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The Year In Robotics

Posted by samzenpus on from the it's-a-wrap dept.

malachiorion writes "From Google's emergence as a robotics giant to Gypsy Danger's emergence as a giant robot (we can root for), here's my attempt to round up the biggest trends in robotics in 2013. These trends are by no means comprehensive or ranked, but feel free to add your own picks for the year's biggest bot-related breakthroughs and setbacks."

4 of 44 comments (clear)

  1. Comeback... by savuporo · · Score: 4, Informative

    Robots made a comeback - on the moon, after a 37-year hiatus.

    Apart from that, the article misses a bunch of very important trends and events in robotics. For example, industrial cooperative robots ( like Rethink Robotics Baster ) etc taking off.

    A much better, video laden article here
    http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/artificial-intelligence/video-friday-our-favorite-robot-videos-and-biggest-stories-from-2013

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  2. Re:Whatever happened to NASA's... by savuporo · · Score: 2

    Maybe it was not as cool as they thought it was

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  3. The real big news in robotics. by Animats · · Score: 4, Informative

    More significant events:

    • Hon Hai Precision Industries, parent of Foxconn, has installed the first 20,000 of the "million robot army" they plan to use in their factories. (Hon Hai makes the iPhone. Apple just does the design, marketing, and some of the software. Hon Hai also makes Sony's PlayStation 3, the Nintendo Wii, Amazon's Kindle Fire, and lots of other stuff.)
    • Amazon bought Kiva Robotics. All those new warehouses Amazon is building will have many robots and few people. Jim Bezos has another robotics company working robots to replace the remaining people.
    • Most of the high-end car makers have demonstrated at least semi-automatic driving. Cadillac, BMW, Volkswagen, Mercedes, Nissan, and even Ford have demos. Tesla is still just talk.
    • The Baxter robot, from iRobot, may bring robotics to short-run production. Cost is low, and it's supposed to be easy to teach.
  4. Re:Remember the year of Linux ? by lintmint · · Score: 2

    Was Google pushing LInux that year? They flog it now as Android and last I heard Android had over 50% of the mobile market. You may also be interested to hear that Andy Rubin who headed up Android is now heading up Google's robotics division.

    Google has some serious technical and financial assets they can bring to bear and for you to just dismiss that out of hand reflects poorly on your intellect.