and today both cars and smartphones rely on GPS satellites to know exactly where they are.
if your car could sense when you were falling asleep behind the wheel, and wake you up before you caused an accident?
combination of fibers and yarns with electrical propertiesworked into the fabrics of the seat cover
other information the project has put online suggests that it has succeeded at consistently filtering out oiselike car vibrations from the sensor data,
IEEE Spectrum notes that some luxury carmakers are already using sensors such as cameras to catch driver fatigue in time to stop accidents,
so perhaps Harken is leaving it to the auto manufacturers to figure that out a
#MERS Virus May be Able To Spread Through The Air Research strongly suggests that camels carry Middle east Respiratory Syndrome (MERS),
Articulate traction control connects three segments together with suspension joints that allow the chassis to articulate diagonally-downward
since 2009 and has worked on self-driving cars a Google spokesman said. Regarding James Kuffner who replaces Rubinâ The Wall street journal saidandy Rubin former leader of Google#s Android mobile businessâ oversaw a series of robotics acquisitions last year
With augmented reality systems in your car signs you see could be translated automatically so that what you percieveâ is the sign in your language without distraction.
when the vehicle's attitude is beyond recovery or control in order to contain the damage from any explosion or debris in the launch area.
The Cygnus cargo vehicle destroyed on this accident was carrying a lot of small satellites owned by schools universities and startups.
One solution to overcomeâ these constraints is the use of marine drones autonomous surfaceâ orâ underwater vehicles capable of traversing great distances and operatingâ independently for prolonged periods of time.
The vehicles carry a range of instruments for observing these animals. As well as measuring the temperature of the water
C-Enduroc-Enduro is an innovative long-endurance autonomous surface vehicle built by Autonomous Surface Vehicles (ASV.
The vehicle was launched officially in March 2014. Built to operate in all marine environments C-Enduro uses solar panels a wind generator a lightweight diesel generator
Wave Gliderthe Wave Glider is an autonomous environmentally-friendly oceangoing vehicle developed by Liquid Robotics.
Slocum Gliderthe Slocum Glider built by Teledyne Webb Research is a high-endurance vehicle equipped with a variety of sensors.
Images and video courtesy ofâ MOST Autonomous Vessels Ltdâ Autonomous Surface Vehicles (ASV) andâ National Oceanographic Centre t
#We#re are many steps away from wearing a device that knows what turning your car on
 Cars are in the front line with incremental modifications such as the sensory-enabled brakes already in the market.
With a product launch that has many in the industry on the edge of their seats Dyson is positioning for a leading part in the coming automation of the home and a major slice of the ripening consumer robotics market.
To increase the range of a small UAV one idea is to pair it with an unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) that can carry it to a site of operation and transport heavier cargo.
One challenge is to make sure the vehicles have the ability to rendezvous and perform coordinated landings autonomously.
The video above demonstrates the use of a coordinated control strategy for autonomous docking of a Aeryon Scout UAV onto a skid-steer UGV (Unmanned Ground Vehicle) from Clearpath Robotics.
The controller handles the nonlinearities inherent in the motions of the two vehicles and is stable in the face of multi-second time delays allowing unreliable wifi communication to be used in the landing.
when hovering over the ground vehicle. For more information you can read the paper Coordinated landing of a quadrotor on a skid-steered ground vehicle in the presence of time delays (John M. Daly Yan Ma Steven L. Waslander Autonomous
Robots Springer US July 2014) or ask questions below! Robohub is an online platform that brings together leading communicators in robotics research start-ups business and education from around the world o
The preeminent country for robotics patents is Japan with 31%of patents published the majority from Toyota.
Overall automotive patents make up around one third of the total not including other types of vehicles such as trucks buses agricultural machinery aircraft and aerospace/defence.
For example Google and Honda are contained very self in contrast to other automotive companies. Most of the patents in the UK dataset are in the field of autonomous vehicles includingâ road vehicles unmanned aerial vehicles and unmanned underwater vehicles.
Roboticsâ companies in the UK dataset have very small portfolios with the largest being Notetry (5â families)
Isis Innovation Limited Qinetiq Limited and Rolls-royce Plc. Finally the rate of change in robotics patent publishing in the last 10 years is very interesting with China showing significant growth from a China to become one of the strong sources of inventions e
Autonomous cars and drones are other examples of robots. The project is launched at theâ AUTOMATICA 2014â conference in Munich.
Google new purpose-built self driving car Google completed a major step in its long and extensive self-driving cars project by presenting its first purpose-built autonomous car
and is modified not a conventional Toyota. The as yet unnamed car is very small (looks smaller than a Smart)
and can accommodate two people and some luggage. It probably electric and its maximum speed is limited to 25mph (40km/h). Its most striking characteristic is that it doesn have any controls#no steering wheel accelerator
or brake pedals#and you can ride it strictly as a passenger which is probably a strange feeling but according to Google video not entirely unpleasant.
This is a purely experimental project in every aspect. Google will make about a hundred prototypes and it looks like it a very serious effort.
and where the side view mirrors would have been in a regular car. Thanks to Google previous experience with self-driving cars one can expect very good performance in real environments;
other Google self-driving cars have completed hundreds of thousands miles with no major incidents. The car itself may look like a toy
but it is cleverly and purposefully designed to be as cute as possible in order to inspire trust
and reduce fear of its autonomous status. Â Small cars in general may be more vulnerable in a crash with a heavier vehicle
but it already proven that with clever engineering you can have almost no compromises in their passive safety
and most small cars from established manufacturers achieve very high scores in a crash test. The main chassis is made from robust box sections of (probably) aluminum tubing and there also a tubular roll cage above.
Even the suspension wishbones look highly over-engineered for a 25mph city car. A substantial crash box is placed in the front
and above it the whole front panel is made of foam so the car is not only safe for its passengers but for pedestrians as well.
As mentioned above the most striking aspect of the car is its lack of any kind of manual control.
or control a self-driving car. If you completely eliminate any kind of input from the occupants (apart from the destination selection) then anyone on board is defined strictly as a passenger
and a question like#should we allow a child to rivean autonomous caris transformed into#should we allow a child to be transported by an autonomous car##Â a question that is still probably not very easy to answer
It was also a two-seater (loosely based on a Fiat 500) but its main feature was the interior where similarly to Google car no manual controls were present
#Transforming robots to transform your room The word#robot#conjures up many different things to many people
and automobile manufacturing food processing and the manufacturing of pharmaceutical electronic and dangerous products. The document says that there will be subsidies of up to 30000 yuan (4800 US dollars) for those who purchase
and to search vehicles. By 2007 more than 800 of these military robots were in use throughout Afghanistan Iraq and several other countries.
and that have a positive impact on the world. â#Colin Angle CEO of irobot described Google recent acquisitions as a logistics play around self driving vehicles
The vision is clearly to capitalize on the DARPA Grand Challenges as Google has done so thoroughly with the automobile/self driving challenge.
and the self-driving cars have met most of the technical hurdles in less than a decade
According to Mueller the algorithm allows the vehicle to remain in flight despite the loss of one two or possibly even three propellers.
#Honda automatic driverless valet parking system Honda has developed a low-cost automatic valet parking system that uses parking lot surveillance cameras to help park cars automatically.
In this demonstration when a car is left in the drop-off area of a parking lot it receives information about
This system can automatically park multiple cars efficiently. Honda sees a lot of potential in a system such as this especially
if it is implemented in the large parking lots of suburban shopping centers. f a store introduces this system customers can drop their car off in front of the store
and the car will go to a parking space automatically in cooperation with the parking lot. Then when customers come out with all their shopping they can just wait in front of the store
and the car will come to them. That the situation wee demonstrating here.?As the number of cars increases itl become essential to move them around efficiently.
So we think this kind of system will become increasingly necessary. s cars equipped with rear cameras only are the most common type in Japan Honda decided to use them in this first prototype.
Vision from the rear camera is supplemented with that from surveillance cameras to create a system that can see more around the car. he information that used to move the cars such as white lines is sent to the cars as maps.
Here wee demonstrating that kind of concept and showing that it could actually be implemented as easily as this. onda plan to create a specification
which combines car cameras and parking lot management systems and develop ways to operate them smoothly.
Honda believe that this system could be practical by or before 2020 y
#Is drone delivery really a robot startup? Australian startup Zookal is making news today with their claims to be the worldâ#first drone delivery company.
 Itâ#an exciting headline and I wish them well. But while you can quibble over who is really the first commercial drone delivery company
 This inflexion point has occurred many times in various industries most notably the automotive industry in the 70s and 80s.
or nanorobots our robots are programmed to behave as simple remote control cars and tuned to listen to the same frequency.
and can model robots including roombas tanks and cars. It has two inputs: forward speed and turning rate.
You can test this out by purchasing several RC cars tuned to the same radio frequency.
If you command the cars to go forward all will move forward. If you command them to turn all turnbut due to process noise all turn a slightly different amount.
This modular flying vehicle would then break apart in the air and then repeat the process over again but in a new randomly-generated configuration.
and created a linear dynamics model of the vehicle in order to provide us with some intuition about its physical dynamics.
Our initial hope was to demonstrate each of the key abilities using a single set of vehicles
in order to make the vehicle lighter for flight. Its primary limitation however was its inability to demonstrate coordinated mobility for randomly assembled configurations.
One additional revision of the vehicle was created prior to arriving at the current design. In designing Revision 1 one of our major goals was to integrate both driving and flying capabilities.
Although lightweight and mechanically robust the ethyl polypropylene foam chassis we used in the proof-of-concept vehicle was difficult to manufacture
when conducting experiments with our vehicle within the environment of a 3d motion capture system (needed for ground truth measurements)
and (2) measurement information (or control information) needed to be transmitted to the vehicle wirelessly for control purposes which at the time of development (using Wifi) generally incurred a lot of latency and packet loss.
and utilized an electrical bus to clean up the mess of communication lines we had in Revision 1. A detailed description is given in the next section.
Standard on most aerial vehicles is a 3-axis rate-gyroscope which is used for measuring body angular velocities as well as estimating the attitude of the vehicle in flight.
An infrared distance measurement sensor is used for measuring the distance of a unit to the ground.
Not only is used this for estimating the altitude of the vehicle but if units share their distance measurements with one another they can also estimate the vehicle tilt
when flying over a flat surface. We have designed each unit with magnetic interfaces located along each of its six sides.
in order to achieve flight â##without it the vehicle would simple rip itself apart before take off.
Thus each unit is generating the appropriate control effort necessary to keep the vehicle in flight
The only information that a unit needs for flight is its local sensor data and its position with respect to the vehicle centre of mass.
if each unit knows the physical configuration of the vehicle. In order for a unit to determine this on its own each unit can work out its relation to neighbouring units by sharing appropriate information.
By forwarding this information around the network each unit can arrive at the physical configuration of the vehicle much like how one might establish his/her family tree.
Assuming a rigid body for the vehicle which was taken into account when designing the chassis local sensor information provides a unit with a rough estimate of the vehicle tilt and altitude.
And knowing its position with respect to the centre of mass it straightforward to work out the appropriate control effort needed to counteract any disturbances.
We instead developed a means for automatically computing the tuning parameters for any flight-feasible configuration of the vehicle that would result in best flight performance.
In carefullly analyzing the parameters obtained for a variety of configurations we then developed a scalable method for mapping the configuration of a vehicle to its approximated optimal control tuning parameters.
Despite a few hiccups (two quads were damaged during setup and some repairs had to be done on the fly) Monday shoot went pretty smoothly. t tookâ about two
and one flying Gopro attached to a quad) to document Dndrea TED talk. An additional camera shot a aking ofvideo as well. tâ#pretty busy
and the drone is indeed a toy quad rotor meant for playing games. We thought we could develop a game for the Parrot that would serve as a means for crowdsourcing the data we needed.
Supervised traffic jam assist After a short day looking at robocars at CES a more full day was full of the usual equipment cameras TVS audio and the like and visits to several car booths.
Ie expanded my gallery of notable things with captions with cars and other technology. Lots of people were making demonstrations of traffic jam assist at CES simple self-driving at low speeds among other cars.
All the demos were supervised of a traffic jam assist. This style of product (as well as supervised highway cruising) is the first thing that car companies are delivering (though they are also delivering various parking assist
and valet parking systems). This makes sense as it an easy problem to solve. So easy in fact that many of them now admit they are working on making a real traffic jam assist
This is a readily solvable problem today you really just have to follow the other cars
and you are going slow enough that short of a catastrophic error like going full throttle you aren going to hurt people no matter what you do at least on a highway where there are no pedestrians or cyclists.
As such a full auto traffic jam assist should be the first product we see form car companies.
(if you trust them) as cruise control does but they give you little else. A ead a booklevel system would give people back time and signal the true dawn of robocars.
The most impressive car is Delphi a collaboration with folks out of CMU. The Delphi car a modified Audi SUV has no fewer than 6 4-plane LIDARS and an even larger number of radars.
It helps if you make the radars as otherwise this is an expensive bill of materials.
With all the radars the vehicle can look left and right and back left and back right as well as forward
Called Project Wing, the system was based on a mechanically simple ailsitterdesign a hybrid vehicle that takes off vertically like a multirotor
For fast forward flight, the vehicle tilts to a near-horizontal orientation, resulting in efficient lift production due to the conventional wing design.
While the vehicle is hovering, it is crucial that a large part of the flaps are within the propeller-induced airstream,
Two radios are attached on the bottom side of the vehicle; a Wifly module for high-bandwidth telemetry,
if the vehicle does not receive control commands anymore or if the battery voltage is too low are implemented also on the FMU.
it is an innovative new concept for an unmanned vehicle (UAV) from NASA's Langley Research center in Hampton, Virginia.
Dr. Jacco van Loon, an astrophysicist at Keele University and lead author of the new paper.
The capital was filled with the sound of car horns as desperate residents rushed to get back home to check on loved ones.
#Google Self-Driving Cars Ready for Public roads Google announced Friday its self-driving prototype cars were ready to leave the test track
in a step forward for its autonomous automobile program. The move comes after Google's internal testing of the bubble-shaped vehicle over the past year
and more extensive experience with technology adapted for existing cars.""Now we're announcing the next step for our project:
this summer, a few of the prototype vehicles we've created will leave the test track and hit the familiar roads of Mountain view, California,
with our safety drivers aboard,"said project chief Chris Urmson in a blog post.""We've been running the vehicles through rigorous testing at our test facilities,
and ensuring our software and sensors work as theye supposed to on this new vehicle."
"The Google car uses the same technology as its fleet of Lexus SUVS which has logged some 1. 6 million kilometers (one million miles)."
"So the new prototypes already have lots of experience to draw on--in fact, it's the equivalent of about 75 years of typical American adult driving experience,
"and during this next phase of our project we'll have safety drivers aboard with a removable steering wheel, accelerator pedal,
and brake pedal that allow them to take over driving if needed, "Urmson said.""We're looking forward to learning how the community perceives
and interacts with the vehicles, and to uncovering challenges that are unique to a fully self-driving vehicle."
"Google said earlier this week its adapted vehicles on the road had been involved in 11 minor accidents, but that none were the fault of the technology.
That included being hit from behind by other cars or sideswiped p
#Engineered Bacteria Send A Signal When Water Gets Polluted Until now, there hasn been a simple, inexpensive and quick way to monitor water quality.
But a team of entrepreneurs from Calgary, Canada, has developed a solution. It called FRED, for Field-Ready Electrochemical Detector,
#Wireless Charger Powers Electric car In Drive or Park Today, charging an electric car requires a plug and an outlet.
But in the future, charging an electric vehicle may require nothing more than driving and parking. Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Wind energy and Energy system Technology IWES in Kassel, Germany, have developed a wireless charger system that not only recharges a battery but also feeds excess energy back into the electrical grid.
parking space or garage and the other fitted to the underside of electric car. With this system in place, energy can be transmitted without a plug
The distance between the car coils and road coils can be up to 20 centimeters (7. 8 inches) for the technology to work,
which limits their usefulness for cars with larger ground clearance. The system aims to provide several options to EV owners,
Scientists in the UK, for example, are developing electric highways to charge electric cars. However, unlike other options, this coil system from Fraunhofer Institute can also discharge the electricity stored in a vehicle battery
and feed back into the grid to offset power surges. This technology is particularly cost-effective,
Wee likely to be using a lot more batteries in coming years, particularly in consumer electronics and electric vehicles.
#Sonic Tractor Beam Levitates Plastic Beads The future, apparently, is going to be loud. In what is being termed the world first sonic tractor beam,
researchers in Britain have developed an acoustic hologram that can hold, move and manipulate objects in mid-air.
Tractor beams have been a reliable staple in science fiction movies like tar Wars, where theye used to reel in uncooperative Rebel blockade runners and pesky Corellian freighters.
The tractor beam developed by the U k. team uses high-amplitude sound waves and works on a much smaller scale.
Hence the tractor beam effect. Similar freestanding haptic holograms have been developed previously, but without the precision required to hold an object in place
The sonic tractor beam could have some interesting applications down the line, according to the research team.
mentioning technologies that would make buildings or vehicles more energy efficient as one example.""But as we tackle economy wide emissions
"These could include emissions from automobiles, where collecting CO2 pollution from each car is infeasible. c
#Tapeworms may be good for your brain Tapeworms get a bad rap. Theye voracious parasites that burrow into gut walls and devour nutrients like a nightmarish version of The Very Hungry Caterpillar.
says Judy Van de Water, an internal medicine specialist at the University of California, Davis, who did not take part in the research. his study getting data that can begin addressing the connection more directly.
and moves data with photons of light instead of electrons would make today chips look like proverbial horses and buggies.
#Researchers create a sonic tractor beam Using a simple set of loudspeakers, scientists have figured out a way to levitate
If perfected, this onic tractor beamcould find uses ranging from treating kidney stones to creating artificial gravity on the International space station.
so the sonic tractor beam might be used to remove kidney stones and clots, deliver drug-laden capsules to various parts of the body,
One example comes from a project with Briggs Automotive to adjust a rear spoiler a wing on race cars
and many street cars that can rotate upwards to increase traction on the tires by increasing drag
you want to increase traction on the tires, Tibbits posits. ou can actually transform the wing panels on the car
so that when they meet moisture they change and put more traction on the car. When they dry out
they become more aerodynamic and you can go faster. Other programmable materials could pay off in improved building environments. e want materials that transform themselves, depending on sunlight, moisture, humidity levels,
and storage devices used in handheld electronics, vehicles, and power plants, making them more cost-effective, efficient and environmentally friendly.
"The group has, over the past 20 years, used various robots to test over 150 different material systems, with potential applications for ballistic missiles to rocketry to automobile manufacturing."
The lab has tested over 150 different material systems, with potential applications for ballistic missiles to rocketry to automobile manufacturing.
The arena is equipped with a motion capture system that provides vehicle position and attitude measurements for the small custom quadrocopters.
300 feet (700 meters) a year comparable to a car accelerating from 55 to 75 mph.
the glaciers behind the collapsed part of the shelf accelerated as much as eightfold comparable to a car accelerating from 55 to 440 mph.
or cars jammed in traffic, said Jeffrey Fredberg, professor of bioengineering and physiology at the Harvard Chan School and one of the senior authors of the study,
or an electric car youl find that batteries take up most of the space inside. Indeed, the recent evolution of batteries has made it possible to pack ample power in small places.
the technology now used in everything from cellphones to electric cars. The electrolyte in such batteries typically a liquid organic solvent whose function is to transport charged particles from one of a battery two electrodes to the other during charging
or a car. The team also included MIT graduate student William Richards and postdoc Jae Chul Kim;
#Daimler unveils first self-driving truck approved for U s. highway testing The future of self-driving commercial vehicles is unclear,
but the lure of fewer accidents, reduced fuel costs not to mention less human error have generated excitement in the trucking industry as well as the transportation safety sector.
The Daimler Inspiration Truck will be tested rigorously on Nevada roads as the company gathers data about the truck performance
Daimler is the parent company of Council Lead Partner Mercedes-benz, which also is working on next-generation vehicles,
including hybrid electrics intended for city use. What different about Daimler truck? Self-driving work rigs are not new.
You can see them on farms in the form of grain harvesters and planters; and mining operations use them too.
But those vehicles aren't designed to operate alongside other cars and trucks on the highway.
The Inspiration Truck has been licensed by the state of Nevada to do just that share the roads.
Autonomous trucks could provide several advantages for the trucking industry. They could dramatically reduce the chance for human error,
The savings in fuel costs would come from the truck's ability to accelerate and decelerate more gradually than humans normally do.
car never gets tired. It doesn't have any emotions when it's driving home from a breakup with its girlfriend.
and monitors to locate other vehicles on the road enables the Inspiration Trucks to remain in their lane,
the Inspiration Truck is not quite riverless. There is a human driver on board ready to make lane changes
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