robotics

When they take over, robots will surely take advantage of studies suggesting we pathetic meatsacks are hardwired to sympathize with them.

Watching a robot being cuddled or abused produces similar reactions in humans to watching people undergo the same treatment, according to two new studies to be presented at the International Communication Association Conference in London in June.

In one, subjects were shown videos in which popular dino-bot Pleo was either hugged or treated violently. Perhaps not surprisingly, the subjects' skin conductance levels rose when Pleo suffered, suggesting they were distressed.

They also reported feeling bad for the bot. Check out how the poor little guy was mistreated in the vid below. … Read more

If you happen to meet a BlabDroid in public, the smiling cardboard-headed robot may roll up to you and ask a question like, "Who do you love most in the world?" or "What's the worst thing you've ever done to someone?" These bots are making a documentary about human-robot relationships, but you may be able get a BlabDroid of your very own.

BlabDroid is the creation of artist and roboticist Alexander Reben. Filmmaker Brent Hoff is using them for a documentary about how humans interact with robots. Versions of the little bots with a camera and speaker onboard are traveling around to international film festivals, where they ask preset questions and film the results. That footage will be edited into a movie. A new Kickstarter project is offering them to the world. The robot can connect to your phone via Bluetooth, so it will be able to work with apps and features like Siri.… Read more

We all know what Roombas are good for. They're good for ferrying cats around, dressing up in silly costumes, and occasionally sucking up dirt. One thing they're not good for, however, is bossing around. For that, you'll need the new Roboking vacuuming robot, which LG announced for the Korean market.

The new Roboking pretty much looks like its predecessors, but it's got more going on under the hood. It takes voice commands and can recognize which direction a person's voice is coming from. That means you could stand at the site of a particularly heinous dirt pile and call it over to come clean it up.… Read more

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Oakley and golf champ Bubba Watson have teamed to build the world's first hovercraft golf cart. A physicist invents a way to write e-mail using a guitar, and a "Star Trek" phaser rifle from the original series sells for a staggering sum. … Read more

STANFORD, Calif.--Issac Asimov's famous laws of robotics say machines may never harm humans. In Matt Groening's "Futurama" universe that takes place a millennium later, however, robots have become a bit less literal-minded.

"The three laws of robotics are actually built into many of the robots," said Patric Verrone, co-executive producer of "Futurama." "Some of them just choose to ignore them."

The best known example of "Futurama's" robot taxonomy is Bender, a foul-mouthed, alcoholic, cigar-smoking kleptomaniac who dreams about killing all the humans. But the universe of &… Read more

STANFORD, Calif.--When I walked onto the Stanford University campus this week and into the Volkswagen Automotive Innovation Lab, I was greeted by a short, gray robot waving his two long arms -- he was looking for a high-five.

All around me robots of all sizes were roaming the floor. I was trapped -- in the future. … Read more

The good thing is that we're a dying species.

This allows us to have a more rounded perspective on life, the world, and every little thing that's coming to replace us.

We know that we are generally incapable of making the right decisions at the right time. So we invented humor to take the edge off it.

We also know that we're increasingly incapable of efficiency and, well, work in general. So we invented robots. Now, we have to decide what we're going to do with them before they do away with us.

In a survey conducted -- with, presumably, entirely straight faces -- by the Huffington Post and YouGov, real human beings offered their more profound thoughts on the robotic future.… Read more

STANFORD, Calif. -- Self-driving cars are expected to save lives: a vehicle driven by a human will experience, on average, a crash every 160,000 miles or so. It's only a matter of time, advocates say, before robots become better drivers than us.

That is, if the lawyers let them. Industry insiders are already fretting about a host of legal problems that could bedevil robot car makers once a sufficient number of their creations take to the roads. Product liability, tort law, negligence, foreseeable harm, patent encumbrance, and design defects are only some of the concerns.

"The longer … Read more

After setting a world record for the longest distance traveled on Earth's surface by a robot, Liquid Robotics today unveiled the latest version of its Wave Glider technology.

The updated platform is capable of autonomously prowling the world's seas while analyzing, processing, and transmitting data gathered from a wide variety of on-board sensors.

The new Wave Glider SV3 is essentially a self-powered sea-faring data center, a system that gives users the ability to investigate the world's water ways for months on end. The SV3 features a hybrid propulsion system, Silicon Valley's Liquid Robotics said, that can … Read more