Meet the FLIR Centaur: an unmanned ground robot that can keep humans safe while identifying and removing hazards. It has a highly dexterous arm with 75.5″ reach and 5 degrees of freedom. It has a pan-tilt/zoom camera in all weather conditions.
Here is another cute coding robot that can teach your kid a thing or two about programming interactively. The Matatalab Lite coding robot has 3 modes and gamifies learning. It comes with all kinds of stickers, controller, and everything your kids need to get started.
Remember the Astrobee? It is a robotic bee designed to free up time for astronauts in the space station. These bots can navigate the ISS autonomously to free up time for astronauts. This video from Columbia ROAM Lab shows the Astrobee ground unit working its underactuated hand:
Here is another soft robot inspired by nature. This video by the Bertoldi Lab/Harvard SEAS researchers shows an octopus-inspired soft robot that can grasp objects of all shapes and sizes. It can grip and move all objects with its tapered design and suction grips.
In the past few years, we have covered plenty of drones capable of grabbing and moving objects. This Cable-Suspended Aerial Manipulator Robot is also worth a look. Developed at DLR, this robot can perform manipulation tasks with high precision. SAM can perform peg-in-hole and pick & place tasks.
Here is another educational robot that can introduce your kids to coding concepts. The Clementoni Mind Designer Robot is compatible with iOS and Android devices. It can be programmed with coding instruction blocks.
Meet the Sentient Bionic Hand 2.0: a five-digit servo-electric gripper that enables robots to grasp a wide variety of objects. It is ready for pick & place tasks, machine tending, lab work, and other tasks. It has 2 degrees of freedom and 10 joints. It is ROS compatible and can be controlled via Dynamixel SDK.
Robots are going to take over many jobs for us in the future. Existing machines can also be turned autonomous with the Robo Autonomous Machine Control system. These machines will be able to perform tasks with situational awareness, deep learning object recognition, and other advanced capabilities.
In the past few years, we have covered a bunch of research projects on robot swarms. Northwestern University researchers have come up with an algorithm to get swarming robots to avoid collisions and traffic jams. This distributed algorithm assigns goal locations for each robot and creates a collision-free path.
Here is another educational robot that can teach you a thing or two about coding. The Xiaomai Micro:bit Smart Robot Car comes with programmable headlights, on-board buzzer, omni wheels, and 105 building blocks. It can be programmed using Micro:bit graphical programming.
