News

iRobot Alumni Build Robot-Vacuum Accessories To Promote “Successful Cleaning Missions”
Wade Roush 10/1/09

A three-legged robot with an unconventional and graceful walk has been developed by US researchers. Like humans, it exploits gravity to save energy with each step, but it also flips its entire body upside-down with each stride.

The fearsome alien tripods in HG Well's book The War of The Worlds are described as moving like "a milking stool tilted and bowled violently along the ground".

Clay Barritt had surgery at Regions Hospital on Wednesday to repair a valve in his heart. The 60-year-old from Turtle Lake, Wis., is not unlike the thousands of people in the area who have procedures like this every year. But what's different about Barritt is that he had a robot assist in his surgery -- a medical first in Minnesota.

Improvised Explosive Devices are the biggest killers of U.S. troops in Iraq ... and one of the biggest killer of IEDs is Foster-Miller's Talon robot.

"It's an excellent robot, and I would rate it as being the best one in theater," ordnance disposal Airman Robert Wester told an Air Force reporter. But how does the Talon compare to other robots -- say, the bestselling iRobot?

Internet search giant Google on Thursday offered 30 million dollars in prize money for companies to land a robot camera to roam on the moon and send back high-resolution snaps and data.

IF, as sci-fi writers have been warning us for decades, robots are plotting to rise up against humans, this week presents them with a prime opportunity. Androids, bots and cyborgs from all over the world, along with the people who build and love them, are converging on the Los Angeles Convention Center this weekend for Wired magazine's NextFest.

A tiny mechanical entomopter using insect-like wing dynamics has achieved tethered flight following US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency funding of a "robotic fly" project at Harvard University's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

Tmsuk Co. Ltd. and Microsoft Co. Ltd signed an agreement to cooperate in the area of robotic software development.

Tmsuk will focus on the evaluation and promotion of Microsoft Corp.'s development tool for robot control software. Meanwhile, Microsoft will provide the software development environment and the marketing assistance to Tmsuk.

Harold Ilano was tired of playing Final Fantasies Seven through Nine on his PS1, so what did he do?

It was a scene from a beautiful film: the dusty San Francisco evening light filtered through the large windows of the exquisite Marina mansion of PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel. Heaps of chipped ice kept shrimp and oysters cool. Waiters in black passed plates of canapés and glasses of champagne and Monterey County pinot noir.