Major headlines in robotics lately have circled around Amazon’s drone-based delivery ambitions and Google’s consolidation of a number of small, innovative robotics teams under Android OS-head Andy Rubin. Such moves, akin in many ways to those made by Chinese manufacturing giant Foxconn toward automation over the past two years, represent the opportunity for a fundamental
For all the excitement surrounding progress toward networking the everyday machines that make up the “Internet of Things” — tech writers and analysts say the IoT will be a major focus of research and investment this year (as well as a new arena of potential FTC intervention) — there has been comparatively little attention paid
The last six months have seen a number of moves toward standardizing the development of the “Internet of Things” on the part of major tech firms. Efforts as wide-ranging as a partnership between Oracle and Freescale and a consortium of ABB, Bosch, Cisco, and LG are telling signs of the increasing sense of both opportunity
The “smart home” industry is booming these days, attracting interest and investment from companies with their feet in every corner of the tech sector. Healthy as that accelerating competition is for innovation, however, it raises a corollary concern over the proliferation of proprietary systems that can’t communicate. Even as more and more groups are trumpeting
While driverless cars and smart homes often snag most of the headlines, they represent only one, particularly visible level of the ongoing automation of everyday life. As products marketed toward the individual consumer, establishing a foothold for such technologies involves a relatively traditional method of targeting or developing an interested niche and expanding from there
It’s no secret that robots have been big business in the consumer-facing market over the last several years. Robotic stars have led films like the “Transformers” series or “Pacific Rim” to major success at the box office, while a robotic crew played a huge role in filming current hit “Gravity.” On the other end of
We are in recent years seeing more and more facets of our daily lives adapt to incorporate not only some broad, loose conception of ever-evolving technology, but a level of automation and connectedness that is markedly changing the relationship we have with the world around us — not least because it’s changing the relationship that things
The past few years have seen an explosion of interest in the idea of the autonomous car, with traditional automotive manufacturers, university-based research teams and more broadly tech-oriented firms all announcing projects aimed at progressively shifting the responsibility of actually operating a vehicle from the human driver to a variety of “smart” systems embedded into
Yesterday Mazor Robotics announced the world’s first (and second, and third) successful robot-aided deep brain stimulation (DBS) procedures. Using Mazor’s Renaissance robotic guidance system, neurosurgeon Nizam Razack performed the procedure at Celebration Health Hospital in Orlando, Fla. DBS, a recognized treatment for Parkinson’s Disease, involves surgically implanting a small battery-operated neurostimulator to deliver electrical stimulation
After suffering through what Motley Fool has termed a “dismal performance” over the previous five years involving a negative 44 percent return for those maintaining an investment over that period, industrial robotics manufacturer Adept Technology is beginning to show significant signs of a turnaround. Following its financial report this week, Adept saw a jump in
