By Evan Ackerman

Here it is, nearly midnight, I have like 5 more hours of work, and what did I spend the last 4 minutes and 5 seconds doing? That’s right, gettin’ down and jiggy with a badass robot dance video. The music is catchy, but the little Keepon robot absolutely steals the show with his rhythmic dance moves. Check it out:

This video was sponsored by WIRED after Keepon’s wildly successful (in Japan) music debut, which you can watch here. Oh, and the band in the background is Spoon. Sadly, you can’t buy Keepon, since he’s a research robot, but the designers are working on a similar bot called Roillo who should have similar capabilities and may become commercially available.

[ Keepon BeatBot ] VIA [ Robots-Dreams ]

By Evan Ackerman

Remember when playing musical instruments required, you know, skill and training and practice and talent and stuff? What with Guitar Hero, and now, a robotic guitar tuner, for better or worse anyone can at least sorta play the guitar. The String Master robotic guitar tuner removes all human error (and musical theory) by using a little motor to turn the tuning pegs on your guitar for you. It runs on a 9v battery, works on any six string electric or acoustic guitar with an output for a guitar cord, and costs $49.95. No, you still can’t play Stairway, but at least you can sound better trying.

[ Robotic Guitar Tuner ] VIA [ Trend Hunter ]

According to some guy named Bill Gates, the robotics industry is on a threshold similar to the one seen in the world of computers 30 years ago. That sure is good news for us here at BotJunkie, but South Korea (who wants “a robot in every home by 2013″) is looking ahead and getting worried about the whole “cybernetic slavery” thing that gets us so excited. So, the South Korean government has decided to draw up a code of ethics by which all robots must abide.

As you might expect (because it’s a government, not because it’s South Korea), at first glance the broad guidelines make things sound like they’re heading for a robot police state: robots must be clearly identifiable and traceable, humans must have access to all data acquired by robots, and military robots aren’t governed by the same rules as civilian robots. Like so many government forays into emerging technology, South Korea has the right idea, but I don’t think they’re giving this a broad enough scope. I’m not saying I know what the proper scope is, but I’m worried that whatever these guidelines turn out to be, for better or worse they’ll become some sort of precedent for future robot legislation by other countries. So, here is my advice to South Korea (since I know they read BotJunkie): be very open minded, be very careful, and listen to the people who have been thinking about this stuff for a long, long time.

VIA [ Physorg ]

It’s quite a stretch to call this thing a robot. It’s just a webcam. With a cute plastic robot-like casing; the kind of stuff Akihabara is littered with. But in our little robot obsessed world, that alone gets a few points. It does have specs, like any piece of electronics, and here they are:

350K Pixels Web CAM.
Built-in Micphone & night light vision.
A Grade CMOS Len designed in Japan, 360-degree all space rounding len-head design.
SPEC: 1,300,000 Pixels (Software Max) .
Picture transmit speed w / USB connect: 30 ftp.
High senseitive CMOS Len design, Plug & Play without interface card required.
Signal / Noise Ratio > 48 dB.
Scan Model: Line-by-Line, Line-acros-Line.
Video Data Format: 24 Bits

Like many things from Akihabara, we don’t know the price. Plus you probably have to go there and get one yourselves.

VIA [ Akihabara News ]

Toyota has music-playing robots. One of them, DJ Robot, entered the public eye at the 2005 Aichi World Expo, where he played in a band alongside other musician bots. DJ Robot’s only DJing skill was the ability to rap (no turntables), which made him perfectly suited to be the MC in a band where the other robots were able to play brass instruments and percussion with an impressive degree of skill. Since the expo, DJ Robot has been working on his communication skills with humans, which may have contributed to his recent decision to quit the high-flying life of rock stardom, and settle for the markedly quieter life as a receptionist. Either that, or he got the bump because of Toyota’s decision to bring out a virtuoso violin-playing bot in the fall.

Whatever the case, the 1-meter tall robot (who gets around on Segway-like wheels) will initially work at the Toyota Kaikan Exhibition Hall at company headquarters in Toyota City, where he’ll use his new skills to “provide information, answer questions and show visitors around offices and exhibitions.”

We wish him the best.

VIA [ Pink Tentacle ]

By Evan Ackerman

Autom is a “weight maintenance sociable robot” designed by the MIT Media Lab to help people lose weight (while also gathering information about how people react to robots that live in their homes). You interact with the robot via a touchpad, and it’s able to track your face and speak to you. My first reaction to this idea was something like, “how is a robot that doesn’t eat and can’t gain weight supposed to motivate me to stay healthy?” But in the video, the robot is ever so polite, and how could you refuse anything that it suggests while it looks at you with those big dreamy brown eyes? Check out the video and you’ll see what I mean.

[ MIT Media Lab Personal Robots Group ]

By Evan Ackerman

Here’s a DIY video showing how to make your very own robot hand. Out of cucumbers and cheese. Need I say more?

[ MAYA: make Edible Robotics ] VIA [ Crave ]

As much as we love robots, we’d rather see them blown up than us. So we’re happy to learn that the US military is seeking reinforcements in the form of 3,000 reconnaissance bots to help them out over in Iraq. On July 17th, the U.S. Multi-National Corps, Iraq, announced a solicitation for the development and speedy deployment of robots that are able to “look into the window of a vehicle” and peek “under a vehicle undercarriage.”

The timetable on this is very tight, with a contract for 101 robots being awarded on September 14th, and shipment of the first bot expected on September 24th. This is only the opening wave of an initial enlistment of 1,000 machines, with 2,000 more expected in five years.

[ Solicitation Document ] VIA [ Danger Room ]

Thinking caps at the University of Madgeburg-Stendal in Germany are developing beetle-like autonomous bots whose primary mission would consist of scuttling around in forests, putting fires out. They’re calling them OLE (though we’re not sure what the acronym stands for) and could theoretically run around the forest at 20 to 30 km per hour. We say theoretically because at the moment, the bots are not much more than a concept.

The reason for their appearance is due to the fact that, much like a real pill bug, when the bots sense danger, they’ll retract their legs and lay on the ground (like a pill), protected from up to 1,300C degrees by their ceramic coating. A team of 30 OLEs could cover and protect a forest area as large as 4,400 miles.

A timeline for their eventual production is unavailable.

[ Read More ] VIA [StreetTech ]

By Evan Ackerman

Okay, so it’s a total cliche, but you’ve gotta admit that it’s about time for a better wheel, and the Airtrax omni-directional drive system is headed in the right direction, whatever that might be. The Airtrax wheels are Mecanum wheels, a design developed in 1973 and picked up by the US Navy for a while. Each wheel is comprised of a series of rollers, mounted so that their axis of rotation is 45 to the axis of the main wheel. As the wheels rotate in sync, the vehicle moves forwards or backwards normally, but by spinning pairs of wheels in opposite directions, the rollers enable sideways movement. Put it all together, and you can move laterally, diagonally, or spin in a circle.

Beyond the critical consumer benefits promised by the total elimination of parallel parking, Airtrax would be ideal for robots. Autonomous path-finding and obstacle avoidance is a tricky thing, but lateral freedom of movement would make things much simpler. It would also be ideal for robots that need to make quick changes of direction. Robots that feature controllability like this are called holonomic, and they’ve been quite successful at RoboCup events.

[ Airtrax ] VIA [ Funl ]