Robo Tonics – Page 7 – TechieTonics

Water Free Robotic Cleaning System Takes Over The Ketura Sun Solar Park

April 2, 2014April 3, 2014 Neha Shukla

The increasing consumption of electricity, due to rise in population and limited availability of natural resources, countries have been focusing on generating energy from alternative sources. Sun energy in one among them and is widely preferreddue to its long hours availability at no cost at all. Though its conversion technology involves crystalline panels and other components, the panels require a regular look after to sustain effectively for years and decades. The large capacity solar plants consisting huge number of these panels suffer some difficulty in smooth operations as dust, sand…

SociBot-Mini Reacts to Expressions by Displaying Various Moods

March 31, 2014March 31, 2014 Neha Shukla

Will Jackson and his team of researchers at Engineered Arts in Penryn, UK, have developed an interactive, one of its kind bot known as SociBot-Mini. The robot distinctive attribute is its face that is capable of displaying distinct moods and can react to expressions of individuals looking at it.

Biomimicry: RoboClam Replicates Atlantic Razor Clam’s Dynamics

March 27, 2014 Pooja Kashyap

Biomimicry: RoboClam Replicates Atlantic Razor Clam’s Dynamics In order to understand the efficient workings of flora and fauna, scientists always try to emulate nature’s wisdom, to which they call biomimicry. In one such attempt, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have created RoboClam that digs itself into the soil to annihilate mines and to bury anchors. Atlantic razor clam (Ensis directus) has a stiff shell yet it is able to thrust itself through soil with a rate of 1cm/s. It’s been long since researchers were working upon the mechanism as…

Cybathlon 2016: The Championship for Robot-Assisted Parathletes

March 26, 2014March 26, 2014 Pooja Kashyap

ETH Zurich in collaboration with the Swiss National Competence Center of Research in Robotics have attempted to take Paralympics to the next level by coalescing the conventional prosthetics with robotics. There has already been an incremental improvement with the equipments being employed by the players in the Paralympic Games including but not limited to prosthetic limbs and swimsuits. If we talk about the props like bows & arrows, cycles, wheels, we would agree that taking these equipments to the higher level of proficiency is not a difficult job than enhancing…

Scrabble-Playing Robot: Excited When Wins While Sulks on Losing

March 21, 2014 Neha Shukla

In the computer science lounge at Carnegie Mellon University, sits Victor, a scrabble playing robot. Unlike other robots who are designed to be the masters of the game, Victor is a below average player and just like humans, the bot is excited when it wins and sulk on losing. But be careful, the bot can be really nastier at times and can talk a lot of trash.

Humans Might Welcome The New Robot Overlords: An Obedience Study

March 18, 2014 Pooja Kashyap

How would it feel working under a ‘robo boss’, constantly pecking on top of the head, reminding the amount of work that is still left. Many would feel frustrated and might leave but there would be some, who might like to finish the task without questioning. In an interesting experiment, performed by the Human-Computer Interaction Lab at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada, revealed the responses that were received by working under a robotic supervisor. Task that was assigned to humans was extremely monotonous which of course became boring…

HyQ: The Most Versatile Quadruped Robot

March 14, 2014June 12, 2014 Pooja Kashyap

With its first launch, HyQ, the brainchild of Italian Institute of Technology had already conquered how to manipulate the terrains. Now the quadruped robot has resurrected but with more tricks than before. Claudio Semini, the lead researcher claimed that the ‘second coming’ of HyQ is sodden with wide variety of motion skills that would help the bot in facing the dynamically changing terrain. Initially, the bot was designed in terms of reactive behavior, the mode that helped it from recovering from huddles but this time, the focus is kept on making…

IVRE: Human Machine Virtual Collaborative Systems

March 12, 2014 Pooja Kashyap

Getting work done through robots is no more a challenging task, with the continuous progression in technology, more and more machines are being designed keeping in mind the safety factor which still reigns supreme when interacting with a machine. Yet we are too far from two equally important aspects, which if conquered, might thoroughly revolutionize robotics, and they are – consciousness and self-awareness. In an attempt to reach fluency in human-robot interactions, researchers at the Johns Hopkins’ Computational and Interactive Robotics Laboratory have come up with a simulated setting, which…

The UHTTR-1: Hoffman’s Table Tennis Robot

March 10, 2014March 20, 2014 Pooja Kashyap

Ulf Hoffman, a hobbiest engineer has designed the table tennis robot, a bot that plays tennis but with one hand. The team has named it the UHTTR-1. Within no time, the machine reverts the ball after servicing. Its ability to respond rapidly is due to its efficient servo motors and light weight aluminum construction. At the moment, the bot works in passive mode but the engineer claim to tune it to work for the next higher level and envision to integrate other higher dimensional skill set. Unlike Watson, it is…

Robots Might Perform At Live Concerts: Prosthetic on the Sticks

March 7, 2014 Neha Shukla

Robots got advanced and sophisticated in the last few decades after all, they are capable of performing various tasks with precision making our life all the more simpler. Now, Gil Weinberg Professor at Georgia Tech Center for Music Technology has designed an innovative robot that can create music of its own. The bot is not the one that just plays the music instead it has been designed to create music by first ‘carefully’ listening a song or melody and then improvise new tunes. Imagine how interesting it would to have…

Researchers Conceptualizing An In-built Privacy Design: Humanoids

March 2, 2014 Neha Shukla

With an increasing use of robotics in various fields, more and more vital information are being transferred to these bots. Sharing information with these machines might seem grandeur but its brings along the challenge to safeguard the information stored in the robots from being hacked or being shared by others. British researchers to explore different ways of preventing these stored data are carrying out a three-year project worth 2 million pound.

Ghost Knifefish Inspired Autonomous Underwater Vehicle: Biomimicry

March 1, 2014March 1, 2014 Neha Shukla

In an attempt to design an underwater vehicle that can go into the depths of ocean, which are not, accessible or not safe for humans to dive in, scientists are studying the Ghost knifefish method of locomotion. The fish are known to hunt in the murky water of the Amazon basin with precision and to sense the environment, rely on the current that they pass through the water and whirl their long fin for smooth motion to move both horizontally (forward and backward) as well as vertically.

Biomimicry: Robotic Bats Might Fill the Skies Soon

February 28, 2014February 28, 2014 Pragati Kashyap

According to a recent study, the manner in which bats flap their wings could actually be the source of inspiration for the upcoming designs of flying robots. The researchers investigated the way the fruit bats made use of their wings for manipulating the air around them. By developing the correct understanding of the functioning of these processes in nature, the engineers could practically come up with the design of small flying robo machines called the micro air vehicles. According to Danesh Tafti, from Virginia Tech, bats comprise of varied shapes…

Super Ball Bot: NASA’s Latest Space Rover

February 27, 2014 Neha Shukla

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) keep coming up with new era robots that can be sent to space for exploration. There are certain limitations in each design such as time taking research, clumsy motions and prone to damage. Therefore, NASA is trying to design a bot that can transform the traditional way robots perform work assigned to them here on our planet or in the space. They are aiming to build a Super Ball Bot, which looks more like a motor fitted in between a mesh of rods…

Toro-Bots: The Movable Garden Lamps in Your Garden

February 27, 2014March 20, 2014 Neha Shukla

We all have seen beautifully maintained gardens with flowers, plants, colored pots, lamps statues and so on. But I am sure no one might have seen a garden with robots moving around and also taking care of it. The adorable looking robots with lights on the top and too many limbs are known as Toro Bots, created by the Japanese, are basically garden lamps that are capable of moving around in your garden of their own. And they are surely going to turn heads and attention towards your garden.