Cheetah military robot can outrun human beings

The Cheetah robot is modeled on its namesake, with four legs, a flexible spine and an articulated head and neck - it may or may not have a tail, says the company.

The company says that not only will it be faster than any human being, but that it will be faster than any existing legged robot too. It will be able to make tight turns and accelerate rapidly - 'starting and stopping on a dime', the company says.

Based on the same control software and mechanical and electric systems as the company's other robots, Boston says the robot will be able to use momentum to bridge gaps, for example throwing or swinging itself from one set of handholds or footholds to the next.

Meanwhile, the humanoid Atlas robot will get about mainly on two legs, although it will also be able to use its hands for support and balance.

"Unlike Honda's Asimo and most other humanoid robots you've seen, Atlas will walk just like a man, using a head-to-toe walking motion, long strides and dynamic transfer of weight on each step, says Rob Playter, Atlas principal investigator and vice president of engineering.

"We have already achieved some advanced behavior in Petman, an anthropomorphic robot we developed for the Army, so Atlas can get a leg up on the problem by leveraging the Petman results."

The company says that both robots will have applications beyond the military, such as in emergency response situations and advanced agriculture.

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Classroom robots are no longer just sci-fi jokes, but real instructors

Robots could one day help teach kids in classrooms, suggests research involving droids and toddlers in California.

A robot named RUBI has already shown that it can significantly improve how well infants learn words, and the latest version of the bot under development should also be able to wheel around classrooms, too.

The idea to develop RUBI came to Javier Movellan, director of the Machine Perception Laboratory at the University of California, San Diego, when he was in Japan for research involving robots and his kids were in a child care center.

"I thought, 'Let's bring robots to the child care center,’ and the children got really scared. It was a really horrible experience," Movellan recalled. "But it showed that the robots really got their attention, and that if we got the experience right, it could be potentially very powerful at evoking the emotional responses we'd want."

Movellan and his colleagues started working on RUBI in 2004. Its name is not an acronym. "My daughter, when she was 4 years old, just insisted that the robot had to be a girl," Movellan said.

The robot is about 2.5 feet (75 centimeters) high, "about the same size as the kids, to be less intimidating and improve interactions," Movellan said.

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Now robot chefs at a Chinese restaurant

Visitors to a fast-food restaurant in Shanghai may be pleasantly surprised when they are served food cooked by two robot chefs. The robot chefs at the Wishdoing restaurant on Shanghai's Nanjing Road can cook delicious Chinese cuisine within three minutes. They can serve customers eight popular dishes, including "crowd-puller dishes" like Kung Pao chicken, spicy diced chicken with peanuts and Mapo Tofu, bean curd with chilli sauce.

The workers only have to press buttons on the robots to choose a dish and they will display the name of the ingredients and their quantities, the Shanghai Daily reported.

In appearance, the robots look like huge kitchen surfaces equipped with iron pots.

It only takes three minutes for a robot to clean the pot from a previous meal, stir the ingredients, finish cooking and then move the food onto a plate for serving.

Although the robots cost 200,000 yuan ($30,350) each, the fast food chain is planning to install them in all of its 100 outlets across the country, said an official surnamed Ma, working with the restaurant's parent company, Shanghai Qi Ding Food Development Co.

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Robots to fix parking problems in Abu Dhabi

ABU DHABI: It will be valet parking with a difference. The “valet” is a mechanical robot, it promises to park or retrieve your car inside 50 seconds – and best of all, parking will be free.

The 14-storey, 50-metre-high robotic car park at the Qaryat al Beri resort will have space for 325 vehicles, from small cars to SUVs, and will be the first of its kind in Abu Dhabi. Building begins next month and it is expected to open next May.

It works like this: you drive into the car park and stop, facing inwards, on a rotating steel pallet operated by small robots. Cameras and sensors tell you when the vehicle is correctly placed.

You then leave the car and go to a nearby machine, which issues a token that identifies the car. The robots on the steel pallet then slide and rotate your car into an available parking spot.

When you return, drop the token into the machine to trigger the retrieval process. The robots slide your car through the exit point, facing outwards and ready to go.

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Hughes Pharmacy Includes ARX’s Robot

Jean Hughes, Owner of Hughes Pharmacy, has stated that the robot has enabled them to effectively use the minimum space. He added that they have not reduced staff because of the robot. He mentioned that the robot has enabled staff to perform other important things.

The robot scans the barcodes of the drugs which are supplied to the pharmacy and verifies them off on a separate list. This is followed by placing the drugs as per their barcode. Once a person comes into the store for getting the drug, the pharmacy staff enters it in a computer. The robot takes the medication and then transfers it downstairs through a chute.

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WA pork company uses robot to cut meat

WA's largest pork processing plant is now using a $700,000 laser guided pork cutting robot, believed to be the first of its kind in Australia.

Ron Penn is the General manager of Linley Valley's Meat and Livestock division and he says it's similar to the robots used in the car manufacturing industry.

"It scans the carcass...takes an image of it and then directs the robot exactly where it should be cutting."

He says the big advantage is accuracy because its reduces waste caused by accidental cuts to the stomach.

"We started looking at it during the labour shortages two or three years ago when most of the skilled people were going off into the mining industry." 

Linley Valley received a grant from the Federal Government (which it had to match dollar for dollar) on condition they allow other companies and industries to come and have a look at the robot in action.
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Milk from forage with robots

BE IT winter or summer, Derek Haworth prioritises milk from forage. And he sees no reason why this cannot be achieved in a system using a robotic milking machine.

Installing a robot at Rose Farm, Hambleton, Poulton-le-Fylde, Lancashire, has not been without its ‘challenges’, but Mr Haworth has worked hard to create a system which suits his milk-from-forage ethos, as well as his farm layout and cows, plus the fact he is a one-man-band with a young family.

Less than 10 per cent of his land is accessible for grazing by the milking herd and so zero grazing has been used by Mr Haworth, and his father before him, for 40 years. The focus on this (coupled with the grazing that is available and making good quality silage) to drive down input costs has not changed with the arrival of the robot.

Mr Haworth says it may be because he is a tenant farmer, but his whole focus is on profitability – therefore the cost of producing a litre of milk is far more important to him than the number of litres produced.

“I don’t own a square foot of land or a brick of building, so am completely focused on profit,” he says, adding that there are no current plans for expansion, because he knows he can milk 70 cows on his own and make a good living from it.

He has had sole control of the business since buying out his father in 2001-02, when almost all the 110 Ayrshires, red and white Holsteins and crosses was sold. Mr Haworth retained 15 ‘odds and sods’ plus the youngstock, slowly building up to today’s 70 cows and with Ayrshire genetics still having a strong dominance.

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India announces plans to develop robot army

In an announcement that you can probably expect to be repeated by rival Pakistan in the next few days, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has claimed that his South Asian nation will be the latest country to pursue technologies for developing a robotic army. Singh's remarks came during the inauguration of a new building for the Defence Research and Development Organization, and were part of a larger speech outlining the country's future plans for military research, where he also mentioned interest in developing next-gen propulsion, camouflage, and precision guided munitions systems

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Robots To Be Inducted In Fuel Fabrication For New Nuclear Reactors

Hyderabad- based Nuclear Fuel Complex (NFC) under the Department of Atomic Energy, has decided to induct robots in the fuel fabrication procedure for new nuclear power reactors which are huge in size, Press Trust of India (PTI) quoted a top NFC official as saying here.

"We plan to introduce robots in the fuel fabrication activities as the proposed reactors are big in size. Robots will also be needed for precision machining," NFC Senior Manager Meena Ravindran said here Tuesday

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Mumbai school boys build robot to clear oil spill

It took the Mumbai Coast Guards several weeks to clear the recent oil spill in the Arabian Sea. But a robot, developed by four city students, can clear it in less than 30 days.
The standard X students of Jamnabai Narsee School at Vile Parle have developed Seaswam, a low-cost solar operated robot that can swiftly clear oil spills in the ocean.
The boys, Soham Sankaran, Rushab Mashru, Yash Savani, and Rishabh Mundra, all around 15 years of age, had built the robots for the Indian Robot Olympiad (IRO) held at Bangalore on September 5.
They won the first prize and will represent India at the World Robot Olympiad (WRO)in November in Philippines.

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