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Stories about: robot


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Halo Wars Title Update Coming Soon

Halo Wars is quite the surprise. It is a real time strategy title shipped exclusively for the Xbox 360 gaming console from Microsoft. It is based on the popular Halo franchise that has only featured shooters until now. It managed to sell no less than 1 million units pretty quickly, making it a success. Unfortunately,...

16 April 2009
07:10 GMT

This Robot Could Be Your Perfect Wife

Admit it, how many times have you thought about having a perfect wife, who would read the latest headlines in a newspaper, be the perfect maid, help you with cleaning the house, cooking the dinner and the like, do your accounts, look great and never ever complain? Le Trung, a chemist graduate from York Universit...

11 December 2008
04:41 GMT

A Jump-and-Roll Robot to Help Alien Planet Exploration

Besides the composition of the atmosphere and the structure and features of the surface, the toughest challenge that an alien planet poses to exploration initiatives is known to be the way its terrain is shaped. This is what slowed down or even trapped the Martian rovers, and what has caused scientists to scratch the...

6 December 2008
06:06 GMT

Deep Slocum Gliders Monitor Oceans

A team of technicians, led by Clayton Jones, has developed a triad of gliding robotic devices called Deep Slocum that would prove to be an essential tool in the task of exploring and monitoring the oceanic waters, providing a better insight on its characteristics. The gliders, called Ammonite, Bellamite and Coprolite...

27 November 2008
08:41 GMT

Robots Should Pose No Threat to Humans

The exponential progress of technology helps specialists design and build ever more advanced machines expected to fully replace humans soon. They already look quite similar to us, or are able to chat, although they are much stronger, play musical instruments better, beat humans at chess, ride monocycles, drive cars, ...

20 November 2008
05:39 GMT

The World's Biggest Robo-Truck

The Caterpillar 797 model, weighing 700 tons, is already known as the largest truck in the world and used in tasks that require dimensions that support a load of 240 tons. But such tasks, like mining, for instance, are usually highly dangerous jobs and provide extremely difficult environments to drive through. That&#...

7 November 2008
06:59 GMT

Robotic, Non-Invasive Surgeons on the Way

Patients who need surgery, especially those suffering from prostate-related illnesses, will be happy to know that technology has made a great step forward towards the incision-free, robot-controlled surgery. New devices will use natural orifices and the vast inner-body network to find the ailing spot and perform pre...

7 November 2008
03:43 GMT

A Robot Plays ‘Flight of the Bumblebee’

A new version of a musical robot that plays the flute perfectly could soon turn out to be a worthy competitor to human musicians. Besides the fact that it makes no mistakes, the latest technology allowed its developers from the Waseda University in Japan to equip it with cameras that act as eyes, ensuring a dynamic c...

6 November 2008
08:07 GMT

Robofish Tracking and Investigating Devices

A team of researchers from the University of Washington has come up with a group of complex underwater robots that use exactly the same swimming moves as fish to travel through the liquid medium. The robots are not relying on human remote control for their movement process, and are also able to communicate among the...

31 October 2008
05:42 GMT

New Robot Mimics Human Facial Expressions

UK robotics researchers have taken up the task of creating a robot that would reproduce human facial expressions most accurately, and it seems they succeeded. At least, they managed to give the robotic head created by David Hanson, a US professional in the field of robotics, the most human-resembling appearance and m...

29 October 2008
08:59 GMT

Martian Houses Built by Tiny Robot Bugs

The recent discoveries on Mars (see the related articles below for more on that) have fueled man's colonization dreams. In this regard, they would need to be helped by something that doesn't suffer from the harsh environment and low atmosphere, at least until these issues are dealt with. In order to address...

22 October 2008
07:17 GMT

New Strongest Robot Record

Up to now, the world title for the most powerful robot had been held by KUKA's Titan for 16 months, but the recent appearance of Fanuc Robotics' M-2000iA/1,200 changed all that. Both devices have large applications in technology, industry and even entertainment.Far from being just “muscles”, the...

16 October 2008
07:26 GMT

Robots Are Still Far from Humans in Chatting

A recent experiment performed at Berkshire's University of Reading checked whether robots could resemble humans in thinking, based on text conversations. Chatbots' jokes, arguments and answers were not enough to beat a Turing test. Alan Turing was a bright British mathematician who addressed the issue ...

13 October 2008
05:52 GMT

Robo-Starfish Adapts Itself to Injuries

During several years of development, robots have been taught to do many things, but recently a lot more attention was focused on their mimicking the human appearance, movement, feelings and reason in order to ensure people's better social acceptance. In this respect, a robot able of self-analysis and self-adapta...

1 October 2008
07:41 GMT

Odyssey IV Tougher than Ocean Currents

Researchers from MIT came up with a new underwater robot that can stay in place over a specific location as a helicopter using its thrusts.Engineers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology called the device Odyssey IV, and it's the latest in the Odyssey series of tiny, cheap and intelligent crafts develop...

29 September 2008
10:42 GMT

A Few Laps Around the Office with the iPhoneLego Robot

Is there anything they can't think of using the iPhone for? The guys at BattleBricks have crafted out a simple Lego robot that can hold an iPhone and read the on-screen activity - remotely manipulated by you - to coordinate its moves. How cool is that?!According to the makers, it's the ability of the Mindst...

4 June 2008
06:42 GMT

Flame Walks as We Do

A new highly advanced walking robot dubbed Flame was developed recently by researcher Daan Hobbelen from TU Delft as part of his PhD research focused on revealing the way people walk. For his research Hobbelen will receive his PhD next week, on May 30. Hobbelen's findings could provide a valuable insight into ne...

23 May 2008
10:40 GMT

Robot Battle Tactics Brings Strategy to Mobile Phones

Robots have always looked good in games and they always will. Leveraging on this unquestionable truth, LemonQuest has recently unveiled the release of "Robot Battle Tactics", one of the latest robot-themed games announced to hit the mobile market. In the words of LemonQuest, Robot Battle Tactics is a SRPG (str...

21 May 2008
13:00 GMT

Fly-Inspired Robot Eyes Are Faster and More Accurate

For most of us, a fly is a pest but, it turns out, its eyes could revolutionize robot vision (employed for unmanned vehicles, guided missiles, and high-speed industrial inspection robots in medical, commercial, industrial, and defense areas), improving and speeding up the detection of edges and boundaries of objects ...

12 May 2008
04:21 GMT

Automatic Wheelchair Docks with Van on Its Own

The system proposed by Freedom Sciences, a company commercializing motorized wheelchairs along with a modified Chrysler minivan, uses automatic devices to open and close the doors of the car, to lower the seat of the driver and load the robotic wheelchair at the push of a button. Once the driver reaches the designate...

30 April 2008
10:19 GMT

Microsoft Introduces Worldwide Simulated Robotics Competition

Microsoft is hosting a virtual robot smackdown via a new initiative debuted on April 25, 2008. RoboChamps is designed as a worldwide simulated competition that will bring the Redmond company's own robotics platform to the centerstage. Academics, hobbyists and developers are invited to take part in the challenges...

25 April 2008
07:56 GMT

Lego Crab-Robot to Facilitate Underwater Studies

The crab-like robot prototype was invented by University of Bath postgraduate student Charles Gage as part of a project to develop an exploration independent underwater vehicle which would enable maritime companies, such as those in the oil and gas industry, to have better access to underwater equipment. The robot ca...

23 April 2008
09:36 GMT

MIT's Nexi Robot Expresses Facial Emotions

Nexi is a MDS small humanoid robot, designed by MIT Media Lab's Personal Robotics Group, capable of expressing facial emotions much in the same way as humans do. MDS actually stands for 'Mobile/Dexterous/Social', meaning it can perform a multitude of tasks, by moving around on its dynamically self-bala...

9 April 2008
06:56 GMT

Walking Robot Sets New Distance Record: 9 Kilometers

The unofficial record set by the Cornell Ranger robot on April 3rd at Barton Hall, by making 45 laps around the running track, more precisely 5.6 miles or 9 kilometers. The robot would have probably continued to keep on going, however at some point it stopped and fell on his back probably due to low power supplied fr...

8 April 2008
09:19 GMT

RoboCup German Open 2008

They say white men can't jump and robots can't play soccer. That may be true, however this didn't stop high-tech enthusiasts from organizing the RoboCup German Open 2008. The tournament will be held between 21 to 25 April in the Hall 25 of the Hannover Messe, Hannover, Germany, and expects more than 80...

2 April 2008
08:53 GMT

Hot Updates for Even Hotter Sony Rolly

Sony Rolly is truly so much more than the "little robotic music player that could" and for those who still don't know what Rolly really is, this movie should explain pretty much everything. Yet, the small football-shaped moving robotic and white MP3 player will get a nifty upgrade, ready to ship on April 19: new...

31 March 2008
09:01 GMT

War Robots Should Be Banned

Landmines are banned from use in more than 150 countries around the world, however the Landmine Action believes that autonomous robots capable of killing people should also be banned because they fall under the same treaty that had outlawed the landmines. The US Army is currently the proud owner of a few thousand mil...

28 March 2008
12:22 GMT

BigDog Robot Prototype Released

It looks like a dog, walks like a dog... must be a robot! BigDog is a quadrupled robot created by Boston Dynamics, powered by a hydraulic system, run by a gasoline engine and controlled by a computer which monitors its every move in relation to the environment, through movement sensors. It weighs 74 kilograms, has al...

27 March 2008
12:26 GMT

Robots Fight to the Death in Japan

"Fight, fight, fight... kill the Robot!" would scream people in some futuristic movie. However, this is hardly the case for the Robo-One Championships that took place in Korakuen stadium hall in Tokyo. Instead, the robot fighters were accompanied by applauses. Don't expect any heavyweight machines either, as the...

25 March 2008
04:22 GMT

World's Largest Underwater Robot

Weighing a massive 60 tons and with the dimensions of a small house, the UT-1 Ultra Trencher is now the biggest underwater robot ever made to be used for installing subsea cables for telecommunications and pipelines used in the oil industry. UT-1 Ultra Trencher is 7.8 meters long, 7.8 meters wide and 5.6 meters tall,...

24 March 2008
06:59 GMT

Antarctic UAV Makes Maiden Flight

It is the first time when an unpiloted Unmanned Autonomous Vehicle is used in the antarctic continent to gather data of the harsh environment. The UAV was developed by a British-German collaboration between the British Antarctic Survey and the Technical University of Braunschweig, and it has completed successfully al...

21 March 2008
11:12 GMT

Robot Returns Objects at a Click of a Button

Robots, as most other computer controlled devices, probably will never be able to fully understand human language, or to differentiate between two images of the same object. That is the disadvantage of processing information in binary code. However, robots can be taught, or at least instructed. Such a robot was recen...

20 March 2008
07:58 GMT

Android-like Robot Soon to Talk to Us

According to University of Hertfordshire professors Chrystopher Nehaniv and Kerstin Dautenhahn, from the School of Computer Science, in the close future we may find ourselves surrounded by robots bearing human features. The first step in developing such machines is the robot created by the University of Plymouth, whi...

5 March 2008
06:47 GMT

The Breast Massage Robot

I understand that robots should replace men in tasks that are difficult, boring, discomfort inducing, dangerous or in which they are simply better. But what this robot does should have been a man's pleasure. It's about the Breast Massage Robot. The device is claimed to deliver a comfortable human-free massa...

28 February 2008
14:06 GMT

Here Comes Judgement Day, Robot Invasion!

Except for the invention of the time machine, everything else is running as smooth as the script of the Terminator series, don't you agree? You know, building robots, then equipping robots with guns, then ever increasing artificial intelligence, so that in the end we lose control over them and total annihilation...

28 February 2008
10:18 GMT

Toshiba 815T PB, the Coolest Phone for Robot Lovers

SoftBank, the third largest mobile operator in Japan, will soon release Toshiba 815T PB, a mobile phone that will make an excellent gadget for all the robot fans out there. Besides being packed with lots of advanced features, the handset can also be transformed into a cool-looking robot, a mini mecha that any Sci-Fi ...

27 February 2008
06:03 GMT

A Robot that Reads Your Dreams and Dances Them!

Dreams should be something intimate, something that is deeply yours, like thoughts. But not any more with the Sleep Waking, a robot that can record your brainwave activity and REM sleep. The robot not only reads your dreams, but plays them back in an interpretive dance. The Sleep Waking robot is the fruit of a collab...

23 February 2008
03:48 GMT

The Robot Invasion Begins!

So be it then! We should at least look at the bright side of the whole deal. No more stepping out of the car, no more getting dirty or smelling of petrol after a quick refuel. The automatic refueling unit was developed by an inventor from Netherlands who is also a gas station owner, and is the first of its kind in th...

7 February 2008
09:44 GMT

Snake-like Robot Dances with You

Dance and robots. The worst possible combination in the world today; some aren't even able to walk, not to mention dancing. Or is it? Some robot developer from Merlin Robotics in collaboration with the Nottingham Trent University argues that you don't necessarily need by be human-like to be able to dance, t...

4 February 2008
05:42 GMT

Applied Robotics Unveils Smart Gripper...From The Future?!

Grippers are devices that allow the holding or manipulation of various objects. If you still cannot picture one, just think that it does the job of a human hand. But, besides that, they are important components of many automated systems. Notably, grippers get attached to the great majority of the robots released on t...

11 January 2008
04:07 GMT

The Sperm-Robots of the Future

The nervous swim of a sperm attempting to make you a father could soon have applications others than reproduction. Future minute nanobots could be empowered by whip-like sperm tail imitating structures, wandering around through your whole body.Sperm would solve the issue of energy supply for nanobots, implants and "...

3 January 2008
13:56 GMT

Touche! iRobot Wins $286 Million Army Contract!

iRobot announced it has been awarded the xBot contract, meaning they just got their stainless steel hands on a 286 million cash cow. This is serious stuff, as iRobot talks about an "Indefinite-Delivery/Indefinite-Quantity (IDIQ) contract given by the U.S. Army Program Executive Office for Simulation, Training, and In...

21 December 2007
05:23 GMT

Google's Robots Released Today

The Google Robotics Division team have come open with what they have been working on, for the past year or so, and are finally ready to release their latest creation to the world. Yes, I know, it was a great surprise for me too, and by the looks of it, it is certain to change the face of things… if only it were true....

19 December 2007
14:51 GMT

Top 4 Technological Advances That Keep off Diseases

In Europe, diseases steal annually 500 million workdays. Decreased productivity and high medical costs are paid by all of us. And do not believe that only in developing countries people do not have access to medical care: 46 million people in US do not have medical insurance. Science fights hard to eradicate infectio...

14 December 2007
07:02 GMT

ASIMO: The Superstar's Popularity Explodes!

If robotry is a religion, then ASIMO is definitely Jesus! Considered the most advanced humanoid robot on the market, the bot is now giving its helping hand to make vehicles safer. But hey, after twenty-years of technology, the robot can see, hear and even dance, not to mention the media treats it like a real supersta...

6 December 2007
14:26 GMT

I, the Ping-Pong Robot!

Forget about Wii! A new revelation in the robotic sports industry starred in the latest International Robot exhibition held in Tokyo. More surprising was the fact that it came from... Vietnam?Ever since the spectators saw the robot playing ping-pong like a pro, they've tried to get in touch with the official rep...

5 December 2007
14:56 GMT

Robo-Fair Reveals Bots Can Cry, Feel And Play!

There is no doubt about it: Japanese are addicted to robots! They're so hooked on robotry they could actually use one bot for just about every need they have.In this regard, Reuters reports on the amazing International Robot Exhibition in Tokyo, which is opening today. The event is definitely going to prove the ...

3 December 2007
15:06 GMT

Bomberman Action Replay Codes (DS)

Bomberman DS will take advantage of the unique features of Nintendo's handheld. The intense battle action will take place on both screens of the console for a wider view of the game, with players able to access and use the menu via the Touch Screen function. Leading battles by voice input will be easy with the N...

3 December 2007
09:43 GMT

Could Robots Help us Get Rid of Cockroaches?

You cannot get rid of cockroaches that easily and they are so hardy that they are amongst the few organisms that can survive in an area after atomic experiments. The disgusting insects also surprise us with a memory that makes them capable of advanced learning. But a new toy can change their behavior. Cockroaches alw...

16 November 2007
05:00 GMT

Go Fetch, Rhex! Wait, Don't Shoot, It's Me!

Boston Dynamics have come up with something I have to admit I find extraordinary and quite funny when being in motion. In other words, they finally lunched a rugged robot that features the highest terrain mobility level of all. Rhex looks like a cute metallic puppy, but it can climb over rock fields, mud, sand, veget...

13 November 2007
05:44 GMT


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