Automaton

Last time we saw DARPA's Autonomous Robotic Manipulation testbed robot, it grabbed one of our cameras by the face. That was fun, but it's not especially practical. Now, this—this is practical: using some low-cost (sub-$3,000) hands from iRobot and Sandia National Labs, the robot can now autonomously use tools to mostly change a car tire.

Insects are masters of the swarm. Bugs like bees and termites and ants manage to do all sorts of complicated and productive things, despite the fact that on an individual level, each insect is really not that smart. The manifestation of complex behaviors from simple systems is appealing to roboticists who otherwise have to try to figure out all kinds of complicated localization and navigation tricks all by themselves. Researchers from the New Jersey Institute of Technology, in Newark, and at the Research Centre on Animal Cognition, in Toulouse, France, are using swarms of ant-like robots to efficiently navigate networks without any sort of cleverness at all.

Happy Easter! We're busy stuffing our faces with chocolate (since that's what Easter is all about, right?), but not too busy to cover our keyboards with fingerprints of melted chocolatey goodness bringing you this robot Easter video from University of Zurich.

The last time robotic dragonflies of this size roamed the Earth, dinosaurs were still about 100 million years down the line. Insects can't get this big anymore (there isn't enough oxygen in the air to keep them going anymore), but that's why we have robots: to resurrect freakishly large bugs and make them do our bidding.

This is the fourth post in our Startup Spotlight series featuring new robotics companies from around the world. We're inviting representatives from the companies to describe their technologies and how they see the marketplace. The views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not represent positions of IEEE Spectrum or the IEEE.

This is the third post in our TurtleBot tutorial series. Check back every week for new posts.

This is it. It's here. My TurtleBot 2 has arrived. It's in a giant box that says CLEARPATH ROBOTICS on one side and TURTLEBOT on the other and I'm absolutely terrified. What if I can't get it to work, or worse, what if it doesn't like me?

Either way, this is the true beginning of our TurtleBot tutorials. This is where it all starts. Right now, with this giant box.

As part of our tutorial series on TurtleBot, we're exploring the history of the robot, and there's no better way to tackle that subject than to talk directly to its creators, Tully Foote (left) and Melonee Wise (right), who developed the robot while at Willow Garage. With all the power of ROS behind it, TurtleBot is a unique platform for robotics development, and we wanted to learn more.

Yes, you are desperately in need of a monster robotic ATV. Meet the Grizzly, Clearpath Robotics' latest new toy serious research platform. It's big, it's scary, and if you get in its way, it'll crush you like a bug. Or, you know, like some puny little lesser unmanned ground robot.

This is the year 2250. At the space railway station on planet Telvikos, the small robot Telenoid R1 is waiting for his departure to Earth. It is already nighttime on Telvikos, and Telenoid can be recognized from afar by his bright silicone skin. His form and face somehow resemble people from planet Earth, although he is only as tall as a puppet. "Telenoid R1, please float to Chronoportation," the loudspeakers at the space railway station say. The robot sighs briefly and packs in his long-term memory cell for the journey.

Would you buy a Telenoid robot with a sci-fi background? According to research conducted at the Ars Electronica Futurelab, you're not only more likely to adopt a Telenoid, but also perceive it as more useful, when it's introduced with the story above.

Have you seen anything so terrifying made of origami? I think not! And even if you have seen something more terrifying, it's unlikely that it's ever chased you down and try to bite you, like this foldable robot bug can. See it skittering around, and more stuff that's almost as cool, in this week's Video Friday.