Robots are going to do many things for us in the future, including ironing our shirts and pants. In a paper accepted to ICRA2016, a group of Columbia University researchers describe a robotic system for ironing clothing items. The robot uses Kinect sensors for wrinkle detection.
We have covered plenty of cool quadcopters here in the past. Have you ever wondered how fast they can ascend to 100 meters? Dirk Brunner has built a quadcopter that can complete the task in 3.871 seconds. As it turns out, this is a world record:
[H/T: Guinness World Records]
In the future, drones will be able to complete missions with minimal human intervention. The DRONEBOX is a drone nesting solution with a grid-independent battery charging system that lets you use drones in remote areas. It can be installed anywhere for your drone to perform scheduled routines or deploy on demand.
Soft robots and wearables are the future. We have already seen many interesting soft robot concepts in the past. This video from the Interactive Architecture Lab covers the Soft Architecture Machines Workshop led by Dr. Helge Wurdemann, Prof. Kaspar Althoefer, Julie Freeman, Vincent Hygh, and Ruairi Glyn.
In the past few months, we have covered plenty of cool DIY robots. MahmoudTolba has shared a guide that shows you how to build Sauron: The Lord Of The Robots. This robot has two 3 DOF arms and a 3 DOF head. It also comes with a fixed base. The robot has standby, game pad, and imitation modes. In the last mode, it can imitate your movements.
Meet the Milrem THeMIS: a modular UGV that can be mounted with various gear to handle search, rescue, and reconnaissance missions. This hybrid unmanned ground vehicle has a base that measures 2000mm long and 900mm high. It has a payload capacity of 750kg.
Meet PowerEgg: a drone with a 360-degree panoramic 4K HD camera on a 3-axis gimbal that lets you capture stunning footage outdoors. It has long range video transmission and an advanced indoor positioning system. The drone has a lightweight design and easy controls. The product is expected to ship in the Q2 of 2016.
Robots are going to do many things for us in the future. That includes making us coffee. We have already covered plenty of cool robots form SuperDroid Robots in the past. This video shows a HD2 Mastiff robot using a 6-axis arm to make coffee. For those of you not familiar with this robot, it is a rugged surveillance robot for hazardous environments.
Meet the Ada Hand: a fully articulated robotic hand with 5 degrees of freedom and PC/Mac control. Its PCB is based around the ATMEGA2560 microcontroller and can be programmed using the Arduino programming environment. The kit can be assembled in around 1 hour using simple tools.
Here is a quadcopter by DARPA that can achieve a 20 m/s flight when fully loaded with sensors. It was developed as a part of DARPA’s Fast Lightweight Autonomy Program. The goal is to develop UAVs that require minimal human intervention and less processing power. These UAVs will be able to complete autonomous fights with no operator or GPS.
More information is available here. What do you think? Are you impressed?
