Blog
Disney’s New Huggable Robots
Martin Buehler, Executive R&D Imaginer at Walt Disney, took the stage at RoboBusiness 2017 to encourage all organizations to prepare for a future in robotics by stepping outside their comfort zone. He urged participants to use their creativity for user-friendly design and enhancing the customer experience.
Earlier this year, Disney applied for a
patent on “soft-body” robots designed for “physical interaction with humans.”
The design specifies the inside to be filled with gas or ai
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Oct 18th 2017
Lean Robotics
When most people think of industrial robots, they think of
bulky metal equipment stashed behind large safety cages. With collaborative
robots, which are smaller and don’t always need safety guarding, that
impression may soon change.
Cobot deployment comes with its own set of challenges, like
accommodating the up-front costs and set up involved. Robotiq CEO Samuel
Bouchard says while many manufacturers prefer a set and forget system, this may
not be the best option primarily because of
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Sep 26th 2017
2017 Amazon Robotics Competition Won by Budget Robot
This year’s Amazon Robotics competition was designed to find
a machine that could identify, pick up and store item. The winners consisted of
university students as part of the Australian Centre for Robotic Vision. The
team built their machine without a robot arm, instead opting to do the picking
from above using a sliding mechanism and walked away with an $80,000 cash prize."The parts for
the robot were cheap by the standards of typical industrial robots and it could
be built for unde
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Aug 1st 2017
Robot Labor Costs Now Cheaper than Chinese Workers
Labor costs in China have risen steadily over the last
several decades. With the rise in international labor costs, the decreased
interest of American workers in performing repetitive tasks, and a surge in
affordable automation choices, robots are poised to take over jobs
traditionally outsourced to international facilities.In the 1960s, robots were preferred to do dangerous jobs and
smaller robots became popular later for assembling parts and material handling.
The introduction of collabo
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Jul 19th 2017
TechCrunch Hosts MIT Robotics Conference
In Boston today, TechCrunch is hosting its “The Minds Behind
the Machines” robotics meeting to foster comprehensive discussion and
networking with the entire robotics community from researchers to technologists to
students. The conference offers robot demonstrations as well as a variety of topics
like Human-Robot Interaction, Hardware Setup Challenges, and Machine Learning
and Artificial Intelligence.
The conference was broken out from TechCrunch’s larger Disrupt events due to it being
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Jul 17th 2017