Always on the forefront of robotics, Japanese brand Honda is launching a Roomba-like self-driving lawn mower dubbed Miimo, set to hit European markets in early 2013. Miimo comes in two models, the 300 and the 500 versions indicating the perimeter covered by the lawn mower, which stretches to 300m for one version and 500m for the other. Honda... continue reading
It’s that time of the year again for the newest members of IIT Kharagpur! Technology Robotix Society brings to them its first event of the academic calendar, the** Freshers’ Robosoccer Challenge**, from the 24th to the 26th of August. Teams are required to build and operate a manual robot to play one-on-one football in a knockout tournament. R... continue reading
Scientists at the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems in Lausanne, Switzerland, have been hard at work inventing the world’s first flying robot that can crash, pick itself up, and fly off again. “We build robots that are better adapted to the real world, not just the lab environment,” says Adam Klaptocz, a doctoral student working on the projec... continue reading
Assembly line robots that are programmed to build cars by placing parts in exactly the same place every time are no longer tech cool. You know what is tech cool? Assembly line robots with laser eyes that can see where parts need to go, adjust themselves to even the slightest variations in positioning, and custom fit each placement. An army of ... continue reading
As with every year, Technology Robotix Society arranged for a grand welcome to the new students of IIT Kharagpur through the introductory workshop held at Kalidas Auditorium on Wednesday, the 25thof July. And what a welcome it was! The auditorium, one of the largest in thecampus, was filled to overflowing with eager freshmen curious to know what... continue reading
Bioroboticists at the University of Virginia have built themselves a robotic cow-nosed ray. Why? Because they can. Also, because rays are great at what they do, and if we can copy all their tricks to make better underwater robots, we absolutely should. It’s no coincidence that all the coolest UAVs look just like rays. The form factor that was... continue reading
DASH, UC Berkeley’s 10-centimeter long, 16-gram Dynamic Autonomous Sprawled Hexapod, has learned a new trick: the robot can now perform “rapid inversion” maneuvers, dashing up to a ledge and then swinging itself around to end up underneath the ledge and upside-down. This replicates behaviors in cockroaches and geckos, and may lead to a new gen... continue reading
Robonaut’s dexterous hands rely on tendon-driven fingers to grasp objects much like our own hands do. You probably noticed that the robot has a perfectly toned upper body with brawny biceps and six-pack abs. But if you’re working alongside this burly bot (hello ISS crew!), fear not: Robonaut has fully compliant arms and even a built-in emergen... continue reading
Straight from Japan comes this robot called “Metallic Vaio 2012,” which has a style of locomotion that we’ve never seen before. Instead of using arms or legs, it’s got a sort of combination of both: two long tentacles made out of chains of servos that it uses to crawl around and rapidly somersault from place to place. This robot was built (or... continue reading
The crazier parts of the scientific community have long declared anything that can walk on water to be possessed by black magic, lizards and bugs included. But black magic or no, roboticists at the Harbin Institute of Technology in China have managed to make it work on a robotic insect that, in addition to walking on water, can also_jump_. Mo... continue reading