Next to Team SCHAFT’s new Google overlords withdrawing them from further competition, the poor showing of NASA’s Valkyrie robot might have seemed the DRC Trials’s biggest disappointment, but it’s nowhere near that simple: NASA JSC and the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC) are keeping the flame alive, and by flame we’re talking like…nuclear blow-torch.
This week Hitachi is finally ready to send its snake/crawler hybrid robot into the heart of Fukushima Daiichi’s severely melted-down reactor #1, and a Japanese booze maker that owns an American booze maker wants to get cozier and it’s kind of funny.
In addition to the most visible and flashy robotics projects, there is a burgeoning world of robotics development out there set to spark the imaginations of another generation of nerd and engineering culture and beyond. This year, we will see some truly amazing things – things the media have barely touched on, and not all of it revolves around Google.
These six teams, unique in that they’ve developed their own machines and software, will be competing with the 7 winners from the Virtual Robotics Challenge (who’ll get an ATLAS robot), and a yet to be determined number from Track D.
The technology dork in charge at Anthrobotic.com has infected yet another online news source: Japan Today’s beautifully made INSIGHT MAGAZINE. If you’ve got an iPad, subscribe! If you don’t have an iPad, get an iPad – then subscribe!
This piece is not a memorial, but hopefully a brief insight into how a terrible natural disaster has invigorated Japan’s robotics industry and brought to light a problem affecting all industrialized societies.