Antonio Mugica

You can still make it to the exhibit at the Japanese American National Museum. 

Antonio Mugica 

In the future just knock on your neighbor’s door.

Antonio Mugica

Robot competitions for every age and size

R2D2 at Comicpalooza Houston.

Antonio Mugica

Is robot love better than human love?

Mechanical moving robot dog. A true member of the Jetsons’ family

Antonio Mugica

The teams that will compete in the DARPA Robotics Challenge have been announced today. This time around, teams will be competing to create robots that can replace humans in disaster situations. DARPA is a branch of the U.S. Department of Defense. 

DARPA’s mission is to reduce the risks in humanitarian assistance. The Challenge has been inspired by the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan. Exposure to radiation is fatal to humans, but not for the “Fukushima 50”, a robot that ventured into the nuclear meltdown nightmare and helped abate the disaster.

The selected teams will have the task of creating robots capable of opening doors, climbing stairways, driving vehicles and connecting cables or a fire hose.  The program manager for the challenge, Dr. Gill Pratt explained: “Disasters often occur in environments that have plentiful numbers of tools that are meant for human beings. And by tools, I mean things from screwdrivers to vehicles and everything in between. And often those tools are around both for construction and repair and maintenance. And, again, during the first few days after a disaster, there is no time to bring in specialized tools and, so, can we build robots that can reuse tools that were originally meant for human beings?”

For more information please visit: http://www.pcmag.com/slideshow/story/304273/darpa-wants-robotics-to-rise-to-the-challenge-of-disasters

Antonio Mugica

Little is known about the sand shark. Off the coasts of Delaware innovative research is being put into use to investigate the lives of these scary, toothy animals.

Mathew Oliver at the University of Delaware is part of a team that has spent the last five years catching, marking and setting back into the wild over 500 sharks. The marking process includes inserting a tag called VEMCO mobile transceivers (VMTs). The VMTs send “pings” of information out into the water.

Recently, the team has launched a robot into these dark waters to help them retrieve the information. It is the first time a device of this kind is used to instantly track locations. The robot is formed like a yellow torpedo and has previously been used only for testing the chemistry of ocean waters.

For more information visit: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/49483229/ns/technology_and_science-science/

Antonio Mugica

Howe and Howe Technologies has claimed to be making the first robot designed to save lives. That is, the company has designed a robot that imitates a firefighter and can accomplish many tasks that put human lives in danger.

Among its many characteristics, the robot has the capability of using a high-pressure fire-fighting hose. Impressively, it can act at a large distance from the supervising human. This is because it can be controlled from up to a quarter of a mile away.

Underneath its sturdy body, the robot ports caterpillar tracks. These are extremely useful for rugged terrain, including obstacles such as debris from buildings. It can also drag weights up to 1,270 pounds.

For more information visit: http://www.mobilemag.com/2012/10/05/firefighting-robot-can-go-where-humans-cant/

Antonio Mugica

A contest announced by the African Robotics Network has just announced the winners, and boy are they a surprise. One robot even has two Spanish lollipops sticking up from up top. The challenge had its limitations but it didn’t stomp engineering creativity.

The challenge was to design a 10 dollar robot. That is, engineers could not spend more than ten dollars to create a functional robot. The idea was to make these robots inexpensive in order to be able to reproduce them in classrooms all across Africa.

The lollipop-sporting winner is called the Suckerbot. The winner of a different category, the traditional roaming category, was the Kilobot. This three-legged, vibrating robot was designed by people at Harvard.

For more information visit: http://www.wired.com/design/2012/09/afron-winners/