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Today, the RealCare Baby 3 infant simulator is a fantastically sophisticated, computer-programmed doll that costs up to $1,000 to replace if you lose it. (I know because I had to sign a waiver; Anna’s school has six of them, provided through a grant from a local education foundation.) The student wears a corresponding wristband that logs his or her responses to the baby through a radio frequency identification tag. Then she — and most of the caregivers are female — has to determine what the baby needs, based on distinctly different cries. “Just like a real baby, you eventually kind of can tell — that’s a...

Researchers in the US have created the first living machines by assembling cells from African clawed frogs into tiny robots that move around under their own steam. One of the most successful creations has two stumpy legs that propel it along on its “chest”. Another has a hole in the middle that researchers turned into a pouch so it could shimmy around with miniature payloads. Roboticists tend to favour metal and plastic for their strength and durability, but Levin and his colleagues see benefits in making robots from biological tissues. When damaged, living robots can heal their wounds, and once...

Video footage from the Massachusetts State Police shows a Boston Dynamics robot dog working for the unit's bomb squad. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) immediately began firing shots, stating that the use of a general purpose robot in a police force setting is potentially dangerous. As per usual, the internet went crazy with hot takes and memes on the latest robo-cop, which the police force leased for 90 days

Honeywell is jumping into robotics — with Pittsburgh as its hub. The Fortune 100 company is creating Honeywell Robotics, an advanced technology center tasked with developing artificial intelligence, machine learning, computer vision, and advanced robotics for use mainly in warehouses. Honeywell Robotics will be based at 3 Crossings in the Strip District. The company leased 25,000 square feet of space formerly occupied by Robert Bosch in the development last spring, but did not say why. In an announcement Thursday, Honeywell said the new robotics center will help to shape the warehouses and distribution centers of the future, with automation plugging...

MIT has developed a new way to speed up the planning involved in a robot grasping an object, making it “significantly” faster — reducing the total time from as much as 10 or more minutes to less than a second. That’s many orders of magnitude better, bringing it closer to the realm of human reaction and response time. This could have big practical benefits to settings where robotics are already in use, including industrial environments. The research team’s method involves having the robot push the object against a surface that doesn’t move, which allows it to shortcut a bunch of...

A healthy foods concept has selected Houston as its next spot to bring its salad-making robot — aptly named Sally. The Salad Station, a Louisiana-based restaurant group, has partnered with California-based Chowbotics to bring salad-making vending machines to Houstonians. Chowbotics invented Sally, which serves customizable, made-to-order salads, snacks, breakfast bowls, and grain bowls. Scott Henderson, founder and president of The Salad Station, tells InnovationMap that the discussion with Chowbotics about being the company's operational manager started in 2018. "In seven states, from Texas to Florida, The Salad Station does operations for Sally the robot," says Henderson. "We both have a...

As NASA makes a big push to land humans on the moon's surface by 2024, the European Space Agency (ESA) wants to learn more about the lunar caves that lie beneath. "Exploring and mapping these tubes could provide new information about the moon's geology, but they could also be an interesting option as long-term shelter for future human visitors to the moon," Franceso Sauro, director of ESA's Pangaea planetary geology astronaut training, said in a statement. "They would shield astronauts from cosmic radiation and micrometeorites and possibly provide access to icy water and other resources trapped underground." The missions have...

The idea behind fast food is speed and efficiency. When it comes to fast-food chains, McDonald’s is always on the cutting edge of getting people fed quickly—too quickly, some say. In the rush to gobble down food, much of the joy of eating is lost. Fast food is a soulless commodity that neglects the spiritual appreciation of flavor and taste. It can turn what should be a dining place into a biological fueling station. The bad news is that it has just gotten worse. Just when you think the fast-food giant has reached a peak of efficiency, it comes out...

A French nightclub has caused a stir after it exhibited pole-dancing robots donning high heels. The gyrating robots had CCTV cameras for heads and were interspersed among their human counterparts at the Strip Club Cafe (SC-Club) in Nantes on Friday night. The androids moved their hips in time to the blasting music while on elevated platforms, in front of a male-dominated audience.

Robotics engineers at MIT have built a threadlike robot worm that can be magnetically steered to deftly navigate the extremely narrow and winding arterial pathways of the human brain. One day it could be used to quickly clear blockages and clots that contribute to strokes and aneurysms, while at the same time making the current state of robotic evolution even more unsettling.

Have you ever noticed the popularity of white robots? You see them in films like Will Smith's "I, Robot" and Eve from "Wall-E." Real-life examples include Honda's Asimo, UBTECH's Walker, Boston Dynamics' Atlas, and even NASA's Valkyrie robot. All made of shiny white material. And some real-life humanoid robots are modeled after white celebrities, such as Audrey Hepburn and Scarlett Johansson. The reason for these shades of technological white may be racism, according to new research. "Robots And Racism," a study conducted by the Human Interface Technology Laboratory in New Zealand (HIT Lab NZ) and published by the country's University...

In addition to letting players steal first base, the Atlantic League — which serves as a testing ground for Major League Baseball — has employed a number of different changes this season which could eventually be adopted by MLB. One of them? Robotic umpires calling balls and strikes. In every stadium of the eight-team Atlantic League, there is now a TrackMan device above home plate which uses 3-D Doppler radar to register balls and strikes. Once the radar decides whether a pitch is in or out of the strike zone, the device relays its decision via wifi to an iPhone...

The Left is no longer keeping their love for communism a secret. They conveniently overlook the many millions that system has murdered and its consistent economic failures and now now promote it as something very desireable. The latest shtick in communism promotion is via the device of science fiction to look at a future of robot communism or "Fully Automated Luxury Communism" (FALC) in which people no longer need to work because robots take care of their needs. Ironically, such a future could never be attained under communism because the most advanced technology has always been developed under capitalism so perhaps...

“IT’S CHEATING.” That’s the response you’ll hear from self-proclaimed music purists talking about technological innovation in song creation. Sampling, synthesizers, drum machines, Auto-Tune—all have been derided as lazy ways to make chart-topping hits because they take away the human element. (With apologies to Vanilla Ice, Gary Numan, Prince, and T-Pain.) The new argument among fans and musicians will be about the use of artificial intelligence in songwriting. According to several estimates, in the next decade, between 20% and 30% of the top 40 singles will be written partially or totally with machine-learning software. Today, recording pros can use A.I.-powered programs...

Amazon warehouse workers are monitored by tracking systems that measure each employee’s productivity, issue warnings for workers that lag and fire those consistently behind, according to documents obtained by The Verge. Amazon offers a base $15 an hour wage and its warehouses, called fulfillment centers, are often competitive to work at. The company is continuously replacing slow performing employees with new hires. An automated system tracks employees and gives pink slips to consistent underperformers, The Verge reported. An Amazon spokesperson told The Daily Caller News Foundation that no employee is fired without meeting with a supervisor.

Corey Booker and some of his Senate colleagues would like to introduce a new area of government regulation in the tech industry. We need to be keeping a closer eye on the development of Artificial Intelligence, but not because of the coming robot revolution. The problem, you see, is that the computer algorithms are (wait for it)… racist. And that justifies some sort of government oversight of the tech sector beyond what we already have in place today. (Associated Press) Congress is starting to show interest in prying open the “black box” of tech companies’ artificial intelligence with oversight that...

Japan's space agency wants to create a moon base with the help of robots that can work autonomously, with little human supervision. The project, which has racked up three years of research so far, is a collaboration between the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), the construction company Kajima Corp., and three Japanese universities: Shibaura Institute of Technology, The University of Electro-Communications and Kyoto University. Recently, the collaboration did an experiment on automated construction at the Kajima Seisho Experiment Site in Odawara (central Japan). A 7-ton autonomous backhoe went through its paces at the site, going through procedures such as driving...

Nanofabbed bots are small enough to be delivered via syringe, raising all sorts of fantastic voyage possibilities. Nick Carne reports. How do you build a very big army of very small robots? Start with a 10-centimetre silicon wafer. That’s what engineers from the University of Pennsylvania in the US did to create a million of them in just a few weeks using nanofabrication techniques borrowed from the semiconductor industry. Each robot is wirelessly powered, able to walk and survive harsh environments, and tiny enough to be injected through an ordinary hypodermic needle, which opens up all manner of possibilities. "When...

The Navy is bulking up its fleet of autonomous robot vessels with the purchase of a cadre of four of Boeing's extremely large and incredibly grandiose unmanned Orca submarines. On Feb. 13, the Navy awarded Boeing a $43 million contract to produce four of the 51-foot Orca Extra Large Unmanned Undersea Vehicles (XLUUVs) that are capable of traveling some 6,500 nautical miles unaided, the US Naval Institute reported. According to USNI, the Navy could potentially deploy the Orcas from existing vessels to conduct "mine countermeasures, anti-submarine warfare, anti-surface warfare, electronic warfare and strike missions." But as Popular Mechanics points out,...

As journalists face increased layoffs despite the growing appetite for up-to-the-minute, timely news, a new trend has quietly been disrupting the news industry. Enter the automated reporter. News organizations are increasingly turning toward artificial intelligence (AI) for production, using a variety of new automated systems to pump out content with minimal need for direct human input. According to a report by The New York Times, Bloomberg News relies on a system called Cyborg to produce about a third of its articles. Most of Cyborg’s output takes the form of company earnings reports that are rife with percentages, charts, and other...