Robots in the Real World: How robotics will tranform our lives

In  a  special   report from IEEE Spectrum  released this week, we meet some of the world’s most creative minds in robotics to find out how their robots will transform our lives—for real. “Engineers of the New Millennium: Robots for Real.”  Many of the people interviewed in the report are members of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society

 Stories in the report include

• 'Lessons from a Mechanical Child', with an interview with Auke Ijspeert of the Biologically Inspired Robotics Group at EPFL-Zurich. Ijspeert describes their work with RobotCub, an initiative whose goal is to study cognitive function by building a humanoid, childlike robot, known as iCub.
• 'Amazing Androids of Hiroshi Ishiguro',  In one of his labs at the University of Osaka, Ishiguro builds androids to help us understand how the human mind works.Duk Fehr,
• 'The A-Team of Robots', featuring Duk Fehr and Nikos Papanikolopolous, of  the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities' Center ofr Distributed Robotics, where the Scout robot, among others was invented. Also featured in this story is Sgt. Chir Kuklok for the Plymouth, MN SWAT team, which uses the scout as 'a first set of eyes on dangerous situations.'

The report is being aired on public radio stations in the United States, and is available for download as an audio slide show on Spectrum's "Inside Technology website at http://spectrum.ieee.org/static/special-report-robots-for-real. The website points to other recent features including