"In the meantime, Pham is keen to see if robots can learn to build the chair using only an image of the assembled product as a guide. Will the technology ever help humans who struggle with the task? "I don't think it is in Ikea's business model to have robots assemble their chairs," he said. "In the next 10 to 20 years, people will still be sweating over flat-pack furniture.""
""Robots are a great educational tool for children. It inspires them to learn about science and engineering," Sharkey told the Guardian in March. "But there are significant dangers in having robots mind our children. They do not have the sensitivity or understanding needed for childcare." "
"The company has revealed the latest evolution of the Captcha (short, sort of, for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart), which aims to do away with any interruption at all: the new, "invisible reCaptcha" aims to tell whether a given visitor is a robot or not purely by analysing their browsing behaviour. Barring a short wait while the system does its job, a typical human visitor shouldn't have to do anything else to prove they're not a robot."
"Chinese delivery firm is moving to embrace automation.Chinese delivery firm is moving to embrace automation.
Orange robots at the company's sorting stations are able to identify the destination of a package through a code-scan, virtually eliminating sorting mistakes.
Shentong's army of robots can sort up to 200,000 packages a day, and are self-charging, meaning they are operational 24/7."
"Google, which recently laid off thousands of employees globally, is now laying off the robots that cleaned cafeterias at its headquarters. A report by Wired recently said that Alphabet's "Everyday Robots" project - a unit under Google's experimental X laboratories - has been shut down by Google's chief executive officer (CEO) Sundar Pichai."
Justin Engler and Paul Vines will demo a robot called the Robotic Reconfigurable Button Basher (R2B2) at Defcon; it can work its way through every numeric screen-lock Android password in 19 hours.
"Peter Chen, CEO of the robot software company Covariant, sits in front of a chatbot interface resembling the one used to communicate with ChatGPT. "Show me the tote in front of you," he types. In reply, a video feed appears, revealing a robot arm over a bin containing various items-a pair of socks, a tube of chips, and an apple among them.
The chatbot can discuss the items it sees-but also manipulate them. When WIRED suggests Chen ask it to grab a piece of fruit, the arm reaches down, gently grasps the apple, and then moves it to another bin nearby."
"Japan, the world's fastest-aging economy, is turning to technologies like AI, avatars, and robots to address labor shortages.
Industrial robots have been deployed to automate the assembly of reinforcement bars (rebar), one of the most labor-intensive processes in the construction industry.
The trucking industry is turning to self-driving trucks for deliveries, and robots for moving cargo."
"The robot arm monitors and attempts to contain a viscous blood-red liquid as it spreads out from the base of the arm, spattering more liquid around its enclosure."
"One prototype system that Wood has helped developed, called Second Skin, can be worn by patients with neuromuscular disorders to stimulate nerve activity and advance rehabilitation. He says that soft- and micro-robotic devices may one day be used inside the body to aid minimally invasive medical procedures."
"Human beings have been replaced with robot arms, which have been busily crafting parts for mobile phones, with production per employee increased from 8,000 to 21,000 pieces at the same time.
This amounts to a 162.5 per cent productivity improvement, and there is further bad news for the outdated meatsacks clutching their Chinese equivalent of P45s - the previous defect rate average of 25 per cent has now been reduced to just five per cent."
"The hive mentality is inspiring the latest advances in technology and the US military is already experimenting with swarms of robotic boats and aircrafts"
"Engineers tried to help, but no robots could navigate the hazardous terrain and disaster ensued, rendering a huge area around the plant uninhabitable after toxic steam exploded into the skies. The radioactive leftovers are still emitting a million watts of heat."
"The 120-centimetre-tall android already works as a shop assistant at SoftBank mobile phone outlets in Tokyo - a move its chief executive, Masayoshi Son, described as a "baby step on our dream to make a robot that can understand a person's feelings, and then autonomously take action"."
"There's a Cambrian explosion in robotics, with species of all sizes, shapes and modes of mobility crawling out of the muck of the lab and onto the terra firma of the marketplace, about to enter your home and your shopping experience."
"The UK is opposing an international ban on so-called "killer robots" at a United Nations conference that is this week examining future developments of what are officially termed lethal autonomous weapons systems (Laws)."
""Robots can't deal with the degree of individualization and the many variants that we have today," Mercedes' head of production Markus Schaefer told Bloomberg. "We're saving money and safeguarding our future by employing more people.""