Robotics

The pressure to find a living soulmate got too much for one man in China who decided to ‘marry’ a robot he built himself last Friday. Tired of the incessant questioning from friends and family concerning his marital status, Zheng Jiajia, a 31 year old artificial intelligence engineer, looked to Yingying, a robot he built last year, according to the Qianjiang Evening News. The relationship quickly blossomed, and after two mon...

The pressure to find a living soulmate got too much for one man in China who decided to ‘marry’ a robot he built himself last Friday. Tired of the incessant questioning from friends and family concerning his marital status, Zheng Jiajia, a 31 year old artificial intelligence engineer, looked to Yingying, a robot he built last year, according to the Qianjiang Evening News.

Leonardo Da Vinci made one of the first attempts at humanoid robot design in 1495, when he developed the mechanical knight. The robot was designed to make several human-like motions, but it wasn't until the 1990s, when the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) invented Kismet, the world’s first sociable robot, that the manufacturing industry took inspiration from humanoid robots to optimise productivity.

Working in partnership, TM robotics and Toshiba Machine have announced the launch of Toshiba Machine’s newest TVM 6-axis line, from the biggest robotics show in the world, Automate. The new 6-axis robots are compatible with other Toshiba Machine products, including injection molding machines and machine tools, and are a great fit for companies that have significant material handling and general machine tending needs.

There are a lot of ongoing fears and speculation in regards to robots stealing British jobs, however, new data reveals that the majority of industry professionals (63.3%) have never witnessed job losses as a result of the introduction of robots or automated processes. Furthermore, over a third (36.7%) stated that robots have often resulted in job creation within their place of work.

Festo has come up with a bionic gripper, OctopusGripper. The company's focus areas include pneumatic, servopneumatic and electric automation technology and the Octopus Gripper is certainly drawing attention in the tech press. The name is quite apt. The gripper has been modeled on an octopus tentacle. Its advantage lies in its ability to grip softly but securely. What is more, the OctopusGripper can pick up and hold a variety of differen...

Want to go ice fishing on Jupiter's moon Europa? There's no promising you'll catch anything, but a new set of robotic prototypes could help. Since 2015, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, has been developing technologies for use on future missions to ocean worlds. That includes a subsurface probe that could burrow through miles of ice, taking samples along the way; robotic arms that unfold to reach faraway objects; and...

The debut of ‘Project Hero’, a new Discovery vehicle with a tailor-made communications drone and other specialist technology to enhance Red Cross and Red Crescent emergency response operations in the wake of disasters, has been announced by Land Rover.

A new approach to human-robot interaction in industrial environments has been presented by imec, Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), University of Hasselt and five industry partners. Introducing new adaptive control software and using gestures to improve human-machine communication, Walt, a collaborative robot (cobot) has been developed that works alongside its human co-workers in a safe and flexible way. Audi Brussels, one of the project partners,...

One of the most important aspects of gearing technology has always been positioning accuracy. Whether gears are used for surgical robots, bomb disposal units or subsea Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs), it is important that axial motion is precise. However, this has become increasingly important in recent years. Graham Mackrell, Managing Director of precision gearing specialist Harmonic Drive UK, explains the engineering developments that ma...