Hydroid Deep Sea Marine-Exploring REMUS AUVs
By David Geer
May 2013, Page 10
A Q&A with the makers of these cylindrical swimming automatons.

Modular Mobots Make STEM Education Fun
By David Geer
January 2013, Page 13
UC Davis — a 100+ year old institution of higher education — is encouraging STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) educational enhancements through the use of Mobots: a robot module platform created by Engineering Professor Harry H. Cheng and his master's student Graham Ryland. The plastic Mobots with their user-friendly programming and software are already in use in many area schools.

Collaborating With Hubo
By David Geer
October 2012, Page 10
The HUBO robot platform is a four foot, three inch tall, fully actuated humanoid robot with similar joint movement to that of humans. HUBO’s legs, arms, hands, fingers, and thumbs work about the same as human’s do, as well.

Students Get a Bot Powered Kick Out of Mathematics
By David Geer
August 2012, Page 10
Something fun, robotic, and mathematical is happening in Gulf Stream, FL, located on the state's southeastern coast. That's where Shawn Harahush — sometimes referred to as RoboTeacher — uses robots, engineering, and rockets to teach math to students at the Gulf Stream School.

Robot Band DARES to Sound Off in Contest
By David Geer
June 2012, Page 05
Robot Band DARES to Sound Off in Contest

GeerHead
By David Geer
April 2012, Page 10
Roboticist Achieves Human-Aided Robot Hand-Eye Coordination.

GeerHead
By David Geer
February 2012, Page 10
Eye Surgery Robot

GeerHead
By David Geer
December 2011, Page 10
The KarmetiK Machine Orchestra

GeerHead
By David Geer
October 2011, Page 10
Kilobot Swarm Robots

GeerHead
By David Geer
August 2011, Page 10
Covert Robots

GeerHead
By David Geer
June 2011, Page 10
A Robot’s Touch

GeerHead
By David Geer
April 2011, Page 10
DARwIn-OP Robot

Geerhead
By David Geer
December 2007, Page
Tortuga: From Isle to Pirates to Underwater Spy

Getting A Grip: Fingerless Robot Hand Grabs, Carries, Pours, and Writes
By David Geer
January 2011, Page 10
What can you do with a latex balloon, some coffee grounds, and suction? You can create a universal jamming robotic gripper hand that can pick up anything.

University of Akron Competition Robot Roundup
By David Geer
November 2010, Page 10
Events such as RoboGames attract bright minds and hungry competitors from across the country.The University of Akron’s student roboticists were well prepared with well-designed, efficient, and intelligent mobile robots.

Titan, Baddest Guitar Hero Playing Humanoid on the Planet
By David Geer
September 2010, Page 11
A high school robotics team is tasked to solve complex programming and design problems in robotics to achieve a worthwhile goal for their age group in popular culture. Their resolution: a humanoid robot that effectively competes in a significantly high percentile in the Guitar Hero video game, defeating most opponents.

Remote Presence Robots Put Physicians Within Reach
By David Geer
June 2010, Page 10
The Remote Presence (RP) robots from InTouch Health enable physicians to be literally anywhere — in the emergency room, the ICU, at home, the office, or even at the same or dif ferent hospital.

Penbo for Girls, Prime-8 for Boys
By David Geer
April 2010, Page 10
Penbo is an intuitive emotive penguin robot — complete with baby — for girls. Prime-8 is a macho, aggressive gorilla robot for boys. Together, they represent hours of playtime for kids of all ages.

Artificial Intelligence Brings Humanoid Robots to Life (Part Deux)
By David Geer
February 2010, Page 10
It is not so much the practicality of humanoid robots that drives interest in their development as it is the familiarity, sources say. “People are interested in things that are anthropomorphic. This makes interaction with [humanoid] robots easier,” says James J. Kuffner, PhD, associate professor of the Robotics Institute at the School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University.

Chiara - The Evolving Education-Research Robot
By David Geer
December 2009, Page 10
Chiara is a six-legged, arachnid/crab-like robot with a pincer arm that was born from the mind of Carnegie Mellon University Professor Dave Touretzky, along with PhD student Ethan Tira-Thompson and mechanical engineer/ product designer Gaku Sato.

Adept Quattro Handles Solar Cells With Care
By David Geer
October 2009, Page 10
The Adept Quattro s650H is an industrial robot with four parallel arms mounted on a rotational body. The arms are extensions of four motors, one motor per appendage. These arms are a good fit for processing crystalline silicon wafers for solar cells as they produce more solar cells per hour than human employees do.

Co-operative ASV Robots Autonomously Investigate Harmful Algal Blooms
By David Geer
August 2009, Page 10
The Robotic Embedded Systems Lab at USC, lead by Professor Gaurav Sukhatme, regularly deploys two ASVs into the Redondo Beach Marina to monitor the sea and take samples.

First Robot For Cleaning Solar Cells
By David Geer
June 2009, Page 10
When the solar energy producer cannot bring the panels to the car wash, it is time to bring the car wash to the panels!

Robot Leaves Breadcrumbs
By David Geer
February 2008, Page 10
Moravian College student and roboticist Wesley Moser (class of ‘08) built a robot that could trace its steps and map them out on a computer screen, albeit with a lot of help from Moser’s own software, which he programmed using multiple languages. The robot was the result of Moser’s Student Opportunity for Academic Research (SOAR) project at Moravian. Ben Coleman, assistant professor of computer science at the academic institution, guided Moser. The robot uses a variety of sensors to ...

Rovio, Robotic House Sitter
By David Geer
April 2008, Page 10
Out of the west rides a three-wheeled guardian named Rovio. When the family is not at home, Rovio roams, the internal landscape (carpets, hardwood floors, tile), keeping a CMOS sensor eye open at all times, monitoring property, pets, and the home environment. Rovio uses a single VGA CMOS sensor to facilitate image capture and digitization so that images can be processed, stored, and transmitted over a network to the end-user via access points or the Internet. Rovio’s built-in computer “eye”...

Kuka Robot Plays Air Hockey
By David Geer
June 2008, Page 11
Students from the Department of Technological Studies at Ohio Northern University found a fun, creative way to solve an industrial robotics problem: How can a robot pick parts from a bin if the parts are in motion? Answer: The same way it can play air hockey. Enabling an industrial robot — in this case, the KUKA KR3 — to play air hockey solves some of the same problems faced when trying to make it pick up moving parts. The robot has to identify the moving puck and direct its arm to meet it ...

MAARS Robots Taking Off for War
By David Geer
August 2008, Page 10
In 2005, I covered the SWORDS (Special Weapons Observation Reconnaissance Direct-action System) maneuverable military robots, which soldiers use as scouts and remote weapons systems in the war in Iraq. As reported, the SWORDS iteration of the robotic sentry is compatible with M16s, M240s, M249s, Barrett 50 calibers, 40 mm grenade launchers, or M202 anti-tank rocket systems. The SWORDS have many other features including advanced sensing. The robots use these technologies to locate enemy...

Robot250 Features BigBots | Robotic Artwork that Interacts and Responds
By David Geer
October 2008, Page 10
Robot250 is a city-wide extravaganza of large scale interactive robot art projects, workshops, festivities, events, and film held July 11-27 in Pittsburgh, PA. Sponsored by Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Pittsburgh, and a number of local community groups like the Heinz Endowments, the program features BigBots interactive robot displays with artistic themes...

Artificial Muscles
By David Geer
December 2008, Page 10
Electroactive Polymer Artificial Muscles (EPAMs) are a new actuating/motion technology based on polymers that react to electricity. The new actuators are useful across applications where motors are not as efficient or are simply not feasible. The basic EPAM is a rubber sheet made of a custom-formulated elastomer, explains Ilya Polyakov, a senior mechanical engineer at Artificial Muscle, Inc., creators of the EPAM. The polymer is applied so that electrodes plate the rubber sheeting on both...

Do Robots Scream for Ice Cream?
By David Geer
February 2009, Page 10
With two KUKA KR3 6 axis arms, an ice cream machine, a PLC, touch panel, toppings dispensers, and a camera and vision software, the team erected a fully robotic ice cream machine that vended scoops and toppings to about 500 customers in three days. (Now, that is how to make a popular robot!). The goal of the robotic construction was a unique demonstration of a computer vision controlled robot that constitutes a framework for developing strategies for bin-picking, which is a popular objective...

The Ultimate WALL-E Robot Toy
By David Geer
April 2009, Page 10
On the big screen, WALL-E (the last, functional Waste Allocation Load Lifter-Earth class robot) is a curious, blue-collar working trash compactor robot tasked with cleaning up mountains of consumer garbage from the Earth’s surface. WALL-E is completely alone in this mess because human beings have moved off the world on a permanent vacation, due to pollution and the inability of the planet to support life...