3 Micro Drones & Robot Swarms Initiatives Backed by the US Military

DARPAs FLA program aims to create unmanned nano robot like insects & birds that can go into buildings & perform key activities that will not be possible by Humans.

Robotics Startup Unveils Humanoid Servant

One of the technology breakthroughs of Alpha 2 is the servo technology that was designed specifically for this robot. The servos are miniaturized while providing maximum torque giving Alpha 2 the dexterity and range of movements currently only seen in robots costing 20K or more.

Simbe Robotics launches new retail robot

By Silicon Valley Robotics via Robohub:  The area of service robotics is getting active, with a new retail robot startup launching today. Tally is one of several robotics startups launching today at Haxlr8r’s 7th Demo Day. Tally is an inventory tracking robot platform fromSimbe Robotics and the “world’s first robotic autonomous shelf auditing and analytics solution” according to the press release. Tally is in trials with several North American retailers and will traverse aisles scanning and auditing merchandise to help stores maintain ideal product placement, fill inventory gaps, and find misplaced or mispriced items. Tally is also capable of autonomously returning to base to charge. “When it comes to the retail industry, shopper experience is everything. If a product is unavailable at the time the shopper wants to buy it, the retailer has missed an opportunity and disappointed their customer,” according to Brad Bogolea, CEO and Co-founder of Simbe Robotics. “Tally helps retailers address these challenges by providing more precise and timely analysis of the state of in-store merchandise and freeing up staff to focus on customer service.”   Cont'd...

Solar for UAV Index

The new metric (PUAV) is a way to compare solar technologies specifically for UAV applications.

FUTURE ROBOTIC CARS Unvieled at Tokyo Motor show 2015

Driverless and Zero Emsision are REALITY by 2020.

Toyota Invests $1 Billion in AI and Robots, Will Open R&D Lab in Silicon Valley

By Erico Guizzo and Evan Ackerman for IEEE Spectrum:  Today in Tokyo, Toyota announced that it is investing US $1 billion over the next five years to establish a new R&D arm headquartered in Silicon Valley and focused on artificial intelligence and robotics. The Toyota Research Institute (TRI) plans to hire hundreds of engineers to staff a main facility in Palo Alto, Calif., near Stanford University, and a second facility located near MIT in Cambridge, Mass. Former DARPA program manager Dr. Gill Pratt, an executive technical advisor at Toyota, was named CEO of TRI, which will begin operations in January. Toyota president Akio Toyoda said in a press conference that the company pursues innovation and new technologies “to make life better for our customers and society as a whole,” adding that he wanted to “work with Gill not just because he’s an amazing researcher and engineer, but because I believe his goals and motivations are the same as ours.”   Cont'd...

Crowdfunding Projects For November

Here are a few projects we think are worth looking into. Be careful... it is crowdfunding.

SkyTech 2016 - UAV Conference & Exhibition

SkyTech 2016 is a two-day B2B tradeshow for the commercial UAV industry. In 2016 SkyTech will incorporate an exhibition, three conferences, workshops, product launches, live demonstrations and marketing opportunities for the commercial UAV community.

Skype founders invent self-driving robot that can deliver groceries for £1

By Sophie Curtis, video by Robert Midgley:  You've heard of Amazon's plan to deliver packages using drones; now a new company called Starship is promising to disrupt local delivery with the launch of a self-driving robot that can deliver groceries to customers' doors in under 30 minutes for less than £1. The Starship robot has been developed by Skype co-founders Ahti Heinla and Janus Friis. It drives on pavements at an average speed of 4mph, and uses proprietary mapping and navigation technology to avoid crashing into obstacles, (check out the video we made).   Cont'd...  

3D Printing and Acoustics: Rapid Prototyping of Sound Diffusers

By being able to design diffusers in 3D and print them, we streamline the prototyping process tremendously. We can do virtual simulations with the 3D models to get a sense of the effectiveness, and we can make aesthetic or functional changes before its printed.

Collaborative Robot Applications

Here are some of the best applications that can be done by a collaborative robot (in my own opinion).

Robots in Restaurants

Here are three examples where Robots are beginning to take over in the restaurant.

UCSD to create robots that see, think and do

By Gary Robbins for the San Diego Union Tribune:  UC San Diego is creating a robotics institute that will develop machines that can interpret everything from subtle facial expressions to walking styles to size up what people are thinking, doing and feeling. The “See-Think-Do” technology is largely meant to anticipate and fulfill people’s everyday needs, especially the soaring number of older Americans who want to live out their lives in their own homes. Engineers envision robots that are so good at sizing up people, places and situations that they could help evacuate crowds from dangerous areas and pick through the rubble of an earthquake to look for survivors. The newly created Contextual Robotics Institute will be formally announced on Friday when some of the nation’s top scientists meet at UC San Diego to discuss the future of robotics. The campus has already lined up support from such San Diego companies as Qualcomm, which needs new markets for its computer chips, and Northrop Grumman, which develops unmanned aerial vehicles. “Our plan is to do the research and development that’s needed to realize robots of the future — robots that are safe, useful and autonomous in any environment,” said Albert Pisano, dean of UC San Diego’s Jacobs School of Engineering.   Cont'd...

How Sensorimotor Intelligence May Develop

From Institute of Science and Technology Austria: Robotic systems controlled by a neural network spontaneously develop self-organized behaviors. Researchers propose a novel learning rule in PNAS to explain the development of sensorimotor intelligence. It is fascinating to observe a robot exploring its physical possibilities and surroundings, and subsequently developing different self-taught behaviors without any instructions. In their paper (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1508400112) published on October, 26, 2015 in PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences), Professor Ralf Der from the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences, und Georg Martius, Postdoc and Fellow at the Institute for Science and Technology (IST Austria), demonstrate the emergence of sensorimotor intelligence in robots based on their proposed learning rule... ... To test their hypothesis, the authors use bioinspired robots consisting of a humanoid and a hexapod robot in physically realistic computer simulations. The robots receive sensory input from their bodies but are not given any form of instruction or task. What can then be observed is a rich spectrum of rhythmic behaviors of the robots as they explore various movements. Solely because of the tight coupling of environment, body, and brain (in this case an artificial neural network), the robots can obtain feedback from their situation and adapt quickly. This, together with a simple, learned self-model, allows them to develop a form of sensorimotor intelligence... ( full article ) ( paper ) ( videos and other materials )

Spreading like Wildfire

The Yosemite incident, and others in America and Australia, are representative of wider discussions that need to be brought to the publics doorstep if respect for when and where to use drone technology can be instilled as an agreed-upon standard of general practice.

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