For those startups in newer areas like robotics, artificial intelligence and augmented reality who complain that VCs are too focused on consumer internet companies, help is at hand: Genesis Angels is a new VC that has raised a fund of around $100 million, with a large chunk coming from co-founder and serial investor Kenges Rakishev, which it plans to use for early stage investments in emerging… → Read More
Sure, we have our Roombas and a few AR Drones here and there, but researchers expect that we’ll have many more – and better – robots within the next few years and that the overall market should hit $6.5 billion by 2017. → Read More
While many current drone programs are extremely complex – and costly – cheap drones used for spying, mapping, and even attacks could turn the tables on world militaries by giving terrorists and less well-funded groups access to UAV technology. → Read More
Red Whittaker is a certified legend in the robotics community. The head of the Field Robotics Center at Carnegie Mellon University, Whittaker has been instrumental building the driverless car that took part in the DARPA Grand Challenge as well as the Mars Rover, a robot designed to explore volcanoes, the arctic, and other planets. → Read More
Grishin Robotics, a Russian VC group dedicated to the commercialization of robotics, has dropped an unnamed sum into Bolt, a hardware incubator in Boston. Grishin’s investment is part of a $3.5 million financing package closed this week. → Read More
UPDATED: According to Willow Garage’s blog, the company will not shut down, but change its funding model:
Willow Garage has decided to enter the world of commercial opportunities with an eye to becoming a self-sustaining company. This is an important change to our funding model.
The success of the PR2 personal robot and of ROS will continue. There are close to 50 PR2 robots in the world and… → Read More
Often the stuff that gets press attention from Kickstarter tends to focus on the consumer market, but the Hydra is a new project on the crowdfunding site that could make big waves in everything from hobby electronics, to home robotics, to industrial manufacturing. It’s a compact power supply with three outputs, each with completely configurable voltage. Put simply, the Hydra is almost like a… → Read More
Two makers on opposite ends of the globe, Ivan Owen in Bellingham, Washington and Richard Van As in South Africa, have teamed up to build a custom robotic hand and publish it on Thingiverse. The best part? They built it for Liam, a five-year-old South African boy who was born without fingers on his right hand, by collaborating online between continents. → Read More
A new Ray Kurzweil book is always a major event. And his latest work, How To Create A Mind: The Secret Of Human Thought Revealed, is classic Kurzweil – both infuriatingly brilliant and brilliantly infuriating. → Read More
Another day, another iOS-based telepresence rig. The Helios is a tiny little two-wheeled car that drives around with your iPhone or Touch in the passenger seat, allowing you to move around a scene and interact with remote subjects through the magic of telepresence.
They are raising money through Kickstarter. → Read More
Editor’s note: Saad Khan is a seeker of bad-assness. He found it at Evolution Robotics (not to mention Blekko, Zaarly, Jobvite, Luminate, and LendingClub). He’s a Partner at CMEA Capital. And he’s doing the robot today. Follow him on Twitter and at SaadWired.com.
Last week, iRobot bought Evolution Robotics, maker of the Mint floor cleaner. The implications of the hot-off-the-presses… → Read More
Dmitry Grishin, founder of Grishin Robotics, believes that robots – personal robots, not boring ones like the Mars Rover – are the future.
“It has been very difficult to do something really big in robotics for the last 20 years. So much technology innovation has been web-based and with computers. It’s been very expensive and hard to do to build a prototype, never mind bringing it to… → Read More
We showed you robotic fish, robotic dogs and robotic snakes in the past, and we know you were just waiting for robotic grasshoppers. But thanks to Tokyo Institute Of Technology, you can consider those animals now covered, too. → Read More
It’s always good to see robotics applied to real-life problems. This time, we can show you the brain child of a team of researchers at Japan’s Kinki University (that’s really the name): a robotic rehabilitation device that helps paralyzed stroke victims regain dexterity. Not too surprisingly, the device is attached to the fingers of the patient in question. → Read More
Meet Phasma, a cool, six-legged robot made by Tokyo-based design and engineering firm takram. The battery-powered insectoid can be remote-controlled and is technically based on a iSprawl, a robot developed at Stanford University. → Read More
Another cool robot from Japan. This time, it’s a huge snake robot, made by the Hirose-Fukushima Lab at Tokyo Institute of Technology. The researchers say it’s not a fun project but that they aim at finding out how snakes can move forward without legs (?) and how a snake-shaped robot could be used for practical applications. → Read More
Japan is the first country that was labeled by the United Nations as a super-aged society (over 20% of the population are currently 65 or older), and it has the world’s biggest robotics industry. So it’s not really surprising to see a relatively big number of “health care robots” coming out of this country, for example Japan Logic Machine’s “Yurina” [JP]. → Read More
Kyoto-based Squse has developed the so-called Robot Hand H-Type [JP], a creepily realistic (but very cool) robotic hand. The hand’s “bones” are made of polycarbonate, while the skin is silicon rubber. It weighs 340g and can lift up and move objects weighing up to 1.5kg. The secret lies in its 16 joints and 22 actuators. → Read More
This is what happens when you let a bunch of engineers play with robots: you get things like the “Motion Cueing Design and Experimental Validation” machine. Roughly translated, this is the ultimate racing game simulator. I love science. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Germany have built this glorious machine using an industrial robot arm. They call… → Read More
Robots can do good for mankind, not only in the future but also right now. Case in point: RAPUDA [JP], a robotic arm, which – once mounted onto a wheelchair – can help the disabled manage certain tasks they’d normally require the help of other people for on their own. It’s developed by the Intelligent Systems Research Institute [JP] at Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and… → Read More
In case you ever wondered what practical purpose robotics as a field of science has, RoboCar [JP] might be one answer. That’s the name of a car robotics platform (and robot) currently in development at Tokyo-based robotics venture ZMP. → Read More
I’ve seen many things in the tech and gadget world, but this one’s a first. A robot research team at Tokyo Institute of Technology has developed a “virtual reality”-based hair cut simulation system. Aptly named Air-Hair, the system makes it possible to imitate the process of cutting a person’s hair using a manikin and a pair of physical “scissors” that’s connected to a screen showing the head of… → Read More
I had the chance to attend a TED event last weekend, namely the TedxTokyo conference, which took place for the second time in Japan. And as CrunchGear’s Japan correspondent, I was naturally most interested in the geekiest presentation delivered: that of Professor Sankai from Tsukuba University (near Tokyo). (The video was of the presentation was uploaded just a few hours ago, which is why I waited… → Read More
Toyota has never been known as an auto maker that’s really active in the robotics area (as opposed to Honda, for example), at least when it comes to producing robots with high show value. There are two exceptions though: one is Winglet, the Segway-like robotic vehicle Toyota showed in 2008, and the other is a violin-playing humanoid that made its debut back in 2007. → Read More
Check out this custom made iPhone app that robotics student Robert Stephenson created. Robert wrote this app to control his Hexapod robot using the the user inputs on the iPhone. → Read More
This, according to Honda, is the future of personal mobility. (In the future, walking will be seen as passe and uncool.) It’s called the U3-X, and it just debuted in Tokyo. It’s sorta like a Segway, but a little less cumbersome (but just as unusual looking to the layman). → Read More
You’ve heard of Deep Blue, the IBM computer that bested Gary Kasparov in a chess match a decade ago. Now, there is Deep Green, a robot that plays pool. And by the looks of the demo video above, it can’t lose.
As Delicious founder, and now-Googler, Joshua Schachter points out, it is “only a matter of time before one of these kills a person.”
Deep Green is a project out of the robotics and… → Read More
Remember BigDog? And its diminutive friend, LittleDog? Here’s a little more footage and testimony from the soldiers at Fort Benning in Alabama. There’s not a lot of new info but it’s nice to see it’s actually in real trials and not sitting in a lab somewhere. I think they’re going to need to do something about that buzzing noise, though. → Read More
Apparently, radish-related lifting injuries are common enough in Japan that an exoskeleon has now been repurposed for the task of bending down, lifting roots and veggies from the ground, and carrying them to a bin. The exoskeleton weighs 25kg and will cost somewhere between 500,000 and 1,000,000 yens, which is between $5000 and $10000 (the price would of course drop with bulk orders). How long… → Read More
It’s true, of course, and not just from a Sci-Fi point of view. With robots doing everything from vacuuming our floors to storing our data to performing surgery, there is a growing need for an international body to establish standards. If, as British robotics professor Noel Sharkey says, “decisions about [robots'] application will be left to the military, industry and busy… → Read More
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