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Robot Parks your Car

By Owen Li | Published: July 23, 2014

With the future bearing gifts: swarms of automated cars, that is, it’s only right that you have a way to park your self-driving car.

Serva Transport Systems has now given us just that.  Debuting at Düsseldorf Airport in Germany, the robot valet, dubbed Ray is equipped with forklifts to help move the cars in and out of the airport parking lot. When you leave you car to be parked by Ray, it uses a laser scanner to measure your car, and will adjust the forklift handles accordingly.

Then, Ray uses even more lasers to find its way around the parking lot, packing all the cars more closely than your average human would possibly dare to park. Therefore, the parking lot can be used to its maximum capacity. There is even an Android app to alert Ray when you want your car back, but that process can soon be automated as well by inputting your flight data when you leave your car.

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JIBO: The Family Robot

By Owen Li | Published: July 17, 2014

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 stands 11 inches tall and using a 3-axis motor system, JIBO can twist and turn in a variety of ways.

JIBO can take photos, videos, and can even point its screen at a subject it’s following. It can make dinner reservations, take your calls for you, and will even tell your children bedtime stories and teach them different things with the right apps downloaded.

The days of a personal R2-D2 have never been closer, and the world has never been more excited for it.

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Finger-ring reads books to the blind

By Owen Li | Published: July 13, 2014

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 below the printed text of any sort; newspapers, restaurant menus, business cards…etc. A camera in the 3D printed device then scans the words, and reads them aloud in real time. A small vibrating motor tells the wearer if they’ve veered off the line of text, or if they need to move on to the next line.

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Robot News Anchors!

By Owen Li | Published: July 8, 2014
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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, designed with a lady-like appearance, can use a variety of voices, such as a deep male voice one minute and a squeaky girly voice the next. The speech can be input by text, giving them perfect articulation. In a demonstration, the robots were also shown to be able to move their lips to match the voice-over, twitch their eyebrows, blink and sway their heads, and move their hands.

The two life-size robots, which have silicon skin and artificial muscles, will be on display starting Wednesday, at Miraikan museum, or the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation, in Tokyo, allowing the public to interact with them extensively.

 

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MIT’s new exoskeleton arms

By Owen Li | Published: June 29, 2014

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 of their wearer’s entire body, measuring acceleration and orientation to predict what they should be doing. By detecting and anticipating what your own arms are trying to do by using a pair of wrist-mounted sensors, the robotic arms will position themselves to assist the wearer.

The MIT researchers are also working on a separate set of arms, pictured above, that will help with building planes. It attaches to the waist, and it’s meant to be used to hold objects or brace the someone while they’re working. And irritate Spidermen.

 

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RoboClam digs through…well…anything!

By Owen Li | Published: May 3, 2014

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 soil in their coastal habitats, researchers developed a machine that could eventually aid in a variety of underwater tasks.

In trials, the RoboClam has burrowed to a maximum depth of nearly 8 inches (20 cm). The real clams can dig to a depth of about 27.5 inches (70 cm), but the current robotic prototype is limited in its reach because its motors sit above the surface of the water.

In the future, this device could be used not only for digging for underground cables, but also for general anchoring boats, for laying underwater cable, for blowing up underwater mines or for setting sensors in the ocean

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Droplet

By Owen Li | Published: April 19, 2014

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 you get a Droplet, you’ll go to a web app to specify the type and location of your plants, and can go through it on a computer or a mobile device in just a few minutes. In addition to that data, Droplet will also supposedly tap into the United States’ weather station and soil sample data to gauge when and how much water to spray. One Droplet should be able to tend to a 2700sq.ft. area.

Now even gardeners have robotic competition. Sorry guys.

 

 

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