robots

Shape-shifting robot squeezes onto military radar

Layer 8 — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 16:43:13 -0400

iRobot today won a $3.3 million contract to build a shape-shifting, flexible robot for dangerous or hard to reach combat duties.

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Bill Gates and the Ballmer Bot

videonet — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 12:18:49 -0400

Video footage from Microsoft's TechEd conference showing Bill Gates interacting with the Ballmer Bot, as part of his TechEd speech on the future of robotics. Note how uncomfortable Gates seems during this.

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Icy reception awaits new robots

Layer 8 — Wed, 28 May 2008 11:52:40 -0400

Robots and unmanned vehicles can drop bombs, fight fires, fix spacecraft problems, conduct orchestras but until now, they generally haven’t been created to handle the harsh environments of Alaska and the South Pole.

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Before Roomba

Adam Gaffin — Sat, 10 May 2008 10:13:26 -0400

There was life-saving, home-protecting, husband-replacing Newton, running on an XT-equivalent PC with a massive 20-Megabyte hard drive and a convenient 729k floppy disk: From 1989. Via Ed Symkus.

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Carnegie Mellon and instant robots

Alpha Doggs — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 17:12:31 -0500

Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Academy has cooked up ROBOTC , a programming language designed to help high school and college students create robots in hours instead of weeks. The language, which is said to be especially useful at debugging, works with LEGO Mindstorms RCX & NXT and Innovation First VEX and FRC controllers. More from CMU.

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Rosie the Robot has some competition

Keith Shaw — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 17:43:56 -0500

The paranoid folks over at the Layer 8 blog are worried about killer robots like the Terminator, I'm much more excited about robots like Rosie the maid from The Jetsons. My dream robot might be closer to reality with the announcement today of the Readybot, made by a bunch of Silicon Valley engineers. The prototype device looks like a white enamel box with wheels, two human-sized arms and chrome styling, that can do such tasks as picking up cups, bowls, plates and dumps food into the trash and can load the dishwasher. The robot can also scrape and scrub countertops, and grab custom tools to scrub, sponge or get around the kitchen. The aim of the project, Readybot's makers say, it so see how much of an average kitchen a robot can clean. The group has issued its "Readybot Robot Challenge", a non-profit effort similar to the DARPA Grand Challenge robot car race. Check out the group's preview video to see Rosie, errr, Readybot, in action.

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Terminator rising: Killer military robot arms race under way

Layer 8 — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 09:26:05 -0500

Can it be that the Terminator movies were right and robots will consume the Earth? Seems that's what one researcher thinks at least.

We are beginning to see the first steps towards an international robot arms race and it may not be long before robots become a standard terrorist weapon to replace the suicide bomber, according to professor Noel Sharkey, from the Royal United Services Institute Department of Computer Science.

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X Prize, Google set on 10 teams in $30 million race to moon

Layer 8 — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 12:53:16 -0500

The X Prize Foundation and Google announced the first ten teams to register for the Google Lunar X Prize, the groups’ robot race to the moon worth $30 million in prizes.

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Elmo Live: Genius robot or parent's worst nightmare?

Keith Shaw — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 12:09:13 -0500

My daughter is now at an age where I'm going to feel the parental pressure of having to get the hottest new toy for the Christmas season, especially when the toy is Elmo-related. I was able to escape the Tickle Me Elmo craze, last year's Elmo TMX (Tickle Me Extreme) and other such interactive plush toys. We own a Chicken Dance Elmo, and she sort of likes that toy, but we're able to quickly distract her with other things so it doesn't become an obsession. I'm not sure I'm going to be able to escape the latest development from Fisher-Price, which announced the Elmo Live interactive product yesterday at the Toy Fair 2008. The $59.99 toy is more lifelike than any other previous interactive toy, and approaches the level of other interactive robot toys, such as the Robosapien and Robopanda devices from WowWee Robotics. I'm not sure whether this approaches Pleo territory yet, but to a preschooler obsessed with Elmo, that doesn't matter. The Elmo Live doll seems to be really alive as his mouth opens and closes just like the muppet, his head bobbles back and forth, and he can wave his arms, sit, stand,cross his legs, and tell stories jokes, sing songs and play games. Children can activate actions by squeezing Elmo's foot, stomach, back or nose. The toy is expected to hit store shelves on Oct. 14, 2008, so if you have young kids you might want to circle that date on your calendar and get ready to stand in line for a while. It's possible that young kids might freak out at having a seemingly alive Elmo dancing and singing in your living room, and it's also possible that parents will get really annoyed with all of the noise pretty quickly (I know that we've already started to "lose" certain musically annoying toys in the house). Who knows? Maybe we as adults are the ones getting excited about this toy, having never grown up with the types of toys that today's kids are subjected to. Anyway, words alone can't give justice to this toy, check out this video to see Elmo come to life.

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RE: Researchers control robot with monkey's brain signals

Sun, 10 Feb 2008 04:25:13 -0500

Wonderful! I suggest a more immediate, dare I say *urgent* application: Use a monkey's brain to control an incumbent US president's movements remotely. This would improve everyone's quality of life immediately, and improve the quality of decision-making at top level.

RE: Shape-shifting robot swarms will create 3D replicas

Tue, 05 Feb 2008 21:55:56 -0500

"...a three-dimensional image of [your boss] simply will sit in your office and have a virtual discussion with you. ..." At which juncture, a 3D replica of myself will tell him where he can put a 3D replica of his job.... :(

Tank-filling robot not the answer

Paul McNamara — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 11:17:22 -0500

For as long as I can remember I have harbored a completely irrational and wildly disproportionate distaste for refueling the family vehicles, so this story about a Dutch inventor's tank-filling robot was read with rapt if ultimately unfulfilled self-interest.

The robot - dubbed Tankpitstop - is supposedly ready for real-world trials over there, but I'm having a hard time seeing it at a station near us any time soon.

From Reuters:

Dutch inventors unveiled on Monday a 75,000 euro ($111,100) car-fuelling robot they say is the first of its kind, working by registering the car on arrival at the filling station and matching it to a database of fuel cap designs and fuel types.

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Gecko-like glue will let robots walk on ceiling

Layer 8 — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 12:58:30 -0500

Researchers say they have created an anti-sliding adhesive that mimics the tiny Gecko lizard and could one day be used to outfit a small robot that could climb walls and ceilings.

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Satisfy your appetite for robot news by attending a business conference on topic

Alpha Doggs — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 09:39:42 -0500

The 5th annual Robo Business Conference & Expo is coming up April 8-10 in Pittsburgh, with keynotes from iRobot's CEO Colin Angle and Takeo Kanade, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University.

Sessions include:

* A Platform for Autonomous Mobile Manipulation R&D: Modular Hardware and Open Source

* SoftwareCultivating a Robotics Workforce from Computer Science Majors: Seven Years of Lessons

* Mobile Service Robots in an Eldercare Setting

Update: Robot company gets $5M order

Keith Shaw — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 10:58:40 -0500

A few months ago I wrote an item about the Adept Quattro s650 robot, and how the look of it reminded me of the 1984 film 'Runaway', in which scary spider-like robots threaten society. Today, the company announced it has received a $5 million order for the robots from a major European machine builder. More than 100 s650 robots will be deployed globally over a 12-month period for a proprietary high-speed, vision-guided handling application. "This order for over 100 Quattro robots from a leading European manufacturer is a very significant milestone for Adept," said John Dulchinos, president & COO of Adept Technology, Inc. in a statement. "It validates the Quattro robot’s capabilities and market acceptance, and positions Adept as a leader in high speed packaging and handling applications." Congratulations to Adept Technology, and thanks for having a sense of humor about the scary robot blog post.

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Robot love: South Korea to build robot theme parks

Layer 8 — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 15:03:57 -0500

Call it WestWorld Lives! South Korea officials today said they hope to build two robot theme parks for $1.6 billion by 2013.

On the Korea.com Web site officials said they consider robotics to be one of South Korea's key growth industries, emphasizing "service robots" that can clean homes and offer up entertainment. The robotics industry has grown about 40% a year since 2003, officials said.

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Carnegie Mellon grabs robot car racing flag, $2 million

Layer 8 — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 11:09:09 -0500

Carnegie Mellon's Tartan Racing team won first place and $2 million in the DARPA Urban Challenge this past weekend. The field of 11 autonomous vehicles was pitted against each other on a course of suburban/urban roadways.

After reviewing judges' scorecards overnight, DARPA officials concluded that Carnegie's Boss, a robotized 2007 Chevy Tahoe, followed California driving laws as it navigated the course and that it operated in a safe and stable manner.

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I now pronounce you man and robot

Keith Shaw — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 10:44:45 -0400

I'm a certified sci-fi geek and fan of future technology, but this next piece of news even creeps me out a bit. According to this Computerworld story, an artificial intelligence researcher is predicting that humans will be marrying robots by the year 2050 because of dramatic advances in robotics. David Levy, a British artificial intelligence researcher whose book, "Love and Sex with Robots," will be released next Tuesday (Nov. 6), says robots will be very much like a new race of people because of their abilities to have intelligent conversations and display emotions. While this may sound exciting to some people, I think it would open up a whole new set of problems. I had a hard enough time as a teen-ager trying to communicate with humans of the opposite sex, imagine how weird it would be to get turned down for a date by a robot. Then again, if all of the robots in 2050 look like 7 of 9 from Star Trek, I would work on my human-robot pickup lines in a hurry. "Hey baby, you have the most beautiful neural network I've ever seen." Update: The slide show boys have put together a list of the 10 Robots We'd Like to Marry. Check it out.

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High-speed robots frighten me

Keith Shaw — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 18:09:19 -0400

I'm sure that the new Adept Quattro s650 robot (pictured) is going to be very useful for companies interested in high-speed packaging of food, medical and consumer goods, but looking at this robot gives me the creeps. According to the company's press release, the "Adept Quattro is a new type of kinematic robot with a unique four arm design that was designed exclusively for high-speed pick-and-place applications." That's all and good, but I'm reminded of the 1984 movie "Runaway," in which Gene Simmons (yes, from Kiss) created a bunch of spider-like robots that would inject you with paralyzing poison. Tom Selleck (yes, from Magnum, P.I.) plays the good guy who saves the world from stinging spider-bots. More information is available at the Adept Web site. Info about the robot, not the movie.

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Robots are cool

Keith Shaw — Thu, 17 May 2007 10:36:43 -0400

Earlier this week I was in Boston checking out the RoboBusiness 2007 show, to see the latest in robotics technology as it's used for business and military applications. Check out this slide show for more details and photos of the robots on display.

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