Robotics has good reason to be grateful for biology, but now biology has to be grateful to robots, too. Schmidt Ocean Institute set out on an undersea expedition with an underwater robot and found about 100 new species. Traveling along the Salas y Gómez Ridge stretching between Chile and Easter Island, researchers used a remote-control… Read more »
New ideas in robotics are often inspired by animals. From kangaroos to octopi, creatures from all over the animal kingdom have given great ideas to the roboticist that study them. The latest: earthworms. Japanese researchers created a new robot based on worms that can travel 9 mm per second. If you’re having trouble imagining that… Read more »
Robot orders fell in 2023 compared to the record-breaking figures of 2021 and 2022. In fact, American robot orders overall are down by 30%. Here are some of the key reasons behind this decline: Economic Slowdown A global economic slowdown in 2023 led many companies to tighten their budgets and put off large investments, including… Read more »
Manufacturing is full of challenges, with everything from labor shortages to increasing variable ambient temperatures making life harder for manufacturers. Would it be better to try manufacturing in space? Varda Space Industries is ready to land its first manufacturing capsule, which has been out in space since June, growing crystals of Ritonavir, an antiviral drug… Read more »
There’s a new home service robot available. Its video shows it partially filling a glass with water. It does this extremely slowly, and the glass is only about one third full, but it does it. Then the camera pulls back and you can see a human being holding a wand. The human is controlling the… Read more »
The automotive industry relies on automation more than any other. One car making plant may use more than a thousand robots. So for Black History Month, we want to celebrate Black inventors who made a difference in this industry. George Washington Carver is justly famous for his work with peanuts, but he also developed a… Read more »
Rexroth got its start as an iron foundry in 1795. In the 20th century, Rexroth acquired Indramat as its electrical drive and control division, and in the 20th century it merged with Bosch Automationstechnik. The resulting company, Bosch Rexroth, has continued to excel. And Bosch has something new to offer: Origify. Counterfeit goods are a… Read more »
In honor of Black History Month, observed each year in February, we’re presenting a few of the many Black inventors who have enriched industry and technology in the United States: Jan Ernst Matzeliger invented a shoe making machine that could make 150 to 700 pairs of shoes in one day, compared to 50 pairs a… Read more »
The Kepler humanoid robot is advertised as a general-purpose robot, and the video above shows it sorting and walking nearly as well as a human toddler. It comes in lots of cool colors, too! Or will, when it actually comes to market. It has planetary roller screw actuator and rotary actuator technology, it has fingers,… Read more »
Recent efforts in robotics have shown robots with impressive abilities beyond what we’re used to seeing in industrial robotics. We’ve seen robots dance, climb stairs, cook Chinese food, and do gymnastics. But there are some things that robots are famously bad at, including opening doors. Not any more. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have come… Read more »
