iRobot, maker of Roomba robot vacuums, is making some big changes to stay in business. The company has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, and it plans to be fully acquired by Picea Robotics.
Roomba maker iRobot has filed for bankruptcy and will be taken over by its Chinese supplier after the company that popularized the robot vacuum cleaner fell under the weight of competition from cheaper rivals.
The US-listed group on Sunday said it had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in Delaware as part of a restructuring agreement with Shenzhen-based Picea Robotics, its lender and primary supplier, which will acquire all of iRobot’s shares.
The deal comes nearly two years after a proposed $1.5 billion acquisition by Amazon fell through over competition concerns from EU regulators.
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If you’ve nothing better to do in the run-up to Christmas, then how about enjoying a mesmerizing hour-long video of a humanoid robot sorting packages? The clip was posted by the founder and CEO of Figure AI, the California-based company behind the Figure humanoid robot. Brett Adcock was responding to a post on X by […]
The post Watch this humanoid robot power through an hour of sorting packages appeared first on Digital Trends.
Most street-based delivery robots take the form of a compact, wheel-based vehicle with a secure compartment for the item that’s out for delivery. But one major issue affects such contraptions: They can’t handle things like stairs, rough ground, or other challenging terrain, a fact that prevents them from trundling right up to someone’s front door. […]
The post This cool delivery robot is coming soon to a U.S. city appeared first on Digital Trends.
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Tesla chief Elon Musk claimed in January that he believes its Optimus humanoid robot business will be worth “north of $10 trillion in revenue,” but a recent video suggests there’s still plenty of work to do on the contraption. In an embarrassing turn of events last weekend, Optimus lost its balance and crashed to the […]
The post Watch Tesla’s Optimus humanoid robot take an embarrassing tumble appeared first on Digital Trends.
This post is brought to you in paid partnership with SenseRobot The holidays are almost upon us, one deal is standing out for tech enthusiasts, chess lovers, and shoppers. The SenseRobot Chess, the world’s first mass-produced AI chess robot arm designed for home use, is now available for $35 off at Amazon with the code […]
The post Save on the SenseRobot Chess — the AI chess master everyone wants appeared first on Digital Trends.
We stumbled upon a story this week that really raised our eyebrows and made us wonder if we were missing something. The gist of the story is that U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, who has degrees in both electrical and mechanical engineering, has floated the idea of using the nation’s fleet of emergency backup generators to reduce the need to build the dozens of new power plants needed to fuel the AI data center building binge. The full story looks to be a Bloomberg exclusive and thus behind a paywall — hey, you don’t get to be a centibillionaire by giving stuff away, you know — so we might be missing some vital details, but this sounds pretty stupid to us.
First of all, saying that 35 gigawatts of generation capacity sits behind the big diesel and natural gas-powered generators tucked behind every Home Depot and Walmart in the land might be technically true, but it seems to ignore the fact that backup generators aren’t engineered to run continuously. In our experience, even the best backup generators are only good for a week or two of continuous operation before something — usually the brushes — gives up the ghost. That’s perfectly acceptable for something that is designed to be operated only a few times a year, and maybe for three or four days tops before grid power is restored. Asking these units to run continuously to provide the base load needed to run a data center is a recipe for rapid failure. And even if these generators could be operated continuously, there’s still the issue of commandeering private property for common use, as well as the fact that you’d be depriving vital facilities like hospitals and fire stations of their backup power. But at least we’d have chatbots.
Well, that won’t buff right out. Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, suffered a serious setback last week when it damaged the launchpad at Site 31/6 during a Soyuz launch. This is bad news because that facility is currently the only one in the world capable of launching Soyuz and Progress, both crucial launch vehicles for the continued operation of the International Space Station. As usual, the best coverage of the accident comes from Scott Manley, who has all the gory details. His sources inform him that the “service cabin,” a 20-ton platform that slides into position under the rocket once it has been erected, is currently situated inside the flame trench rather than being safely tucked into a niche in the wall. He conjectures that the service cabin somehow got sucked into the flame trench during launch, presumably by the negative pressure zone created by the passage of all that high-velocity rocket exhaust. Whatever the cause of the accident, it causes some problems for the Russians and the broader international space community. An uncrewed Progress launch to resupply the ISS was scheduled for December 20, and a crewed Soyuz mission is scheduled for July 2026. But without that service cabin, neither mission seems likely. Hopefully, the Russians will be able to get things tidied up quickly, but it might not matter anyway since there’s currently a bit of a traffic jam at the ISS.
We saw a really nice write-up over at Make: Magazine by Dom Dominici about his impressions from his first Supercon visit. Spoiler alert: he really liked it! He describes it as “an intimate, hands-on gathering that feels more like a hacker summer camp than a tech expo,” and that’s about the best summary of the experience that we’ve seen yet. His reaction to trying to find what he assumed would be a large convention center, but only finding a little hole-in-the-wall behind a pizza place off the main drag in Pasadena, is priceless; yes, that mystery elevator actually goes somewhere. For those of you who still haven’t made the pilgrimage to Pasadena, the article is a great look at what you’re missing.
And finally, we know we were a little rough on the Russians a couple of weeks back for their drunk-walking robot demo hell, but it really served to demonstrate just how hard it is to mimic human walking with a mechanical system. After all, it takes the better part of two years for a new human to even get the basics, and a hell of a lot longer than that to get past the random face-plant stage. But still, some humanoid robots are better than others, to the point that there’s now a Guinness Book of World Records category for longest walk by a humanoid robot. The current record was set last August, with a robot from Shanghai-based Agibot Innovations going on a 106-km walkabout without falling or (apparently) recharging. The journey took place in temperatures approaching 40°C and took 24 hours to complete, which means the robot kept up a pretty brisk walking pace over the course, which we suppose didn’t have any of the usual obstacles.
[Engineezy] might have been watching a 3D printer move when inspiration struck: Why not build a robot arm to clean up his workbench? Why not, indeed? Well, all you need is a 17-foot-long X-axis and a gripper mechanism that can pick up any strange thing that happens to be on the bench.
Like any good project, he did it step by step. Mounting a 17-foot linear rail on an accurately machined backplate required professional CNC assistance. He was shooting for a 1mm accuracy, but decided to settle for 10mm.
With the long axis done, the rest seemed anticlimactic, at least for moving it around. The system can actually support his bodyweight while moving. The next step was to control the arm manually and use a gripper to open a parts bin.
The arm works, but is somewhat slow and needs some automation. A great start to a project that might not be practical, but is still a fun build and might inspire you to do something equally large.
We have large workbenches, but we tend to use tiny ones more often in our office. We also enjoy ones that are portable.
If you’ve ever thought about getting a robot vacuum but didn’t want to spend “flagship money,” this is the kind of deal that makes it a lot easier to say yes. The iRobot Roomba 105 Vac Robot Vacuum is currently $149.00 as a limited-time deal, down from $299.99—a full 50% off. You’re getting proper power-lifting […]
The post This Roomba robot vacuum is 50% off and actually makes “set it and forget it” cleaning realistic appeared first on Digital Trends.
[Aditya Sripada] and [Abhishek Warrier]’s TARS3D robot came from asking what it would take to make a robot with the capabilities of TARS, the robotic character from Interstellar. We couldn’t find a repository of CAD files or code but the research paper for TARS3D explains the principles, which should be enough to inspire a motivated hacker.
What makes TARS so intriguing is the simple-looking structure combined with distinct and effective gaits. TARS is not a biologically-inspired design, yet it can walk and perform a high-speed roll. Making real-world version required not only some inspired mechanical design, but also clever software with machine learning.
[Aditya] and [Abhishek] created TARS3D as a proof of concept not only of how such locomotion can be made to work, but also as a way to demonstrate that unconventional body and limb designs (many of which are sci-fi inspired) can permit gaits that are as effective as they are unusual.
TARS3D is made up of four side-by-side columns that can rotate around a shared central ‘hip’ joint as well as shift in length. In the movie, TARS is notably flat-footed but [Aditya] found that this was unsuitable for rolling, so TARS3D has curved foot plates.
The rolling gait is pretty sensitive to terrain variations, but the walking gait proved to be quite robust. All in all it’s a pretty interesting platform that does more than just show a TARS-like dual gait robot can be made to actually work. It also demonstrates the value of reinforcement learning for robot gaits.
A brief video is below in which you can see the bipedal walk in action. Not that long ago, walking robots were a real challenge but with the tools available nowadays, even a robot running a 5k isn’t crazy.
Login██████╗ ███████╗███████╗██╗ ██╗███████╗██╗ ██╗
██╔══██╗██╔════╝██╔════╝██║ ██║███╔═══╝██║ ██║
██║ ██║█████╗ ███████╗███████║█████╗ ██║ ██║
██║ ██║██╔══╝ ╚════██║██╔══██║██╔══╝ ██║ ██║
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╚═════╝ ╚═╝ ╚══════╝╚═╝ ╚═╝╚══════╝╚══════╝╚══════╝
D3Ext's Forwarded Shell it's a python3 script which use mkfifo to simulate a shell into the victim machine. It creates a hidden directory in /dev/shm/.fs/ and there are stored the fifos. You can even have a tty over a webshell.
In case you want a good webshell with code obfuscation, login panel and more functions you have this webshell (scripted by me), you can change the username and the password at the top of the file, it also have a little protection in case of beeing discovered because if the webshell is accessed from localhost it gives a 404 status code
To use other forwarded shells you have to edit the script to change the url and the parameter of the webshell, but DFShell use parameters to quickly pass the arguments to the script (-u/--url and -p/--parameter), the script have a pretty output with colors, you also have custom commands to upload and download files from the target, do port and host discovery, and it deletes the files created on the victim if you press Ctrl + C or simply exit from the shell.
*If you change the actual user from webshell (or anything get unstable) then execute: 'sh'*
Install with pip
pip3 install dfshellInstall from source
git clone https://github.com/D3Ext/DFShell
cd DFShell
pip3 install -r requirementsOne-liner
git clone https://github.com/D3Ext/DFShell && cd DFShell && pip3 install -r requirementsIt's simple, you pass the url of the webshell and the parameter that executes commands. I recommend you the most simple webshell
python3 DFShell.py -u http://10.10.10.10/webshell.php -p cmd
██████╗ ███████╗███████╗██╗ ██╗███████╗██╗ ██╗
██╔══██╗██╔════╝██╔════╝██║ ██║███╔═══╝██║ ██║
██║ ██║█████╗ ███████╗███████║█████╗ ██║ ██║
██║ ██║██╔══╝ ╚════██║██╔══██║██╔══╝ ██║ ██║
██████╔╝██║ ███████║██║ ██║███████╗████████╗███████╗
╚═════╝ ╚═╝ ╚══════╝╚═╝ ╚═╝╚══════╝╚══════╝╚══════╝
D3Ext's Forwarded Shell it's a python3 script which use mkfifo to simulate a shell into the victim machine. It creates a hidden directory in /dev/shm/.fs/ and there are stored the fifos. You can even have a tty over a webshell.
In case you want a good webshell with code obfuscation, login panel and more functions you have this webshell (scripted by me), you can change the username and the password at the top of the file, it also have a little protection in case of beeing discovered because if the webshell is accessed from localhost it gives a 404 status code
To use other forwarded shells you have to edit the script to change the url and the parameter of the webshell, but DFShell use parameters to quickly pass the arguments to the script (-u/--url and -p/--parameter), the script have a pretty output with colors, you also have custom commands to upload and download files from the target, do port and host discovery, and it deletes the files created on the victim if you press Ctrl + C or simply exit from the shell.
*If you change the actual user from webshell (or anything get unstable) then execute: 'sh'*
Install with pip
pip3 install dfshellInstall from source
git clone https://github.com/D3Ext/DFShell
cd DFShell
pip3 install -r requirementsOne-liner
git clone https://github.com/D3Ext/DFShell && cd DFShell && pip3 install -r requirementsIt's simple, you pass the url of the webshell and the parameter that executes commands. I recommend you the most simple webshell
python3 DFShell.py -u http://10.10.10.10/webshell.php -p cmd
