The winning robots — the adult-sized CHARLI-2 and miniature bots called Darwin-OP — were built in Blacksburg by students and staff versed in artificial intelligence and funded by with corporate and government grants and student dollars, Mackay said. They are fully autonomous and can spot, pursue and kick the ball on their own and not are controlled by any adult on the sidelines, he said.
‘What all the wise men promised has not happened, and what all the damned fools said would happen has come to pass.’
— Lord Melbourne —
New and improved Honda Asimo humanoid robot now more autonomous
Smaller, lighter, smarter, faster. These are the words that every tech company would like to use to announce their new products. The Asimo robot fulfills all of those.
Asimo can now walk over non-flat surfaces without the entire thing ending up as an epic fail viral video, has improved voice recognition technology and can even do a handy trick: pour wine into a paper cup (without crushing it).
To Create the Perfect Machine, Soldiers Build a Robot Out of Robots
Specifically, soldiers there mounted a TiaLinx Cougar 10 (that’s the robot that can hear your terrified breathing through a concrete wall via radio frequency sensors) on top of a faster and stronger Lockheed Martin Squad Mission Support System (SMSS), a load-bearing unmanned ground vehicle that went to Afghanistan recently for operational testing.
This Robot Can Hear Your Frightened Breathing, Even Through Walls
The Cougar20-H, manufactured by California-based TiaLinx, is the latest iteration in a series of sensor systems employing the company’s fine beam ultra-wideband (UWB), multi-gigahertz radio frequency (RF) sensor array (we’ll call it UWB RF). Its earlier Eagle5-N was a tripod-mounted radar that could detect breathing and monitor heartbeat through walls. An army grant then led to the development of the Cougar10-L, which essentially mounted the Eagle5-N on a small, remotely controlled robot.