Category: Robots

Have you ever felt like Zoom calls weren’t weirdly futuristic enough? Well, to help fill that gap comes the $1,999 Wehead, a full-size head-shaped display that brings a caller into the room with the ability to look around, following their own head movements and displaying their face on its screens in real-time.

Seen here about to lose at rock-paper-scissors (I’m choosing rock), Clone Robotics’ Synthetic Hand v18 is the latest and greatest version of a humanoid hand created by the company. This 1:1 scale iteration of a human hand features artificial muscle fibers and custom valves that allow it to move eerily like the real thing.

Created by SOMATIC, this commercial bathroom cleaning robot is capable of spraying and disinfecting all bathroom surfaces using an on-board industrial robotic arm. After spraying surfaces (e.g. mirrors, sinks, urinals and commodes), it then blasts them with an air jet to dry them.

This new gasoline fueling system was developed by Autofuel. It’s powered by an industrial robotic arm and is capable of filling a customer’s gas tank without the motorist ever needing to leave the comfort of the driver’s seat.

Because our scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they never stopped to think if they should; researchers at the University of Tokyo have developed a giant flying robotic spider. Named SPIDAR (the all-too-obvious acronym for ‘SPherIcally vectorable and Distributed rotors assisted Air-ground amphibious quadruped Robot’), the four-legged beast can take to the skies thanks to a total of 16 thrusters on its legs.

In what’s sure to become an all too common occurrence in the future, this is a video of YouTuber Robot Circus having a knife fight with a little robot he built. Wow, training robots to wield weapons in battle – what could possibly go wrong?

Developed by researchers at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, the waterproof Mirs-X autonomous drone is capable of both flying AND swimming underwater using its same four rotors for propulsion. It positions itself vertically to swim up or down and tilts itself horizontally to swim side to side or at an angle.

Developed by researchers at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology’s (KAIST) Department of Mechanical Engineering, the RaiBo quadruped robot was designed to be able to tackle any terrain. The robot is even capable of traversing loose sand at around 7 MPH.

The future: it’s undeniably going to be a terrifying place. If you thought today was scary, just wait to see what tomorrow brings. Case in point: this sea cucumber-inspired shape-shifting soft robot developed by researchers at Carnegie Melon and Sun Yat-sen University can melt, escape a prison cell, and reform itself outside the bars just like a T-1000 Terminator.

Because what good is a robotic housekeeper if it can only clean the ground floor, engineer James Bruton challenged himself to build a robot capable of ascending and descending stairs. It accomplishes the task via its three sections, which it can lift and lower individually, making stair-climbing possible.

Because in the future, all our entertainment will be produced by robots; we now have a video of the robotic One Hacker Band covering Nirvana’s classic ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit.’ That song is 32 years old now, by the way.

Developed by a team of mechanical engineers at the University of Maryland, this 3D printed hand is dexterous enough to use a Nintendo controller, and even manages to beat Super Mario Bros. World 1-1 in the video.

Recently on display at Pack Expo 2022 (I’m sad I missed it), this high-speed donut sorting machine developed by Soft Robotics, Inc. can sort donuts by variety and handle them all without damaging its precious, doughy cargo.

Because why should anywhere be safe from killer robots of the future, researchers at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology have gone and developed MARVEL, a quadruped robot with magnetic feet it can use to climb metal walls.

Constructed by brilliant engineer Shane Wighton of Stuff Made Here, Jigzilla is a jigsaw puzzle assembling robot that uses machine learning to determine which pieces fit together and where. In the video, Jigzilla tackles a custom 4,000-piece all-white jigsaw puzzle made by Shane and manages to complete the whole thing except for the very last row.

Speedfolding, the name given to a pair of industrial robotic arms coupled with a ‘machine vision’ neural network called BiManual Manipulation Network (BiMaMa-Net), can fold up to 30 to 40 garments an hour. The robot, developed by researchers at UC Berkeley’s AUTOLAB, can pick up a garment laid before it in any random position and proceed to fold it in about a minute or two.