If you couldn't make it to ICRA this year, don't worry: We'll bring ICRA to you. The 2012 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation attracted more than 1,700 people to the River Centre convention center in St. Paul, Minn., last week. We've been keeping you informedaboutthecoolest (andtheweirdest) projects presented at the conference, and we still have many more stories to come. But today we want to take you to ICRA's show floor, where over two dozen exhibitors demoed their robotic creations. Check out our video montage after the break.
The robots at the exhibit hall included the DARPA ARM (the robot pictured above), NASA's Robonaut2, Willow Garage's PR2, Intuitive Surgical's Da Vinci, and the Scout, from ReconRobotics, which is based in Edina, Minn., and brought a makeshift Afghanistan village to the show floor. Though we've seen all of these bots before, we've learned some new things about each of them. Watch:
Photo: Evan Ackerman. Video: Erico Guizzo & Evan Ackerman/IEEE Spectrum; special thanks to Bruno Palazzo for the soundtrack.
Erico Guizzo is the digital product manager at IEEE Spectrum. An IEEE Member, he is an electrical engineer by training and has a master’s degree in science writing from MIT.
Evan Ackerman is a senior editor at IEEE Spectrum. Since 2007, he has written over 6,000 articles on robotics and technology. He has a degree in Martian geology and is excellent at playing bagpipes.