Posts Tagged: "robotics"

Microsoft is often found soaring high atop the intellectual property world in terms of the patents it’s issued by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. In 2014, the company was 5th overall in the world for U.S. patent grants with 2,983 patents that year, a 6 percent increase from the previous year’s totals. In the three months leading up to this writing, Microsoft has earned 597 U.S. patents, a slow quarterly pace compared to last year but still one that would likely put the company in the top 10 most innovative organizations this year.

The patent portfolio of Boston Dynamics is small but it does cover some very intriguing innovations in the field. The company holds six patents issued by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, two of which protect jumping technologies that may contribute to some functioning of the Sand Flea. U.S. Patent No. 8849451, issued under the title Hopping Robot, protects a robot with a chassis, a motive subsystem that maneuvers the chassis, a hopping actuator including a rearwardly extending foot which is attached to the chassis for launching a robot and a separate leg pivotable to pitch the chassis upward at a selected launch trajectory angle. This technology, developed to overcome issues in robotic components suffering damage when the unit lands, is definitely on display in the Sand Flea video, and diagrams attached to the patent grant confirm this.

In 2012, the global robotics industry saw a total of $26.8 billion in economic activity, according to Bloomberg Business. Much of this was focused in the field of heavy industrial robotics, as was pointed out in a video segment produced by the business news publisher, but robotics for consumers are expected to become a much larger sector in the next…

Science has found it difficult to answer the many risks of harm to body and property which earthquakes cause. Technologies meant to enable the prediction of earthquakes have not worked out in the past and researchers are still unable to predict the location and magnitude of the next big quake. In the meantime, there has been plenty of research and development leading to the creation of tools and techniques that have saved lives from the incredible destruction of a violent shift in fault lines.

In 2014, Samsung Electronics was second overall among companies receiving U.S. patents with approximately 13.5 patents every day over the course of a year. While much of Samsung’s recently acquired portfolio relates to semiconductor and memory devices, they are also a big player in wearable technologies. In fact, Samsung is the top filer of patent applications related to wearable technologies, accounting for about four percent of the 41,301 patents making up the wearables field according to a study by Lux Research of Boston, MA.

Google has recently received a patent on a method of giving a robot a personality, and in the Summary of the Invention the company explains: ”The robot may be programmed to take on the personality of real-world people (e.g., behave based on the user, a deceased loved one, a celebrity and so on) so as to take on character traits of people to be emulated by a robot” Thus, the claims on the Internet that Google has created a robot that takes on the personality of a deceased loved one, seem grounded in fact, which itself is a little surprising.

Google’s self-driving car development has advanced so far beyond what our country’s laws are currently able to regulate that the technology has hit some legal stumbling blocks. As a result, Google has been focusing recently Google First Quarter 2015 Text Clusteron inventing pedestrian safety systems to be incorporated with its self-driving car, even receiving a patent for an airbag that would protect pedestrians in a collision. The company even has its focus on surgical robotics, recently announcing a partnership with Johnson & Johnson to develop surgical robots that would assist human surgeons.

A type of harvester that utilizes a hybrid electric drive system is featured within U.S. Patent No. 8897943, which is titled Battery Electric Hybrid Drive for a Combine Harvester. This patent protects a hybrid drive system. The invention provides a harvester that meets emission guidelines regulated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency while supporting operation of the harvester’s internal combustion engine.

Samsung is a multinational conglomerate company headquartered in Seoul, South Korea, which is comprised of a multitude of subsidiaries and affiliated businesses in electronics, ship building, construction and more. Samsung invested the 2nd-greatest amount of money into research and development of any company worldwide in 2014; it’s $13.4 billion R&D investment that year was slightly edged by Volkswagen’s $13.5 billion…

As always, Samsung has been issued some very interesting patents in the field of robotic technologies, including one protecting a technology that enables a robot to assume a more natural, human-like posture. Home media experiences, including televisions capable of processing video calls and a virtual reality input system, are discussed. We also discuss some patents in the field of mobile technologies, including disaster information broadcasts and traffic information widgets for electronic devices.

Headquartered in Nagano, Japan, the Seiko Epson Corporation is a worldwide leader in the manufacture of computer printers, imaging equipment and other information technologies. Well known for its printer products, Epson made some interesting announcements at the 2015 Consumer Electronics Show regarding a series of wearable gadgets for fitness tracking. Investment in printing technologies is still strong at Epson, which…