Robotics

  The Danish pioneer of human-robot collaboration, Universal Robots, revolutionises the automation industry with the launch of Universal Robots+ at AUTOMATICA in Munich. Today, the company presents:

This summer’s Olympic Games in Rio will feature an unprecedented amount of technology, employed by athletes and spectators alike, to help enhance performance and improve our viewing enjoyment. However, interaction between human competitor and cutting edge technology could about to be taken to the next level after a research team at the University of Electronic Science and Technology in China developed a badminton playing robot.

With football fever gripping the nation, rivals from across the world are getting ready to lock nuts and bolts at the forthcoming RoboCup 2016 robotic world championship which kicks off in Leipzig, Germany on 30 June. The University of Hertfordshire’s robot football team Bold Hearts – the oldest and most successful in the UK – will be competing against over 500 other teams from 40 countries.

More than a quarter of UK adults polled in the UK Robotics Week survey believe that the biggest benefit of driverless cars will be fewer road accidents. The research, commissioned by the EPSRC UK-RAS Network, is being released ahead of the first ever UK Robotics Week, scheduled from 25th June to 1st July 2016).

Robots will outnumber human beings, there will be more driverless cars than traditional vehicles and drones will be used to deliver pizzas to our door. These are just some of the technologies that could transform our lives within the next 20 years according to research released to mark the start of London Technology Week 2016 (the SMG Insight /YouGov survey of 2,077 British adults took place in June 2016).

The proliferation of low cost drones for hobbyists has led to a number of well publicised incidents. The use of drones is now often forbidden by law around airports, sporting events and government establishments due to the risk of physical injury or use in committing crimes. Policing has traditionally resorted to arresting the drone operator and/or seizing the drone and its cargo when it lands, as forcing the drone out of the sky while it is flyi...

Fabrics containing flexible electronics are appearing in many novel products, such as clothes with in-built screens and solar panels. More impressively, these fabrics can act as electronic skins that can sense their surroundings and could have applications in robotics and prosthetic medicine. Researchers at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Saudi Arabia, have now developed smart threads that detect the strength and locat...

  With support from the Office of Naval Research (ONR), researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have created an AI software program named Quixote to teach robots to read stories, learn acceptable behaviour and understand successful ways to conduct themselves in diverse social situations.

Thymio, the teaching robot designed by EPFL and widely used in French-speaking Switzerland, is now making inroads elsewhere in Europe. In France, it has been incorporated in an important initiative to teach digital sciences in nursery and primary schools. The first one emerged from EPFL's labs barely four years ago. There are now more than 14,000 Thymios in use around the world. This little teaching robot has become widely popular. 

Valkyrie has recently landed at Northeastern, marking the first time that the 6-foot-2-inch, 275-pound humanoid robot has interacted with the public. There was a demo: As part of an hourlong presentation, the robot walked across the carpet in the event space on the 17th floor of East Village, turned to face the audience, and then waved, eliciting a surge of laughter.