This article, from Israel’s Yediot Acharonot newspaper, is titled “‘A Vacuum Cleaner Captured a Snake.” It looks like “captured” is a bit of an understatement… The Roomba 560 appears to have totally pwned what we’re told is a deadly viper threatening some kids (and possibly a cat) by sucking it up around one of its rotating brushes. There are more graphic pics of the, uh, end result over on Facebook, but suffice it to say that the poor little snakey came to a rather violent, and probably really confusing, end. I’m not sure I’ll be able to look at my Roomba the same way again (and neither will my pet snake), but it’s good to know that our robot vacuums have our backs when it comes to poisonous reptiles shaped like electrical cords.

BTW, if anyone can translate any of that text, we’d much appreciate it.

[ iRobot PackBot on Facebook ]

Thanks Dave!

Bandit here is a sort of friendly, sort of scary robot designed to help you exercise. And I mean, that’s what you want in a personal trainer, right? Somebody nice, but somebody who you’ll perform for ’cause you’re worried that if you don’t they’ll suck your soul out. Yeah, that’s Bandit.

Bandit is helping the University of Southern California Center for Robotics and Embedded Systems conduct a study on exercise training. 70 volunteers of all ages (including 20 people aged 60 or older living in retirement homes) will have either Bandit himself or Bandit on video as a trainer, and the researchers will try to figure out if the physical presence of the robot makes a difference.

I would say that Bandit isn’t quite human enough to set off those Uncanny Valley alarm bells, but come on guys, are eyelids too much to ask? It’s that creepy unblinking stare that really puts people off.

[ CRES ] VIA [ DVICE ]

GetRobo has the scoop on a presentation made by Toyota executives entitled “Realization of Moon Exploration Using Advanced Robots by 2020.” Sending robots to the moon is certainly not a new idea, but slick looking humanoid robots? Building rock gardens and doing calligraphy? I guess the robots can do whatever they want once they get there, and Toyota has some fairly specific ideas on hardware and capabilities:

-joints are protected from regolith

-small capacity solar battery onboard

-internal status shows on screen on chest

-arms exchangeable for different tasks

-able to jump with springs in legs

-keeps warm during night covered in metal cloak

There isn’t a lot of detail beyond the info here, but I’d say it’s certainly possible to have bots like this in 2020 based on the current capabilities of Toyota’s partner robots. The first robots back to the moon might look more like this, but Toyota has a real shot at the solar system record for lunar calligraphy.

VIA [ GetRobo ]

I have no problem with industrial robots. They may be inhuman, but at least they look inhuman enough that they don’t scare me. The scary robots are robots that have enough human features that you can imagine them having some kind of evil intent, kinda like these Nextage industrial robots from Japan’s Kawada Industries. Although you can’t really see it in the video, the robots are mounted on mobile bases, so they aren’t restricted to working in just one place. Unlike most industrial robots, the Nextage robots have their sensors and intelligence integrated into one package (complete with stereo cameras in their heads and additional cameras in their hands for examining objects), which makes them more versatile but also much more expensive. From what I can tell, these robots are designed to work in concert with humans as part of a cooperative assembly line, but personally, I would not like one of these things as a co-worker… I think it’s those creepy praying mantis arms:

VIA [ Robot Watch (Translated) ]

Among other interesting trends, these graphs (from PHD Comics’ Jorge Cham) show how robotics has been taking off in academia in the last 20 or 30 years. The graph only goes out to 2005, though… My guess is that it just keeps skyrocketing upwards. ROBOTS FTW!

[ PHD Comics ] VIA [ io9 ]

Boeing’s drone-zappin’ laser cannon we posted about back in January has gone live in tests, and has had no problem shooting down not one, not two, but five hapless unmanned drones using a “relatively low laser power” weapon outputting about 2.5 kilowatts. It’s not clear how, exactly, the drones were brought down… The deliberately vague press release says that the drones were “acquired, tracked and negated at significant ranges,” which makes me think that they weren’t instantly vaporized a la the Death Star. Aww. Keep tryin’ guys.

VIA [ Danger Room ]

4:08- “Noooo! I don’t wanna be a robot!”

I hear ya, kid. Right now, I don’t wanna be a robot either.

This is a remixed version of an actual show called “Colby’s Clubhouse” that ran for 42 episodes in the 90s on Trinity Broadcasting Network.

VIA [ io9 ]

That sweet looking Mantis UAV from BAE that we spotted at AUVSI earlier this year has taken its first flight out in Australia. The Mantis has a wingspan of 20 meters and is designed to be modular and easy to transport, with capabilities for long range surveillance as well as weapon delivery. Just 19 months ago the Mantis was little more than a concept, so my guess is that deployment will follow the same aggressive schedule.

[ AINonline ] VIA [ Gizmag ]

For some reason, the idea of iRobot’s (and UW’s) little Seaglider robot wandering around the oceans, listening for whale songs, completely captures my imagination. Seaglider is looking for beaked whales in particular, since they’re rare and very hard to track. Also, they react especially badly to US Navy sonar tests, which may have killed dozens of them. Seaglider’s mission is to record beaked whale songs off the coast of Hawaii to try to determine where the whales live and how to track them. Unlike their larger cousins, beaked whales make higher pitched noises that don’t carry as far in the water as, say, a humpback whale song, which makes them harder to find.

The Office of Naval Research has contributed $1.5 million to this project, which so far just involves one single Seaglider operating for about 20 days. The Seaglider itself is 1 meter long and is capable of operating autonomously for up to 10 months without needing to recharge its batteries. It has a range of 4600 km, or 650 dives to its maximum depth of 1000 meters. It can be programmed ahead of time, and every once in a while it’ll pop up to the surface and stick out a satellite antenna for further instructions. Ideally, a whole fleet of Seagliders would cooperate to keep tabs on the whales, but at the moment, researchers are hoping to use existing Navy hydrophones to help them figure out where to send the Seaglider.

[ iRobot Seaglider ] VIA [ Wired ]

At CES last year, BotJunkie was among the first to introduce you to Anybots’ QA telepresence robot. We were a little bit skeptical, though, about how much of a market there was for a $30,000 robot that performs a similar function to some guy walking around holding a netbook running Skype, especially in this economy.

At the 2009 IEEE conference on Technologies for Practical Robot Applications (TePRA) conference, Anybots demonstrated their latest telepresence robot, QB, which looks like a simplified version of QA… A simplified version with an eating disorder, since it doesn’t have that slick body on it anymore. Among other things, it also doesn’t have the ability to bend at the waist, it doesn’t have a big screen for displaying ties, and it doesn’t have that friendly looking head with glowy eyes. The most important thing that QB is missing as compared to QA is the pricetag of $30k; QB is estimated to cost only $10,000 – $15,000. That’s a lot cheaper, to be sure, but is it going to be cheap enough for commercial viability? According to Anybots, here’s the key difference between a telepresence robot and Skype:

“You can communicate with people while they are in their element, such as an office, manufacturing floor, or home,” Rapacki explained. “It’s easier to drop in on people this way or inspect parts in a manufacturing plant.”

Granted, this is an ability that’s unique to a mobile telepresence platform, but I still have to question whether or not it’s commercially viable. As I said last year after meeting QA, I really really hope that I’m wrong, that there’s a huuuuuge market for robots like this, and that Anybots will go on to produce a robot that will do my dishes. Sort of.

[ Anybots ] VIA [ Technology Review ]