Our Drone Future. Autonomous Nissan Leaf Drives Japanese Roadway. Nissan, in a bid to move forward the cause of autonomous driving vehicles, recently completed its first public road test on a Japanese highway of a robotic Leaf electric car. The automaker wasted little time in completing this test, as it was only in late September that it was licensed by governmental officials to let one of its driverless cars on the road. The Leaf in question, while not directly controlled by a human, did have some important individuals on board, including the company’s vice chairman and the regional governor where the test took place. This locale was in the Kanagawa Prefecture, specifically near the “Sagami Robot Industry Special Zone,” an area that is being revitalized with the help of the local government.
Projects include the development of life-assist robots which are equipped with sensors, artificial intelligence, and control systems. Image via Nissan. NASA's Valkyrie robot is a 6-foot 'superhero' designed to save you from disasters. NASA has created a robot for DARPA's upcoming Robotics Challenge Trials. The Valkyrie is a 6-foot-2-inch humanoid machine with detachable arms, sonar sensors, mounted cameras, and a glowing Tony Stark-esque circle in the middle of its chest. The space agency says it's mobile and dexterous enough to enter disaster zones to provide search and rescue functions. Project and group lead for NASA JSC's Dextrous Robotics Lab, Nicolaus Radford, tells IEEE Spectrum that Valkyrie was designed specifically for the DARPA competition. Strong legs mean the robot's capable of moving around "degraded environments" typical of disaster-stricken areas, and cameras mounted on its head, body, forearms, knees, and feet, allow it to provide visual information back to its handlers.
Extra data can be provided by the robot's sonar and lidar units. Unlike DARPA's own Atlas robot, Valkyrie doesn't require a tether, running instead on a 2kWh battery stored on the machine's back. How Robots Will Change the World - BBC Documentary 2012. Robotics.
Festo. A Full-size, Autonomous Helicopter Lands Itself. Robots with Machine Guns. Boston Dynamics Robots Research 2013.