Fully driverless vehicles may be as little as 10 years away — at least according to a new study by ABI Research. According to the study, driverless vehicles will start to appear in North America at the beginning of the next decade, culminating in more than 10 million robotic vehicles shipping in 2032. In other
The fledgling “drone journalism” programs at the University of Missouri and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln recently received letters from the Federal Aviation Administration advising them that they lack proper authorization and could be subject to legal action. As a result, they will cease flying unmanned aerial vehicles outdoors for newsgathering and research purposes. The universities
Earlier this month, DARPA hosted a “Proposer’s Day” at Johns Hopkins University to share details of its futuristic Hydra program with companies who might be in a position to help make it a reality. The goal of Hydra is to create an unmanned undersea system that can rapidly deploy unmanned aerial and underwater vehicles worldwide. Pretty
As its military sales have stagnated over the past year, robotics market-leader iRobot has been leaning more and more on its always preeminent Home Robots division to drive corporate profits. Over the past several years, however, that division has often seemed to be less a site of technological innovation and product diversification than a home
GrabCAD, a platform that helps engineers collaborate and quickly share CAD files, recently partnered with RoboSavvy, which hosts an online community for humanoid robot builders, to launch a new humanoid robot design challenge. It’s not exactly DARPA Robotics Challenge in terms of scope — these robots aren’t meant to revolutionize the future of search and
Willow Garage, the robotics research lab responsible for both the open-source robot operating system ROS and the PR2 robot, announced yesterday via its blog and a press release that a majority of its employees are moving over to remote presence company Suitable Technologies. Both companies were founded by Scott Hassan, an early Google developer and
Part crowdsourcing platform, part recruiting tool, part STEM education showcase, the Air Force recently launched its “Collaboratory” — an interactive platform that invites technology-minded people to submit solutions to real-world Air Force problems. The site particularly targets students studying the STEM disciplines (science, technology, engineering and mathematics), offering video game-like achievement badges in exchange for
The variety of images that might surface in one’s mind when someone utters the term “robotics” has exploded in recent years – from autonomous vacuum cleaners to spinal surgery systems to military-grade explosive disposal solutions. For some, however, the term conjures something darker: a landscape of pervasive airborne surveillance, so-called “drones” keeping tabs on average citizens in
A poll conducted by Monmouth University last month shows that the U.S. public supports certain domestic uses of unmanned aerial vehicles, particularly applications related to search and rescue. However, most Americans haven’t heard a lot about the use of UAVs by law enforcement within the U.S. and harbor some privacy concerns. Of the individuals surveyed,
In July, AeroVironment’s Puma AE became one of the first two small unmanned aircraft systems to receive approval from the Federal Aviation Administration for commercial missions. At AUVSI’s Unmanned Systems conference earlier today, the company shared a new milestone, reporting that an in-development solar-powered version of the Puma AE lasted more than nine hours during a
