Traveling Sophia

Sophia, One of the world’s most advanced humanoid robots, whose name means ‘wisdom’ in Greek, is set to visit the Greece’s city of Nafpaktos to attend a panel titled artificial intelligence and ethics.

In October 2017, Sophia was granted Saudi Arabian citizenship, becoming the first robot to receive legal personhood in any country.

It has been reported that the ‘Meet Sophia Conference’ will be taking place on March 10 at the Nafpaktos International Conference Center, which is housed within the Monastery of the Transfiguration of Christ,
in Skala Nafpaktia.  READ MORE...

MilliMobile An Autonomous Robot

Researchers at the University of Washington have created MilliMobile, a tiny, self-driving robot powered only by surrounding light or radio waves. It’s about the size of a penny and can run indefinitely on harvested energy. (UW Photo / Mark Stone)




University of Washington researchers are rolling out another tiny robotic breakthrough, this time in the form of an autonomous device that relies on surrounding light or radio waves to move in short bursts.

The robot, dubbed MilliMobile, is about the size of a penny and weighs as much as a raisin, and a typical power source, such as a battery, has been kicked to the curb in favor of more environmentally friendly approach.

MilliMobile has a solar panel-like energy harvester that sits above four tiny wheels, enabling the robot to roll — in incremental steps — about the 30 feet in an hour across surfaces such as concrete or packed soil.

Carrying three times its own weight in equipment such as cameras and sensors, the device takes internet-of-things style data collection and makes it mobile. Such tiny robots can be used on a smart farm to track humidity and soil moisture or in a factory to seek out electromagnetic noise to find equipment malfunctions — especially when deployed in a swarm.

“We took inspiration from ‘intermittent computing,’ which breaks complex programs into small steps, so a device with very limited power can work incrementally, as energy is available,” said the UW’s Kyle Johnson. “With MilliMobile, we applied this concept to motion. We reduced the robot’s size and weight so it takes only a small amount of energy to move. And, similar to an animal taking steps, our robot moves in discrete increments, using small pulses of energy to turn its wheels.”

MilliMobile was tested both indoors and out and in very low light situations, and was still able to inch along. The robot is also able to steer itself, navigating with onboard sensors and tiny computing chips.

Johnson, a UW doctoral student in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, was co-lead author on research that the team will present Monday at the ACM MobiCom 2023 conference in Madrid, Spain.   READ MORE...

FedEx's New Robot

FEDEX UNVEILED A two-armed robot called DexR this week that’s designed to automate one of the trickiest tasks facing the company’s human employees—loading a truck with packages.


The new robot aims to use artificial intelligence to stack rows of differently sized boxes inside a delivery truck as efficiently as possible, attempting to maximize how many will fit.


That task is far from easy for a machine. “Packages come in different sizes, shapes, weights, and packaging materials, and they come randomized,” says Rebecca Yeung, vice president of operations and advanced technology at FedEx. 

The robot uses cameras and lidar sensors to perceive the packages and must then plan how to configure the available boxes to make a neat wall, place them snugly without crushing anything, and react appropriately if any packages slip.


“A few years ago, AI was not at a stage where it was smart enough to handle this kind of complex decision-making,” Yeung says. DexR is currently in testing, ahead of a wider rollout at FedEx at some point in the future.


While generative AI tools like ChatGPT have created a sense in many industries that AI technology is ready to take on just about anything, handling objects in the messy, unpredictable real world still poses formidable challenges for algorithms. 

Most industrial robots are designed to carry out highly repetitive jobs with extreme precision, but no variation. 
READ MORE...

Robots Doing House Chores

Imagine the biggest market for a physical product you can. Are you thinking of mobile phones? Cars? Property?


They are all chunky markets but in the coming decades a new product will be rolled out that will dwarf those giants, says Geordie Rose, the chief executive of Sanctuary AI.


The Vancouver-based firm is developing a humanoid robot called Phoenix which, when complete, will understand what we want, understand the way the world works and have the skills to carry out our commands.


"The long term total addressable market is the biggest one that's ever existed in the history of business and technology - which is the labour market. It's all of the things we want done," he says.

Before we get too ahead of ourselves, he qualifies that statement: "There is a long way to go from where we are today."


Mr Rose is unwilling to put a time frame on when a robot might be in your house, doing your laundry or cleaning the bathroom. But others I have spoken to in the sector say it could be within ten years.


Dozens of other firms around the world are working on the technology.


In the UK, Dyson is investing in AI and robotics aimed at household chores.   READ MORE...

Humaniod Robot Has Moves

Boston Dynamics, the company known for its robotic dogs, now has a humanoid robot capable of doing gymnastics.

The robotics company previously has shown how its robot dogs can go down stairs and open doors. Some police departments have begun using the robot dogs, typically called Spot, to help patrol. And Atlas, which the company dubbed "the world's most dynamic humanoid," showed in an earlier video how the robot can jog and jump over a log.

In a new video, Atlas now can do parkour – a sport of moving through obstacles – jumping and running along uneven platforms. Then, two humanoid robots do synchronized movements including turning, spinning and two flips, mirroring each other moves.

Having the robots perform parkour sequences including running along a balance beam, jumping and doing flips helps in the development of a robot capable of multiple tasks, “a go-anywhere, do-anything robot of the future," said Scott Kuindersma, leader of Boston Dynamics' Atlas team, in a blog post accompanying the new videos.

"The work that we are doing now is really just foundation building," he said. "We are building the core capabilities that we think any useful robot will need and in doing so we are really just defining the next set of challenges that we are going to be working on over the next two to five years."  READ MORE