Robotics

Approximately 3,500 attendees from 42 countries attended the IDTechEx Show!, which featured 284 exhibiting organizations. The event, held in Santa Clara, California, is unique in bringing together eight key technologies with the organizations that seek to use them.

The Robotics Flagship aims to develop robots and artificial intelligence that are economically, socially and environmentally sustainable: this is the project proposal submitted to the European Commission, that by 2020 will have chosen the flagships that will receive one billion euros over ten years to guarantee Europe a leading position in science and technology.

Walmart is partnering with Ford to explore delivery with autonomous vehicle technology.

A critical risk hanging over the future of the drone industry is safety and regulation. Today, even the current slightly more relaxed regulations put constrains on weight/payload, altitude, line-of-sight pilot control and so on.

A small lab-grown diamond measuring a few millimeters per side could one day enable civilian drones to be recharged in mid-flight through a laser. Thanks to the diamond, the laser beam can remain strong enough over a long distance to recharge photovoltaic cells on the drones' surface.

To robots, humans' instructions are incredibly complex. Even a relatively simple command like "Go to the house, passing the tree on your right," may require hundreds of attempts to learn. And if the command changes to "Go to the house, passing the tree on your left," the robots needs to re-learn the task from scratch.

Telepresence robots for use in classroom settings and simulation labs give students and professors in remote locations the chance to observe lessons and procedures firsthand, in a highly interactive environment.

Understanding how elephants use their trunks to pick up small objects could lead to robots designed with flexible hands or grippers, according to a new study.

Combining innovative hardware with a new class of conversational AI software and state of the art tools, the company has also developed a powerful and sophisticated platform specifically for multisensory and immersive language interactions, enabling developers working in any industry sector and from any country to build highly advanced applications for social robots.

Finding lost hikers in forests can be a difficult and lengthy process, as helicopters and drones can't get a glimpse through the thick tree canopy. Recently, it's been proposed that autonomous drones, which can bob and weave through trees, could aid these searches. But the GPS signals used to guide the aircraft can be unreliable or nonexistent in forest environments.

Small Robot Company harnesses the power and precision of robots and Artificial Intelligence to improve the way that food is produced and minimise chemical usage. It will make farms more profitable, and increase yield and efficiency, through using small robots instead of tractors.

A robot can assemble a car door or pack a box much faster and more efficiently than any human, but such single-purpose machines struggle when asked to perform in challenging environments that contain elements such as stairs or tunnels.

More than 1 million Americans require daily physical assistance to get dressed because of injury, disease and advanced age. Robots could potentially help, but cloth and the human body are complex.

The world's first commercial rollout of autonomous package delivery on the ground, with hundreds of robots from Starship Technologies delivering packages straight to consumers' front doors.

Geek+ is a warehouse and logistics robot manufacturer and service provider. It started operations in late 2015.