In Japan, home robots aren’t in every home, but there’s plenty of them in development. The one big difference between them and this ‘bot, designated THKR-4, is that this one was designed with just off-the-shelf parts.This THKR-4 robot is able to serve at the party better than R2-D2 when he has forced to serve on Jabba the Hutt’s Sail Barge.
Modern humanoid robots are able to run, somersault and even dance – now comes a robot that walks like a senior citizen. It leans on objects in its environment for support to help it move around and complete tasks.Newscientist published an article last week about HRP-2, a robot unveiled this month during the Humanoids2010 conference in Nashville. Sébastien Lengagne of Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology in Tsukuba, along with a team of french and japanese scientists, developed a program that allows the HRP-2 to use objects in his environment to help his movements, rather than simply considering them as obstacles.
While NASA has been planning to deploy the humanoid robot Robonaut2 to the International Space Station this fall, two private Japanese companies plan to go one step further and get…
![[Video] NASA Unveils Its Humanoid Rescue Robot Valkyrie](https://thetechjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/NASAs-Humanoid-Rescue-Robot-Valkyrie-139x200.jpg)
Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) has been hosting a DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) since last year that challenged some participants to create robots that can be used in the real world. Space agency NASA accepted the challenge and hence, had been building a humanoid rescue robot named Valkyrie. Lately, NASA has unveiled Valkyrie. It looks like Iron Man.
We have seen robots working alongside humans in so many movies. We also dream that someday such human companion robots will come into the market. These robots will not only assist us in the day to day activities but be a great companion as well.
We have seen some truly impressive robots in the recent past. But a new robot, unveiled at ongoing DARPA Robotics Challenge outdoes them all because it packs some extraordinary strength.
We reported that Japanese companies are planning to send humanoid robot to the Moon by 2015. Well, 2015 has long way to come, but yesterday, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) launched a tiny talking ‘robot astronaut’ called Kirobo and a new cargo ship with tons of supplies towards International Space Station (ISS) from the Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan.
Slowly but steadily, robots are entering in our world to replace humans from exploring hazardous and difficult-to-access work. But stiil due to lack of intelligence, they can’t interact with the surrounding environments like humans. If today’s most sophisticated robot is trapped behind a jammed door in a burning room, it would probably not know what to do or how to locate and use objects in the room to climb over any debris, try to open the door, and escape the building. But, in this situation, if MacGyver were there then he might have used his shirt to filter the smoke, craft an explosive from a paperclip and strand of hair to blow that jammed door open. However now, a team of Georgia Tech University researchers hopes to change that. The team aims to build such a robot that can work out how to use nearby objects to solve problems or escape threats. And guess what? US Navy is funding for making this robot.