Tech: Baxter Manufacturing Robot

Baxter is a new manufacturing robot designed to perform repetitive tasks normally done by unskilled labor while working "elbow-to-elbow" with human coworkers. Sonar and cameras allow the robot to detect humans in order avoid colliding with them. What's more, Baxter doesn't need to be programmed. He can be trained by simply walking him through the motion required to complete a new task. The hope is that Baxter's relatively low cost (US$22,000) will provide small business with an alternative to offshore manufacturing.

Tech: Researchers Develop Body Extender Suit

Researchers Develop Body Extender Suit:

Once the preserve of science fiction, increasingly sophisticated robotic devices are vying for a place side by side with humans in the real world. Researchers are currently working on a Body Extender robot at the Perceptual Robotics Laboratory at Sant’Anna University in Pisa, Italy. The exoskeleton or “body extender”, a prototype costing millions is a armour suit weighing 160 kilos which multiplies the strength of its human user 20 times.

Source: 33rdsquare

Documentary: Social Robots

We have seen it so many times in the movies – Computers getting smarter than humans and ultimately trying to exterminate us so they can roam free in the world and in our universe. But can it actually happen? Could a computer gain so much self-awareness that it would start making decisions against what it was programmed to do? It’s a hard question to answer since we don’t yet know just how powerful we can really make a computer.