In 2011, robot sales hit about 160,000 units, translating to $8.5 billion in sales—this was by far the highest level recorded for any single year. Employment isn’t for humans only—there are currently 1.1 million working robots in the world. Today, robots sort through construction waste for reusable materials, and the even play a major role in automobile production. In fact, 80 percent of car production is completed by machines. By using artificial intelligence, Hyundai Motors reduced delivery time by 20 percent and increased inventory turns from 3 to 3.4. “Baxter” is a humanoid…

The robot employment scenario has been described and discussed for decades. Ever since the first hints of automation started creeping into industrial production around the end of the 19th century, people have claimed that mechanical automation would eventually replace humans altogether for better or for worse. We’ve seen it happen a lot in recent years. They are able to do many of the tasks that once employed humans, even going so far as to replace noodle slicers in China. Should humans be worried that robotic automation could eventually put us all out of a job? Will it happen sooner than later?…

The concept of robots from the past has either centered around making mundane tasks of humanity easier or obsolete, or they tell us about the robot apocalypse where mechanized artificial intelligence takes over humanity and makes us their slaves (or food). The reality is that robots are able to do some cool things, albeit not nearly at the level that most thought possible by this time in history. Cleaning windows, mowing lawns, mopping floors – all is possible with robotic technology. The devices themselves are not that extraordinary, but the prices actually caught me by surprise. Here’s the…

Families argue. It’s part of being a family. When your “family” is made up of unhappy robots getting ready for a nutritious meal of glowing objects, you know the only way the ensuing dispute will end is with dubstep and 3D graphics. Lights and flying radioactive cylinders highlight the short film by Fluxel Media with a dubstep remix of Nostalgia’s “Knights of Cydonia”. …

In the movies, it always start innocently. They are designed to help humans, to do the mundane or difficult tasks that are better suited for non-sentient robots rather than men and women. In the end, they always turn on us. Hopefully, the folks at the Swiss Federated Institute of Technology in Zurich are keeping that in mind as they develop the system for the Flying Machine Enabled Construction project. The video below displays where they are as of now in this first public demonstration: “The installation, called “Flight Assembled Architecture”, was conceived and built by teams led by my colleagues…

Today’s advancements in technology have made automation a part of our daily lives. Many of the tasks that were once performed by humans are now done by computers and in some cases, robots. As the trend continues, will we see humans replaced in many job functions by robots? That’s the question that our friends at Mindflash explore in their most recent infographic. While it’s hard to imagine a robot paralegal today, it’s not as far fetched in the very near future as we might expect. Click to enlarge. …

The dream of making the perfect robot that can do a lot of our human activities may have found a simple solution in Swarmanoid, an open scientific project whose goal is  the design, implementation and control of a novel distributed robotic system. Rather than build robots that can do many things, they build many robots that can do one thing and have them work together to accomplish their objectives. The video below has the robots working together to retrieve a single book. It may sound simple, but when was the last time you saw a robot that could retrieve a book? That’s what I thought. …

I sense a theme coming on: people create robots, robots destroy robots, and robots destroy humans? Well I’m a believer after what I just watched. In the above video, there is a four-legged robot called BigDog that is capable of walking in a freakish but effective fashion, which is entertaining to say the least. However, it’s all about to get a bit more awesome. There is a new bot on the block, and it has one goal in mind — speed! It is named Atlas. It looks more like a cheetah than a four-legged freak of nature, like the BigDog mentioned above. And it is going to be fast, according to Boston Dynamics, the…

There are some things worth watching in life: a revolution for freedom, a Jersey Shore escapade, and, now, a slow-motion take on the destruction of a BattleBot. These hunks of destructive metal used to be all the rage on Comedy Central in the 2000s, but it eventually fell through. Since then, the world has gone without seeing robot destruction (unless you have watched the new Terminator movies). But it has come to my surprise that BattleBots has a renewed vigor, and tournaments are being held. Someone just so happened to record some footage of a battle in 60 frames-per-second. Enjoy….

Am I the only one who finds this terrifying? Like, sure, it’s not quite as immediately scary as Boston Dynamics’ BigDog, but imagine what it’ll look like a couple decades from now when several of these things are sprinting over a hill at you with guns for heads after the military buys them up? Can you say Judgment Day? Of course you can. The bot, called Athlete, is the brainchild of Ryuma Niiyama, a post-doctorate student at MIT, and uses pneumatic artificial muscles to simulate human legs. Currently, it can only run three steps before toppling over, but it’s only a matter of time before the current…