We have already seen robots cooking. Robots flipping hamburger (meet Flippy at Caliburger in California), others having a menu of up to 600 dishes (Robochef cooks Indian, Chinese and Mediterranean cuisine) other can prepare cocktails (Tipsy has 60 cocktail recipes up to its sleeve…). We have even seen a fully …
Read More »Welcome Moxie!
After the success of Roomba, the robotic vacuum cleaner of the last decade, Paolo Pirjanian -former CTO of iRobot the manufacturer of Roomba, joined forces with Maja Matarić, USC robotics professors to create a successful social robot. The keyword here is “successful”. We have seen quite a number of social …
Read More »From Cow-Boys to Cow-Buoys
By 2050 the Planet population is expected to be close to 10 billion people. That’s much less than the estimated number of ants living today (1 quadrillion, that is 100,000 more than the expected 10 billion humans in 2050) but their total weight is two orders of magnitude less than …
Read More »Poor ducks! A robot is about to take up their job…
For as long as we can look back in time farmers in China and other “rice” areas have been using ducks in the rice paddies to curb on bugs of various sort. In the last decades pesticides have been used but now farmers are coming back to ducks. It is …
Read More »Food delivery robots roaming US campuses
Having food delivered at your doorstep was unusual in Italy but in the last few years it has taken up steam, particularly among the youngsters. In other countries, like the US, it has been common for quite a while and even more so in the university campuses. Now it looks …
Read More »A liquid flow of energy
Researchers keep looking at more efficient ways to distribute power, particularly in areas where the constraints are significant. Nature had billion of years in experimenting energy savvy solutions and through natural selection it has achieve impressive results. In most cases, particularly when we are looking at small sizes, Nature is …
Read More »Pizza is fuelling innovation
According to the 2018 Pizza Power Report the worldwide business of selling pizzas has reached 134B$, 3 billion pizzas have been eaten last year in the US, over 30 billions in the world. That’s not bad for something that started as a slice of bread with some tomatoes and cheese. …
Read More »You can pick up a raspberry, so can a robot and it is much faster
I should confess that when I read this news, a robot harvesting raspberry, what impressed me most was the statement that a human “harvester” could pick up 15,000 berries in an 8 hours shift. I would have imagined, based on personal raspberry harvesting experience, so much less (may be that’s …
Read More »Slicing an onion: tougher than it looks at first glance
I have to confess that I never thought about the complexity of slicing a salami or a potato. I guess I have a knack for it (and my wife is usually charging me of any slicing chore…). But so are most people (if not all of them!). Slicing, chopping, cutting …
Read More »Drones take flying lessons from hummingbirds …
Several insects can hover, I bet you saw bees hovering on flower beds looking for the most appealing one for landing and drinking its nectar, birds cannot, with the exception of hummingbirds. I remember spending a few hours in Mexico looking at them and appreciating the hovering that made so …
Read More »