June 1, 2010
In what may be (but probably isn’t) just a coincidence, a third telepresence robot has made a (pre) commercial appearance in as many weeks. This robot is called Vgo, and… Well, it does telepresence. Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but you get on your computer on one end, connect to the robot, and then drive it around while looking through its cameras. Sensors keep you from running into stuff or falling down stairs, and it’ll run all day on one battery charge. The biggest news, at this point, is that the Vgo is only supposed to cost $5000. Plus a mandatory support contract of $1200 a year. So, $6000. The Boston Globe has a nice piece on Vgo… There aren’t many more technical details, but I did find this interesting: Two analysts I spoke with differed on the potential for robotic videoconferencing. Rob Enderle, a technology analyst at the Enderle Group who has written about the slow spread of traditional videoconferencing systems, said that “the closer we get to simulating being there, the better an alternative to travel it will become.’’ But Dan Kara, president of the publishing company Robotics Trends in Framingham, said, “I’m not quite sold on mobile telepresence. How is it that much better than having someone at the remote site carry around a netbook computer with a free copy of Skype on it?’’ The whole minion+laptop+Skype thing is exactly the point we made back when Anybots’ QA was introduced at CES for $30k. Obviously, a telepresence robot is much better than minion+laptop+Skype, but the question is, is it really that much better in terms of cost effectiveness? At the $6k price point, perhaps. Or maybe that’s not the question… Maybe the question should be, how much hardware is required to simulate being somewhere else […]
June 1, 2010
Like its domestic ancestor, iRobot’s new military robot is also a cleaning machine. But instead of dust devils, this one cleans land mines and barbwire obstacles. It works using the Mk7 Anti-personell Obstacle Breaching System. Not subtle, but extremely effective. More » Military – Weapon – Business – Defense – Aerospace and Defense
June 1, 2010
We first introduced you to Anybots’ QA telepresence robot back in January of 2009 at CES. QA was pretty slick looking, with features like a bendy waist and an LCD tie and a pricetag of about $30k. QB, a stripped down slimmer version of QA showed up about 9 months later, and now Anybots has announced the official launch of QB. All QB needs to be fully functional is you plus a computer on one end, and it plus wireless internet on the other. It has a top speed of 3.5 mph and will run for a solid eight hours per charge. The Anybots QB telepresence robot will be available this fall for $15,000, which seems like a lot… But, compared to the cost of (say) hiring a new employee and paying for them to relocate, or flying people back and forth across the country all the time, a $15k telepresence robot may make sense for a lot of businesses. [ Anybots QB ]
May 31, 2010
The instant you hear a cellphone ring, your brain reacts in a unique way – if the ringtone matches that of your own phone.More » Ringtone – Cellular Phone – Communications – Wireless – Shopping
May 28, 2010
Arizona man Charles Okeke spent the last two years of his life connected to a 400-pound machine that functioned as his heart. Now, he’s able to shed that bulk thanks to the new “Freedom Driver,” a backpack-powered, totally artificial heart that’s letting him leave the hospital grounds. He’s an honest-to-goodness bionic man. The Freedom Driver’s advanced miniaturized technology makes totally artificial hearts possible. Produced by Tuscon’s SynCardia — the same company behind the Total Artificial Heart that was keeping Okeke alive for two years — the Freedom Driver only weighs 13 pounds. Children go to school with book bags heavier than that. Okeke isn’t the first person to depend on a completely artificial heart. It’s a common layover on the way to a heart transplant. He is the first, however, to leave the hospital with one, and the first to test the Freedom Driver. Consider this: Keeping people alive while they wait for a suitable donor, without robbing them of their day-to-day freedom? That’s a major breakthrough. Amazingly, doctors say that even if a suitable donor is not found, Charles Okeke may be able to live the rest of his life with the Freedom Driver instead, which costs upwards of $125,000 and $18,000 a year to keep running. Check out the Freedom Driver and Charles Okeke in the video below. Via PhysOrg
May 27, 2010
Robot Wars: The 6 scariest unmanned aerial vehicles Look out, everybody, because here come the unmanned aerial vehicles, otherwise known as UAVs or drones. They’ve been flourishing in the Iraq War, starting with just a few unarmed drones when the conflict began in 2003, and now growing in numbers to more than 7,000. Many are packing serious missiles and bombs, and some soon could be autonomous. This is undoubtedly the dawn of an entirely new era of military might: robot wars. Flying over battlefields in a variety of shapes and sizes, the aircraft are controlled from either the battlefield itself, thousands of miles away, or anywhere in between. They can keep an eye on bad guys wherever they may roam, and some can even blow them up at a moment’s notice. One reason they’re so compelling for military types: They present no danger to their pilots. To help you recognize and identify these scary robotic birds, we picked out a representative sample of six of these these soulless, empty flyers for you to contemplate.