robots

A short Insider Tech look at Ocado's grocery warehouse where thousands of robots on a grid pack orders, communicating over 4G to avoid collisions. It handles around 65,000 orders a week.

An IEEE Spectrum compilation of humanoid robots falling over during the 2015 DARPA Robotics Challenge Finals.

Robin Deits presents the JuliaRobotics organization and shows how Julia is used to visualize, simulate and control a humanoid robot. The talk touches on real-time performance and composability across packages.

A dramatized fictional video of micro drones with facial recognition and swarm AI used as autonomous killer weapons. It is a Slaughterbots-style warning about lethal autonomous weapons.

A short Boston Dynamics clip of the Sand Flea, an 11-pound RC-car-style robot that can jump about 30 feet into the air. An onboard stabilization system keeps it oriented in flight and for landings.

An overview of the Quiet Logistics warehouse using Kiva Systems robots, narrated by company executives. The robots bring storage racks to human pickers at stations.

A short Boston Dynamics demo of RHex, a 30-lb six-legged robot built for rough terrain, remotely operated with a video uplink and about four hours of battery life. It can run right-side-up or upside-down.

A Berkeley PR2 robot autonomously folds a pile of five previously unseen towels, shown at 50x speed. The video accompanies a 2010 ICRA paper from Pieter Abbeel's group.

Ben Katz's custom robot solves a Rubik's Cube in 0.38 seconds. The description links to the hardware and software write-ups.

A KUKA commercial staging a table tennis match between German star Timo Boll and a KUKA KR AGILUS industrial robot. It is a polished showcase of robot speed and precision.

Boston Dynamics shows WildCat, a four-legged robot built with DARPA funding that reached about 19 mph using bounding and galloping gaits.

Slaughterbots is a fictional short film, backed by Stuart Russell, depicting swarms of cheap autonomous drones that use facial recognition to assassinate targets. It was made to argue for banning autonomous weapons.

Festo's promo video of SmartBird, an ultralight bionic flying model inspired by the herring gull that flaps and twists its wings to fly. It shows the robot in flight.

Novelist Daniel Suarez warns in a TED talk about autonomous robotic weapons and drones. He argues that taking the decision to kill out of human hands threatens democratic accountability and calls for a ban.

A short Apple promotional video about Liam, a robot that disassembles old iPhones so their materials can be recovered. It frames the robot as part of Apple's product life cycle and recycling story.

A short Boston Dynamics clip of the Atlas humanoid robot doing parkour, jumping over a log and leaping up steps using whole-body control and computer vision to locate markers.

Boston Dynamics' 2010 demo of BigDog, a quadruped robot that climbs through woods, recovers from kicks, slips on ice and jogs at 5 mph. It was an early showcase of dynamic legged locomotion.

Valve's short video on building the Steam Controller on a heavily automated assembly line, which the company designed itself. It shows the robotic manufacturing process and US final assembly.

Slaughterbots, a short dystopian film in which swarms of small autonomous drones are programmed to kill targets matching a profile. It opens as a slick product launch before turning into a terror scenario.

Boston Dynamics shows its Atlas humanoid robot performing a gymnastics and parkour routine, using optimization-generated motions and a model predictive controller.

A short Boston Dynamics clip of the DARPA-funded Cheetah quadruped robot hitting 28.3 mph on a treadmill, slightly faster than Usain Bolt's fastest 20 meter split.

Corridor Digital's comedic fake video of a Boston Dynamics robot fighting back against its human tormentors, made with motion capture and VFX.

A two-minute Insider Tech clip on DeepMind's simulated agents that learned to walk, run, jump and climb without guidance, with the goofy resulting gaits.

A Corridor Digital parody of a Boston Dynamics promo, showing a CGI military robot trained for combat that goes rogue and refuses to kill a robotic dog.

A short clip from the Futurama episode I Dated a Robot, showing the in-universe propaganda film warning against dating robots.

CGP Grey's video "Humans Need Not Apply" argues that automation will make a large part of the workforce economically obsolete, much as engines did for horses. It surveys robots and software replacing both physical and mental labor.

Rob Miles explains for Computerphile why simple rule sets like Asimov's Three Laws cannot make robots and AI safe. Terms like harm and human are too ambiguous to specify precisely.

Brian Douglas introduces Braitenberg vehicles, simple robots whose sensors are wired directly to motors yet show surprisingly lifelike behavior. He draws on Valentino Braitenberg's book Vehicles.

A short Boston Dynamics demo of Handle, a wheeled mobile manipulation robot that builds and unloads mixed-box pallets in a warehouse. It uses vision to find boxes and force control to place them against neighbors.

The ED-209 boardroom scene from the 1987 film RoboCop, where the enforcement droid malfunctions after giving a man 20 seconds to comply.

Footage of the Mercedes A-Class production line at the Rastatt plant in Germany, filmed in 2013. It shows robots and fixtures working through assembly.

A one-minute Rick and Morty clip in which a small robot asks its purpose and learns it is to pass butter.

Real Engineering explains how Zipline built a drone delivery network for medical supplies in Rwanda. It covers the fixed-wing drones, catapult launch, parachute drop and the logistics behind the service.

NASA JPL engineers explain the final minutes of the Curiosity rover's entry, descent and landing on Mars, which combined aerobraking, a parachute and a skycrane. It lays out the tight sequence of events that all had to work automatically.

Slaughterbots is a short sci-fi film in which swarms of cheap autonomous drones are programmed to kill targets by profile. It was made as arms-control advocacy against autonomous weapons.

NASA's animated explanation of the Curiosity rover's Mars landing, which relied on a complex automated sequence taking about seven minutes. It features NASA engineers discussing the risks before the 2012 landing.

Mark Rober shows an automatic bullseye dartboard that tracks a thrown dart with motion capture and moves in real time so it always hits the center. He spent over three years on the project.

A University of Tokyo lab demonstrates a book scanner that flips pages automatically and scans over 250 pages per minute. It uses real-time 3D recognition of the flipped pages and then restores each one to a flat image.

Johns Hopkins APL shows Les Baugh, a bilateral shoulder-level amputee, controlling two Modular Prosthetic Limbs by thought after a short training period. Nerves rerouted to his chest drive the arms.

A Wendover Productions documentary-style video on how Zipline delivers blood and medical supplies by drone in Rwanda. It covers the catapult launch, parachute drop and the logistics behind it.