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Topic: Robotics

  
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Robots Dance Their Way Into Uncanny Valley, Next Stop: Your Heart

Japan's AIST has impressed us before with its android robots, but this new video of gynoid HPR4C is enough to...well, seriously give us the shivers. She's dancing, and if you squint, you'd almost mistake her for a real girl. READ»

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iRobot, Makers of Sweet Little Roomba, Also Blow Up Bad Guys [Video]

Robo-squids, robot "swarms"--and vacuums. For its 20th birthday celebration, the company celebrated its split personality, designing robots both for the home and for the military.READ»

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Won't You (Cheaply) Help DARPA Gear Up for the Coming Robopocalypse?

Back in July the government identified robots as one of the R&D priorities for the 2012 budget (about a decade behind the rest of us). Now there's a research funding round to aid small business robotic's efforts, to build robot gear DARPA can't manage.READ»

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AIST's HRP4: Sci-Fi-Like Household Helper Robots Have Arrived

You've seen plenty of robots and androids in the news, but you've probably never seen anything as astonishing as HRP4, which promises to be cheap, powerful, and the most sci-fi-like bot built to date. READ»

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Nanowire Skin May Grant Robots a (Very Limited) Sense of Touch

Researchers at Cal Berkeley have come up with a new nanowire "skin" prototype that some are touting as either a future robotic skin or prosthetic. That might be overly optimistic, but it is a very promising technology.READ»

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Female AILA Spices Up Robot Sausage Party

Robots, robots everywhere ... but ne'er a ladybot in sight. Well, gynoids we mean. And not in any sort of smutty way.READ»

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Derek Morikawa's Robots Pick Oranges From Trees (Really)

Derek Morikawa makes robots that help growers harvest oranges and prune grapevines.READ»

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Meet Sorena 2: He's Humanoid, He Walks, He's Iranian

Meet Surena 2, a human-sized, human-shaped (ish) robot that's new on the world robotics scene. He's capable of walking, and designed to perform the similar sort of human-assist role as other similar bots. He's from Iran. ...READ»

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Test Drive: Working Remotely With Anybots Telepresence Robot

Telepresence robots aren't much more than Skype bots on wheels, right? That's what we thought before taking part in a scavenger hunt this week using the Anybots QB telepresence robot--an attractive bot set to go on sale this fall ...READ»

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In the Future, We Will All Be Replaced by Telepresence Robots

Ever wish you could attend a meeting without getting out of bed or chat with participants at a conference 2,000 miles away? You could always videochat, sure, but it's just not as meaningful as having a physical presence. Enter the ...READ»

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Robovie's Plastic Butler Bot Gets An Upgrade, Goes on Sale

Just the other day we were giggling with glee at Robovie's diminutive MR2 companion robot. Now the company's trumped itself: Robovie's R-Ver.3 is out. He's taller, can cope with rugged terrain, and you can pre-order him. For real.This ...READ»

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Meet the Matrix, er, Elephant Trunk-Inspired Arm of Your Future Robot Overlord

Meet Festo, a prototype robotic arm that takes its design inspiration from the way an elephant's trunk moves every which way thanks to its series of highly flexible muscle segments. Clever? Yes. On the way to real robots? Probably. ...READ»

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A Little Bit About Me

A bit from my world, thinking, and musings.READ»

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You Could Hire This Robot Teacher for $77,000

The robot revolution is indeed on its way: Soon we'll have robovacuums, robot chefs, and now, robots teaching our kids about robots. But it's not a one-way evolution, as humans are becoming little more futuristic too, with the help ...READ»

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Eco Building Rebuilds Itself Using Robotic Arms and Eco Power

We've seen every kind of architectural concept related to green design, but here's an exciting new one that may also be the oddest. It seems to borrow from a NASA design concept; it constantly re-builds itself and grows biofuel on its ...READ»

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Why Market Your Company With Stick-on Emotion When You Can Tap the Real Thing?

Why market your company with stick-on emotion when you can tap the real thing?READ»

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In Defense of Slapping a Robot

By inflicting pain on entities with artificial intelligence we enable them to become truly intelligent.READ»

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Filene's Eco Pods is an Adaptable, Biofuel-Producing Building

Algae-based biofuels have become increasingly popular over the past few months, with even biofuel-aversive oil companies like BP and Exxon getting in on the action. Boston-based Howeler Yoon Architects want to bring that interest ...READ»

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Why Is Jeff Bezos Investing $7 Million in Heartland Robotics?

Jeff Bezos founded Amazon.com, coined the phrase Artificial Artificial Intelligence, and invested in human spaceflight startup Blue Origin. Now he's expanding his portfolio to include robots.Specifically, he's investing in Heartland ...READ»

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Fox News Eats Words on EATR Robot

Fox News corrects itself: No, a biomass eating robot will not be munching on "dead bodies."READ»

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EATR: A Robot That'll Forage Its Own Fuel

The Pentagon is developing a new robot that can power itself with biomass--and, as Fox News gleefully conjectures, dead people.READ»

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Fabulist Ray Kurzweil Tackles Transportation Problem with Nanobots

The new issue of GOOD magazine is a timely one, dedicated entirely to transportation. It includes an interactive, before and after graphic showing exactly how urban planners would go about making a forbidding city street ...READ»

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All-Terrain Tribot Rolls Where Man Fears To Tread

The Tribot may look a little like something you'd find barring traffic at a construction site, but actually it's a sophisticated robot designed to gather data for climate and environmental research from difficult-to-reach ...READ»

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New Product Development Tools

According to Don Debelak in his book, How to Bring a Product  To Market for Less Than $5,000,  a product can be developed by "taking apart existing products and use their parts to  make a new product."  Well, that ...READ»

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The Nuts and Bolts of Business

The MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab is building the future of business -- literally. Think C-3P0 with degrees in astrophysics, marine biology, and home economics.READ»