Author Archives: Owen Li

JIBO: The Family Robot

Nowadays, personal AI’s in your smartphone help with making appointments, adding events to your calendar…etc. But none of them are truly social. That’s where JIBO comes in. The world’s first family robot, JIBO brings intelligence and helpfulness with heart to the home. Developed by MIT Media Lab researcher and Director of Personal Robots Group, Cynthia Breazeal, JIBO […]

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Finger-ring reads books to the blind

According to the World Health Organization, 285 million people are visually impaired, with 39 million of them being blind. To assist the visually impaired in reading, researchers from the MIT Media Lab have recently developed a ring-shaped device that will read to the wearer. After putting the device on their finger, the user runs that finger […]

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Robot News Anchors!

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Some news anchors already can’t help but act and look robotic when giving us the news. But that isn’t enough for Japan. They want actual robots giving us the news. Dubbed Kodomoroid and Otonaroid, the two robots developed by Professor Hirosho Ishiguro of Osaka University look scarily human, yet have decent anchoring skills. The robots, […]

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MIT’s new exoskeleton arms

Need a hand? Two? Look no further! Thanks to a team of researchers at MIT’s d’Arbeloff Laboratory, a set of robotic arms have been developed which can be mounted on your shoulders or waist. Now…where have I seen that before? Meant to augment actual arms, these robotic arms instead base their movements off of the movements […]

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RoboClam digs through…well…anything!

Ever have underground cables that need quick repair but have no implement to help? Well fear no more! Designed by Amos Winter, a professor of mechanical engineering at MIT, the robot takes pointers from the Atlantic razor clam a large mollusk found along the Atlantic coast of North America. Through analyzing how it burrows through muddy […]

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Droplet

Traditional sprinklers simply spread water over an area, which leads to lots of water wasted and uneven watering. Droplet wants to change all that with its eponymous robot. Instead of blindly spraying water around like Bill & Lance with a Spread gun, Droplet knows where your plants are and aims at them like Mr. Mundy in Doublecross. When […]

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Robot Lumberjack

With conspiracy theorists teeming with excitement over Google’s potential Skynet plot (buying Schaft, Boston Dynamics, self driving cars…what gives?), roboticists Yasuhiko Ishigure, Katsuyuki Hirai, and Haruhisa Kawasaki, are adding to the fray, with this  lumberjack bot. This chainsaw bot is not only capable of climbing up and down trees, but can also dismember them without human interaction. The […]

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