So you are in love with Uber? In the future, you are going to be able to summon robots, from your smartphone or other smart gadgets, and have them drive you to your destination. We are talking about autonomous cars that don’t require any human to drive them. The robot taxi uses a camera to recognize and open the door to the passengers.
Meet Tickle: a drag & drop programming interface for drones, robots, and toys. It is compatible with Parrot Drones, BB-8 Droid, Sphero, Ollie, Rolling Spider, and other robot toys. It simply lets you interactively and wirelessly program Arduino. It can also teach you a thing or two about coding concepts.
Robogamis are coming. Researchers at EPFL have managed to build a folding, re-configurable robot that weighs about 4 grams and is capable of crawling and jumping. Tribot, a recent robogami, is modeled after inchworms. It switches between jumping and crawling. It can jump over obstacles and resume moving forward.
Meet the JISIWEI S+: a vacuum cleaning robot that cleans your floor and lets you keep an eye on your home. The robot has a built-in camera and WiFi, so you can interact with it from your smartphone. It offers dual-mode anti-scratching system, auto-recharging, and 7cleaning paths. You can use the camera and the app to record and view videos. With smart motion detection, your robot lets you know when it detects unexpected motion.
Robots are going to do many things for us in the future. They are already being used in manufacturing environments to get things done. These videos show robotic thermal spray automation systems in action:
The thermal spray process has been around since the early 1900s, but thanks to robots, humans won’t have to do the tough job. With robots becoming more sophisticated and cheaper, they will take on many more jobs like this.
Robots moving objects may look easy but it takes serious research and development to pull it off. This Modular Soft Robotic Gripper can lift a wide variety of objects without damaging them. As you can see in the below video, the robot is capable of lifting eggs, papers, cups, pens, and other delicate items.
Like what you see? You can find out more in this MIT paper.
Here is a cool robot that can ride a bicycle like a pro. The PRIMER-V2 can reach a speed of 6 mph and rides its small bike in a human-like fashion. As you can see in the below video, the robot also waves to spectators:
Other versions of this robot have been released over the past few years. You can find out more here.
Meet the Cannybot: a smart toy that you can program and control from your smartphone or tablet. You can build it like LEGO and drive it like a slot car. The Cannybot can reach a straight line speed of up to 4ft/sec. Upgrade the motor to achieve faster results.
Meet the DLR Hand Arm System: a robot system that uses two arms to manipulate objects. It uses image processing and point cloud processing to locate the object. The left arm picks the object, while the hand equipped with two finger tactile sensors, detects the object and triggers the grasping process. The right arm grabs the object using a simple closing commend. An impedance controller allows the robot to hold the object properly.
There are plenty of fancy drones available on the market. You can’t fly most of them more than 20 minutes on a full battery. The Easy Drone XL Pro is different. It is a modular drone that you can fly for up to 45 minutes on a full charge. It has a 28″ frame but still fits in a backpack easily. Easy Drone XL Pro can lift a pro camera on a gimbal with a max weight of 3 lbs.
