Tag: robots

Little Radar-Toting Robotic Gun Vehicle Aims To Protect Squads From Drones

Atrio of international defense contractors have teamed up to offer a new lower-tier counter-drone system that consists of a turreted infantry rifle with a computerized “smart sight,” a small radar array, and a six-wheeled uncrewed ground vehicle. The resulting combination could potentially be employed against other threats beyond drones and would also offer units on the ground valuable surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities.

Smart Shooter, headquartered in Israel, collaborated with Leonardo DRS, the U.S.-based subsidiary of Italy’s Leonardo, and American firm HDT Global to develop this system, seen in the picture at the top of this story. It is set to make its public debut at the Association of the U.S. Army’s main annual conference that opens in Washington, D.C. next week.

The weapon component of the system comes from Smart Shooter. It consists of the company’s Smash Hopper remote-controlled turret armed with a standard infantry rifle equipped with a Smash 2000-series computerized optic.

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Chinese researchers create dancing microrobots using lasers

A team of researchers has come up with a method that utilizes femtosecond lasers to make micromachined joints, showcased by tiny “dancing” micro robots that look like humans.

Inspired by the flexible joints of humans, the scientists from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), of the Chinese Academy of Science, led by Prof. Wu Dong, proposed a two-in-one multi-material laser writing strategy that creates the joints from temperature-sensitive hydrogels as well as metal nanoparticles. 

What are femtosecond lasers? 

Femtosecond lasers are pulsed lasers that use short, intermittent irradiation. They feature the shortest pulse width, just one quadrillionth of a second (10-15 sec). Unlike a continuous wave laser, the material that’s affected by the pulse is instantly removed. 

The technique of femtosecond laser two-photon polymerization, a “true three-dimensional fabrication technique with nanoscale precision,” as the press release from USTC  describes it, has been widely used recently to create a number of functional microstructures. 

Such microstructures have been showing promise for applications in micro-nano optics, micro sensors, microelectromechanical systems. The study specifically mentions soft grippers, artificial muscles, and wearable devices as possibilities. The challenge lies in “integrating multiple microjoints into soft robots at the micrometer scale to achieve multi-deformation modalities,” as the scientists write in their paper, published in Nature Communications. 

One possibility would be to equip terrestrial robots with multiple shape memory alloy joints that can “realize linear/curvilinear crawling, walking, turning, and jumping by laser-inducing,” as the study proposes. Another use would be to create flexible hands with multiple joints as an aid to disabled people. This would allow them to grip different kinds of objects.

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Injured person reportedly dies after Cruise cars block first responders

On Aug. 14, two stalled Cruise vehicles delayed an ambulance from leaving the scene of a crash in which a driver had hit a pedestrian with their car, according to reports from the San Francisco Fire Department. The pedestrian later died of their injuries, which first responders linked to the delay in getting them to the hospital. 

“The fact that Cruise autonomous vehicles continue to block ingress and egress to critical 911 calls is unacceptable,” one emergency responder wrote in a report. Cruise spokesperson Tiffany Testo countered that one of the cars cleared the scene and that traffic to the right of it remained unblocked. “The ambulance behind the AV had a clear path to pass the AV as other vehicles, including another ambulance, proceeded to do,” she wrote in a statement to SFGATE. 

According to several reports written by first responders, first obtained by Forbes, emergency personnel arrived at Seventh Street and Harrison in SoMa and began treating a “critically injured” pedestrian who had been struck by a car. The patient was quickly loaded into an ambulance, but the ambulance driver was unable to immediately leave the scene, according to two reports written by members of the ambulance team.

Two autonomous Cruise vehicles and an empty San Francisco police vehicle were blocking the only exits from the scene, according to one of the reports, forcing the ambulance to wait while first responders attempted to manually move the Cruise vehicles or locate an officer who could move the police car. 

Collectively, these interferences “contributed to a poor patient outcome, delaying the definitive care required in severe trauma cases,” according to one of the reports. The patient reportedly died of their injuries approximately 30 minutes after arriving at San Francisco General Hospital.

SFFD representatives did not immediately respond to SFGATE’s request for comment. 

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Russia heads back to the Moon with Luna 25

Russia’s space agency successfully launched a robotic spacecraft Thursday on a journey to the Moon, the country’s first lunar explorer since the Soviet Union’s Luna 24 sample return mission in 1976.

The Luna 25 mission lifted off from the Vostochny Cosmodrome, located in Russia’s Far East, at 7:10 pm ET (23:10 UTC). Heading east, a Soyuz-2.1b rocket propelled Luna 25 through an overcast cloud deck and into the stratosphere, then shed its four first-stage boosters about two minutes into the flight. A core stage engine fired a few minutes longer, and the Soyuz rocket jettisoned its payload shroud.

A third-stage engine fired next, then gave way to a Fregat upper-stage to place Luna 25 in orbit around Earth. The Fregat engine fired a second time to send the nearly 4,000-pound (1.8-metric ton) lunar probe on a roughly five-day trip toward the Moon. Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, declared the launch a success less than 90 minutes after liftoff, shortly after the Luna 25 spacecraft separated from the Fregat upper stage.

This is historic for Russia’s space program. Russia hasn’t launched a lunar mission in nearly 50 years and hasn’t had a mission successfully fly to any other planetary body since 1988, despite several attempts. Thursday’s launch was a major moment for Luna 25, but its departure from Earth on a reliable and proven Soyuz rocket was not the riskiest part of the mission. That will come in a couple of weeks when Luna 25 begins its powered descent toward the lunar surface.

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Robotic Flea Leaps 87 Times Its Own Length

Although fleas are annoying pests, credit must be given where it’s due. These tiny creatures, just 3 millimeters long, can leap as far as 330 millimeters in a single hop—a distance close to 100 times their own body length. Now a similar feat has been achieved by a miniature robot. The results were published 24 March in IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters.

“We were inspired by fleas in nature, which despite their small size can unleash tremendous potential and jump close to 100 times their body length. No one in the field of robotics has been able to achieve this feat yet,” says Ruide Yun, a third-year Ph.D. student at Beihang University, in Beijing, who was involved in the study.

To acquire flealike jumping abilities, the robot had to be able to unleash a lot of energy at once, so Yun and his colleagues created one that works somewhat like a miniature piston engine.

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‘Thermonator’ Robot Dog Shoots Flames As ‘Skynet Moment’ Nears

Remember those ‘cute’ dancing robo-dogs from (Japanese-owned) Boston Dynamics doing all sorts of tricks, like decorating a Christmas tree and opening doors? 

Even though Boston Dynamics has pledged not to weaponize robo-dogs, other companies have. 

China has made their version of ‘spot’ – except they strapped a gun onto it.

Another Chinese defense contractor showed off a drone deploying an armed robo-dog into a mock warzone. 

…which leaves us with yet another robo-dog that a US company called “Throwflame” has developed into “the first-ever flamethrower-wielding robot dog,” according to its website.

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World’s first baby is born from a transplanted uterus implanted by a robot – and it brings hope to tens of thousands of American women who lack a womb

A baby boy carried in a uterus implanted into his mother by a robot was born in a world first.

The youngster, who has not been named, weighed six pounds and 13 ounces when he was born via planned C-section in Sweden last month. Both the child and his 35-year-old mother are doing well.

The pregnancy was made possible when a family member agreed to donate their uterus to the mother, who then had a fertilized egg implanted into it via IVF. The case marks the first time robots have been used for the procedure.

It will give hope to the tens of thousands of American women who don’t have a uterus — which can be due to cancer or a medical condition — or have one unable to carry infants.

The case was revealed by surgeons at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, a leader in uterus transplants.

In the surgery, researchers began by removing the uterus in the donor by gradually cutting it away from blood vessels and pulling it out through the vagina.

Small incisions were made in the second patient’s side by the pelvis, and the uterus was implanted into them. It was connected to their blood vessels and vagina.

Surgeons inserted cameras and robotic arms with surgical instruments attached through the small entry holes in the lower belly to carry out the procedure — with the robotic arms being the first for this type of surgery.

The arms were steered via joysticks, with surgeons using consoles to see 3D images of the patient’s insides simultaneously. 

This method is less invasive than the standard uterus transplant, which involves opening up larger openings in patients.

It is also thought to reduce the risk of infections, hemorrhages and allow patients to return to their daily lives faster.

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Los Angeles City Council approves ‘robot dog’ donation to police

A four-legged “robot dog” is the newest member of the Los Angeles Police Department after the City Council voted 8-4 to approve its acquisition on Tuesday.

The robot – a quadruped unmanned ground vehicle called “Spot” – is manufactured by Boston Dynamics and is valued at nearly $280,000.

Spot was first offered as a gift to the LAPD’s Metropolitan Division by the Los Angeles Police Foundation in March. The foundation is a nonprofit group that has “awarded more than $44 million in grants to the LAPD” since 1998, according to its website.

LAPD said the robot will be used in a limited number of scenarios including “incidents involving active shooters, assessment of explosives, hostage situations, natural disasters, hazardous materials assessment, barricaded suspects and search and rescue missions.”

Spot will not be equipped with any weapons systems, facial recognition software or analysis capabilities, officials said. It will also not be used for routine patrol duties or covert surveillance operations.

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This Soft Robot Unfurls Inside the Skull 

An octopus-like soft robot can unfurl itself inside the skull on top of the brain, a new study finds. The novel gadget may lead to minimally invasive ways to investigate the brain and implant brain-computer interfaces, researchers say.

In order to analyze the brain after traumatic injuries, help treat disorders such as seizures, and embed brain-computer interfaces, scientists at times lay grids of electrodes onto the surface of the brain. These electrocorticography grids can capture higher-quality recordings of brain signals than electroencephalography data gathered by electrodes on the scalp, but are also less invasive than probes stuck into the brain.

However, placing electrocorticography grids onto the brain typically involves creating openings in the skull at least as large as these arrays, leaving holes up to 100 square centimeters. These surgical operations may result in severe complications, such as inflammation and scarring.

Now scientists have developed a new soft robot they can place into the skull through a tiny hole. In experiments on a minipig, they showed the device could unfold like a ship in a bottle to deploy an electrocorticography grid 4 centimeters wide, all of it fitting into a space only roughly 1 millimeter wide. This “enabled the implant to navigate through the narrow gap between the skull and the brain,” says study senior author Stéphanie Lacour, a neural engineer and director of the Federal Polytechnic School of Lausanne’s Neuro-X Institute in Switzerland.

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Robot dogs will soon patrol the US-Mexico border

“Robot Dogs” will soon be patrolling the U.S.-Mexico border according to the Department of Homeland Security.

These four-legged robotic quadrupeds weigh in at approximately 100 pounds and look like something out of science fiction horror.

DHS says the machines are critical in patrolling the harsh landscape of the American Southwest.

“The southern border can be an inhospitable place for man and beast, and that is exactly why a machine may excel there,” said DHS Science and Technology Derectorate manager Brenda Long. “This S&T-led initiative focuses on Automated Ground Surveillance Vehicles, or what we call ‘AGSVs.’ Essentially, the AGSV program is all about…robot dogs.” 

Reaction to the armed dogs has been mixed but police view them as just another tool.

“Due to the demands of the region, adding quadruped mechanical reinforcements is a smart use of resources. Despite the dangers, and maybe even using them as cover, there are many types of illegal activity that happen in the harsh border zones,” DHS said in a statement.

Police use of such robots is still rare and largely untested — and hasn’t always gone over well with the public.

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