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.
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.
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.
We all secretly knew that Bender would end up as a post sooner or later, but what guise would he be in? Well, when I was finding stuff out about yesterday’s robot I found this little project which is immensely brilliant. Some dude in New Zealand took it upon himself to build a life-size Bender out of MDF and fibreglass. But that wasn’t all – there is a ‘brain’ to allow Bender to talk (MOS 6502 processor spouting pre-recorded clips via a wireless remote), a light-up cigar and, the best bit, a beer brewer in Bender’s stomach (albeit it does make it so it appears Bender is urinating the beer..).
I could go on about how awesome this Bender Brewer is but I think you should take a few minutes and just have a browse of the dude’s website. Very nice job.
Well it looks like the pinnacle of human civilisation has been achieved. Exhibit A: the Asahi Robocco beer pouring robot. Well, when I say achieved I actually mean attempted as this is a pretty rubbish robot. The idea is great but the execution is, unfortunately, poor. Very poor. So if you do grab yourself one of these beer pouring robots, don’t forget to follow these simple instructions:
Learn Japanese to understand what to do to get yourself a nice, cold beer.
Don your safety glasses in case of flying ring pulls.
Stand clear and put on ear protectors for the noise.
Pour yourself a beer, take a seat and maybe read a book whilst waiting for the robot to complete its task.
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.
Ever seen that episode of Futurama where Bender becomes an Ultimate Robot Fighter? You know the one, where he starts out as Bender the Offender but ends up as Gender Bender and gets his shiny metal ass handed to him by the really big Destructor – the twist being that Destructor is controlled by that insect-looking guy who used to train Leela how to fight when she was younger but said women “lacked the way of the warrior” like a complete arse? Well, now you too can be that complete arse.
Welcome to.. usually I would stick the name of the robots here or the toy or whatever but I can’t find it. They’re essentially radio controlled boxing robots. Yes, I know there are plenty of toys like that around, at least two whole other choices, but these ones are unique. You hold the controllers as if you were playing a Nintendo Wii and you box. Punch punch jab punch slap punch. That kinda thing. The infrared controllers have all manner of accelerometers and tilt-sensors that detect you punching movements and translate them straight to the robot, with buttons on the controllers that control moving forwards and backwards. On the robots chest there is a target beneath four LEDs – hit the target and light an LED, light all four to win.
Please, please, please find me where I can buy these in England. For now the only place I can find them is in Canada – and they’re only bloody well sold out.
Spike Jonze is cool (think music videos for Beastie Boys, Björk, Chemical Brothers, Daft Punk, Sonic Youth, Breeders, FatBoy Slim, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and the chairman of the board himself, The Notorious B.I.G.). Robots are cool (think, well, robots in their entirety. Especially ones wielding lasers). So Spike Jonze plus robots must be cool, right? I can only really say potentially here. I mean, the film itself looks cool but what’s this? Sponsored by Absolut Vodka? It wouldn’t actually be so bad if it didn’t somehow creep into the film itself, but with the tag-line “A Love Story in an Absolut World” I have a horrifying feeling that it has. Absolut Vodka is weird, but I think any vodka is weird since I drank too much as a misguided youth. And what about the state of indie films, about how they’ve sold out to corporations and blah blah? Well, I don’t give a crap about that. I like robots. End of. And their being in this film a-plenty = win.
I look forward to seeing this film in full some time if it ever comes out, if anyone knows anything let me know? I have also found out someone has printed a book to coincide with the imminent release or something, which can be found here and looks kinda cool perhaps maybe.
I only just found out about this guy/girl/collective/robot/robot collective/disembodied hand (haha, that joke has literally been on every version of this story I have seen so thought I would keep it too because I am being lazy). Basically he/she/they/it/they/it are crafting a robot every day in 2010 out of junk and stuff. Just like I LIKE ROBOTS writing about a robot every day in 2010, but actually doing something instead. See the pictures here.
Good luck to you weird robot maker person/ecollection of persons/robot/collections of robots and remember, robots are for life not just for 2010.
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.
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.
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