Brains, Bots and Bodies

Headquartered in Silicon Valley, the Readybot Challenge is a non-profit research group composed of senior engineers and designers from the networking, motion control, ergonomics, and software industries. Their mission: to build a robot that can clean a kitchen.

What has become a milestone in the evolutionary timeline of robotic market development, iRobot sued its former competitor Robotic FX to death last year.  At the center of the battle was the Robotic FX version of a robot called The Negotiator which allegedly violated U.S. Patents 6,263,989 and 6,431,296 that relate to robot platform and [...]

iRobot Negotiator Provides a Cost-Effective, Basic Reconnaissance Robot to Public Safety Organizations
Bedford, Mass., August 6, 2008 – iRobot Corp. (Nasdaq: IRBT) today announced the introduction of the iRobot Negotiator, a low-cost tactical robot designed to meet the basic reconnaissance needs of public safety professionals.
After the success of the company’s iRobot PackBot 510, iRobot heard from [...]

SciVestor spoke with Colin Angle, co-founder and CEO of iRobot Corporation. We asked him about how iRobot will change the world, the importance of Moore’s Law, and why the business community should be interested. We also got his take on the state of the emerging robotics industry.

iC Hexapod is the coolest robot I’ve ever seen. Builder Matt Denton of Micromagic Systems designed and machined the parts, motherboard, controller, and algorithms required to bring elegant animate life to this gorgeous piece of creative engineering, as Denton calls it. Each leg sports three servos giving it 18 degrees of freedom. [...]

SciVestor Executive Director Jonas Lamis narrates the Autonomous Vehicle Roadmap that was presented at RoboBusiness 2008. This presentation is based in part on Robot Central’s observations, research, and opinions of emergent technologies from the DARPA Grand Challenge series of competitions. It highlights progress and challenges in the technologies necessary to facilitate civilian [...]

Earlier this year, WowWee debuted its first practical (and really cool-looking) robot Rovio. The robot sports a complete mobile telepresence pack including camera, microphone, and speaker. It’s WiFi enabled and provides audio and video streams via a web interface it serves up over the internet. You can also control the robot over [...]

Leonardo da Vinci was known for many things: painting, sculpting, and of particular interest to RobotCentral readers, a French king commissioned him to build a walking mechanical lion. Which for some reason could produce a chest full of flowers on demand (probably because Leo had not yet invented the chainsaw). But he also [...]

Ask a symphony musician what the difference is between a conductor and a chimpanzee, and the musician will likely tell you that some chimpanzees have been shown to be able to communicate with humans. Perhaps a robot can gain their respect, and on May 13th, Honda’s multi-talented ASIMO Robot is going to try. [...]

Paro Robots U.S., Inc. will be distributing Japan’s Intelligent Systems’ artificial life form Paro in the US and Canada. Modeled after a baby harp seal, it is designed to provide therapeutic services to patients with Alzheimer’s disease, other forms of dementia, and emotional complications stemming from the prolonged recovery associated with severe injury [...]