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NASA and General Motors are working together to accelerate development of the next generation of robots and related technologies for use in the automotive and aerospace industries. Engineers and scientists from NASA and GM worked together through a Space Act Agreement at the agency's Johnson Space Center in Houston to build a new humanoid robot capable of working side by side with people. Using leading edge control, sensor and vision technologies, future robots could assist astronauts during hazardous space missions and help GM build safer cars and plants.

10 lucky research organizations will stand to benefit from Willow Garage's PR2 Beta Program, under which they will each be granted free use of one PR2 robot and earn the privilege to participate in the advancement of open source robotics development. Willow Garage, an organization dedicated to the development of robotics hardware and open source software, has put up the PR2 Beta Program to enable breakthroughs in personal robotics, expand the open source robotics community, develop reusable components and tools, and explore new applications for personal robots. These initiatives are aimed at eventually building safe personal robots that can aid...

Leavenworth — Editor’s note: Reporter Mark Boyle takes us behind the scenes of news stories in the area. This week, he catches up with members of the U.S. Army in charge of evaluating and testing the military’s latest equipment. Protecting our soldiers is the top priority for the U.S. government, and it has developed a way to do just that through military robots. Reporter Mark Boyle controls the Small Unmanned Ground Vehicle, or SUGV, military robot at Fort Leavenworth during a military modernization exercise. WALL-E, meet SUGV. The character in the Pixar animated film of 2008 has a real-life counterpart,...

Diagnostic Devices, Inc. (DDI), the maker of Prodigy blood glucose monitoring systems, and the leading provider of audible meters, is leading what could be a made-in-America revolution by doing the unthinkable and bringing manufacturing jobs home from China, according to experts in international trade. "Given the recent economic downturn, there is no shortage of critics of the U.S. economic model - which is based on free markets, innovation and creativity," explained Stan Vinson, banking and financial services professor at Northern State University. "When you see businesses relocating to the United States from perceived low-cost manufacturing countries, it reaffirms our ability...

Just when you were getting used to the idea of unmanned aerial vehicles patrolling the skies over your city, they're beginning to enter buildings. This flying robot designed by a U.S.-German team recently won a contest in which the goal was to autonomously navigate inside a simulated nuclear power plant and find and image a control panel without the aid of a GPS. The Pelican, based on hardware designed by German start-up Ascending Technologies with programming by a team at MIT, accomplished the mission on its fourth attempt, but with only a few minutes to spare. It netted a $10,000...

A robotic sub called Nereus has reached the deepest-known part of the ocean. The dive to 10,902m (6.8 miles) took place on 31 May, at the Challenger Deep in the Marianas Trench, located in the western Pacific Ocean. This makes Nereus the deepest-diving vehicle currently in service and the first vehicle to explore the Marianas Trench since 1998. The unmanned vehicle is remotely operated by pilots aboard a surface ship via a lightweight tether. Its thin, fibre-optic tether to the research vessel Kilo Moana allows the submersible to make deep dives and be highly manoeuvrable. THE NEREUS SUBMERSIBLE Weight on...

U.S. military hopes robotics can save soldiers' lives

The Georgia Dome, home of the Atlanta Falcons football team, was recently crowded with cheering fans and adrenaline-filled competitors. A thrilling competition crowned new champions. But this was not a football game. It was a robotics competition for high school students interested in engineering, a program that now attracts about 200,000 student-competitors and nearly 100,000 volunteers. Known as FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), this program demonstrates that there is no shortage of American engineering minds. Started nearly 20 years ago by Dean Kamen, the inventor of the clever Segway that officials scoot around on, this competition...

In the movies, Cyberdyne is a corporation whose superintelligent computers lead to the fall of mankind in the "Terminator" series, and HAL is a superintelligent computer who takes over a spaceship in "2001: A Space Odyssey." In real life, Cyberdyne is a Japanese robotics company, and HAL is Hybrid Assistive Limb, its full-body, "Iron Man"-like exoskeleton designed to help people with weak muscles or disabilities. ... The U.S. military has been trying to develop robotic exoskeletons for decades to help soldiers carry heavy loads or move at high speeds. But at a suggested retail price of about $4,000 (for Japanese...

LANCASTER [California] - In "The Wizard of Oz," the Tin Man sought a heart from the wizard. Lancaster High School's Tin Man already has dozens, however. The 43 members of the Eagle Robotics team, together with many more advisers, mentors and parents, demonstrate that it takes more than brains and courage to build a successful program shaping the leaders of tomorrow. It takes a lot of heart, too. The Tin Man, the team's most recent robotic creation that was unveiled to the public Thursday, is only one physical manifestation of the team's prodigious efforts. The wider effects are seen throughout...

Institute of Robotics in Scandinavia (iRobis) has announced commercial availability of Brainstorm®, the world’s first “complete cognitive software system for robots”. The system turns robots into self-developing, adaptive, problem-solving, “thinking” machines. The system automatically writes control programs for any robot on which it is installed, dramatically shortening development time and cost. The same technology is used to allow robots to adapt to new circumstances and solve other problems while in operation. ... read more

Sony Robots bust a move! holy cow. the japanese are taking things to a whole new level. this is awesome, if not for much more than entertainment value.

HAIFA, Israel (Reuters) - paralyzed for the past 20 years, former Israeli paratrooper Radi Kaiof now walks down the street with a dim mechanical hum. That is the sound of an electronic exoskeleton moving the 41-year-old's legs and propelling him forward -- with a proud expression on his face -- as passersby stare in surprise. "I never dreamed I would walk again. After I was wounded, I forgot what it's like," said Kaiof, who was injured while serving in the Israeli military in 1988. "Only when standing up can I feel how tall I really am and speak to people...

The Most Advanced Quadruped Robot on Earth BigDog is the alpha male of the Boston Dynamics family of robots. It is a quadruped robot that walks, runs, and climbs on rough terrain and carries heavy loads. BigDog is powered by a gasoline engine that drives a hydraulic actuation system. BigDog's legs are articulated like an animal’s, and have compliant elements that absorb shock and recycle energy from one step to the next. BigDog is the size of a large dog or small mule, measuring 1 meter long, 0.7 meters tall and 75 kg weight. Video at link.

Classic rock pounded from the sound system and kids broke into spontaneous dance moves. A quartet of robots took center stage in a tiny makeshift arena, preparing to test their metal in a game of skill. The competition culminated a weeklong engineering workshop sponsored by NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center, Lancaster High School Eagle Robotics Team and the AERO Institute at Palmdale's civic center. More than 40 middle school students attended the workshop, at which they learned about mechanics, engineering and electronics from Lancaster High's robotics team members. Organizers divided each day into two parts - mornings in the classroom...

PORTLAND, Ore. — The much-ballyhooed movie, "Iron Man," opens in theaters worldwide today (May 2), but the real "iron man" is already under construction at Raytheon Company (Salt Lake City, Utah). Raytheon's Exoskeleton project is the brainchild of project leader Stephen Jacobsen and is being funded by the U.S. Army. The project, according to the company, permits soldiers to don an Exoskeleton suit that amplifies their strength--enabling them to lift 200-pound payloads without tiring. The "Iron Man" exoskeleton being worked on by Robert Downey Jr. in the movie (left) is eerily similar to the real Exoskeleton (right) being developed at...

The wheel-like assembly of 16 duroquinone molecules on the edges and 1 duroquinone molecule in the center can produce quotone-to-manyquot parallel communication. Credit: Bandyopadhyay and Acharya. The wheel-like assembly of 16 duroquinone molecules on the edges and 1 duroquinone molecule in the center can produce "one-to-many" parallel communication. Credit: Bandyopadhyay and Acharya. For years, researchers have been building tiny nanobots that could one day serve a variety of purposes. But, until now, nanobots couldn't work together. Recently, scientists Anirban Bandyopadhyay and Somobrata Acharya from the National Institute of Materials Science in Tsukuba, Japan, have built the first ultra-tiny, ultra-powerful...

When you ask a man on the street where revolutionary advanced robots are being developed, he is likely to name Japan and the United States. Japan is well known for such amazing mechanical creations as ASIMO and HRP, as well as robots that dance, engage in martial arts, transform, and play musical instruments. In the United States, the success of iRobot in both military and consumer markets is legendary. The DARPA Grand Challenge demonstrated advanced work on autonomous vehicles. GM has its own autonomous vehicle and expects driverless cars to be on the roads in a few years. (Lexus...

It may not look like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator character, but robots designed to tote automatic weapons could give a key advantage to American soldiers serving in Afghanistan and Iraq. Soaring demand for a bomb disposal robot called Talon in Iraq has helped QinetiQ to post a strong rise in profits, despite a slowdown in overall defence spending by Britain. QinetiQ has sold more than 1,000 Talon robots, with about a third of those heading for Iraq and Afghanistan. Yesterday it announced that it had received more than $175 million (£84.5 million) of orders in the first half of the year....

LOS ANGELES — Google Inc. is bankrolling a $20 million out-of-this-world prize to the first private company that can safely land a robotic rover on the moon and beam back a gigabyte of images and video to Earth, the Internet search leader said Thursday. If the competition produces a winner, it would prove a major boon to the emerging private spaceflight industry and mark the first time that a nongovernment entity has flown a lunar space probe. Google partnered with the X Prize Foundation for the moon challenge, which is open to companies around the world.