Last Updated 11/6/09 6:11 PM
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Earth & the Environment
Robotics
Health & Medicine
Extreme Machines
Research
Worst-Case Scenarios
Science
Featured Story
10 Most Brilliant Innovators of 2009: The Ball-Shaped Robot
Greg Schroll's robot isn't your regular pendulum-powered spherical bot. With Schroll's unique design this ball bot can roll, dodge and even climb stairs.
Previous Robotics Stories
| 3 New Farm Bots Programmed to Pick, Plant and Drive Intelligent, manned machines aren’t just for warplanes and border guards—they can be found on the farm too. Increasingly, agro-bots are taking laborious tasks out of the farmer’s helper’s hands, and saving time and money in the process. (Published in the September 2009 issue)
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| Autonomous Autos: New Kit Converts Any Vehicle Into a Robot (With Video) There are many ways that the unmanned vehicle revolution can reach beyond the frontlines. Why not retrofit existing vehicles? The Pronto4 Strap-On Autonomy System can transform any steered vehicle into an autonomous unmanned ground vehicle.
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| 5 Useless Robots (And Why We Love Them) Robots are made to assist us. But in the history of robotic development there have been as many epic failures as incremental successes. Here, PM editorial adviser, author and roboticist Daniel H. Wilson corrals five of the most useless robots.
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| Robots That Dress Like Animals for Science To better understand animal behavior, scientists are dressing up data-gathering robots in animal garb. By fitting in with their unsuspecting friends, robot bees, turkeys and lizards are recording intimate details of habitats that were never before seen. (Published in the July 2009 issue)
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| Diving Robots Could Recover Air France 447's Black Box As more details of Air France 447's final minutes become known, deep-sea technology experts are saying that the recovery of the aircraft's black boxes will be difficult, but not impossible, with the help of deep-sea-diving robots.
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| Robotic Task Force: A Two-Robot, Bomb-Defusing, Riot-Controlling, Firefighting Team (With Video!) Two robots can defuse dirty bombs, take on riots and fight fires—giving their controller a comfortable distance from dangerous situations. Here is an up-close look from the show floor of Robobusiness 2009.
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| Safety Snake: The Construction Worker's New Best Friend? Inspecting high-rise construction sites is a dangerous job, but somebody—or some robot—has to do it. Engineers at Virginia Tech built the HyDRAS-Ascent II to climb by encircling a beam and twisting its 90-degree joints in sequence. (Published in the April 2009 issue)
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| 5 Robots that Look, Act and Are Designed Like Animals Scientists studying animal behavior and movement have developed robotic birds and bugs capable of anything from surveillance to space exploration. Here are five of our favorite biologically inspired machines.
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| Inside FIRST Robotics 2009: Robots are Now Ready to Rumble This week, high school robotics teams from around the country concluded the six-week build ahead of the regional FIRST 2009 Robotics Competitions. We dropped in on George Westinghouse High to unveil their design for this year's competition.
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| Robots That Help The Disabled (With Video) Help for disabled people has increasingly been the domain for skilled dogs. But Georgia Tech’s Healthcare Robotics Lab has another solution. Their answer: The EI-E, a robot that can perform basic household tasks on command. (Published in the February 2009 issue)
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| View Full Science: Robotics Archive | ||
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