FIRST Robotics Competition fever has hit the schools once again. At the annual robotics competition the students get a chance to test their skills as part of a robot building team. They go through the process of designing and building their robots for the competition and learn a lot more than robotics in the process.
Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), an applied research and development organization, has set up the ROS-Industrial Software Repository that will comprise drivers, tools and libraries for industrial automation hardware.
A research team at the Institute of Cognitive Research (ICS) at the TU Munchen along with a Japanese group have developed a Mask-Bot, which is a robotic face that communicates with humans.
IBM has been working on a computer chip that can mimic the human brain. The team of scientists from IBM, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the top four US Universities has been working on a microchip that emulates the processes of the human brain. The experimental computer chip has been named SyNAPSE.
The Smithsonian Institution is acquiring nine historically significant robots from the Sandia Labs for its permanent collection at the National Museum of American History.
Microsoft’s Kinect has put robotics in the hands of the common man. The hardware is changing the robotics industry as new innovative applications for the product keep popping up.
President Obama has announced a $70 million initiative to accelerate the development and use of robots in the United States that work beside, or co-operatively with people. The proposal has been called the National Robotics Initiative and is backed by a number of government run agencies including the National Science Foundation (NSF), NASA and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
The World Robot Olympiad Arabia this year saw 1,500 students form 300 plus teams to participate in the three categories. The WRO 2011 was hosted in the capital city of Abu Dhabi.
The Motorola Mobility Foundation had sponsored some teams this year for the FIRST Robotics Competition. The For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology robotics competition was founded by Dean Kamen to help inspire young students to become science and technology leaders.
Neuron Robotics, a company that develops products for reducing the developing cost of cyber-physical systems and robotics, announced that it has performed its first major sale of the Dynamic Input / Output (DyIO) modules.