At today’s nestCON 1.2 Internet of Things conference, a company called Knightscope announced it is developing a new technology it calls “Autonomous Data Machines.” The machines are designed to collect massive amounts of real world data to provide organizations with real time information, behavioral analysis and user-defined alerts at any site they choose. The company
In the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s recent policy statement on automated vehicles, the group defined five different levels of automation — from “no automation” to “full self-driving automation.” Many of the autonomous advancements car manufacturers will introduce during the next several years will fall between those two extremes, yet they will still represent revolutionary
In yet another sign of how quickly 3-D printing is growing, Stratasys announced yesterday that it will acquire MakerBot in a stock-for-stock transaction initially valued at $403 million — not including performance-based incentives that could increase the total to more than $600 million (based on Wednesday’s stock price). It was just last week that we
Research published online this week in the latest edition of Advanced Materials could make possible a generation of miniaturized robots that until now have lacked sufficiently small and powerful batteries to operate. To create the grain-of-sand-sized lithium-ion microbatteries (shown above), researchers 3-D printed interlaced stacks of battery electrodes less than the width of a human hair, according
One of the most attractive promises robotics as a forward-facing industry makes is savings in time and labor — and thereby costs — in a plethora of different fields. While online retail giant Amazon’s pursuit of economic efficiency through warehouse automation (as represented by their $775 million acquisition of Kiva Robotics in early 2012) is
There has been a lot of movement by a broad range of technology firms and automotive manufacturers alike over the last few years to develop autonomous cars and “connected vehicle” technology (as well as a great deal of discussion about the innumerable policy and safety concerns to which these projects give rise). BMW and Honda
Today at InfoComm in Orlando, iRobot announced its latest entry into the nascent telepresence market, a collaboration with Cisco Systems targeted at business users. The robot, called the Ava 500, essentially mounts Cisco telepresence technology on a mobile base from iRobot. The base is an enhanced version of iRobot’s Ava robotics platform, and the display
We recently wrote about the promise of the new Xbox Kinect sensor for robotics applications as well as the trend of using existing technologies to enhance the abilities of a new generation of robots. Researchers from the University of Washington have combined those two ideas with a new gesture-recognition system that uses the wireless signals
Zurich-based ABB, which develops power and automation solutions, presented an impressive display of flash-charging technology at a conference last week, demonstrating its ability to power an electric bus in 15 seconds. ABB reported at the 60th congress of the International Association of Public Transport in Geneva that it is working together with the city’s public
Boomerang Systems, which builds automated parking garages, today announced a manufacturing and licensing agreement with John Bean Technologies Corporation, a global technology solutions provider. Boomerang says the arrangement will allow the company to reduce its cost structure and improve its ability to deliver a superior product in significant volumes and expedited fashion. “This is a
