During the European Robotics Week, at the Science Museum in London we’ll meet swimming, flapping or crawling robots mimicking real animals. The EU-funded STIFF-FLOP project will be showing a robotic arm inspired by the softness and agility of an elephant’s trunk and by the octopus’ ability to find food by exploring small cavities in rocks.…
This November, Robot SafariEU at the Science Museum will explore the fascinating world of biomimetic robots. Beginning on Wednesday 27th November at Lates and continuing over the weekend (30 Nov – 1 Dec), visitors can trek through the un-natural habitats of these robots, interacting with creatures that swim, flap, and crawl, in a unique safari…
For humans interested and involved in robots and robotics. The London Robotics Network is an open network of people around London interested in robotics. We organise meetings, events and networking for the London robotics community. Our vision is to bring together all of London’s robotics community to exchange ideas, find opportunities, mentor and support one…
Technological developments move fast, and if the trend continues, it won’t be long before humans and robots are working side by side in home, field, and factory environments. Our society has to be prepared (more here).
This workshop aims at summarizing the results and on going discussions within some of the EU-funded projects in robotic surgery, such as SAFROS, STIFF-FLOP, Active and uRalp. Although patient safety in all types of surgery seems an obvious concept, the close examination of patient safety in the specific case of robotic surgery raises a number…
In a piece on how killer robots may affect the future of military warfare, BBC 2 reports on how robotics is used today and how they may develop into weapons. The UN Human Rights Council in Geneva is debating on the ethical use of “killer robots,” with UN rapporteur Christof Heyns calling for a halt…
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Vx5EkKNCdM] In a report discussing the increasing presence of robots in our daily lives, Sky News interviewed Dr. Thrishantha Nanayakkara on his views of how robots can be perceived. “Machines are machines, and humans are humans. Is there not a line that we simply shouldn’t be crossing there?” Sky asks. To which Thrish replied, “Actually,…
Cecilia Laschi and Matteo Cianchetti from SSSA demonstrated how the OCTOPUS robot works and explained how it could one day be used for tasks such as repairing underwater structures like oil pipelines and ships’ hulls to performing search-and-rescue operations – venturing into places too dangerous for humans! The event was held at the Science Museum…
A paper by a group of undergraduate students from the Centre for Robotics Research (CoRe), has been accepted to be published in the proceedings of the prestigious International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2012). Fabio Bianchi, Giulia Bartoli, Kya Shoar, Maria R Armas Fernandez and Valerio Pereno are currently in their fourth year…
Within the EU FP7 Project STIFF-FLOP the Shadow Robot Company developed the “Shadow Robot Nervous System” (SRNS) which is a universal hardware integration platform for connecting input and output components to a PC running the research standard Robot Operating System (ROS). The connection is made via EtherCAT which allows for fast, high bandwidth, real time…