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Governments should pre-emptively ban fully autonomous weapons because of the danger they pose to civilians in armed conflict, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. These future weapons, sometimes called "killer robots", would be able to choose and fire on targets without human intervention.
Nov 19th, 2012
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Mathematicians at the University of California, Merced created a model of penguin huddles that assumes each penguin aims solely to minimize its own heat loss. Surprisingly, the model reveals that such self-centered behavior results in an equitable sharing of heat.
Nov 19th, 2012
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In the past the key reasons for investing in robot based automation were all about improving productivity, reducing costs, increasing manufacturing flexibility or delivering consistent product quality. But more and more manufacturers are now citing employee safety as a key reason to deploy robots.
Nov 16th, 2012
Read moreUsing skills gleaned from video games, high school and college students outmatch medical residents in surgical simulations a new UTMB study finds.
Nov 15th, 2012
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Britain's desire to be at the forefront of robotics research has been reinforced by universities minister David Willetts, who saw world-leading technology when he visited the Bristol Robotics Lab.
Nov 13th, 2012
Read moreScience Applications International Corporation (SAIC) was awarded a prime contract by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for the Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel (ACTUV) program phases two through four to design, build and test a new prototype unmanned autonomous surface vessel.
Nov 12th, 2012
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Navy plans to phase out its Sea Mammal Program and retire its pods of dolphins and sea lions that are currently used to help locate - and in some cases destroy - sea mines. Swimming into their place is a new generation of robotic mine hunters.
Nov 8th, 2012
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Max and Ben, two knee-high humanoid robots that can dance to ?Thriller?, play games and emulate Tai Chi, are to be showcased by researchers at the University of Birmingham as part of the ESRC festival of Social Sciences.
Nov 8th, 2012
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LEXI is a new robot at work in the firing tanks of the Lab's High Explosives Applications Facility (HEAF) and the work that's done there for the National Explosives Engineering Sciences Security (NEXESS) Center. The tri-lab program is funded by the Department of Homeland Security to assess threats from explosives and to evaluate countermeasures.
Nov 8th, 2012
Read moreNASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) successfully have used an experimental version of interplanetary Internet to control an educational rover from the International Space Station. The experiment used NASA's Disruption Tolerant Networking (DTN) protocol to transmit messages and demonstrate technology that one day may enable Internet-like communications with space vehicles and support habitats or infrastructure on another planet.
Nov 8th, 2012
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Computer scientists from the University of Bonn have developed a new robot whose source code and design plan is publicly accessible. It is intended to facilitate the entry into research on humanoids, in particular, the TeenSize Class of the RoboCup. The scientists recently introduced the new robot at the IROS Conference (International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems) in Portugal.
Oct 30th, 2012
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Cornell researchers have created an autonomous flying robot that is as smart as a bird when it comes to maneuvering around obstacles.
Oct 30th, 2012
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A new study shows that jumping can be much more complicated than it might seem. In research that could extend the range of future rescue and exploration robots, scientists have found that hopping robots could dramatically reduce their power demands by adopting a unique two-part "stutter jump".
Oct 26th, 2012
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Robots have the potential to help older adults with daily activities that can become more challenging with age. But are people willing to use and accept the new technology? A study by the Georgia Institute of Technology indicates the answer is yes, unless the tasks involve personal care or social activities.
Oct 25th, 2012
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The Robot Hall of Fame inducted four robots chosen for the first time by a popular vote ? Aldebaran Robotics' NAO humanoid, iRobot's PackBot bomb disposal robot, Boston Dynamics' four-legged BigDog and WALL-E, the fictional robot of the namesake Pixar movie - during a ceremony tonight at Carnegie Science Center in Pittsburgh.
Oct 24th, 2012
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Roboticists at Carnegie Mellon University will field two teams in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Robotics Challenge, a competition in which robots will perform complex, physically challenging tasks as they respond to disaster scenarios in human-engineered environments, such as nuclear power plants.
Oct 24th, 2012
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Teaching a robot a new trick is a challenge. You can?t reward it with treats and it doesn?t respond to approval or disappointment in your voice. For researchers in the biological sciences, however, the future training of robots has been made much easier thanks to a new program called "PaR-PaR".
Oct 23rd, 2012
Read moreScientists from eight countries (Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, New Zealand and the United States) have created the first detailed 3D map of the underside of sea ice in Antarctica.
Oct 19th, 2012
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