Building a Rope Bridge With Flying Machines
From Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering at ETH Zurich:
The Aerial Construction project is a collaboration between the Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control and the Chair of Architecture and Digital Fabrication. The objective is to investigate and develop methods and techniques for robotic aerial construction... (project homepage)
OMRON to Acquire U.S. Based Adept Technology
OMRON plans to acquire 100% of the outstanding shares of Adept common stock through an all cash tender offer followed by a second-step merger. OMRON will offer Adept investors $13.00 per share of Adept common stock, which represents a 63% premium over the closing price for Adept's common stock on September 15, 2015. This values Adept at approximately $200 million. OMRON will fund the tender offer through cash on hand.
Commenting on the acquisition, Yutaka Miyanaga, OMRON Industrial Automation Business Company President, said, "We are delighted Adept Technology, a world leader in robotics, has agreed to join OMRON. This acquisition is part of our strategy to enhance our automation technology and position us for long term growth. Robotics will elevate our offering of advanced automation."
Rob Cain, President and Chief Executive Officer of Adept, added, "We are excited about the opportunity to join OMRON, a global leader in automation. Together, our products will offer new innovative solutions to customers all around the globe."
Full Press Release:
The 3D Printshow - Learn About 3D Printing
The 3D Printshow is the first dedicated 3D printing event anywhere in the world.
WowWee brings expensive university bots to store shelves
By Corinne Iozzio for Scientific American: Hong Kong–based WowWee's success stems from bringing university research projects to life that might otherwise languish in the prototype stage. A licensing agreement with the Flow Control and Coordinated Robotics Labs at the University of California, San Diego, for example, provides WowWee with access to patents and the labs with a healthy cash infusion. The collaboration has already netted a series of toy robots that balance like Segways. More recently, the avionics lab at Concordia University in Montreal began working with the company to perfect flight algorithms for a four-rotor drone. Next, chief technology officer Davin Sufer says he has his eye on the Georgia Institute of Technology and its work with swarming behaviors, which would allow a group of robots to function in tandem.
In the case of Switchbot, WowWee adapted a locomotion system developed in part by former U.C. San Diego student Nick Morozovsky. The robot moves on tank-tread legs either horizontally to navigate uneven terrain or on end to stand and scoot fully upright. Morozovsky built his prototype with off-the-shelf parts, including a set of $50 motors. The motors were a compromise; each one had the size and torque he wanted but not the speed. Over the past few years he has worked with WowWee to customize a motor with the exact parameters needed and to cut the final cost of the part down to single digits.
That back and forth yields low-cost, mass-producible parts, which means university-level robotics could become available to everyday people. “One of the reasons I went into mechanical engineering was so I could create real things that have a direct impact,” Morozovsky says. “I didn't expect that to necessarily happen in the process of grad school.” Cont'd...
Robot Taxis Are to Be Main Drive Around for 2020 Tokyo Olympics
With an еуе оn 2020, thе gоvеrnmеntÑ• revised economic strategy adopted in Junе ÑаllÑ• fоr the аррliÑаtiоn оf rоbоt tеÑhnоlоgiеѕ аѕ travel guides аt Narita International Airроrt in Chibа PrеfеÑturе, аnd Tоkуоѕ Hаnеdа airport.
3 Key Ways Automation Reduces Safety and Ergonomic Concerns
As companies continue to rely on automation to remain competitive, employees will have the benefit of working in safer environments. In the years to come, the question wont be "Is your company automating?" but instead "How is your company automating?"
7Bot: $300 6-axis Aluminum Desktop Robot Arm
From 7Bot's Kickstarter campaign:
In 2014, two of us co-founded project uArm with other two makers. There we received a lot of feedback from our Angel backers:
More axis for more powerful applications, and more controlling dimensions (force control, speed control and flexible-joint).
More rugged material rather than Acrylic, muscular servos hardly to be burned out.
More intelligent API. Better inverse kinematics and path planning algorithms to make the movement more precise and smooth.
More accessories and various of end-effectors.
Our custom servos with precise position feedback allow you to quickly set it up and operate in teaching mode without any codes. In this mode, you can simply drag each joint of the robot to a serious of desired way points. The movements will be recorded, and could be replayed in an optimized path.
A multi-platform supported 3D visualization application will be provided for you to manipulate the 7Bot Arm intuitively. With our 3D visualization application, you can easily set and read the position of each joint separately with real-time graphic interface.
If you have two 7Bot Arms, you can build this amazing Humanoid robot -7Bot Arm Dual:
Estimated shipping date is January 2015... (7Bot's Kickstarter campaign)
5 Robotics Stocks to Watch
Chad Fraser for The Street: Soon, robots could be doing much more than just vacuuming your house or assembling your next car-they could also invade your investment portfolio. If you're looking for the industry's fastest growth, you'll want to pay particular attention to what's happening on the consumer/office side, where sales are set to grow at a 17% compound annual rate between 2014 and 2019, according to a May report from Business Insider -- seven times quicker than the industrial-robot market. In addition, a number of radical new applications for robotics are emerging in the medical and defense markets, as outlined in this presentation from Investing Daily.
Even though the automation trend is clearly set, there still aren't many pure ways for investors to play it. But that doesn't mean there are no intriguing options out there. Here are five robot makers to keep on your radar screen:
Star Wars The Force Awakens BB-8 Toy Teardown
From uBreakiFix's Youtube channel:
Festo's R&D Timeline - Part 3 - 2010 & 2011
Part 3 includes more bionic robots like the smartbird and a handler modeled after an elephant trunk.
Optical Time-of-Flight Sensing Technology
Focuses on Unmanned Automotive Technologies at RoboBusiness
Soft Robotics Project Exo-Biote 3D Prints Living Movement
BY HANNAH ROSE MENDOZA for 3DPrint.com: Soft robotics is a relatively new field of research that aims to create flexible robots that are more easily adaptable to human interaction. Often, the forms of these creations and the mechanics of their movement are inspired by a close study of nature in an effort to ‘go organic’ with machines. 3D printing with flexible filament is one way in which this integration of robot and movement is taking on a flexible aspect.
For this particular installation, titled Exo-biote, the National Institute for Research in Computer and Control and the Department of Science and Visual Culture at the Imaginarium worked together, with support from Neuflize Bank, to create a robot organism that embodied the formal typologies and demonstrated the possibilities for movements in soft robots. After all, some of nature’s most amazing machines have nearly entirely soft bodies – think of the octopus, for example, able to lift, carry, walk, swim, shape change, camouflage itself, and fit through a tube no bigger than a quarter! Cont'd...
New Open Loop Current Transducers With Near Closed Loop Performance
Measured performance is at the level expected and increases the range of applications which may be addressed by open loop transducers instead of more complex solutions.
Toyota hires robotics expert for AI push
Richard Waters for FT.com: Toyota has hired the top robotics expert from the US defence department’s research arm and promised $50m in extra funding for artificial intelligence research, as it steps up the race between the world’s biggest carmakers to pioneer new forms of computer-assisted driving.
However, the Japanese carmaker maintained on Friday that completely driverless cars were still years away, and that AI and robotics would have a more complex effect on the relationship between humans and their vehicles than Google’s experiments with “robot cars” suggest.
Gill Pratt, who stepped down recently from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), will move to Silicon Valley to head Toyota’s robotics efforts, the company said. Darpa played a key role in stimulating interest in driverless cars with a competition in 2005 — the leader of the winning entry, Sebastian Thrun, who was then a professor at Stanford University, went on to found Google’s driverless car programme. Cont'd...
Bucky Fuller Friday
Animated retelling of a Buckminster Fuller story and Ephemeralization (doing more with less):
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