Items tagged with robots
Sexual fembots don't exist outside of Hollywood movies, but just in case they ever become a reality, robot ethicists (yes, there's such a thing) are already campaigning against having sex with robots. Those who support the "Campaign Against Sex Robots" feel that shagging with a scrap of parts resembling a person is...
Read more...
The hitchhiking robot hitchBOT has traversed multiple countries by relying on the generosity of strangers, but its adventuring came to an abrupt and disastrous conclusion shortly after it arrived in the U.S. The place of hitchBOT’s demise turned out to be Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love, which apparently...
Read more...
Just a few days after Steve Wozniak stirred fears with comments about the inevitability of humans becoming pets for superior robots, the Twittersphere has found further “evidence” that humanity’s end is nigh. A robot at an automotive plant in Germany killed a worker this week and the reporter who first covered the...
Read more...
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak isn't the only one envisioning a world where artificially intelligent systems rise up and rule over mankind. So Dr. Stuart Armstrong, an academic at the Future of Humanity at Oxford University. According to Armstrong, we're precariously close to creating computers that will ultimately...
Read more...
Foxconn CEO Terry Gou spoke out at a shareholder’s meeting to set the record straight on comments made at the beginning of the year about robots. It turns out that the era of robot-powered factories isn’t quite as near as the head of Foxconn seemed to imply in February and he’s holding the media responsible for...
Read more...
A group of French and American scientists publishing in the science journal Nature are reporting success in their attempt to develop software that allows damaged robots to quickly overcome many sustained injuries and continue with their tasks.
A major problem in robotics has long been the inability of the machines...
Read more...
Imagine going to the water's edge, wading into the sea, and dragging out...a blue whale. And not an easy to wrangle (comparatively speaking) baby blue whale either, but a fully grown, mature mammalian beast of the sea. This is the equivalency being offered to describe the astounding power of the oh-so-small MicroTug...
Read more...
Score a win for the robot species, which will soon be joining Foxconn's flesh and blood workers to help assemble Apple's forthcoming iPhone 6 device. So says Foxconn CEO Terry Gou, who announced the plan at a recent shareholder meeting, adding that Apple will become the first company to use the service. Citing a...
Read more...
Google is now the proud owner of Boston Dynamics, an engineering company that specializes in building dynamic robots and software for human simulation. You may have seen some of Boston Dynamics' creations already, especially if you've spent any amount of time browsing YouTube videos -- a 2 minute demonstration of the...
Read more...
Amazon isn't taking any chances with our future robotic overlords. To show that it's willing to play ball under a mechanical regime, Jeff Bezos recently went on "60 Minutes" and unveiled plans to use delivery drones to drop off packages to flesh and blood customers (or "servants," as robots will call them after the...
Read more...
The wonderful and terrifying robot future portended by Amazon’s delivery drones isn’t exclusive to the e-tailer giant; Google is getting in on the robot action, too. The company is looking to develop humanoid robots that could perform tasks such as manufacturing electronics, loading up products to ship...
Read more...
Believe it or not, it's earning seasons again, and a company that always seems to make things interesting in this regard is Amazon. While it's stock price is soaring, the past few quarters have shown tremendous revenue with next to no profit. This quarter, however, Amazon didn't manage to make a dime. While Q3 2013...
Read more...
You've probably heard the saying, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure," but did you ever equate it to being prepared for the inevitable robot uprising that will threaten the human race? Probably not, but that isn't stopping a group of Cambridge researchers from at least entertaining the idea. "Many...
Read more...
Foxconn (Hon Hai Precision) may have finally figured out a solution to all those pesky accusations of poor working conditions that keep popping up in headlines -- robots! The human condition being what it is, workers comprised of blood and guts tend to gripe and moan when employers saddle them with low wages, long hours, tedious tasks, and...
Read more...
According to China's Xinhua's news agency, Taiwanese technology bigwig Foxconn (otherwise known as Hon Hai Precision) plans to employ 1 million robots in the next three years to help curtail the rising costs of having to play real life humans, and also to improve efficiency. Terry Gou, founder and chairman of the...
Read more...
The "personal robots" market will explode in the next few years, and we don't mean all over your kitchen. ABI Research expects robots aimed at consumers to create a $19 billion market by 2017. Who wouldn't want one of the two new "personal presence" bots introduced this month by start-ups? Or Panasonic's new hair-washing robot? Vacuum robots...
Read more...
Not that CES (the Consumer Electronics Show) really needs any additional hype, but the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) wants to make sure that even with CES half a year away, that the media and analysts never forget that their technology extravaganza is on the horizon. The CEA sponsored a mini tradeshow in New York City this last week,...
Read more...
A team of U.K. researchers have developed robotic fish that they plan to use to detect pollution. The researches plan a trial of five robotic fish in the northern Spanish port of Gijon. If successful, they hope to use the fish in waterways worldwide. Unlike earlier models, which had to be remotely-controlled, these new carp-shaped robots are...
Read more...
How would you feel about a robot asking, “Would you like fries with that?” when you ordered a Big Mac? Well, if the National Intelligence Council’s recent Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World is correct, we could be experiencing just that by 2025. Granted, it’s a few years down the road, but the idea that robots could be so capable to replace...
Read more...
It has been a somewhat slow weekend for tech news, but I just came across an interesting article over at the Live Science site that I wanted to share. The article centers around a cutting edge MIT robotics project dubbed Nexi.What makes Nexi so interesting is that "she" has been designed to communicate with not only the spoken word,...
Read more...
Everything gets automated eventually. At first, businesses strive for efficiency in workers, and then when the work becomes too boring and repetitive, they go all the way to having a machine of some sort do it. But that could never happen to writing software code, could it? Charles Simonyi thinks it could, and his company Intentional Software...
Read more...
According to an article from Engadget, Europe and South Korea are developing a "Robot Ethics Charter" in order to govern the manufacturing and use of robots to including ethical standards. If this wasn't already sci-fi enough, guess where the a great deal of inspiration for the charter is being...
Read more...
