Professional

Stats Monkey : The journalist robot

Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

Stats Monkey

The French newspaper, Le Monde, wrote that journalist robots already exist and work quite well.

The experimental program of artificial intelligence, “Stats Monkey“, is able to autonomously write sports news.

It can produce a headline of a particular game in only 2 seconds without spelling or grammar mistakes.

Stats Monkey independently looks for websites specialised in match statistics, scores, goals, major events and even photographs.

To write its article, the journalist robot uses pre-recorded forms of expressions that often come up.

These writers are already perfected and would be as good as speciality news agencies.

For the time being, the software only writes about baseball. However, it will soon be used for NFL football, basketball and the stock market.

A commercial version is already foreseen for regional sports news.

There is already a robot similar to the robot journalist called News at Seven that can produce a documentary video on the fly for Internet.

For more info on Stats Monkey, go to the project website: http://infolab.northwestern.edu/projects/stats-monkey/

An autonomous helicopter used to fly above nuclear disasters

Monday, March 8th, 2010

Helicopter Robot

Unmanned Systems Laboratory developed a helicopter robot that can fly above disaster areas after nuclear attacks or accidents, or bomb explosions.

The autonomous helicopter was developed by students at Virginia Tech College and their professor, Kevin Kochersberger.

It measures 1.80 meters and weighs approximately 90 kg. It can have a maximum weight of 94 kg when taking off including a 28 kg load. It has a battery life of 60 minutes.

The research team of USL modified an aerial vehicle, a remote-control Yamaha RMAX, so that it can fly autonomously.

The helicopter robot can also lead itself to radioactive sources.

The main purpose of this prototype is to take photos, map, and measure levels of radioactivity.

via

A Caterpillar TL1255 for the LAPD

Thursday, March 4th, 2010

Caterpillar TL1255

The LAPD (Los Angeles Police Department) bought a remote control mobile robot by Northrop Grumman Remotec.

This is a Caterpillar TL1255 that does not have a driver but can be controlled remotely from a distance of 1.6 km (1 mile).

The arms of the machine have a range of 12 meters in front and 15 meters to the side. It can raise loads of 5.5 tons (5448 kg).

You might be wondering how a remote control robot like this could be useful to the police ?

It will be used when explosive and dangerous materials (e.g. toxic products) are found by the SWAT (special weapons and tactics) and first response teams.

The aim is to improve the safety of the police by giving them a good operating distance from potential dangers.

Skybotix CoaX Autonomous Micro-Helicopter Drone

Thursday, February 25th, 2010

Skybotix drone

The Skybotix CoaX UAV Drone is an autonomous micro helicopter.

It is a coaxial helicopter robot ideal for research and education.

It features two brushless motors for the rotors and two servo motors for guidance.

To communicate, the Skybotix CoaX uses a Bluetooth connection and also an optional WiFi module. It can be guided with a 2.4 GHz remote control.

It has numerous applications and that’s what makes it interesting.

The Skybotix Drone can be used in professional fields: for customs patrols; monitoring traffic; searching for people in natural disasters and/or fires, avalanches, etc.; collecting information for the police, from maps, aerial photos and inspections of bridges and dams.

For education, it can be used for non-linear systems from autonomous navigation, estimation theory, from real-time control, from analysis in frequency fields, etc.

Two months ago, Helen Greiner, iRobot’s co-founder, won a contract worth several million dollars for her new company, Cyphy Works, to develop a new type of autonomous flying device able to inspect infrastructures, bridges, etc. But why develop this type of product? It doesn’t make too much sense because… RobotShop has it available for sale already!!

Skybotix remote control

A video showing the CoaX using an optical mouse sensor:

Here it operates at a fixed distance from a wall allowing two people to bounce it back and forth as in table tennis:

iRobot announces to have delivered its 3000th Packbot

Wednesday, February 17th, 2010

iRobot Packbot

iRobot, a world leader in robotics, announced today that it had sold its 3000th Packbot robot.

Introduced for the first time in 2002, the PackBot is a Tactical Mobile Robot that allows military or civilian rescue teams to examine suspicious objects from a distance (such as bombs and bomb parcels).

This robot uses professional video cameras and sensors to stream the video and audio to the operator who manipulates it.

To make its handling faster and more efficient, the PackBot is equipped with a Joystick style remote control like those used for playing video games.

iRobot Corporation is a company listed on Nasdaq under the symbol IRBT.

Coca Cola Robot in the streets of Tokyo

Tuesday, February 9th, 2010

Coca Cola Robot

At the Shibuya Station in Tokyo, Japan, one can see out a large Coca-Cola distributor robot.

In the photo, the girls seem rather surprised and can’t believe that this nice monster came out of nowhere :-)

via tradingmarkets

Cow milking robot

Friday, February 5th, 2010

Here is a beautiful video presentation of a milking robot machine in Germany.

The robot cleans the udder, recognizes the teats by itself and starts milking. The milk is sent directly into the tank.

The cows are tagged with electronic bracelets that provide information on how many liters of milk they produce per day.

They have even learned to come all by themselves to meet the robot when they feel they are ready for milking.

This is what we call efficiency in a dairy farm!

Robot window washers

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010

The city of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates is equipped with robotic window washers.

The advantages of robots from the Serbot AG company are numerous: worker safety (robots instead of humans), faster execution speed (150 m2 per hour for the machine instead of 20 to 30 for a man) and the option of working in windy conditions.

The robot moves in several directions using suction cups and cables.

Given the height of the skyscrapers in the city of Dubai, the work that these machines provide is a great idea.

This type of extreme robot will increasingly replace humans in the future for obvious cost, speed, and safety reasons.

Who can compete with it?

Here it is in action:

OC Robotics is launching its Explorer snake-arm robot product line

Thursday, January 28th, 2010

OC Robotics Snake Robot

The British OC Robotics Company has just launched a snake-arm shaped robot that is able to dig around in inaccessible places to detect bombs (anti-terrorism), inspect a machine (cars, etc.), search through rubble (explosions, earthquakes, natural disasters), etc.

For example, one of the videos below shows a robot of the “Explorer” product line, inspecting the underside of a car.

These robotic snakes have a 4 to 15 cm diameter.

Rob Buckingham, OC Robotics Director said that his Explorer snake-arm robot series will be particularly suited for use in confined spaces for inspection or maintenance tasks.

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