Huge Pacific Rim robot to help clean up Fukushima nuclear disaster site
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Robots have a multitude of applications but up until now most of them have been quite small, a new mech from a Korean company just broke the mould. This week a team in Seoul demonstrated a 13 ft (4m) tall robot, or “mech,” that, unlike it’s diminutive...
New breakthrough will give prosthetic limbs a human sense of touch
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Many people take the sense of touch for granted but for those people with neurodegenerative disorders, or who have prosthetic limbs, it’s the sense they miss the most, now a new breakthrough could give them, as well as future robots, that sense of touch back....
Nimble Atlas robot ups its game again to conquer tricky terrain
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF We take many of the things we do as humans for granted, such as balancing, but our bodies make thousands of adjustments every second just standing still and getting a robot to mimic what comes naturally to us isn’t as easy as you think ...
Drones get new eyes in the sky with Echodynes miniature radar
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF As more and more drones clutter the skies systems that can detect, and avoid other airborne obstacles become more crucial Echodyne, a US based materials Radar company, want to see a day when radar equipped drones fill the skies and deliver your packages and...
The US Marines want to build a fully autonomous F-35
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF As weapons systems, and war, become more autonomous it is inevitable that the US, Chinese, Indian and Russian military will continue to push the boundaries of unmanned combat. The US Marine Corps is in the looking to obtaining what it calls a “mega-drone” that...
Urban Aero shows off its first fully autonomous flying taxi
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Companies are increasingly scaling up drone technology and their associated energy and control systems in the new race to take passengers to the skies and back, but the Cormorant is the first to demonstrate full autonomy. Nine years ago the AirMule was simply a...
US Navy stands up the worlds first fully autonomous drone squadron
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF When you look across the spectrum of military developments it is clear that nation states are now committed to creating fully autonomous military platforms, the only question left to answer is when will they make their own “Kill” decisions. The time when the US...
ISS SPHERE drones learn to see and fly around in space all by themselves
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF This new milestone will help to pave the way for fully autonomous drones, and vehicles, that can navigate their surroundings without the need for any specific maps or navigation aids. During an experiment this week on board the International Space Station (ISS) a small drone,...
Baidu launches a medical chatbot to help Chinese doctors diagnose patients
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Melody could one day replace your GP – once it’s matured. The doctor will see you now. Chinese search engine company Baidu has announced the release of Melody – a chatbot powered by increasingly powerful artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities that lives inside the existing Baidu Doctor app...
Google teaches robots to learn from each other using a hive mind
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Robots learning from other robots will ultimately mean robots will learn new skills faster, accelerating the robot revolution. The robots of the world are uniting – and that’s either a great thing or a terrifying thing depending on your view. Google has a plan to...
Japanese company Spread set to open worlds first fully autonomous farm in 2017
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF The only humans these Lettuces see will be the one who eats them. The Japanese lettuce production company Spread believes the farmers of the future will be robots – so much so that Spread is creating the world’s first farm manned entirely by robots. Instead of relying on...
Amazons drones will recharge themselves using street lamposts
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Amazons new patent could change the look of your community forever. It looks like Amazon is finally answering a fundamental question about its long awaited delivery drones – where will they land? And a possible answer, according to a recent patent filing that they put...
Stanford’s humanoid robotic diver recovers treasures from King Louis XIV’s flagship
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Built to go where human divers can’t Stanfords OceanOne takes the plunge. Oussama Khatib held his breath as he swam through the wreck of La Lune, 100 meters below the Mediterranean. The flagship of King Louis XIV sank here in 1664, 20 miles off...
London boroughs new face of customer services is a bot
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF The London borough of Enfield has enlisted artificial intelligence Amelia to take on customer service tasks for its residents starting late this year. Developed by IPSoft, Amelia is a cognitive agent – that’s bot to you, I and most people, capable of automating certain...
An AI Bot posing as a Teaching Assistant fooled students for five months
A quiet revolution is coming, one that will eventually turn every industry into a dumb pipe and flip the world of commerce, decision making, jobs and transactions on their heads. Here come the Bots. Earlier this year Eric Wilson who was taking an online Artificial Intelligence course at Georgia Institute of Technology...
Boston Dynamic’s humanoid Atlas robot has learnt to balance
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Balancing is a difficult skill and now one robot has mastered it. Boston Dynamics’ Atlas robot – the world’s most advanced humanoid robot, which previously demonstrated its ability to walk across rough terrain and take all kinds of abuse from its creators has now...
World first as surgeons use a robot to operate inside the eye
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF The world’s first robot assisted eye surgery paves the way for surgeries that were previously impossible. British surgeons have successfully performed the world’s first robotic operation inside the eye, potentially revolutionising the way such conditions are treated. The procedure was carried out at John...
DoNotPay’s famous robo-lawyer helps people avoid homelessness
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF The power of Bots is only just starting to be realised and it’s looking increasingly likely that the first industry they’ll disrupt is the legal profession. The idea started with a desperate email from a woman in a UK hospital. She was scared of being discharged at...
Zipline drones take to the skies to save lives
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Drone company Zipline takes to the skies to deliver medical care packages. San Francisco based startup, Zipline, is about to begin testing its drone delivery system intended to deliver medical supplies to remote areas of the US, and then eventually to the rest of the world...
Ford rolls out collaborative robots and ringfences workers jobs
We’re used to hearing about how robots will take our jobs so meet the co-bots that help us keep them With factories across the globe filling up with robots, often replacing workers on assembly lines or by transporting packages across the plant, human fears of being substituted by a machine...
