3 New Chips to Help Robots Find Their Way Around

Robots have a tough job making their way in the world. Life throws up obstacles, and it takes a lot of computing power to avoid them. At the IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference last month in San Francisco, engineers presented some ideas for lightening that computational burden. That's a particularly good thing if you're a compact robot, with a small battery pack and a big job to do. Engineers at Intel are experimenting with robot-specific accelerators as part of a collaborative multirobot system.