robots
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The vivacious, acrobatic Minitaur robot will definitely improve your day
Mondays, as we all know, are the worst. That’s why it’s important to keep an eye out for heart-warming videos like puppies sliding on hardwood floors, otters holding hands, or energetic robots doing flips and climbing fences. It helps if, as in this case, the background music is a jam. Read More
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Crunch Network
Robots pave the way for our sci-fi future now
As robotics begins to leave controlled environments and navigate the real world alongside humans, the question remains: How will this affect the way we interact, work and talk to not only robots, but one another? Read More
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Crunch Network
Hard questions about bot ethics
Bots are becoming a part of our life. I wake up in the morning and tell Alexa to play my Brazilian samba, I let Amy set my meetings and I check stats and reports in Slack. Bot builders and users alike are starting to understand that bots are an integral part of our life. But what are the rules that govern these new tech friends? Read More
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MegaBots debuts a trailer for its new web series, outlines its giant fighting robot kit
In the shadow of AT&T Park, two Bay Area-based engineers took to the stage at TechCrunch Disrupt SF to showcase their plans for a new kind of sports league. Dressed like a matching pair of flamboyant American flags, Gui Cavalcanti and Matt Oehrlein debuted a trailer for an upcoming web series following MegaBots’ journey from pipe dream to a Formula 1-inspired robotic fighting… Read More
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Robin is automating lawn care with robots and putting an end to checks under the doormat
A well-kept lawn is one of the most common mixed blessings with which homeowners can treat/afflict themselves. Robin is a startup looking to take as much pain out of the process as possible, both by improving the way you hire and pay for your yard’s care, and soon, by putting a robot on the job. Read More
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Pepper the Inflight Service Bot is a multi-lingual flight attendant who doesn’t hate picking up your garbage
At the Disrupt SF Hackathon today in San Francisco, a team of seasoned software engineers unveiled Pepper the Inflight Service Bot, a robot flight attendant that doesn’t hate picking up barf bags, can circulate in a plane even when there’s turbulence, and can speak to passengers in their own language. The robot is built using the Pepper companion robot, IBM Watson’s… Read More
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Magazino’s TORU inventory-grabbing robot rolls into major German logistics center
If you work in any kind of storage facility or warehouse, there’s a better chance every day that you’re going to be working alongside robots. Magazino’s TORU is a good example of the latest generation: navigating by sight, safe around humans, and simple to put to work. Read More
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Robots and on-board ovens deliver on Zume’s promise of better pizza
Today, in a world of bacon-wrapped crust and custom-modified Chevys with pizza warmers, being excited about pizza is just not as easy as it used to be. Zume Pizza founder Julia Collins and her Elon Musk-esque approach to pizza doesn’t care much for the rest of the pizza industry. In her mind, the pizzavations of the previous decades are irrelevant if the pies arrive soggy, cold and… Read More
Latest Crunch Report
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Dyson’s 360 Eye robot vacuum succeeds by seeing more
Dyson’s 360 Eye robot vacuum has been a long time coming to U.S. carpets. The squat little cylinder of a bot first broke cover in September 2014, with a splashy product announcement and a consumer launch in Japan in 2015. North American homes are only just getting their first taste of Dyson’s inaugural foray into robotics, however, and my own has been playing host to one for the… Read More
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GOAT legs will let future robots handle rough terrain with ease
A Master’s Thesis by CMU’s
Simon Kalouche posits a new form of robotic leg, one designed for maximum range of motion and, more importantly, an easily control method for force reduction. In other words, this is the kind of leg you want on your robot when you send it to Mars. GOAT stands for Gearless Omni-directional Acceleration-vectoring Topology and uses a single motor and… Read More -
Having conquered Chess and Go, the robots move to master Foosball
We’ve come a long way since the days of selecting a CPU player for the other Pong paddle, tank or hand-to-hand combatant. Now the computers are taking it to us, in meatspace, and seemingly no tabletop activity is safe from their depredations. The latest to succumb to computer domination? Foosball. Read More
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Crunch Network
How computer-assisted art will help humans embrace the rise of the robots
For many people, the robot-populated future is a zero-sum game; it’s either going to be us or them running things. Headlines are rife with dire predictions: “Robots will take over most jobs in 30 years” and “The future has lots of robots, few jobs for humans.” Even the arts aren’t safe. “Computer art” (where a computer uses algorithms to create… Read More
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Watch wall-walking spiderbots weave ‘impossible’ structures with carbon fiber
Normally, the notion of setting a pair of spiderbots free in your house would seem alarming. But if you knew that they were weaving you a strange and mathematical hammock while you were gone? Suddenly that fear turns to wonder — and eventually, a nap. Read More
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Crunch Network
The diagnosis and the cure of automation
I was challenged recently to “name one job in the future that won’t be automated.” I was stumped. I couldn’t think of one job that someday won’t be dehumanized. That got me thinking about the process of automation. How does it happen? Are we running down hill trying to eliminate one job at a time, or are we walking down hill trying to eliminate them all? Read More
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Crunch Network
The assimilation of robots into the workforce as peers, not replacements
One might ask why we would ever want to create robots that can do human work when we have so many people who need jobs. The goal of robotics should not be to replace humans with robots, but rather to improve productivity and safety, removing humans from harm’s way and enabling them to focus on things that humans should be doing. Read More
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Crunch Network
Let’s start getting excited about robots taking our jobs
A recent Pew report found that a majority of Americans believe that most human jobs could be automated by 2065. It’s no wonder, then, that talk about technological unemployment is becoming increasingly popular, with many beginning to question whether or not they’ll still have jobs in the coming years. Read More
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SwagBot will autonomously roll them little dogies along rough Australian ranchlands
Is nothing sacred? The rugged trails that over history have been trod by cowboys, gauchos, ranch hands, and in Australia, swagmen, are now to be presided over by cold, calculating machines. SwagBot is the vanguard of our incoming steer-driving overlords, its independent all-wheel drive churning carelessly the mud in which once toiled our manly forbears and their snorting charges. Read More
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Police use of robot to kill Dallas shooting suspect is new, but not without precursors
The Dallas police force used a bomb-defusing robot equipped with an explosive device to kill a shooting suspect, police chief David Brown revealed today at a press conference. An explosive was affixed to the extension arm on the robot, Brown said at the press conference, in order to neutralize the suspect, later identified as Micah Xavier Johnson, 25. The incident involved the shooting… Read More
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The Pleurobot robo-salamander crawls and swims like a real amphibian
The mad roboticists at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne have produced another biomimetic mechanoid — this one based on the lithe locomotion of the salamander. “Pleurobot” imitates the amphibian’s ambulation with its own articulated vertebrae, allowing it to slither along on land or at sea. Read More
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