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2023 was the perfect 12 months ever for robotics. I say this each 12 months, however yearly it’s true, as a result of the robotics subject appears to be at all times poised on the sting of adjusting completely every thing. Is 2024 going to be even higher? Will or not it’s the 12 months the place humanoids, or AI, or one thing else makes our lives wonderful? Possibly! Who is aware of! However both means, it’ll be thrilling, and we’ll be right here because it occurs.
As we stay up for 2024, right here’s a glance again at a few of our hottest tales of 2023. I hope you loved studying them as a lot as I loved writing them!
Roombas at the End of the World
My favourite story to report and write in 2023 was this story of the weird existence of the Roombas that stay and work on the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station. A single image that I noticed whereas casually shopping by the blog of a South Pole infrastructure engineer took me down a loopy rabbit gap of Antarctic hijinks, the place a small variety of people relied on some robotic vacuums to assist preserve themselves sane in essentially the most remoted place on Earth.
This Robot Could Be the Key to Empowering People With Disabilities
This story about Henry and Jane Evans, Willow Storage, and Hey Robotic superbly tied collectively one thing like a decade and a half of my historical past as a robotics journalist. I bought to know the parents at Willow early on in my profession, and noticed the PR2 doing a little wonderful work, together with with Henry and Jane. However the PR2 was by no means going to be a sensible robotic for anybody, and it took the expertise and fervour of Hey Robotic to design the {hardware} and software program to make PR2’s guarantees into one thing real-world helpful.
What Flight 50 Means for the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter
The Ingenuity Mars Helicopter is at present wanting ahead to its seventieth flight, which is astonishing for a expertise demo that was solely actually anticipated to fly 5 instances. Arguably, this little helicopter is without doubt one of the most excessive autonomous methods that people have ever constructed. I’ve written a bunch about Ginny over the previous few years and talked to a number of completely different members of her workforce. However Flight 50 was a particular milestone, and on this interview, Ingenuity workforce lead Teddy Tzanetos talks about why.
It’s Totally Fine for Humanoid Robots to Fall Down
We’re going to be seeing much more robots strolling round over the subsequent 12 months, and that additionally means we’re going to be seeing much more robots failing to stroll round in a technique or one other. Movies of robots falling are likely to go loopy on social media, however most people who see them gained’t have any thought in regards to the underlying context. On this article, two of the businesses with essentially the most expertise constructing humanoids (Boston Dynamics and Agility Robotics) clarify why robots falling down is definitely not an enormous deal in any respect.
Watch This Giant Chopstick Robot Handle Boxes With Ease
It’s not typically {that a} robotic is ready to mix a really novel design with an instantly sensible industrial utility, however Dextrous Robotics was in a position to do it with their large chopstick field manipulator, and our readers actually appreciated it. Packing containers are a compelling near-term utility for robots, however the go-to manipulation method that we see over and over is suction. Dextrous’ method is completely distinctive, and it looks like a gimmick—till you see it in motion.
Superhuman Speed: How Autonomous Drones Beat the Best Human Racers
People can do some fairly unbelievable issues, and watching a human demonstrating some talent that they’re the precise finest on this planet at is fascinating—particularly in the event that they’re susceptible to shedding that prime spot to a robotic. This race between world champion drone racers and autonomous drones from ETH Zurich came about in 2022, however I needed to await the underlying analysis to be printed earlier than I used to be allowed to inform the entire story.
How Disney Packed Big Emotion Into a Little Robot
It’s refreshing to jot down about Disney’s robots, as a result of considerably uniquely, they’re designed for the first objective of bringing people pleasure. Disney goes about this methodically, although, and we’re at all times excited to have the ability to share the analysis underlying every thing that they do. These are a few of my favourite tales to inform, the place there’s an excellent cool robotic that simply will get cooler when the individuals behind it clarify the way it does what it does.
Stowing Is a “Beautiful Problem” That Amazon Is Solving With Robots
Robotics is stuffed with issues which can be exhausting, and a kind of issues is stowing—the method of packing objects into bins in a warehouse. Stowing is the alternative of choosing, which is one thing that warehouse robots are getting fairly good at, however stowing can also be rather more tough. “For me, it’s exhausting, nevertheless it’s not too exhausting,” Amazon senior supervisor of utilized sciences Aaron Parness informed us for this text. “It’s on the chopping fringe of what’s possible for robots, and it’s loopy enjoyable to work on.”
Your Robotic Avatar Is Almost Ready
As a lot as we love robots, people are nonetheless a lot, a lot better at plenty of stuff. One factor that people are notably dangerous at, although, is being bodily current in far-off locations. The Avatar XPrize competitors mixed human brains with robotic embodiments, and the outcomes had been truthfully a lot better than anticipated. With the appropriate {hardware} and the appropriate interface, the competitors confirmed that people and robots could make a improbable workforce.
All of the Humanoid Robots
And eventually, our prime robotics protection space for 2023 was humanoid robots. Or, extra particularly, humanoid robots which can be (supposedly) poised to enter the labor drive. The final time we had this a lot humanoid robot protection was in all probability in 2015 surrounding the DARPA Robotics Problem Finals, and it’s not like there’s been a gradual enhance or something—humanoids simply went completely bonkers in 2023, with one thing like a dozen corporations creating human-scale bipedal robots with near-term industrial aspirations.
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