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CADE: Before the pandemic, a resident of Milton Keynes, Liss Page, thought these robots were fascinating but mostly pointless. On her jogs, she'd wind up alongside a robot, and she would talk to it — almost tease it.
Then the pandemic happened, and she was advised not to leave her apartment because of pre-existing health conditions. Those robots are now vital to bring her groceries — when the stores are in stock.
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Gap rushes in more robots to warehouses to solve virus disruption - Reuters
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - U.S. apparel chain Gap Inc ( GPS.N ) is speeding up its rollout of warehouse robots for assembling online orders so it can limit human contact during the coronavirus pandemic, the company told Reuters.
Gap reached a deal early this year to more than triple the number of item-picking robots it uses to 106 by the fall. Then the pandemic struck North America, forcing the company to close all its stores in the region, including those of Banana Republic, Old Navy and other brands. Meanwhile, its warehouses faced more web orders and fewer staff to fulfill them because of social distancing rules Gap had put in place.
The Restaurant Of The Future? London Tea Room Chain To Reopen With Robots
He and his team conducted a survey that asked their customers what they feared the most about going back to restaurants. The results showed that most were apprehensive about interacting with waitstaff and sitting at tables that are too close together. The latter was simple to address: The Tea Terrace will space out its tables at all of its four locations—two in London and two in Surrey. The concern about coming into contact with employees, however, required a more complex solution.
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The ... threat is real - StarTribune.com
If there was ever a good time for the robots-taking-over-jobs argument, this may be it. Not just because factory owners don't want to pay for rising labor costs, but because workers don't want to gather every day in petri dishes.
Chinese manufacturing is facing a challenge since employees returned to production lines: keeping them on the job. Some companies reported a 90% turnover in workforce after the economy started reopening in March, compared to 25% to 30% in a normal year. Such spikes are expected worldwide as lockdowns ease.
Robot Comedians | Human-Robot Interaction
Jon is the subject of new research at Oregon State University, which uses comedy to improve human-robot interaction. The work, which encompasses a 32-show tour across comedy clubs in Los Angeles and in Oregon, appears in the Proceedings of the 2020 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction.
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"In this preliminary work, we aimed to compare audience responses to a robotic stand-up comedian over multiple performances that varied robot timing and adaptivity," they note in the paper's abstract.
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Inspired by Cheetah Biomechanics, Researchers Build World-Record Fast Soft Robots
Inspired by the biomechanics of cheetahs, researchers have developed a new type of soft robot that is capable of moving more quickly on solid surfaces or in the water than previous generations of soft robots. Credit: Jie Yin, NC State University
Inspired by the biomechanics of cheetahs, researchers have developed a new type of soft robot that is capable of moving more quickly on solid surfaces or in the water than previous generations of soft robots. The new soft robotics are also capable of grabbing objects delicately – or with sufficient strength to lift heavy objects.
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