Robonaut 2 Looks Like Master Chief, Hopefully Less Aggressive
05.02.10 :: No comments yet, leave your own!
NASA and GM have combined forces to advance crappy Robonaut 1 (with his Star Warsesque head and his creepy fake muscles) into the sleek killing machine that is Robonaut 2, or R2 as he is known to his friends. Did I say killing machine? I meant humanoid telepresence-based space hero, so easy to get those mixed up.

R2 will be able to use the same tools humans use, things like hammers, staplers, sellotape, a bow and arrow, wiimotes, sticks of dynamite, spoons, lego, window spray, frying pans and, of course, big and dangerous guns. Probably with lasers and tiny rockets that make you go all dead. But that doesn’t matter as R2 will be floating above the world in the spaceosphere, hooray! Except that he will also be on Earth, forced to work in GM’s factories making sure people don’t get pwnd by those reckless and emotionless robotic arms. I’m not suggesting R2 might be dangerous or anything, but have you seen those lasers coming out of R2′s knuckles? My suspicion is suitably piqued.

R2 looks pretty cool too, what with its big shiny head. Rather like Master Chief from the ever popular youth video arcade game ‘Halo 3: Killing Stuff Lolz’. Go on, check out the likeness here. Okay, that was just a funny picture I found, real likeness here.

Okay, I am going to leave you with one more video before I go and hide, fearing that R2 has read this and is looking out for me. This is why we must fear. Meet Boba Fett Robonaut 1 (and Robonaut 1 doesn’t even have any friends to call him R1 either).

Robonaut 2 via Engadget via BotJunkie
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Flying Robot Penguins – AirPenguin
04.02.10 :: 6 Comments, leave your own!
As if penguins weren’t awesome enough already, Festo, an über efficient German efficiency company, have created the AirPenguin – an autonomous flying robot penguin. This is a pure example of beautiful engineering at work, if not pointless (except for being a pure example of beautiful engineering at work of course). The penguins have a micro-controller that allows the to explore with “free will” in a defined airspace, detecting said airspace and each other using ultrasound transmitters. Presumably they are flying by being full of helium as opposed to some new anti-gravity technology I haven’t heard about yet.

I do feel a sense of impending doom in the video when the penguins are flying slowly towards their keepers, which got me thinking about an army of these flying penguins one-hundred strong slowly making their ever shiny progress across the country mesmerising the population into submission. And there won’t just be penguins – there will be eagles, sharks, tigers, bassett hounds and elephants too (and so on in that fashion). We bow to our new flying robot animal overlords.

via Rickey
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Icosatetraped Robot!
03.02.10 :: No comments yet, leave your own!
This robot is really cool and reminds me of some sort of Pokémon snail/millipede creature or Rincewind’s Luggage from Terry Pratchett’s novels. Icosatetraped means that is has 24 feet, which whilst is true, only actually uses 8 of them to move – the other 16 ‘feet’ being used to support the robot’s weight. Most remarkable is that the feet themselves are soft – that is they are made from hollow, ribbed tubing – which is quite novel. The ribbed part is important too since the feet are controlled pneumatically, the tubes filling with air and emptying to bend them in any direction! The robot is controlled over wifi to a mac mini.

I would like to know how many weekends “a few weekends” (the time it took to construct) is because if it is anything less than eight that is incredible! I want to work at Google and make robots damnit.

via Boing Boing
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PALRO, a New Robot Pal
02.02.10 :: No comments yet, leave your own!
A new humanoid robot has been announced today, after some showboating last year, which is aimed at the aducational market to begin with – as with the wonderful Nao. Sales start on March 15th 2010 with the first thousand units and general release will follow later allowing hoobyists to get their greasy hands on PALRO’s 38.9″ body. Priced at around £2000 you actually get quite a lot of bang for your buck – PALRO boasts 20 degrees of freedom, a camera, microphones, speakers, an LED faceful of expressions, a meagre 1.5kg heaviness and an Intel Atom 1.60GHz brain. And PALRO looks awesome, with apparently many colours available if you’re into that sort of thing. Voice control is also being suggested, yet I cannot confirm at present.

Check out PALRO and his friend doing their thing:

Press release [translated] via Plastic Pals [link 1 | link 2]
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Spirit Stuck on Mars, Potentially Sad
30.01.10 :: No comments yet, leave your own!
source: http://xkcd.com

Poor Spirit. Stuck on the red planet with no hope of ever leaving and now, not moving either due to a couple of faulty wheels. But it isn’t so bad really – for one, Spirit doesn’t actually care. And if Spirit was capable of cognitive thought, it would be pretty damn pleased that it had lasted an incredulous six years rather than the originally-planned-for 90 days. And, being a scientist, would be more than happy to know it would be continuing with pushing the boundaries of science further evenm without moving – being stationary will allow for a different style of experiment to be undertaken, such as determining the planet’s core through rotational wobbles. But first, Spirit needs to be realigned to the northern winter sun to enable its critical electronics to stay warm.

We’re all routing for you, Spirit!

via Space Fellowship
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PETMAN – BigDog’s Big Bipedal Brother
26.01.10 :: No comments yet, leave your own!
Down at Boston Dynamics they have finally accomplished one of their long-term goals – they have created a robot THAT CAN WEAR SHOES! OMFG and stuff. Actually, what they have done is create a bipedal robot that is similar to BigDog but with two legs. It is essentially going to be the first anthropomorphic robot that can move dynamically just like a real person. Its initial use will be to test that chemical hazard suits do their job of allowing freedom of movement without falling apart, whilst being sprayed with various chemical warfare agents. PETMAN will be able to mimic e a big, hot, perspiring human as to give the most accurate test results. Sweaty robot.

When our future overlords start their rampage (delivery is estimated for 2011), maybe it is worth offering them a can of deodorant in an attempt to appease them before they begin all the skull crushing and general destructions.

Boston Dynamics PETMAN
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Living With Robots – a Honda Short Film
23.01.10 :: No comments yet, leave your own!
Honda released this short film, Living with Robots, at the Sundance Film Festival. It is pretty cool, mainly about ASIMO and its history but also throws in some footage of the weird bodyweight support thing. Basically, its like a pair of electronic pants for lazy people that makes it appear as though a large robotic spider is trying to escape from your crotch. Anyway, pretty good watch so press play now.

After you’ve digested that, let me thrill you with more ASIMO visual pleasure by showing you the old advert/film attempting to bring warm joyous feelings towards ASIMO and such. Well, it works. Enjoy.

Honda – Dream the Impossible Campaign
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What’s Big and (kind of) a Dog at the Same Time? BigDog
20.01.10 :: 2 Comments, leave your own!
well, it's like a big dog

BigDog is not your standard woof woof (minus head). It is a rough-terrain robot, capable of walking, running, bounding, climbing, carrying heavy loads and is fully house-trained. Okay, I made the last one up but I fully assume it is. Built and tamed by Boston Dynamics, it is about three feet long, two and a half feet tall and controlled by lots of computer gizmos and sensors and stuff – for those of you lacking imagination, that’s like a German Shephard with four Xbox and a Wii stuck to it.

BigDog gets about the place using a Leopard go-kart engine, various hydraulics, valves, actuators, servos, joints and springs, which all combine to get it to a speed of 4mph (to date). They also allow it to climb up 35 degree slopes, navigate over rubble, go on muddy hikes, bound around in snow and splash about it water. Amazingly, BigDog has managed to walk 12.8 miles without stopping or refueling, which is pretty sweet. BigDog can also carry a 150kg load – that’s two people, fifteen machine guns or about 1300 hamsters.

Check it out for yourself in the following videos and prepare to laugh as BigDog meets some ice. Oh and when that guy boots BigDog in the side, incredible robot.

And finally, even robots have to take some time out. I love you BigDog!

BigDog
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Sweet Bipedal Nao Robot
09.01.10 :: No comments yet, leave your own!
When I first saw this robot I assumed it was yet another humanoid robot and I guess it is really. There are some sweet features on-board though – fully customisable voice recognition and analysis, Internet interaction such as reading off an RSS feed (just like the I LIKE ROBOT feed!), face/shape and surroundings recognition, tactile response and the ability to interact with another Nao robot and perform collaborative work.

The Nao robot walks a bit funny and seemed to find it difficult to bend down to pick up the rubber duck, but it completed the task all the same. The self-righting mechanism is cool too, making the bot pretty much self-contained.

But the main thing that interested me was the first case of a robot lying – YOU JUST PUT THE DUCK IN THE BIN! Oh and the music in the video is awesome too.

Keep your eye on Aldebaran Robotics if you have (probably lots of) spare cash and want to buy one or two of your own!

Aldebaran Robotics via Smart Machines
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Swarming Robots, (Zombie) Infection!
08.01.10 :: No comments yet, leave your own!
"mmm, FeRAMs", the zombots are here

We all know I like robots, but a little known fact is I also like zombies. And then I found these. I had heard of swarm robots and they certainly piqued my interest. I did not even imagine you could set them up as in the video below, to simulate an infection scenario, just like zombies right? Right?! What makes it more zombie-like is that it is undertaken in low light – dusky, scary and zombie-y.

Zombots! Okay, maybe not, but a man can dream..

Even though these bots look simple, they aren’t – they drive using small mobile phone motors, can communicate over infrared (many uses here: one being the uploading of firmware to one robot can ‘infect’ it to all the others in a swarm, another to use the infrared sensors as ambient light sensors so the bots can zoom away (or to) light sources and a third use being the ability to identify colour changes on the floor) and their batteries hold around an hour charge. The bots can even charge themselves up by driving to a powered rail.

The whole system looks really fun, it is extensible and ready to be hacked and developed (if only I had the time..). You can pre-order your formica 2 kit here for a meagre £30 (though be prepared for a touch of easy soldering to complete them in all their glory).

Tiny - mobile phone motors and infrared communication

Clever robots nomming on electrons

Formica via Makezine
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I LIKE ROBOTS

I LIKE ROBOTS

2010: A YEAR IN ROBOTS

About

Blimey, it’s 2010 already, the most futuristic year to have ever happened. And what else exists in the future? Robots of course. So, in homage to our new masters (pending imminent takeover) here you will find a new robot each and every day of 2010, whether they be in pictures, art, videos or other forms.