http://robodynamics.com Official Blog of RoboDynamics Corporation Wed, 02 Mar 2011 09:43:58 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en This past Thursday, February 24th 2011, marked two distinct milestones for NASA and space exploration: space shuttle Discovery launched for a final time bringing its 27 years and 143 million miles of service to an end while at the same time carrying in her cargo bay Robonaut 2, the first ... http://robodynamics.com/2011/02/a-final-mission-for-nasas-discovery-shuttle-marks-a-new-beginning-for-humanoid-robotics/ For those of you who attended the 2010 Immersive Tech Summit in person, you already know you were part of something special. After my talk that day I wrote a quick summary post of some of the talks I found interesting and worthwhile... though not by any means an exhaustive ... http://robodynamics.com/2011/01/around-the-world-in-80-seconds-a-story-of-robotic-telepresence-from-robodynamics-ceo-fred-nikgohar/ Travis Deyle over at Hizook asked me to write an article for his blog which I was happy to oblige given his dedication to sparking intelligent and in-depth conversations on topics in robotics. "The Need for Low Cost Sensors in Robotics - The Holiday Edition" is an analysis of the current ... http://robodynamics.com/2011/01/the-need-for-low-cost-sensors-in-robotics-holiday-edition/ There is something unexplainably elegant about simplicity. Case in point: The Noun Project. The Noun Project has a simple mission" "... to share, celebrate, and enhance the world’s visual language". Their goal is to collect and organize all the symbols that form our language into one easy-to-use online library that can be ... http://robodynamics.com/2010/12/the-noun-project-to-make-a-custom-robot-icon-for-robodynamics/ Veteran Robotics Scientist and Chairman Emeritus of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at USC Dr. George Bekey Joins the Advisory Board of RoboDynamics Corporation. RoboDynamics HQ - Santa Monica (December 14, 2010) RoboDynamics announced today that Dr. George Bekey has joined its Advisory Board. Dr. Bekey is the founding Director of the USC ... http://robodynamics.com/2010/12/dr-george-bekey-the-%e2%80%9cgodfather-of-robotics%e2%80%9d-joins-advisory-board-of-robodynamics-corporation/ Large data-sets have always fascinated me. Almost all countries in the world have been keeping reliable statistics on things like life-expectancy and GDP for over two centuries. The advent of digital technology and personal computers specifically has enabled us to not only collect better stats on everything, but to analyze ... http://robodynamics.com/2010/12/200-years-of-global-life-expectancy-in-four-minutes-dr-hans-rosling/ Greetings Fellow Subscribers of RoboDynamics Official blog. As of this morning, we have switched over our feed to Feedburner which provides additionally functionalities for you the reader - as well as the authors of this blog. Feedburner, another fantastic Google product, enables blog authors to get basic statistics such as total ... http://robodynamics.com/2010/12/minor-tweak-to-the-robodynamics-official-blog/ Completely out of left-field (to me) a company called Mantaro introduces the MantaroBot, a Skype-based telepresence robot for $3,500 - available now! I don't know who this company is or what exactly the capabilities of this robot are but they're definitly at the right price point. Given that their order ... http://robodynamics.com/2010/12/robotic-telepresence-gets-more-crowded-with-mantarobot/ By now everyone knows about Phillipp Robbel's weekend hacking project where he used the Microsoft Kinect as a robotic sensor. Kinect is a fantastic 3D sensor that could have a ton of robotic applications - and the scale (price) at which it is produced, makes it very ideal. An obvious place ... http://robodynamics.com/2010/12/200-prize-for-the-first-person-to-use-microsoft-kinect-with-slam/ Gartner's Jackie Fenn has published Executive Report called Six New Technologies That Will Reshape Your Business. You can read the summary of it here (registration required). The six technologies identified are: The real-world Web of smart objects and places Augmented reality, which provides contextual information as an overlay on the physical world Next-generation user ... http://robodynamics.com/2010/11/gartner-gives-love-to-robotic-telepresence/