ROBOTIC INSECT SIZED DRONES DEVELOPED AT HARVARD MICRO ROBOTICS LAB

Andrew Baisch has been developing the robots over the last five years while earning his PhD under the principal investigator, Professor Rob Wood. Quick assembly of the prototypes was made possible by the lab’s Printed Circuit Microelectromechanical Systems (PC-MEMS) manufacturing method, where materials are sandwiched together in 23 microscopic layers and laser cut into patterns. Flexible materials in the pattern serve as hinges, allowing panels to be folded into three dimensional shapes much like the pages in a children’s pop-up book (though some components are still assembled by hand).

Though there’s much work to be done before miniature robots move exactly like insects, Harvard Microrobotics Lab is making strides with ...

SPY DRONES A NECESSARY ITEM IN COMBATING HOME GROWN CRIME I USA

The FBI employs drones in domestic surveillance operations, Director Robert Mueller revealed, but said they were used in a “very, very minimal way.”

Mr Mueller, in Senate testimony on Wednesday, acknowledged for the first time that the Federal Bureau of Investigation uses “very few” drones in a limited capacity for surveillance.

“It’s very seldom used and generally used in a particular incident when you need the capability,” Mr Mueller said. “It is very narrowly focused on particularised cases and particularised needs.”

Mr Mueller’s remarks about the FBI’s use of drones — and the regular use of the vehicles by other law enforcement agencies — come as lawmakers and civil liberties groups are raising concerns about the reach of...

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Henry Sapiecha

AERIAL DRONES PLACE DNA ON CABLES FOR THEFT ID PURPOSES

Published on May 22, 2013

May 22 – The organised theft of copper from homes and building sites has become a global problem in recent years, but German telecommunications giant Deutsche Telekom has struck back by marking their copper wires with so-called ‘artificial DNA’ to track down the copper’s origin and even its thieves

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ROBOTIC SPIDER AVOIDS OBJECTS WHILST TALKING-VIDEO

There are robots that walk around like spiders, there are robots that avoid objects, and there are robots that talk, but what about a robot spider that talks while avoiding objects? Hobbyist Kevin Ochs’ creation, Charlotte, is just that. Charlotte is a hexapod robot with a talking head that lets it narrate its progress as it avoids collisions.

Charlotte is an in-progress project started by Ochs as a way of brushing up on his C++ programming skills. It began life a commercially available robot kit sold by Trossen Robotics that Ochs equipped with a brain in the form of a Raspberry Pi overclocked to 1000Mhz running on C++ with custom coding.

The head is made from an Asus Xtion Pro Live for motion sensing, hearing and vision...