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Eye-tracking robot arm lets you paint while you eat

The Imperial College's eye-tracking robot painter arm

One day, you might not have to even touch a canvas to make a masterpiece. Scientists from Imperial College London have developed a system that lets you paint hands-free through a combination of eye tracking and a robotic arm. All you do is adjust your gaze and blink at the right times — you can even munch on breakfast while you’re in mid-oeuvre. The technology is crude at the moment, but it should eventually become intuitive enough that you can focus on perfecting your style, rather than mastering the basics.

Source: Reuters

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Why Self-Driving Cars Must Be Programmed to Kill

Self-driving cars are already cruising the streets. But before they can become widespread, carmakers must solve an impossible ethical dilemma of algorithmic morality.

When it comes to automotive technology, self-driving cars are all the rage. Standard features on many ordinary cars include intelligent cruise control, parallel parking programs, and even automatic overtaking—features that allow you to sit back, albeit a little uneasily, and let a computer do the driving.

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Four-legged bot uses drone sidekick to avoid rough terrain

Even with a sure-stepping robot like DARPA’s Big Dog, there is still plenty of terrain that today’s packbots simply can’t handle. That’s why a team of researchers from ETH Zurich’s Autonomous Systems Lab has devised a way to ensure these robots never get bogged down by impassible terrain: pair that packbot with a forward-scouting UAV.

The mechanical pair are designed to cooperate with one another to map and navigate changing terrain. The UAV first flies ahead and creates a rough map of the area, including relative elevations. It then shares that data with the walking robot, which determines the most efficient route to take. The packbot also employs a laser rangefinder to continually update its elevation map and ensure that every step it takes is sure-footed. The team’s study, "Collaborative Navigation for Flying and Walking Robots" is currently under peer review ahead of the 2016 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

Source: ETH Zurich (YouTube)

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