Chronicling Robots Since 2011
Last Wednesday, I attended AeroVironment’s presentation of their contribution to NASA’s Mars Helicopter mission. The autonomous vertical-lift drone is remarkably capable of flying through the planet’s thin atmosphere, as demonstrated on Earth in a vacuum chamber by their CEO, Wahid Nawabi. The unmanned aerial craft will provide a bird’s eye view of the Martian landscape to guide the growing fleet of … Read more
Sometimes the biggest breakthroughs lead to the worst nightmares. I often wake up shaken from a recurring image of insect swarms. Now at the University of Sheffield (United Kingdom) has taken the idea of robotic swarms to a whole new level. This follows the Harvard experiment last year: Swarm robotics studies how large groups of robots … Read more
This past weekend box office hit (even with 29 rotten tomatoes) was the adorable robot, Chappie. As observed by Gary Marcus of the New Yorker, Chappie takes his inspiration from real life artificial intelligence from iCub to Rodney Brook’s Baxter. The big question being asked by everyone from Elon Musk to car insurance companies, are robots able to … Read more
Terminator is just a movie, right? I am sure that is what the robot conspiracy theorists thought, as General Robert Cone, the head of U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), declared that by 2030, a quarter of the US Army’s combat troops will be robots. Already today, the army is considering reducing the … Read more