Craftsmen at small, family-run workshops refined gadgets that no industrial robot could ever produce as adeptly.

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As it turns out, there's a lot more to the installation than a Kuka industrial robot, fiberglass, plywood and steel railing.

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The hard work at the Eindhoven-based company is carried out by an old industrial robot that Vander Kooij fashioned into a 3D printer.

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The software for the EV3, which is based on the same National Instruments LabView software used for industrial robot applications, has been upgraded.

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Microchip-testing-equipment maker Advantest Corp. and industrial-robot maker Yaskawa Electric Corp. have confirmed that they placed pension money with AIJ.

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In 2008, the total world robot population including service and industrial robots was 8.6 million ande xpected to grow to 13 million by the end of 2012.

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With fewer people needed to operate a robot than to operate a conventional industrial manufacturing plant, many people will end up with more leisure than they would like, Ms Litzenberger acknowledges.

BBC: Robots: Brave New World moves a step closer

The robot, developed by German engineer Bernd Brodbeck and Kiener Maschinenbau, a manufacturer of automated industrial systems, is a tool to build solar power plants rather than operate them.

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The first of those took place last July, when Abderrahmane Kheddar, director of the CNRS-AIST joint robotics laboratory at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology in Tsukuba, Japan, and his team used FMRI to allow someone to control a robot located thousands of miles away using only their thoughts.

FORBES: The Robots Are Coming (and they seem to be revolutionizing healthcare, agriculture and education along the way)!