Just last week, a pair of Boston Dynamics Atlas robots Atlas successfully completed a complex obstacle course at the company’s headquarters, but they didn’t do it flawlessly. The first of the two made its way up a series of banked plywood panels, broad jumped a gap, and ran up and down stairs in the course set up on the second floor.
We have seen the future of beach cleanup, and it includes the BeBot. This innovative solar-powered robot is designed to clean up everything from disposable bottles and food wrappers to microplastics, which are the tiny pieces of plastic residue weathered down from larger plastic products.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is sending a robot into space, and it may be one you’re already familiar with. This four-legged explorer prototype, called NeBula-SPOT, combines autonomous technologies provided by JPL with a doglike likes. Boston Dynamics developed this subterranean Spot robot in response to a contest sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
You may have seen electric vehicle charging robots before, but most, if not all, are years away from being released. So, this Tesla owner decided to make his own using a Raspberry Pi 4 computer as the brain. Simply put, the Raspberry Pi 4 is connected to a camera that can automatically detect where the illuminated blue charging port is using computer vision and machine learning.
Inventor Shane Wighton likes to think outside the box, whether if he’s playing basketball, or just some pool. Since he’s not a professional at either, robotic intervention is required to master some things. His latest project involved building a robotic pool cue that can easily sink trick shots. In a typical game, the eight-ball can not be sunk until all the other ones are in the pockets. This ingenious robotic pool utilizes a projection system and algorithms to precisely direct his shots.