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Saturday, 16 November 2013

People-safe robot is first non-human to close NASDAQ

Comment: Machines meeting those who think like machines. Cause for celebration?  If you are non-human  - flesh or silicon - very probably.

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New Scientist

Hillary Clinton, Richard Branson and Michael Jackson have all done it. Today a multi-jointed, people-friendly robot arm, called UR5, became the first non-human to ring the bell at the NASDAQ stock exchange, a twice daily act that marks the opening and closing of the market in Times Square, New York.

NASDAQ offers its bell-ringing up to companies, heads-of-state and community leaders as a means to make announcements or celebrate important milestones – Mark Zuckerberg rang the bell the day Facebook went public, for example.

UR5 was chosen to mark the launch of the first robot-specific stock market index, ROBO-STOX, which allows investors to track the value of the robotics industry as a whole.

"It is a very exciting step for us, and an exciting step for the robot industry as a whole," says Esben Østergaard of Universal Robots in Odense, Denmark, which makes UR5. "The world needs robots, and we are very happy to be chosen to represent this important event in the history of robot technology."



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