Robotic surgery systems have been around for a while now. They are becoming more sophisticated though. The THINK Surgical TSolution One Surgical System is ideal for orthopedic surgery. Surgeons can use it to create a personalized pre-surgical joint replacement plan for each patient.
Remember the RoboHero bot? It is an intelligent Arduino programmable robot with app motion control. Someone has managed to turn it into the robot from Laputa: Castle in the Sky with 3D printed parts. It has 17 movable joints. Its iOS/Android app lets you program custom motion sequences for your bot.
The Laputa Robot can run for over 40 minutes on a full battery. You can find the instructions for it here.
Here is a bionic hand for amputees that allows them to control individual fingers accurately thanks to machine learning and ultrasound technology. Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology created a special sensor to allow amputees to control their prosthetic hands with fine motor hand gestures not possible with current commercially available bionic hands.
Thanks to this solution, users can play piano and perform other tasks independently, with more accuracy. Pretty impressive, don’t you think? More info is available here.
Robots are going to take many jobs from us. They are also going to work around humans. Plenty of researchers are working to make robots safer around humans. This video shows how the iCub robot can share space with humans safely. The robot maintains a protective safety zone dynamically with human keypoints estimation in 3D.
Meet Mark Setrakian’s Axis Robot: a five fingered sculptural robot that can rotate a trophy on its finger tips. It is like a robot walking upside down. It moves its fingers one at a time to keep the item on it balanced gracefully. This video shows it in action:
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Meet the MJX B3 Bugs: a brushless quadcopter powered by four MT1806 1800kv brushless motors that can achieve a max upward lift of 230g. It comes ready to fly and has a 1800 mAh battery that lasts up to minutes (without the landing gear and camera).
In the past few months, we have covered plenty of robots capable of picking and placing items. This video shows how the UR arm can be used to pick and place fruits. It enables businesses to handle inventory all day long.
Here is another giant humanoid robot that operators can control with a simple control interface. The FX-2 robot comes with two giant hands with fingers you can control to handle and move objects. This video from KAIST HuboLab & Rainbow-Robotics shows what you can do with this robot:
Robots are now being used to carry the Olympic Torch. We are less than 2 months from the start of the Pyeongchang games. Hubo which is capable of handling tools and performing complex tasks recently joined the Olympic torch relay. Of course, unlike humans, these bots don’t get tired or feel cold.
In the future, robots will be used to complete complex surgeries. They are already being used by surgeons for minimally invasive operations. Take the da Vinci Xi Robotic Surgical System: it comes with clear 3D HD vision and wrist instruments that bend and rotate beyond the human hand.
