Brazilian Government Invests In Robocops To Prep For World Cup, Olympics

The same robots used by the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan come to Brazil. Brazil has a big couple of years coming up: the FIFA World Cup and the pope are both coming to Brazil in 2014, and the summer 2016 Olympic Games will be held in Rio. To ensure the safety of those attending those events, Brazil has...

popsci.com (12 hours ago)

Cheating in Online Video Games

Rules are meant to be broken; video games are no exception. Cheating has a long and storied history in video games, from the infamous Konami code to playing as Bill Clinton in NBA Jam. But that was back when gaming meant sitting huddled around a TV in the basement with your friends. Now, players log into online...

time.com (14 hours ago)

How Toys Are Preparing Kids For A Future With Robotic Friends

Introducing Generation Robot For Christmas in 1993, my father gave me a My Magic Diary, a children’s version of Casio’s digital organizer. From that point on, I always had some iteration of that device-whether a PalmPilot or the iPhone 5 I carry today. Like most others my age, I was raised around mobile devices, so...

popsci.com (2 days ago)

How Will We Keep Track Of Our Robot Minions?

In the future, when machines run our lives, we'll need a way to keep tabs on all those helper bots. Two researchers have come up with a solution. The trickiest part of a future filled with helpful robots (think Roombas, but for everything) is keeping track of them all. Researchers at Wayne State University...

popsci.com (9 days ago)

Students take part in robot competition at WWII museum

Sun, 12 May 2013 17:29:14by kari dequine harden New Orleans bureauAdvocate staff photo by ANDREA MABRY Zachary Harris, middle, and Kiary Lafayette, right, both fifth-graders at Westdale Heights Academic Magnet School in Baton Rouge, watch as their team’s robot maneuvers the robotics course at the World War II Museum...

theadvocate.com (12 days ago)

Elementary school students wage robot battle at WWII museum

Sun, 12 May 2013 17:29:14by kari dequine harden New Orleans bureauNEW ORLEANS - Competing for best robot, 28 teams of elementary students from across Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama battled their LEGO-brand bots in a series of contests on Saturday at the National World War II Museum. It was the first time the ...

theadvocate.com (12 days ago)

A Wing and a Tether: Tiny Robotic Insects Now Capable of Controlled Flight

In light of recent insect-inspired feats of digital derring-do — I just wrote about a clever bug-eyed camera yesterday — let’s hear it for RoboBees, tiny insectile robots that took to the air with purpose for the first time last summer, and who finally hit the interwebs this week. By purpose, I mean they buzzed...

time.com (21 days ago)

8 Snake Bots Crawling Your Way

Snake robots can find disaster survivors, do surgery, shoot lasers, clean toxins out of water and even fight fires.

discovery.com (21 days ago)

Google’s virtual assistant invades Siri’s turf

In a battle of the ‘bots, Google is trying to snag market share from Apple’s Siri. Google Now doesn’t have quite the same sense of humor.

miamiherald.com (25 days ago)

The perils of polling Twitter bots

Social media monitoring tools might promise plenty of bang but their ability to dissect Twitter accounts with large follower numbers is questionable.

businessspectator.com.au (26 days ago)

Pants-Fetching 'Bots Power Store of the Future, and Could Slow Amazon's March

wired.com (29 days ago)

WATCH: Will We Bond With Bots?

We often think of robots as merely assembly-line tools meant for physical labor. But they're capable of much more than that: like companionship, and even love. Will we come to depend on robots as a source of empathy? And will we welcome them everywhere, from the boardroom to the bedroom? Research scientist Dr....

huffingtonpost.com (1 month and 4 days ago)

Look At This Insane 2-Ton Insect-Robot

Stomping in from the future at a menacing 1 kilometer per hour Meet the Mantis Walking Machine. Designed by Matt Denton and his team at Micromagic Systems, it's a 2-ton, 9-foot-tall, 50-horsepower hexapod (six-appendaged) robot drivable through a cockpit or via wi-fi. And look at this robot! Look at it march...

popsci.com (1 month and 8 days ago)

Netflix Inks 'Toons Agreement With Hasbro

Filed under: Investing Bugs Bunny they ain't, and they lack even the unvocalized theatrical brilliance of Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner, but Hasbro's Littlest Pet Shop and Kaijudo characters apparently hold some attraction for the pre-tween viewers in this day and age. Enough attraction, at least, that on...

dailyfinance.com (1 month and 10 days ago)

iRobot Wins $28.8 Million Navy Contract

Filed under: Investing Among the $1.3 billion in Pentagon contracts awarded Friday, one tiny company won a sizable part of the funds available, when Bedford, Mass.-based iRobot was awarded a $28.8 million modification to a previously awarded contract. The U.S. Navy gave the award to iRobot, ordering an unspecified...

dailyfinance.com (1 month and 10 days ago)

POLL: Would Sex With A Robot Be Cheating?

A provocative new poll shows that Americans have little trouble imagining a future full of personal service robots -- at least when it comes to robots tasked with cleaning our homes, driving our cars, and even helping fight our wars. But the HuffPost/YouGov poll shows that we're a bit squeamish about bots in...

huffingtonpost.com (1 month and 13 days ago)

Robots should be a worker's best friend | Moira Herbst

Far from threatening jobs, automation can enhance quality of life. But it all depends on who controls the bots: you or your bossEveryone's talking about robots these days, and there's plenty to discuss: Google has unveiled self-driving cars; automated software can grades college essays; and unmanned drones are...

guardian.co.uk (1 month and 14 days ago)

Milford High School Students Heading to National Competition with Robot

Milford High School students Michael Emerson, Andrew Beckerich and Ryan Dodds created a robot that took first place at the Xtreme BOTS regional competition held March 25 at the Miami Valley Career Technical Center in Dayton.

rss.cincinnati.com (1 month and 14 days ago)

School board meeting previews

Longview’s Bits & Bots robotics team, which placed second in the regional robotics competion in Portland in March, will give a presentation at Monday’s Longview School Board meeting. The t…

tdn.com (1 month and 17 days ago)

Gas-Masked, Camouflaged Robot Passes For A Menacing Human

PETMAN tries on some new duds. The robot-makers over at Boston Dynamics make some consistently amazing robots, and consistently amazing videos of said robots. Another of their 'bots, BigDog, took runner-up in our drones vs. robots bracket, and the robot you see here, Petman, didn't do too bad either. Petman, which...

popsci.com (1 month and 18 days ago)

A Robot With Heart

Using cardiac cells as a motor. "Our miniature bio-bot is made of a flexible polymer and living heart cells. The cells beat together, creating a contracting and releasing motion that inches the bot forward. We use a 3-D printer to build the bot’s body layer by layer out of a hydrogel—the material contact lenses are...

popsci.com (1 month and 27 days ago)

One of These 'Bots Will Be the Navy's Next Killer Drone

wired.com (1 month and 27 days ago)

How Relying on Algorithms and Bots Can Be Really, Really Dangerous

wired.com (2 months and 1 day ago)

Watch This Snake Robot Grip Whatever It Touches

Just stay away from our necks, snake 'bot. We've seen Carnegie Mellon University's modular snake robots before, and it looks like one of them has learned a new trick. Throw it at a tree branch or field goal post or some other cylindrical object, and the 'bot will wrap itself around it, holding on wherever it lands....

popsci.com (2 months and 4 days ago)

All-Terrain Bots Get More Agile

New finding could help legged robots climb over shifting sand, pebbles and up stairs.

discovery.com (2 months and 5 days ago)

How a toothbrush news site can get more visits than the Economist: More on the botnet scam

An investigation this week revealed that major brands are paying at least $6 million a month to serve ads to bots on 202 websites. Here are some more names and details.

gigaom.com (2 months and 6 days ago)

Salamandra robotica II moves swiftly on both land and water

Scientists have often taken inspiration from the animal world in robotic designs, with bots modeled after fish, sandfish lizards, and even sea turtles. Such biomimicry makes sense – if you want a robot to move a certain way, why not look to creatures that already can? With the Salamandra robotica II, researchers...

gizmag.com (2 months and 6 days ago)

Massive bot network is draining $6 million a month from online ad industry, says report

An analytics firm has uncovered a network of more than 200 sites that appears aimed at defrauding the online ad industry. The network tricks marketers into serving billions of "targeted" ads to bots every month.

gigaom.com (2 months and 7 days ago)

Botnet fraud costs display advertisers $6m a month, security researchers say

'Chameleon' botnet falsely views billions of pages and adverts on about 200 sites owned by a small group of publishersSecurity researchers have discovered a botnet they have dubbed "Chameleon" which they calculate is costing display advertisers around $6m (£3.9m) per month by falsely viewing billions of pages and...

guardian.co.uk (2 months and 7 days ago)

High-schoolers fine-tune disc-tossing bots

PLACENTIA – Gears and motors whirring loudly, faint curls of smoke rise from a carefully designed 98-pound disc-throwing robot. The smell of burning plastic wafts off the indoor playing field. This particular robot was built by 22 students from 12...

ocregister.com (2 months and 9 days ago)