The Hunter Unmanned Aircraft System was thought to be nearing the end of its life last year when the Department of Defense awarded Northrop Grumman a $37.2 million contract modification to supply logistics and engineering support through Jan. 14, 2014 (today). Now it seems the stay of execution has been extended another year, as the

Last year, mobile robot maker Aethon says 21 hospitals started using Intralogistics, a supply chain logistics platform that uses the TUG autonomous robot to transport and deliver materials throughout hospitals. (Intralogistics also includes a software system that tracks medication deliveries to ensure chain-of-custody.) According to the company, more than 400 TUG robots now make 50,000

Israel’s Mazor Robotics, creator of the Renaissance surgical guidance system, reported today that it has signed an agreement with one of the largest group purchasing organizations for hospitals and acute and non-acute healthcare facilities. Under the agreement, the company’s products will be available to the GPO’s members, which include hundreds of hospitals and freestanding surgery

A lot of cool robots have been built using Raspberry Pi, the credit card-sized computer that was originally developed to help teach computer science. But Raspberry Pi wasn’t built specifically for making robots, and according to two former software/mechanical engineers from Carnegie Mellon University, that means it’s not as robot-friendly as it could be. Their

For humans, space might be the final frontier, but robots have it pretty well in hand. The International Space Station is currently home to both NASA’s Robonaut and Japan’s Kirobo, and the Curiosity Rover is cataloging Mars as we speak. For robots, a lack of oxygen and extreme cold is nothing — the real challenge

According to a report from Bloomberg yesterday, Takashi Kato, co-founder of recent Google acquisition and DARPA Robotics Challenge winner Schaft Inc., has opened a fund to invest in new technology from Japanese start-ups and universities. Kato told Bloomberg that his fund, 246 Capital, plans to raise about 2 billion yen ($19 million) in the next

Raspberry Pi has proven the value of a credit-card sized computer to both the robotics and maker communities, and now Intel is going even smaller with its latest offering, an SD card-sized computer with built-in wireless capabilities. At CES this week, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich unveiled the Edison, a new Quark-based computer housed in an

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

At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas yesterday, French company Induct Technology announced the U.S. launch of its electric, self-driving shuttle Navia. Navia has already been deployed via partnerships in Switzerland, the United Kingdom and Singapore. The shuttle, which was originally announced in Europe in 2011, guides itself using laser-mapping technology and sensors that detect

The 2014 FIRST Robotics Competition kicked off over the weekend, and high school students around the world (nearly 70,000, according to organizers) got their first look at this year’s arena and game. Each year, the basic structure of the FIRST Robotics Competition remains the same, but the specific game that students must design their robots