If you thought Sandia’s Mini-Robots were tiny, the pico (which they inspired) is even tinier at half the volume. It’s also much more impressive, with a top speed of 0.5 foot per second and a 15 minute runtime, and it’s 100% home built by Zac Wheeler from commercial available (until recently, anyway) parts.

Pico’s pico-ness doesn’t leave room for a very big brain, which becomes immediately obvious as the pico throws itself off of a table as soon as it’s turned on. This happens twice more in the video below, and for some reason I find it hilarious. It’s nice to see a robot with such a single minded sense of purpose. It looks like the pico is in fact able to detect (via an infrared sensor) when it runs in to something, and will change direction when it does so. It’s also supposedly able to follow a line. Not bad for a little guy the size of a dime:

Originally, pico was meant to be buildable from a kit, and also was meant to be the precursor to a whole new pico division of competitive sumo robots. Unfortunately, some critical parts have been discontinued, and the kits are “not likely to be available anytime soon.” I for one hope that whatever interest is generated by blog exposure might just convince Zac to give it another shot, ’cause I’d buy one in a picosecond.

[ pico ] VIA [ TechEBlog ]

If you find yourself with too much time on your hands and you want to throw together something cool for Halloween at the last minute, then by all means build yourself this Robotic Dalek Pumpkin. Daleks are the robot villains from the classic Doctor Who show.(Just in case you live in a cave.)

Before you rush out to your local pumpkin patch and get the knives out, this isn’t just fancy pumpkin carving. It has motors and is remote controlled. It’s gonna take at least one or two trips to Radio Shack.

Should you choose to accept this mission, you will have the coolest Halloween pumpkin in your neighborhood. At least until it’s fleshy mass rots of course, and the flies gather around.

A short video of the cyber-pumpkin in action after the jump, as well as a step by step guide when you follow the link. I have to say, it moves pretty nice for a bionic pumpkin. The only thing it doesn’t have is the grating robot voice repeating “Exterminate”.

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A five hour armed standoff with a suicidal elderly man in a North Fort Myers, Florida trailer park ended in the evening of October 27 when a sheriff’s bomb disposal robot was shot. “As night was beginning to fall, deputies stepped-up their tactics by using a bomb robot to assist [in reconnaissance?]. The subject shot at the robot, breaking the robot’s lens, and then deputies subdued the man.” The man was taken to the hospital, but it’s unclear whether it was for a physical or mental reason. No word on the condition of the robot, but getting shot at is exactly what it’s there for.

[ WINK News ] VIA [ Engadget ]

The qualifiers for the DARPA Urban Challenge started on October 26, with 35 teams competing for 20 slots in the finals, which will start November 3rd. If you’re not familiar with the DARPA Grand Challenge series, the first successful one took place in 2005. It was an off road race for driverless vehicles over a 132 mile stretch of rugged Mojave desert terrain. The vehicles used GPS, cameras, lasers, and a ton of complicated software to navigate themselves over the course, and in the end, three of them made it. You can watch an awesome hour long NOVA program on the race online here. The next challenge, taking place this year, places the robot cars in an urban environment, where they will have to contend with speed limits, stop signs, and other cars. The vehicles will have to traverse the 60 mile environment in less than 6 hours with no human intervention to win the $3.5 million prize, and they’ll have to obey all California state traffic laws along the way, which is something that most people probably can’t pull off. Danger Room has some excellent coverage of the first few, uh, fatalities. The final will be webcast live on November 3rd, check the DARPA website for details.

[ DARPA Urban Challenge ]

This is Monty, a teleoperated humanoid robot powered by compressed air. Despite (or perhaps because of) his questionable facility with dishes, he’s designed (in the near future, anyway) to perform tasks in industrial or hazardous environments that would otherwise require the physical presence and decision making skills of a human. He can balance on his own on two wheels (like a Segway), can carry up to 20 kgs, and will operate for “hours” off of a scuba tank. His hand is modeled very closely on the human hand, and is nearly as dexterous. As you can see from the video, operating Monty takes a substantial amount of coordination: a joystick in one hand moves his body, and a glove on the other hand will transmit the arm and hand movements of the operator to Monty’s arm and hand. In the second video clip, Monty accidentally knocks an object off the table he was at, so we asked if he was capable of picking things up off the ground (he didn’t look like he was designed to bend over). I was pretty impressed that he was able to do so, albeit with the operator standing nearly over his shoulder.

[ Anybots ]

One of the major themes on the expo floor at RoboDevelopment was visual pattern recognition. That is, robots being able to look at an object, know what it is, and react to it. This video shows a custom-built humanoid robot playing dice with one of its developers from Virginia Tech (who apologized for the fact that the robot’s head was in fact attached to a different robot). This isn’t new technology, but what IS new is that the robot is being controlled by commercially available software with these pattern recognition abilities standard, no complicated programming necessary. It’s not even developer software, it’s something that you can teach yourself to use for healthy tasks like robot gambling in an hour or two from scratch. It’s called LabView, and I’ll be talking about it in more detail later on.

Oh, and what happens if this robot DOES lose? Apparently, I don’t want to know, but it may or may not involve a robotic punch in the spleen.

[ RoboDevelopment ]

Not having reliable internet access made it somewhat difficult to post from the RoboDevelopment conference last week. But in retrospect, I’m glad I’ve had a chance to digest it for a few days. The overwhelming feeling, alluded to in almost every keynote speech, was that robotics is going to be HUGE over the next decade(s). It was more than just speculation, too… According to one of the Thursday keynotes (given by Tandy Trower, the GM of Microsoft Robotics Group), the robotics industry in general is going to double in market size by 2010 to nearly 25 billion dollars. By 2025, it’s projected to be approaching 70 billion, over half of which will be made up by robotics in the home.

So, that’s the future, but where are we now? Lots of speakers throughout the conference were comparing the current state of robotics to computers in the 70s. And there certainly are a lot of parallels: Both large industry and the government have been using robots for years, and are starting to rely on them more and more heavily. Most people, though, still view robotics as a hobby, much as PCs used to be. Consumer robots currently take some degree of specialized knowledge to interact with, and are only effective for very specific tasks. Like the PC, robots are evolving towards user-friendliness and more generalized integration into daily life. A more appropriate metaphor for robots might be the automobile in the early 1900s: you’ve seen them around, you know they’re useful, but at the moment they’re pretty esoteric and anyway, you’re happy enough with your horse. It’s just a matter of time, though, before your horse gets run over. A bit more, plus some spectacular video, after the jump. (Read more…)

The 40th Tokyo Motor Show kicked off on Oct. 26th and one of the neatest concept cars being shown is the Nissan Pivo 2 electric car. It definitely has a few features that make it stand out. For starters, it’s wheels rotate 90 degrees, allowing the battery-powered vehicle to be driven sideways. I think we saw that in Minority Report. The cabin itself can rotate a full 360 degrees, making parallel parking a breeze and eliminating the need for a reverse gear all together.

As cool as those features are, it just wouldn’t be complete without a decapitated PaPeRo Robot head slapped on the dash to act as your navigator, speaking English and Japanese. We told you about NEC’s cute PaPeRo back in August, when it had aspirations of becoming a blogger. Well, judging by the head being removed from it’s pudgy body, I’m guessing that didn’t work out.

In his current incarnation PaPeRo will be able to sense the mental state of drivers by analyzing voice and face image data. The voice-activated navigation is designed to soothe stressed drivers through making robot small talk. I just wish the interior didn’t look like a kid’s toy.

[Zercustoms]

No, this is not a prop from the new Terminator movie. It comes from researchers at Japan’s National Institute of Information and Communications Technology. Standing at 5 feet tall, the 187-pound robot uses 3D vision to recognize gestures like pointing and bowing. Then it determines their meaning and repeats the gestures when appropriate. They expect to apply the technology to future caregiver robots, who will look after the elderly.

I can’t think of anything that would scare our elderly more than the picture above. As far as learning gestures, well, a certain percentage of the elderly are just plain crazy. This bot is going to be acting strange… I can envision many a finger flipped at this thing, while it gives as good as it gets.

[The Inquirer] VIA [Engadget]

The good folks at Nokia are never ones to rest. Not when they can come up with some new form of creepy pet in their spare time. This is a robot dog merged with a Nokia Internet tablet for a face. The first thing that you’ll notice is a creepy quasi-goofiness. The second thing that will strike you is that it actually gives the dog a personality which is very much lacking in most robo-pets.

The concept was thought up by some gifted Finnish children at a school that Nokia sponsors.(Just imagine what other beautiful atrocities these kids are dreaming up). Not much more to say about this puppy. Some things bark for themselves.

Check out the video after the jump.

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