12/18/09 — Four universities working under the European Union’s Rawseeds project have developed set of free benchmarking tools that allow roboticists to effectively compare different Simultaneous Localization and Mapping approaches and algorithms against each other for the first time. “What does the world look like?” and “where am I?” are two questions robots must solve if they are to act autonomously in an unknown environment. Work by European researchers will help future robot generations provide smarter answers. The process by which robots use vision, laser and/or sonar sensors to map an environment and, at the same time, determine their location in it…

06/05/09 — A new type of deep-sea robotic vehicle called Nereus has successfully reached the deepest part of the world’s ocean, reports a team of U.S. engineers and scientists aboard the research vessel Kilo Moana. The dive to 10,902 meters (6.8 miles) occurred on May 31, 2009, at the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench in the western Pacific Ocean. | The dive makes Nereus the world’s deepest-diving vehicle and the first vehicle to explore the Mariana Trench since 1998. Nereus’s unique hybrid-vehicle design makes it ideally suited to explore the ocean’s last frontiers. The unmanned vehicle is remotely operated by pilots…