According to thinktank Machine Industry Memorial Foundation, robots could fill the jobs of 3.5 million people in Japan by 2025, helping to avert worker shortages as the country’s population shrinks. The country faces a 16% slide in the size of its workforce by 2030 while the number of elderly will mushroom, the government estimates, raising [...]
USA Today is running a story about the emergence of robots in common aspects of life in Japan. Many simple yet social jobs are being filled by robots of increasing sophistication. The article suggests that Japanese culture is more open to such interaction than the majority of other cultures.
From the Article: “For Japan, the robotics [...]
ScienceDaily is reporting that a new exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New York is part computer, part robot, and part child. Part of the “Design and the Elastic Mind” exhibit “WizKid” is able to focus on human faces and follows your movement allowing you to interact with objects on it’s display [...]
Annalee Newitz, editor of io9, posted some controversial photos of a robot on the scene of a suicide bombing in Israel. One of the worst shots includes the robot rolling over the bomber’s corpse to check if the body is rigged with a second batch of explosives, but what’s really worse than that is that [...]
The “RoboScooter” isn’t really robotic at all, but ignoring the nomenclature it’s still got verve. Designed at MIT’s Media Lab in partnership with SYM/Sanyang Motors, the prototype electric scooter is made from just 150 discrete parts, making maintenance and upkeep simple. It’s supposed to be charged by hanging it on a special rack, but if [...]
This not-so-little ladybug robot is designed to automatically clean restrooms located next to Japanese rest areas. Inside each “Lady Bird” model are water tanks, brushes, and cleaning supplies, while microphones in her antenna can listen to patrons and respond with basic information about traffic conditions or weather.
There is nothing horribly frightening about this robot at [...]
Japan’s National Institute of Information and Communications Technology have developed a robot they say can recognize—and respond with—human body language.
From the Article: “The droid’s body language skills are due in large part to technology that allows it to observe, recognize and remember human behavior. NICT’s robot learns body language by watching — much like children, [...]
Japan’s Kanagawa Institute of Technology showed off their intimidating air-pressure robot suit, designed to turn old people into RoboCops who not only don’t need wheelchairs, but can lift cars and fight crime.
The suits could be used by old people to get around, or by their caregivers, who need to carry them around. Japan is urgently [...]
Artist Michael Sullivan is making a movie called “The Sex Life of Robots,” and he has a robot porn installation going on display at the Museum of Sex in NYC this week.
Snip from Wired item by Dylan Tweney: “While making an animated war movie featuring armies of battling robots, filmmaker Michael Sullivan began to get [...]
Johnny Five - hero of Short Circuit, Short Circuit 2, and all the Short Circuit sequels that have been playing only in our hearts since the franchise died in 1988 - is indeed alive, and for sale on eBay.
The five-foot-tall totally sentient robot is made of aluminum and steel, with “vaccu-formed styrene panels” to conceal [...]
I’m not sure these sushi robots are for “home use,” but who wouldn’t want their own mechanical man making sushi for them? The various rice-ball-forming machines make anywhere from 850 balls an hour up to 1200 balls an hour, and the various parts of the sushi robot lineup make 2000 to 3000 pieces an hour.
Sounds [...]
This syndicated story from 1928 warns of the promise and peril that will shortly arise due to the army of mechanical men that will rise from inventors’ drawing boards and take over the world:
“The mechanical man, brazen-lunged creature of dreadful portent is among us! A few years from now you may rub elbows with him [...]
The NeuroArm, a surgical robot that provides magnetic resonance images of the brain was unveiled in Calgary, where researchers called it a “milestone in medical technology.” The technology works in conjunction with real-time MRI to provide surgeons with unprecedented detail and the control to manipulate tools at a microscopic scale for operations ranging from repairs [...]
MIT researchers recently demonstrated the capabilities of a robot named Domo, designed to interact with humans and adapt to its environment. Original funding for Domo came from NASA but the project is now supported by Toyota. Intelligent robots could work together with people to make workers more productive and save manufacturing jobs from being sent [...]
Say hello to Kyrre Glette, Jim Tørrenson, Jeff Hawkins and one of your future robot overlords. The first three have developed two different ways to create independent machines. The fourth is just looking to destroy you.
Glette and Tørrenson, from Oslo University, have come up with what could be the next generation of hardware—machines that evolve [...]
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