Motobot project - Automated motorcycle driving

Robot cow milker

Personal gardening robot

FARM-BOT (Open-source)

Spot Mini

Training eagles to intercept drones?

A "catchy" idea for the moment, but unrealistic in terms of induced cost. Makes me wonder of the reaction of the eagle in the scenario where the drone is equipped with a very high-frequency sound emitter to deafen the eagle. 

Audiovisual emotion emulation; meet virtual "Zoe" avatar

A marvelous technological achievement brought when social sciences and engineering sciences meet altogether, by talented people. Can you imagine this expression capacity to be demonstrated by an actual robot? The amount of empathy or antipathy would you develop as a response? What would happen if these automatic emotive expressions could be intelligently emulated in order to induce a certain emotional response to the recipient? The following article is a MUST read...

Cambridge University & Toshiba | Zoe the emotional avatar of the future

The parody and contradiction of robotics science

The parody...

The contradiction...

Wild encounters

And this summarized that day's lesson of father's kangoroo to the child kangoroo, on dealing with annoying flying creatures even if you are not biologically engineered to deal with this kind of situations.

It is called improvisation...

Beginning of new era II: Sunbathing will never be the same again

This is what happens when air drone enthusiasts "accidentally" happen to fly over unwary citizens... in France.

You are advised NOT to try this at home (i meant the sunbathing on the terrace).

Fanbot, a.k.a. the Robotic Fan

If you thought you have seen, or imagined, all the different uses of robots in human society, you were mistaken:

Fanbot

TEDx Talk by Hugh Herr: Extreme Bionics

Catching objects in mid-air using a robotic-arm

The Uncanny Valley Phenomenon

... a concise introduction to the "Uncanny Valley Phenomenon".

Robot arm rings NASDAQ stock exchange's bell

A robotic arm rings the stock exchange bell and inaugurates the ROBO-STOX index.

KUKA ping pong duel with world champion Timo Boll

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Crazyflie Nano Quadcopter

by http://www.bitcraze.se/

TEK: Robotic Mobilization device

Cubli: a fancy self-balancing cube

The Cubli is a 15 × 15 × 15 cm cube that can jump up and balance on its corner. Reaction wheels mounted on three faces of the cube rotate at high angular velocities and then brake suddenly, causing the Cubli to jump up. Once the Cubli has almost reached the corner stand up position, controlled motor torques are applied to make it balance on its corner. In addition to balancing, the motor torques can also be used to achieve a controlled fall such that the Cubli can be commanded to fall in any arbitrary direction. Combining these three abilities -- jumping up, balancing, and controlled falling -- the Cubli is able to 'walk'.

More details can be found at the project' s homepage, here:

http://www.idsc.ethz.ch/Research_DAndrea/Cubli

Merry Christmas: the Robots' point of view

The annual 2013 "Merry Christmas" video of the ASL (Autonomous Systems Laboratory) in ETH Zurich, has just been released. This time it features more robots than previous years and an overall more exquisite scenario.

The Masterpiece, directly below:

inFORM display by MIT

inFORM is a Dynamic Shape Display that can render 3D content physically, so users can interact with digital information in a tangible way. inFORM can also interact with the physical world around it, for example moving objects on the table's surface. Remote participants in a video conference can be displayed physically, allowing for a strong sense of presence and the ability to interact physically at a distance. inFORM is a step toward our vision of Radical Atoms