The Rise of the Robots

Overall agricultural employment in California fell by about 11 percent in the first decade of the twenty-first century, even as the total production of crops like almonds, which are compatible with automated farming techniques, has exploded

Silvercar, a start-up rental car company, offers the capability to reserve and pick up a car without ever having to interact with a rental assistant

One of the most important propellants of the robot revolution may turn out to be “cloud robotics”—or the migration of much of the intelligence that animates mobile robots into powerful, centralized computing hubs

Rather than employing store managers at each location, Kura uses centralized facilities

ROS—or Robot Operating System—was originally conceived at Stanford University’s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and then developed into a full-fledged robotics platform by Willow Garage, Inc., a small company that designs and manufactures programmable robots that are used primarily by researchers at universities. ROS is similar to operating systems like Microsoft Windows, Macintosh OS, or Google’s Android but is geared specifically toward making robots easy to program and control.