6 Robot Technology 2019 - Awesome Robots | Military Robots

1. Robots that deliver

There are so many delivery robots at CES that it’s easy to imagine that we’ll all be stumbling over them on the sidewalk — or in the elevator — before long. Zuberi says it’s among the new robot trends with the most promise because the field is drawing on some of the same advances that power self-driving cars.

Segway Robotics, part of the same company that makes electric rental scooters for Lime, Jump and Bird, is the latest to get into the delivery game with a new machine it calls Loomo Delivery. The wheeled office robot can avoid obstacles, board elevators and deliver documents to another floor.

A similar office courier called the Holabot was unveiled by Chinese startup Shenzhen Pudu Technology. CEO Felix Zhang says his company already has a track record selling robots in China, where its Pudubot robot — which looks like shelves on wheels — navigates busy restaurants as a kind of robotic waiter.

Nearly all of these robots use a technology called visual SLAM, short for simultaneous localization and mapping. Most are wheeled, though there are outliers — such as one from German automotive company Continental, which wants to deploy walking robotic dogs to carry packages from self-driving delivery vans to residential front doors.

A delivery robot will need both sophisticated autonomy and a focused mission to stand out from the pack, says Saumil Nanavati, head of business development for Robby Technology. His company’s namesake robot travels down sidewalks as a “store on wheels.” The company recently partnered with PepsiCo to deliver snacks around a California university campus.

2. Robots for dogs

Does man’s best friend need a robotic pal of its own? Some startups think so.

“There’s a big problem with separation anxiety, obesity and depression in pets,” says Bee-oh Kim, a marketing manager for robotics firm Varram.

The company’s $99 robot is essentially a moving treat dispenser that motivates pets to chase it around. A herd of the small, dumbbell-shaped robots zoomed around a pen at the show — though there were no canine or feline conference attendees to show how the machines really work.

Varram’s robot takes two hours to charge and can run for 10 hours — just enough time to allow a pet’s guilt-ridden human companion to get home from work.

3. Robot friends

Lovot is a simple robot with just one aim — to make its owner happy.

It can’t carry on long conversations, but it’s still social — approaching people so they can interact, moving around a space to create a digital map, responding to being embraced.

Lovot’s horn-shaped antenna — featuring a 360-degree camera — recognizes its surroundings and detects the direction of sound and voices.

Lovot is the brainchild of Groove X CEO Kaname Hayashi, who previously worked on SoftBank’s Pepper, a humanoid robot that briefly appeared in a few U.S. shopping malls two years ago. Hayashi wanted to create a real connection between people and robots.

4. Nuclear Tunnelbot

A group of scientists wants to send a nuclear-powered "tunnelbot" to Europa to blaze a path through the Jovian moon's thick shell of ice and search for life.

Europa, the fourth largest of Jupiter's 53 moons, is one of the best candidates in our solar system for hosting alien life. Researchers believe that its icy crust hides a liquid water ocean and that vents through that crust might deliver the necessary heat and chemical ingredients for lifeinto that ocean.To peek beneath that thick veil of ice, researchers on the NASA Glenn Research COMPASS team (a group of scientists and engineers scattered around the country and tasked with solving problems for NASA) think they have come up with the tunnelbot.

On Friday (Dec. 14) at the 2018 meeting of the American Geophysical Union, the researchers presented a proposal for a "tunnelbot" that would use nuclear power to melt a path through Europa's shell, "carrying a payload that can search for… evidence for extant/extinct life." [Humanoid Robots to Flying Cars: 10 Coolest DARPA Projects]

The tunnelbot, the researchers reported, could use either an advanced nuclear reactor or some of NASA's radioactive "general-purpose heat bricks" to generate heat and power, though the radiation would present some design challenges.

Once on the frozen moon, the tunnelbot would move through the ice, also hunting for smaller lakes inside the shell or evidence that the ice itself might contain life. As it burrows deeper, it would spit out a long fiber-optic cable behind itself leading up to the surface and deploy communications relays at depths of 3, 6 and 9 miles (5, 10 and 15 kilometers).

Once it reaches the liquid ocean, to keep from "falling through," it would deploy cables or a floatation device to lock itself in place, the researchers wrote.

At this stage, this is just a rough theoretical proposal. The researchers haven't actually designed the payload for sampling Europa's water and ice, or figured out how to get the tunnelbot onto the moon. As Live Science has previously reported, that's a task that poses some significant mysteries and challenges (like possible giant, robot-destroying spikes).

Still, the proposal provides a fascinating window into what a future robotic mission to Europa might look like, and how we might eventually begin to explore whether the distant moon harbors life.

Originally published on Live Science.

5. hanson robotics sophia

created by hanson robotics, ‘sophia’ the robot made her debut at the south by southwest show in march 2016 and since then has become somewhat of a media personality — having spoken at the united nations and appeared on the jimmy fallon show. she can animate a full range of facial expressions, and is able to track and recognize faces, look people in the eye, and hold natural conversations. in 2017, saudi arabia announced that it is giving citizenship to ‘sophia’, making it the first country in history to do so for a robot. on the achievement, ‘sophia’ had this to say, ‘I am very honored and proud for this unique distinction. this is historical to be the first robot in the world to be recognized with a citizenship.’

6. Ubtech Robotics Walker

Ubtech has been a pioneer in the industry with its humanoid robots, including an Alexa-enabled robot that can perform yoga too. However, the robot Ubtech previewed at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) expo is its most ambitious project.

The Ubtech Robotics Walker is a four-foot tall bot that has true bipedal motion, which enables it to not only walk around but go up and down stairs and even kick a soccer ball.

The version that was showcased in the CES 2018 was an early model and did not have arms but by the time Ubtech Robotics Walker becomes available in 2019, it will have all of its limbs, with a host of new abilities according to company representatives. The technology marvel Walker is studded with sensors like cameras in its head and torso, and auto detection sensors in its feet and sides, which help the robot, know when it is close to an object. When armed with the right programming, the robot can avoid things such as chairs and tables which come in its way. Ubtech Robotics Walker responds to vocal commands as well as visual cues and its head is a large touchscreen which has a camera on the top to control your smart home, help schedule your calendar, play music and dance, patrol the home, and provide visual surveillance and motion detection.