Robotics

Liquid Robotics has announced that its fleets of Wave Gliders have reached 1 million nautical miles at sea—an important milestone for the unmanned surface vehicle industry.

Omnivision is in the top 3 of image sensor manufacturers. The company was acquired by Hua Capital for $1.9bn last year. Omnivision is headquartered in Santa Clara, CA and completed its IPO in July 2000. The company has shipped more than 5.7 billion image sensors in total.

A material that can emit different coloured light and sense touch - yet still stretch nearly five times its original length - has been invented by scientists in the US and Italy.

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Researchers have built a wearable robotic limb that allows drummers to play with three arms. The two-foot long "smart arm" can be attached to a musician's shoulder. It responds to human gestures and the music it hears.

The Bonirob robot, which is approximately the size of a compact car, uses video- and lidar-based positioning as well as satellite navigation to find its way around fields.

Lely are perhaps the world leader in robotic milking machines but also offer a variety of other robots for agricultural applications.

The first industrial robot, Unimate, went into operation at a General Motors plant in 1961. Over the next few decades the use of industrial robot arms in the automotive industry matured.

Carbon Robotics are bringing to market a high-quality low-cost (sub-$5,000) robot arm by employing novel technologies and materials.

The TSensors Summit 2015 was held in Celebration, FL this year and was attended by approximately 150 people that had the chance to attend presentations on the latest developments and applications for sensors, and how the concept of abundance (as defined by Peter Diamandis in his book of the same name published in 2012) would be enabled with the proliferation of trillions of sensors deployed worldwide.

As part of our coverage of printed electronics, IDTechEx has been following the development of printed and flexible sensors. In this article we look back at the most important trends of 2015.

Komatsu are the world leader in autonomous haul trucks for the mining industry. The mobile robots for mining market sector is set to grow substantially over the next decade.

Yaskawa have the largest installed base of any robot manufacturer.

The recently launched EU scientific project "subCULTron" is on its way to create new standards in underwater environmental monitoring.

Optoforce are a Hungarian company making multidirectional force sensors for robotics. The system is based on a layered silicone dome structure, with an internal optical sensor to measure deformation of the dome. This can be used to compute motion data in 3 or 6 axes (x,y,z + rotational). They system enables soft robotic systems, as shown by many of their partners.

Autonomous vehicles uses a portfolio of sensors that is highly dependent on Lidar technology, given the high price of these sensors, researchers are looking how to reduce the reliance on this technology through enhancing the capabilities of cheaper sensor technologies.

An amphibious robot that can swim through the oceans of distant moons and planets could be the next iteration of self-sustaining, robotic space exploration.

INDA, the industry association for non-woven fabrics focused the keynotes of its RISE & n3m 2015 conference on emerging technologies and the way they could influence the future of non-wovens. To that end, presentations focused on the potential for innovation in fabrics and textiles and the way emerging technologies are expected to be integrated in traditional fabric technologies. Here IDTechEx provides a summary of its key learnings.

Latest turtle robot capable of performing more complicated tasks such as surveillance and energy harvesting, and operates on a self-charge mode.

A new device that may be capable of pumping human waste into the 'engine room' of a self-sustaining robot has been created by a group of researchers.