Filed under: Robots

Here at Engadget, it’s a safe bet to say that we’ve never met a robot we didn’t like. Still, people who work as farmhands may not take too kindly to this concept for an agricultural droid from Vision Robotics. The idea is that a scout robot would use vision and mapping technology to determine what areas of an orchard need to be harvested, and then would deploy itself, or possibly a team of “harvester” robots to bring home a basket of delicious goodies. It’s similar to a tomato-picking bot we spotted nearly two years ago, but we’re guessing that the mapping aspect makes this new one a bit different. From what we can tell, these bots are still in the lab, if not on the drawing board, but a recent application to the US Patent and Trademark Office shows some promise. If the scout robot gets approved or someone spots it roaming the Central Valley of California or the Yakima Valley of Washington, we’ll let you know. Cyber house rules, indeed.

 

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SPONSORED BY: BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time.

Filed under: Robots, Transportation

It’s always more fun driving with a buddy than cruising around alone, but since we lack what are referred to as “social skills,” there aren’t that many folks willing to ride shotgun in our car or hop on the handlebars of our Segway. Enter the robotic driving companion from Pioneer, a little penguin-shaped bot being shown off at CEATEC that perches on your dashboard and seems to act as a blinking, chirping second set of eyes on the road (or a backseat driver, if you will). Unfortunately — due to garbled machine translation — it’s nearly impossible for us to discern all the features offered by this device, but we think that its embedded camera and image recognition software allow it to remind you when the light has changed, alert you if you’re swerving (”Officer, I swear I’m not drunk — see, my robot penguin hasn’t chirped at me once”), or give you a heads-up when you pass a “point of interest” (such as a ferris wheel, helpfully suggests the Impress write-up). No word yet on pricing or availability for this lively road trip partner, nor is it clear whether sporting one qualifies you for the carpool lane. Keep reading to check out the unnamed bot “in action” (i.e. sitting motionless in front of a driving simulator), and then hit the read link for a few more snaps and short video…

 

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SPONSORED BY: BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time.

Filed under: Household, Robots

So you’ve got Roomba on carpet duty and a couple Scoobas taking care of the kitchen and bathrooms, but who’s cleaning up that mess of a workshop where you spend most of your time getting your hacks and mods on? Well up until now you had to rely on your own prowess with a shopvac (meaning that nothing ever actually got tidied up), but thanks to the good folks at iRobot, the bad-ass Dirt Dog is here to get your back. The same size and shape as the more timid Roomba — meaning all your current batteries, remotes, and charging bases are compatible — Dirt Dog comes equipped with a 40% larger debris bin along with specially designed brushes to sweep up caked-on dirt, heavy debris, and other messes that are “too dirty for a regular vacuum.” This new $130 dog will be taking a bite out of some of your toughest cleaning chores starting on Friday, but you gotta make sure that it doesn’t wander out of your workspace and into the rest of the house — it probably won’t pee on your couch, but those 1,000 RPM brushes will shred your shag carpets, scratch the hell out of your polished hardwood, and — if you have a significant other — get you confined to the garage for the rest of your natural life.

[Via The Raw Feed]

 

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SPONSORED BY: BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time.

Filed under: Robots

Ok folks, the future is officially upon us: Japan has just built a robot with a frickin’ laser embedded in its head. Yes, we were thinking Cylons too, but it turns out that their intentions are not quite as devious. The new Excellent Mobility and Interactive Existance as Workmate bot (EMIEW) — who last had a gig as a hotel clerk — has now been equipped with a sensory laser, giving it the ability to navigate a crowd without bumping into people. Hitachi will demo the new-and-improved EMIEW at the 2006 World Automotive Congress beginning October 23 in Yokohama, Japan — we just hope that its laser is also able to identify shorter folks, because injured toddlers are really bad PR.

[Via The Raw Feed]

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Filed under: Robots

We’ve certainly seen our fair share of robotic surgeons, nursebots, and robopharmacists around here, but what happens when it’s the robots themselves that need a little medical attention? Why you ship them off to Osaka, Japan’s Akazawa Roboclinic, of course. Although some people might write off the recently-opened clinic– which is run by Systec Akazawa, makers of the skateboarding, Bluetooth-controlled PLEN bot — as little more than a repair shop, the employees apparently conduct themselves in a very professional manner, donning traditional hospital lab coats and dividing the space into examination, operating, and rehabilitation rooms. The hospital is currently staffed by just four “physicians” led by a Dr. Ohno, who says that the most common maladies they encounter are faulty motors, fractured frames, and severed wires. So before sending your malfunctioning Robosapien, decapitated Qrio, or rabid Aibo to that great mechatronic heaven in the sky (a.k.a. your local landfill), spend a few bucks on a long distance call to Akazawa — they may just be able to fix up your beloved robotic companion and return him/her as good as new.

[Via Robot Gossip and Loving the Machine]

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Filed under: Robots

Our fellow Americans: be forewarned, our seemingly friendly neighbors in the Great White North may soon be invading with legions upon legions of seemingly helpful medical assistant robots. Oh yes, this time it’s coming from the inocuous city of Winnipeg (made famous for housing the Royal Canadian Mint!), where the Robotic IV Automation is in development by Intelligent Hospital Systems. This robot (which surely must be related to both Penelope and Emma), can, as its name implies monitor the delivery of various medications, in syringe, pill and IV forms, up to 100 perscriptions per hour. Given that our country is already afraid of the importation of cheap Canadian drugs, we think that we should be even more frightened of the devious importation of robots that can administer those cheap Canadian drugs that will take jobs away from hard-working American nurses.

[Via Robot Gossip]

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Filed under: Storage

Because we can’t seem to get enough of robots, so how about we show you one that actually does something useful? Too boring, you say? What if we handed you a stack of 50 DVDs and CDs and told you to rip the image, archive ‘em and, while you’re at it, take a picture of each label. Now you want a robot to lord over, don’t you? Lucky for you, our favorite Kansas hard drive maker and friend of forensics analysts everywhere, James Wiebe has come to your rescue with the WiebeTech CD/DVD Imager. So remember kids, this new bot may not be as fun to say as the robotic “welly wanger”, but it’s probably a bit more practical if you’re about to fire off a few hundred copies of your latest tape (on CD) and can front the $2399 one of these will set you back.

[Via MacMinute]

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Filed under: Robots

Following recent developments in robot cooperation between virtual bots, AIBOs and military bots, researchers at Örebro University in Sweden have created yet more progenitors of our future overlords that can get buddy buddy with each other. These bots work by tapping into each others sensors and computers, allowing them to perform tasks that they otherwise wouldn’t be able to do on their own, such as navigating past difficult obstacles — a door, for instance. In one test, two robots balanced a piece of wood between them, relaying information about speed and direction to each other in order to keep it balanced. Sure, today it’s only wood… tomorrow, it could be you.

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Filed under: Robots

So it looks like firefighters may be the next unlucky professionals replaced by cheap robotic labor, at least if a snakebot built by the Foundation for Industrial and Scientific Research in Norway (SINTEF) ever makes it into mass production. Lovingly nicknamed Anna Konda (no explanation necessary), the Norwegian bot was assembled using 20 hydraulic motors powered by a regular fire hose, whose 100 bars of pressure give it enough power to break through walls and even lift a car right up off the ground. Anna consists of ten segments containing angle sensors, two valves, and two motors each -- rotating around orthogonal axes and wrapped in a tough steel exoskeleton -- that are controlled by a computer to help her maneuver over numerous types of terrain. Besides providing support in dangerous situations like tunnel fires, SINTEF envisions future versions of Anna being used to locate and provide oxygen to earthquake victims or perform maintenance on underwater oil rigs. The good news for human firefighters is that at least a few of their traditional tasks still remain beyond the robosnake's capabilities -- well, until it's able to climb a tree and rescue a stranded cat without breaking its neck, that is.

[Via Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends]

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Filed under: Robots, Transportation

It's not often we're sitting on a sophisticated 3D printer and four tons of material, but Lockheed Martin apparently wanted to see if they could "print" out a new plane from their Skunk Works facility in California. The result is the Polecat, a 91-foot wide, four-ton unmanned flying wing with the major claim to fame being that most of its internal structures were rapid prototyped on said 3D printers. Our broke selves still have to stick with printing out our airplanes in paper (though our folding techniques have significantly advanced since the Cold War), but it's strange to think of a future where aircraft (and landcraft, and seacraft) aren't built by people and machines, but instead are squirted out of tanks of polymer and sent on their merry little ways.

[Via Futurismic]

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From now until September 10th, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is holding a new exhibit of animatronic characters in movies. You can see such cinematic luminaries as Johnny-5, A gremlin from Gremlins, the arms Doc Oc used in the latest Spiderman movie, the little Men in Black aliens, and Alien vs. Predator in mid-combat.

There are lots more characters being shown there so if you’re in town, you might as well make a trip of it. Who doesn’t love Johnny Five? – Jason Chen

Exhibit Page [Academy via Swazzle via MAKE]

This roller skating robot from Japan may not drink and spew catchphrases like "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass", but unlike Bender, you can control this one with your Bluetooth-enabled cellphone.

Plen has 18 movable joints and a 32bit ARM7 CPU inside. You connect him to your PC using USB and he runs/walks/skates for 25 minutes on one charge. There's only a few available from Japan, so if you want one you probably need to hurry. Available from the land of Dragonball Z for 262,500 Yen ($2,200). – Jason Chen

Plen: Bluetooth controlled robot goes on sale [New Launches]

Although I received my Lego Mindstorms NXT kit in the mail early last week, it wasn't until yesterday that I really had a chance to dig in, spending a whole day working through the included instructions. It's difficult to completely review NXT in the entirety of its potential as it's the first set of new platform—more instructions and kits should be coming down the line soon enough.

Still, my initial impression is good. The included software—which was such a turd in the original Mindstorms that some builders rolled their own versions—is approachable and capable. It ran a bit doggishly on my Macbook Pro, especially when plinking together GUI bits of programming logic, but I rarely felt lost or overwhelmed.

Each step of the software leads you to the next: first a build phase, with zoomable instructions; Then, a programming phase; Finally, testing. The first model even has a separate box with its pieces, saving you the trouble of searching through the set when you're eager to dig right in.

After the jump: Where Lego went wrong.

The NXT brick, which acts as both the brains and (usually) the body of your models, has both USB and Bluetooth built-in. For whatever reason, I couldn't make my laptop talk to the brick over Bluetooth. They'd pair just fine, but the NXT software did not recognize it.

Instead I used the USB connection to load my programs, sounds, and images—the brick both makes noise and displays things like beating hearts on its LCD display—into the NXT's brain. A bit of a hassle, but livable—more livable than the tiny amount of built-in flash memory storage.

With the low price of flash storage these days, I have to question Lego's decision to limit the amount of memory to 256KB of user storage. There was not even enough space to story the four initial programs and their accompanying sound and image files. And we're talking 4-5k sounds here—not multi-megabyte MP3s. Plus there's no expansion slots for later upgrades. It seems that most Lego builders will be running out of space for their own programs soon after they begin to write their own. It's almost a dealbreaker.

The build quality is typically high, although one of the elements was bent when I received it. I was just barely able to pry it back into shape without breaking the plastic, but if I couldn't, I would not have been able to build at least one of the four main models.

I also felt a little bit abandoned after building the final project, a humanoid robot named 'Alpha Rex.' Sure, the starter instructions are more about teaching you the basics of building and programming, but it still would have been nice to have been left with a big finale for the impressive robot, like using its distance sensor to keep itself from falling off a table. Instead, the lessons end abruptly with no suggestion of where next to go. Sure, that's sort of what Lego is about—making your own fun—but some challenges or ideas would have been nice.

In all, I'm pleased with the NXT platform, but for its price—$250—I'd expect a bit more. Especially more memory, considering that this is supposed to be the first in a series of Mindstorms products over the next few years.

For dedicated Mindstormers already sold on Lego, the NXT system's pleasant and capable software package is almost worth the price of entry by itself. –Joel Johnson

Filed under: Robots

A new breakthrough in materials science may pave the way for those inevitable swarms of tiny flying robots that will one day darken the skies and strike fear into us all, as researchers in South Korea have succeeded in coaxing specially-prepared cellophane paper to rapidly curve and straighten itself in an insect-like flapping motion. Although scientists have apparently known since the 1950's that wood was piezoelectric, meaning that it bends slightly when exposed to electricity, it took a team from Inha University with help from Texas A&M to discover that the same property also holds true for other cellulose-based material. By coating both sides of a sheet of cellophane with thin layers of gold, the researchers were able to create so-called Electroactive paper (EAPap) so sensitive that the voltage from a microwave beam provides enough power to trigger its unique shape-changing abilities. Oddly enough, no one is quite sure of the physics behind the transformation -- theories center around pressure changes resulting from the movement of ions -- but regardless of how it works, we're sure that more than a few governments will be most interested in deploying this technology to beef up their domestic and international surveillance programs.

[Via Roland Piquepaille and ScienceNOW]

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Filed under: Household, Robots

Some of you laughed at South Korea's bellicose and seemingly unrealistic plans for 100% robot market penetration by 2020, but we wouldn't rule 'em out. Especially not since the Ministry of Information and Communication, which originally made said claim, will begin placing 1,000 wheeled, cell-phone controlled automatons -- dubbed URCs, or ubiquitous robotic companions -- into households and kindergartens this fall as a trial run for new robot technologies. The URCs will do the usual handling of domestic tasks as we might expect (and some we might not have seen coming, like cleaning rooms and reading books to children), as well the usual hanging out, taking care of pets (the real kind), and perform a little light sentry duty. The only thing at all disconcerting about any of this is the fact that unlike normal household droids, these URCs will be operated wirelessly from a central computing center ala I, Robot. Even though central robot behavior processing is what will supposedly get get the cost down to between $1,000  and $2,000 for one of these units, you'll never know exactly what your URC phoning home to the Ministry of Information and Communication about.

[Via GoRobotics]

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Filed under: Robots

Ok, so while it's not quite as flashy as the Robot Hall of Fame, Nagoya's about to get its automaton on in October when they'll be opening the Robot Museum. We recommend patronizing this landmark if for no other reason than making sure your identity appears in the museum's records of attendance -- anything to score a few points with the bots should they, you know, run amok and use the Robot Museum as the capital for the new world order. You know what? Forget it, we don't need some joke about robots taking over the world to justify attending this museum. You should go because pretty much anything they could put in there -- from Daleks to Totoya assembly arms -- is  gonna be freaking phenominal. Did we mention how much we love robots?

[Via Pink Tentacle]

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France must be riding high, having just knocked Brazil out of the World Cup. When not crushing South American dreams, it seems the French have a passion for robots and devising unique methods of controlling them. Take this mod, for example, that uses the PSP's Wi-Fi capabilities—and a little homebrew magic— to control this haggard-looking robot. It's probably more fun to play with this robot than it is to play any of the PSP's absolutely stellar games. – Nicholas Deleon

PSP Robot Remote [TechEBlog]

 
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Related: Printable Robot

Alas, these printable robots can't feel your pain, spy on you, or do the nasty, but you can print them from your own inkjet printer.

The first printed robot may more resemble a paper origami insect than an octopus. It would operate as a digital ugoku (moving) origami capable of locomotion under its own power and even performing preprogrammed physical tasks.

This works by embedding tiny circuits onto the paper, so that the "devices will integrate structural, mechanical and electronic components during fabrication using an all-inkjet printing process". Maybe someday we'll be able to print out a device that will be able to, in turn, print out another copy. – Jason Chen

Printable Robots [OhmyNews via Neatorama]

 
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Filed under: Robots, Transportation

Don’t let those cutesy looks fool you, these new XAV robotic military vehicles from Korea pack a bit of a punch. The surveillance XAV (which we’re guessing is the one to the left) weighs in at 1.2-tons, and is designed for patrol and information gathering. It’s battery powered — for extra sneakiness — and has a top speed of about 19MPH. The combat XAV is a a bit speedier, at 28MHP, but weighs only 0.9-tons and is powered by a gasoline engine. Combat XAV also has the riskier role of frontline combat, but luckily both it and its surveillance brother are outfitted with 5.56-millimeter machine guns for a bit of self defense. Both units are still in testing, and will go back to the shop for more upgrades between 2013 and 2020 before they actual are deployed. The Korean military also has some eight-legged dog-like robots in the works to replace human soldiers in some guard duties by 2012. We can’t say we feel incredibly confident placing a machine gun in the “hands” of a dumb machine, but luckily the $36 million project has a ways to go before any robots get to fighting.

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Robots

We'd thought that with all the robotic doctors, bartenders, and baseball players out there that our autonomous frenemies already possessed a pretty light touch, but a new material developed by researchers at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln may help future bots replace even more professionals by endowing them with greater tactile sensitivity. Unlike traditional touch sensors or the sensitive skin developed by NASA, the design created by Ravi Saraf and his colleagues uses alternating layers of gold and cadmium sulphide nanoparticles in a film just 100-nanometers thick, and indirectly detects pressure using a digital camera to capture emitted light when voltage is applied. Since the light output of the sensor is directly correlated to the amount of pressure being applied, subtle surface aberrations on a given object are easily identifiable, meaning that a bot equipped with this technology would be able to resolve details as small as the embossed lettering on a coin. Besides giving robots a better understanding of the stuff we make them hold, the sensors could also be applied to devices used in tele-medicine, so doctors performing remote surgeries could operate with more precision and less poking around.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

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