The Advantage of Four Legs

Shortly after SoftBank acquired his company last October, Marc Raibert of Boston Dynamics confessed, “I happen to believe that robotics will be bigger than the Internet.” Many sociologists regard the Internet as the single biggest societal invention since the dawn of the printing press in 1440. To fully understand Raibert’s point … Read More

The Race To Own The Autonomous Super Highway: Digging Deeper Into Broadcom’s Offer To Buy Qualcomm

Governor Andrew Cuomo of the State of New York declared last month that New York City will join 13 other states in testing self-driving cars: “Autonomous vehicles have the potential to save time and save lives, and we are proud to be working with GM and Cruise on the future of this … Read More

Robots On The Beat

Ultimately, last week’s terror attack in Lower Manhattan was halted by the bravery and skill of New York’s finest – Officer Ryan Nash. As authorities investigate new technologies to keep citizens safe it is unclear if intelligent machines could have prevented or alerted first responders sooner to prevent loss of … Read More

Brain Surgery, The Robot Efficacy Test?

The internet hummed last week with reports that “Humans Still Make Better Surgeons Than Robots.” Stanford University Medical Center set off the tweetstorm with its seemingly scathing report on robotic surgery. When reading the research of 24,000 patients with kidney cancer, I concluded that the problem lied with the humans overcharging patients … Read More

The Five Senses of Robotics

Healthy humans take for granted their five senses. In order to mold metal into perceiving machines, it requires a significant amount of engineers and capital. Already, we have handed over many of our faculties to embedded devices in our cars, homes, workplaces, hospitals, and governments. Even automation skeptics unwillingly trust … Read More

RoboBusiness 2017: What’s Cooking In Robotics?

Mike Toscano, the former president of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, emphatically declared at the September RobotLab forum that “anyone who claims to know the future of the [robotics] industry is lying, I mean no one could’ve predicted the computing mobile revolution.” These words acted as a guiding principle … Read More

Descartes Revisited: Do Robots Think?

This past week, a robotic first happened: ABB’s Yumi robot conducted the Lucca Philharmonic Orchestra in Pisa, Italy. The dual-armed robot overshadowed even his vocal collaborator, Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli. While many will try to hype the performance as ushering in a new new era of mechanical musicians, Yumi’s artistic … Read More

Solar Reflections: Have Machines Eclipsed Humans?

This past week’s historic eclipse could be an analogy for the future of automation. The all powerful human is being shadowed by the subservient autonomous machine. Like the moon’s dependency on the sun, robots could not exist without mankind. As we reached total darkness, one was tempted to be like Icarus, … Read More