Science and Enterprise

Tag: robotics

  • Lizard Tail Feedback Boosts Jumping Robot Stability

    A team of biologists and engineers at University of California, Berkeley have documented the way lizards manage to leap successfully even when they slip and stumble, and applied that capability to robots. Berkeley professor of integrative biology Robert Full and colleagues, including graduate and undergraduate students, describe their findings in the 5 January online issue…

  • Google Granted Patent for Autonomous Vehicle Technology

    The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office awarded a patent to Google Inc. in Mountain View, California for its technology that enables cars to switch from driver to driver-less mode. Patent number 8,078,349 — entitled “Transitioning a mixed-mode vehicle to autonomous mode” — was awarded on 13 December. The patent covers the processes and devices for…

  • Enzyme Developer In-Licenses Synthetic Biology Technology

    Novozymes A/S in Bagsvaerd, Denmark has agreed to license genetic engineering technology from MorphoSys AG in Martinsried, Germany for the development of industrial biotechnology products. The multi-year agreement provides Novozymes, a manufacturer of industrial enzymes, with a non-exclusive license to use MorphoSys’s Slonomics technology. Financial and more precise timetable details of the deal were not…

  • Robotic System to Test 10,000 Compounds for Toxicity

    Three U.S. agencies have begun a testing program of some 10,000 chemical compounds for potential toxicity. The Tox21 program is a collaboration of National Institutes of Health, Environmental Protection Agency, and Food and Drug Administration. The program aims to find out if these chemicals have the potential to disrupt human processes that can lead to…

  • University Develops, Licenses Autonomous Robotics Technology

    Engineers and computer scientists at Harvard University have developed small, inexpensive robots with algorithms that enable the devices to work on their own or together in groups. The technology for Kilobots, as they are called, has been licensed to a Swiss company for manufacture and marketing. The tiny robots, about the size of a quarter…

  • Honda Advances Autonomous Humanoid Robot and Robot Arm

    Robotics engineers at Honda Motor Company in Japan have developed more advanced capabilities for ASIMO, its humanoid robot, and released an early version of a task-performing robot arm. The experimental robot arm is designed to be remotely controlled for tasks in unstable places which are difficult for people to access. The new version of the…

  • Researchers Give Robotics a Human Face

    Research engineers at Technical University of Munich (Technische Universitaet Muenchen, TUM) in Germany and the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology in Japan have developed a way to give robots a human-like plastic head. Called Mask-bot, the technology may have a more immediate application as a tool to create avatars for participants in…

  • $40K Challenge Seeks High-Speed Missing Food Finder

    A new challenge on InnoCentive seeks a method or process of identifying trays with missing food servings in a system where servings are delivered to trays one at a time at high speeds. The competition has a prize of $40,000 and a deadline of 2 January 2012 for submissions. InnoCentive in Waltham, Massachusetts is a…

  • University, Industry Team Demonstrates Robotic Biologist

    Researchers from two universities and a research company have demonstrated an automated system that can analyze raw experimental biological data and derive the mathematical equations that describe the way the system operates. The team from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and CFD Research Corp. in Huntsville, Alabama published their results…

  • More Efficient Algorithms Devised for Robotic Motions

    Computer scientists at Massachusetts Institute of Technology have built a new robotic motion-planning system that calculates much more efficient trajectories through free space. The researchers in MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS) will present their findings next week at the IEEE International Conference on…