In Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (aka Star Wars), C-3PO lays this self-deprecating confession on Luke Skywalker: “I’m not so good at telling stories.” Yet, two films later, he’s literally telling the story of Star Wars to a bunch of Ewoks. C-3PO might seem like a bumbling idiot, but in this video we show why he’s…
The advancement of robotics and artificial intelligence will make 75 million jobs obsolete by the year 2022, according to a new report. Sounds dreadful, but the same report goes on to predict the creation of 133 million new jobs over the same period.
Robots in factories are really good at picking up objects they’ve been pre-programmed to handle, but it’s a different story when new objects are thrown into the mix. To overcome this frustrating inflexibility, a team of researchers from MIT devised a system that essentially teaches robots how to assess unfamiliar…
Did you ever imagine what the future would be like when you were a kid? We all did. Some of us were obsessed with jetpacks and robots, while others dreamed of videophones and space travel. It was “all of the above” for two kids in Reynoldsville, Pennsylvania, who imagined what the futuristic world of 1999 would look…
Even after spending $950 on the new self-emptying Roomba, there will still be lots of places in your home that require another vacuum to clean them. It’s a problem common to all robot vacuums—except the new Coral One. Built into this robovac is a removable hand vac that can be used to clean anywhere in your home the…
Originally sold as the world’s first remote control ball, Sphero’s baseball-sized rolling toy has evolved over the years to eventually become one of the most accessible ways to learn the basics of coding robots. Bolt, the company’s latest creation, adds new abilities and ways to automate the bot’s behavior, including…
With the first Jurassic Park, we were all content to just stare in awe at what appeared to be living, breathing dinosaurs onscreen. But four sequels later, we now want to do more than just look at dinosaurs, we want to play with them too. Science has yet to deliver the goods, so Mattel has stepped up to bring…
When Aibo is standing on its hind legs, tail wagging and soft OLED-lit eyes roving, it’s so dang adorable you forget it’s supposed to do stuff. But after a while the initial charm of its design wears off, and you’re stuck asking what the heck this robot dog even does.
Humanoid robots are still relatively primitive here in the 21st century. Sure, we have Roombas that can vacuum our floors and Boston Dynamics robots that are doing backflips. But when it comes to the dream of our own personal robot servant, we’re still in the Dark Ages. You can’t go down to Costco and pick up a fully…
Russian arms manufacturer Kalashnikov is showing off its latest and greatest death machines at the Army-2018 international forum in Moscow this week. And one of its most stunning designs is something straight out of Robocop. The only problem? It looks like it’s just a statue.
Have you seen this video of a very human-looking robot walking up a driveway? It’s gotten a lot of people online freaked out about the coming robot apocalypse. But you can rest easy... for now. This “robot” was created using computer graphics. As in, it’s totally fake.
New research shows that children are more likely than adults to give in to peer pressure from robots, a disturbing finding given the rapidly increasing rate at which kids are interacting with socially intelligent machines.
In Next Gen, a young girl befriends a hyper-intelligent killer robot voiced by John Krasinski, and the pair team up to save the world from a madman.
With a budget of just $600—a mere pittance compared to what robots like ATLAS cost to develop—students from the University of California’s Davis’ College of Engineering created a machine that’s capable of tying a shoe all by itself.
Tired of that smug look of satisfaction on your kid’s face when they’re able to find Waldo on a page faster than you can? A creative agency called redpepper built a robot that levels the Where’s Waldo playing field using a camera and machine learning AI to spot the striped traveler in as little as four-and-a-half…
Designing robots that emulate how creatures move and walk helps us not only understand the world around us, but also improve how automatons of the future will get around. But on the other hand, that same research has given birth to this creepy centipede robot toy that squirms around on 18 flailing legs like a tiny…
Boston Dynamics is preparing to build its terrifying army of robot dogs, according to a Saturday report in Inverse that the company has set a target date of July 2019 as the time it will be ready to manufacture 1,000 of its compact SpotMini models annually.
Our oceans are home to a diverse array of aquatic organisms, a surprising number of which have yet to be discovered. To help in the search for these fascinating creatures, researchers have developed a robotic device capable of capturing even the most delicate deep-sea animals, which it does with a foldable, 12-sided…
Remember that episode of Futurama, “Crimes of the Hot,” where all the robots in New New York are sent to an island to party until they die? That’s basically this poster, except these robots will never die. At least not in our hearts.
