willow

Had Dipak Chowdhury known just how accident-prone I really am, he never would have handed over the 0.1-millimeter sheet of glass for me to bend between my fingers.

Luckily for me, the vice president and director of Corning's Willow Glass division is a trusting soul and gave CNET the world's very first public demo of this glass so thin it can bend without breaking.

Flexible glass and flexible screens have been a hot topic for some time, culminating with fanfare at Samsung's demo of its curvy Youm OLED display at CES.

Companies like Samsung, Nokia, and … Read more

LAS VEGAS--There's no question that flexible screens are the future, along with the bendable products that go with them. Corning, maker of Gorilla Glass 3, was kind enough to drop by our CNET booth at CES to show me Willow Glass, its take on bendable glass so thin you can curve it in a deep arc without breaking.

Willow Glass is as thick as a business card -- only 0.1 millimeter thick -- and as malleable as promised. I could easily bend it within its plastic laminate cover, but at this early stage in development, I wasn't … Read more

Leaked from today's 404 episode:

- Instagram photos disappear from Twitter feeds.

- You can use IFTTT to post Instagram photos to Twitter cards.

- Twitter vs. Instagram in a knock-down, drag-out filters fight.

- Head-to-head: Twitter vs. Instagram filters.

- Sony putting an end to production of handheld cassette recorders.

- "Modern Seinfeld" Twitter account imagines Jerry and Co. in the Digital Age.

- Check out the CNET 100 of 2012.… Read more

If you're getting sick and tired of flying to another city for a few unproductive meetings, you don't have to dream of a day when telepresence robots will make that totally unnecessary.

Beam from Suitable Technologies, a spinoff of Willow Garage, is a new addition to the growing field of remote-operated robots that project your presence into a distant location. Like other telepresence bots, it's basically a Webcam on wheels, letting you roam around offices or factories to chat with colleagues.

Officially called the Beam Remote Presence System, the bot is roughly 5 feet tall, weighs 95 pounds, can roll along at walking speed (about 5 feet per second), and has a 17-inch screen. It's got two HD cameras, six microphones, speakers, Wi-Fi, and LED lamps. … Read more

In this week's Always On (Episode 7), host Molly Wood visits robotics research lab Willow Garage in Menlo Park, Calif., to see how its crafty $400,000 PR2 robot fares as a sushi waiter.

PR2 looks like a juiced-up version of Rosie the robotic maid from "The Jetsons." But even with its buff arms, this humanoid robot can set a table with surprising grace. It shows poise on camera too -- impressive considering that the footage below represents robot sushi waiter's first video appearance.

For those unfamiliar with the open-source robot, the PR2's array of … Read more

It would appear the robotics industry is having its Linux moment, which backers hope will unleash a torrent of creativity around robots. But not everyone's convinced that's a good thing.

Robotics company Willow Garage yesterday created an open-source body to shepherd the development of its ROS (Robot Operating System). Called the Open Source Robotics Foundation, the goal is get more people writing software for robots, particularly for commercial and consumer use, say its creators.

Everyone agrees robots need killer apps to graduate beyond curiosities and cool demos, much the way the spreadsheet helped catalyze the PC movement. And … Read more

Everything cool in technology eventually becomes mundane. I think history shall record that robots, once the stuff of science fiction and fantasy, crossed this threshold when they began picking poop off the floor.

Willow Garage's PR2, a humanoid with an evolving MacGyver skillset, has added shit disturber to its many talents.

Ben Cohen and friends at the University of Pennsylvania's GRASP lab recently took the wraps off this awesome new technology, named POOP SCOOP (Perception of Offensive Products and Sensorized Control of Object Pickup). Hello, Ig Nobel prize. … Read more

Realizing too late the threat of its PR2 robots taking over the world, Willow Garage today began offering a less dangerous version with only one arm.

The PR2 SE can be yours for the low, low price of only $285,000. That's way down from $400,000 for a two-armed PR2, and a discount is even available to those who make significant contributions to the open-source Robot Operating System (ROS) community. Users can buy another arm later if they want.

PR2 has made the rounds of late with its skills in helping people, reading, cooking, tag-teaming with a TurtleBot to serve drinks, and fetching beer.

Willow Garage says about two dozen PR2s, which went on sale last September, are being used by researchers around the world, and that PR2 SE will expand the community because it's more affordable. … Read more

PR2, the beer-fetching, laundry-folding, breakfast-making jack of all trades robot, has taken up a job as personal assistant for a man disabled by a stroke.

Maker Willow Garage has partnered with Georgia Tech's Charlie Kemp and colleagues of the Healthcare Robotics Lab to help Henry Evans and his wife Jane in a project dubbed Robots for Humanity.

It sounds rather grandiose, but the humanoid robot has made a real difference in the life of Evans, who suffered a brain stem stroke at age 40 that left him paralyzed and mute. Therapy has enabled him to move his head and a finger.

That allows him to use a computer and control PR2. The bot helped him scratch an itch for the first time in 10 years.

As the vid below shows, Evans prefers to shave himself with PR2 rather than have others do it. … Read more