As coworking robots, or cobots, become more important in manufacturing, the focus is mostly on the physical safety of human beings who work closely with robots. But there is quite a bit of research on the emotional aspects of human-robot interaction, too. We know that people will think twice about turning off a robot who… Read more »
Politicians are talking about robots. To a large extent, they’re warning us about robots taking our jobs. Andrew Yang, an entrepreneur and philanthropist with a 2020 presidential campaign, thinks we underestimate the dangers inherent in automation. He sees a near future in which millions of truck drivers and retail clerks are unemployed and potentially dangerous…. Read more »
A temple in Kyoto has a new job for a robot: giving a sermon. The robot, which moves and speaks, presents a 25-minute sermon on a traditional Buddhist text called the Heart Sutra. The robot was designed by Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro of Osaka University. Ishiguro is known for human-like but androgynous robots. The Kyoto robot… Read more »
Researchers are trying to figure out the best way to make robots persuasive to human beings. The University of Toronto programmed robots to behave in a range of different ways. Some were abusive, telling people they’d be stupid not to follow the robot’s suggestions. Others tried logic, arguing that their sensors gave them specialized knowledge… Read more »
You have enough to worry about in a factory without thinking about fire, right? We like fires in nice controlled conditions like the one pictured here, not in uncontrolled conditions in our workplaces. Last week, a factory fire in Taiwan claimed 6 lives and another in Bangladesh killed 81. A few years ago in Arkansas,… Read more »
Robot workers offer quite a few advantages. For example, they work without breaks or holidays. They can be bought once rather than paid for over and over again. Entrepreneur Andrew Yang, in his book The War on Normal People, suggests another advantage: they don’t hold grudges. Lay off a dozen workers and replace them with… Read more »
Automation is a big win for many kinds of tasks. There are jobs that machines can do better because they require greater speed, precision, or power than human beings can achieve. There are jobs that should be done by machines because they’re unsafe or unsatisfying for human workers. And, increasingly, there are jobs that are… Read more »
Russian robot Boris impressed a lot of people with its dance moves… but it turns out that it isn’t a robot at all. Boris was part of the show at a tech conference for students in Russia. Then Russian state TV showed footage of the robot’s antics, claiming major technical breakthroughs. The video went viral…. Read more »
The Robot Science Museum in Seoul will be opening officially in 2022. Its first exhibit, however, will get started next year when robots publicly build the museum. The building will be egg-shaped and covered in metal plates which the robots will form, assemble, weld, and polish while admiring humans look on. A second team of… Read more »
Rexroth HCS drives, the IndraDrive C models including HCS202 and HCS203, use firmware which might need to be replaced at some point. Are you updating or upgrading? If your old firmware — say MPH04V06 — is replaced by a new release of the same firmware, such as MPH04V08, then you’re updating. If you decide to… Read more »
