Category: Robots

Should Robots that Displace Workers Be Taxed?

Bill Gates made quite a stir recently when he said we should tax robots that replace workers. As technology grows at an ever-increasing pace, could this be a way to support and fund programs like Social Security and Medicare for an aging country? I am interested to hear what our audience thinks, so please leave your thoughts in the comment section below.

SpaceX makes good on space station delivery a little late

SpaceX’s Dragon cargo ship is captured by the International Space Station’s robotic arm a day after a GPS problem prevented the capsule from coming too close. SpaceX’s Dragon cargo ship is captured by the International Space Station’s robotic arm a day after a GPS problem prevented the capsule from coming too close.

SpaceX makes good on space station delivery a little late

SpaceX made good on a 250-mile-high delivery at the International Space Station on Thursday, after fixing a navigation problem that held up the shipment a day. Everything went smoothly the second time around as the station astronauts captured the SpaceX Dragon cargo ship as the two craft sailed over Australia.

SpaceX, Russian cargo ships heading for space station

As a SpaceX Dragon cargo ship closed in on the International Space Station early Wednesday, a Russian Soyuz-U rocket making the venerable booster’s final flight successfully lifted a Progress supply ship into orbit, three months after an upper stage failure destroyed another station-bound freighter. Mounted atop a snow-covered launch pad — the same pad used by cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin at the dawn of the Space Age — the Soyuz-U rocket carrying the Progress MS-05/66P cargo ship thundered to life at 12:58 a.m. EST and climbed away from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Meet the soft robot which keeps your heart beating

A soft robot which embraces failing hearts to keep blood pumping could one day be used to help keep people with heart failure alive. Developed by researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and described last week in the academic journal Science Translational Medicine , the robotic sleeve was created to mimic the composition of human heart tissue.

Soft Robot Helps the Heart Beat

Harvard University and Boston Children’s Hospital researchers have developed a customizable soft robot that fits around a heart and helps it beat, potentially opening new treatment options for people suffering from heart failure. The soft robotic sleeve twists and compresses in synch with a beating heart, augmenting cardiovascular functions weakened by heart failure.

Introducing Centrelink’s robo-public servant

Public servants could find themselves replaced with robots sooner than anyone expected with Centrelink soon to step up experiments with “virtual” welfare officers manning the agency’s shopfronts around Australia. Centrelink will soon have two robo-assistants answering questions from the public, one of them about the National Disability Insurance Scheme, the other helping young people with the complexities of claiming student benefits.

Intricate microdevices that can be safely implanted

Applications include a drug-delivery system to provide tailored drug doses for precision medicine, catheters, stents, cardiac pacemakers, and soft microbotics Fabrication and assembly of an iMEMS microdevice. Left: layer-by-layer fabrication of support structures and assembly of gear components.