Showing posts with label robotics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label robotics. Show all posts

Thursday, October 29, 2009

All Hail the Robot Armada!

A QUANTUM OF SCIENCE

In the future, space exploration of distant worlds will be carried out not by humans, nor even by human-guided robots, but by robot-guided-robots.

Wolfgang Fink, visiting professor at California Institute of Technology, predicts a day when small, expendable robot teams would make the trek to Mars or Titan and explore independently, using generalized instructions and flexible programming to search extraterrestrial landscape in much the same way that astronauts have explored the surface of the moon.

All hall the Robot Armada!

For more information:

Robot armada might scale new worlds (R&D Magazine)

Visual and Autonomous Exploration Systems Research Laboratory

© AQOS / P. Smalley (2009)
Reproduction with attribution is appreciation

Friday, October 23, 2009

Chicks Dig Giant, errr, Tiny Robots!

A QUANTUM OF SCIENCE

Microscopic robots might just be the next big thing.

Robots are cool. Giant robots are cooler. But robots measuring just a few micrometers (millionths of a meter) take the cake. At the National Institute for Standards and Technology, they might just do it literally. In May of 2010, the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation to be held in Anchorage, Alaska will host the NIST Mobile Microrobotics Challenge pitting microbots from around the world against one another in such thrilling challenges as sprinting across a distance equal to the diameter of a pinhead! Operated by remote control and observed by judges literally watching them under a microscope, the microbots will perform tasks such as placing tiny pegs into holes or performing other feats of system reliability, level of autonomy, power management and task complexity.

Still not impressed? How about a rousing game of nanosoccer?

For more information:

Mobile microbots to face big challenge (R&D Magazine)

NIST Nanosoccer event

National Institute of Standards and Technology


© AQOS / P. Smalley (2009)
Reproduction with attribution is appreciation