robots

Norovirus is a particularly nasty virus that causes severe gastrointestinal upset. It's famous for turning cruises into nightmares. It's a tough little number that spreads easily and is hard to kill. To study it, you can't just ask a bunch of sick people to pop down to the lab and vomit on demand. That's where a robot nicknamed Vomiting Larry comes in.

Larry is a one-robot upchucking machine in residence at the Health & Safety Laboratory in Buxton, U.K. He's an anatomically correct model and his favorite hobby is barfing for science. He helps scientists determine how far the norovirus can spread. … Read more

Samsung revealed yesterday (albeit, with little detail) its latest robotic vacuum cleaner -- the Smart Tango Corner Clean -- just a week before a potential CES debut.

For those of you with visions of a Samsung-made Rosey the maid robot from "The Jetsons" zipping about your home, well, we're not quite there yet. However, due to the inclusion of appendages, the latest robotic vacuum from Samsung might give pause to prospective buyers of Roomba or Neato devices. … Read more

If you've never seen DARPA's version of Boston Dynamics' semi-autonomous LS3 (Legged Squad Support System) robot in action, now's a good time.

The government agency released a video yesterday that highlights one of LS3's most powerful skills: the ability to follow a leader by using computer-aided vision and GPS. In the four-minute clip, you can watch the dog-like robot following an instructor over some rough terrain -- with great ease -- in a wooded area near Fort Pickett, Va. … Read more

Here's a robotics challenge for you: create an advanced humanoid robot in only nine months.

That's what engineers at the University of Zurich's Artificial Intelligence Lab are trying to do with Roboy, a kid-style bot that's designed to help people in everyday environments.

Researchers around the world are trying to create useful humanoids. One interesting aspect of Roboy is its tendon-driven locomotion system.

Like Japan's Kenshiro humanoid, Roboy relies on artificial muscles to move; in the future, it will be covered with a soft skin. … Read more

Call it too little, too late.

Mitsubishi is the latest Japanese conglomerate to show off a new robot to work at the devastated Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, following Toshiba's flubbed demo of a quadruped walker.

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI), Japan's largest defense contractor, yesterday unveiled the Maintenance Equipment Integrated System of Telecontrol Robot (Meister), a two-armed unit that rolls around on four tracks.

The remote-controlled bot can wield a variety of tools such as cutters and drills, clear obstacles, and pierce through concrete to check radiation levels, according to MHI.

Just like human arms, its robotic appendages can move along seven axes. Check it out cutting a pipe in the video below. … Read more

We've seen transforming robots before, and I'm not talking about anything related to Hasbro.

Researchers from MIT are among many engineers and tinkerers trying to design robots that perform different functions by changing their shape or appearance.

Japan-based Brave Robotics has designed a 1/12-scale RC car that can transform into a humanoid robot. It can shuffle around, grab footage with its Wi-Fi camera, and even fire little missiles from its arms. … Read more

PARIS -- For telecommuters who just aren't happy with Skype videoconferences or Google+ hangouts, why not try a telepresence robot?

David Cann, co-founder and chief executive of Double Robotics, showed off such a beast today here at the LeWeb show. The $2,000 design looks, in Cann's words, like an iPad on a Segway.

The robot, called Double, is basically a mobile videoconferencing device. On the bottom is a pair of wheels and a motor; in the middle a thin stalk; and on the top a bracket with an iPad. The operator can control the robot remotely, steering … Read more

After a record-breaking 9,000-mile journey across the ocean, a small autonomous robot recently arrived in Australia having collected and transmitted a wealth of scientific data that could lead to a better understanding of the world's seas.

On November 17, 2011, a Silicon Valley startup called Liquid Robotics launched four of its Wave Glider robots from San Francisco, two of which were heading toward Australia and the other two on their way to Japan. The hope was that the Wave Gliders, which are designed to travel across the globe without fuel or outside propulsion, would set the Guinness World … Read more

You gotta hand it to the marketers who come up with robot acronyms. Can it get any better than Extreme Access System for Entry (EASE)?

Sounds innocuous enough, right? Until this little critter tries to float into your room to spy on you. It's one of two bots unveiled by CyPhy Works, headed by iRobot co-founder Helen Greiner.

EASE and PARC (that's Persistent Aerial Reconnaissance & Communication), a communications relay, are compact flying machines that can fly between 3 feet and 1,000 feet while remaining tethered to their human controllers via microfilaments. … Read more