Now, don’t go getting too excited… You’re not going to find any trace of Darth Vader or Anakin Skywalker or even Jar Jar Binks in the new live action TV show that George Lucas has just begun working on. No, it’s going to be something completely different, focusing on minor characters in the Star Wars universe, and according to Lucas, all about “the life of robots.” Let me emphasize that this is in the very early stages (Lucas is currently looking for writers), and there’s little else in the way of information, but I have high hopes, since Lucas has had reasonable success with robot characters in the past. Roger, roger.

[ LA Times ]

I’ve lost count of the number of times where I’ve wished for a readily accessible robot packed with 14 CDs and a roll of toilet paper. RoboCard promises both, stocking the CDs in his chest and the toilet paper in his head. He’s made entirely of cardboard (some assembly required) and comes in either “Giant” or “Crazy” for an undisclosed Singaporean price.

[ RoboCard ] VIA [ Gearfuse ]

Don’t be fooled by the picture, Ninjas will not be wearing these devices. But in the future anyone with leg injuries, or even the elderly may be sporting something like this on their hip. Honda is applying some of the things they learned from designing Asimo, their robot mascot, to the area of rehab. When we last saw Asimo, he was chatting it up with humans and showing off his running skills. Now it seems that some of the engineering that went into making him is beginning to surface in other areas.

Aside from making you look like a robot cowboy with a mean holster, this strange apparatus is capable of learning how you walk and by doing so, will assist your stride with its motors. There isn’t very much info other then that at the moment, but it’s safe to say that Honda sees opportunity in the elderly/rehabilitation sector.

There seems to be a growing fascination with assimilating our elderly into cyborgs. I always thought the young would be the first to fall prey to our metal overlords. The other week I reported on a robot suit that could give the elderly super strength. It will be interesting to see where all of this leads.

[MedGadget] VIA [Ubergizmo]

The U-Tsu-Shi-O-Mi humanoid robot’s purpose is to be a real, physical object that replicates in meatspace everything its virtual twin does in VR. It accomplishes this through computer animation and a special headset. The robot is outfitted with a green suit (presumably, this is similar to green screen technology used in movies), making him look like a creppy mannequin frog. If you are wearing the headset, you will see a person “painted on” the featureless green robot, so that as the robot moves and gestures and talks, the computer animation “sticks” to the robot and appears continuous to your eye. The robot even responds a bit if you do things, like say, touch its hand. In the video, you see a blue aura around the form, but I assume that is because they did not paint the sides of the form. It’s not a quantum leap to think that if they map the entire object, then what you have is a true 3-d virtual buddy, love slave or whatever you like.

The implications are amazing for both consumer and military use. Imagine the money to be made by virtually-pimping a stable of “girls” that are essentially software. The bonus for the consumer perv is that he or she would not only have the image, but the physical “doll” as well. Now imagine the military using this in the future for everything from training to assassination.

The video is a bit more disturbing then you might think. That’s thanks mostly to their choice of music. They show the whole creepy process and explain a bit more about the exoskeleton underneath the green suit.

Video and links after the jump…

(Read more…)

People already love their robots. People already have sex with robots. It’s no stretch of the imagination, therefore, to see humans falling in love with and marrying robots in a few decades, argues David Levy in his Ph.D thesis entitled “Intimate Relationships with Artificial Partners.” Levy explains that humans are already getting quite comfortable interacting with non-human objects, and when you examine the psychological reasons for both love and sex, there’s no real reason why they wouldn’t apply equally to human-human relationships as well as human-robot relationships. His thesis was based on some 450 papers on psychology, sexology, sociology, robotics, materials science, artificial intelligence, gender studies, and computer-human interaction. If the current trends in robot development continue (both in software and, uh, hardware), sooner or later you’re going to end up with a robot that looks and acts arguably just like a human. And even if it’s not just like a human, that may not make a substantial difference when it comes to relationships.

This is basically just what I argued in the article I wrote a few weeks ago about one of the Arse Elektronika talks I attended. It’s funny… A lot of readers were unhappy with the subject matter presented at Arse Elektronika. But when you repackage the concepts that the Arse Elektronika conference was about into an academic format like a Ph.D thesis, it somehow becomes legit. In a lot of ways, the porn industry is way ahead of the game, if for no other reason than they have substantial financial motivation to make sex with robots a mainstream reality. It’s going to happen to society at large at some point in the future, but it’s going to happen FIRST (probably sooner than you might think) in the porn industry, and that’s where we’re going to see the ethical issues initially emerge.

One way or another, it’s gonna be interesting.

[ Daily Mail Article ] VIA [ Crave ]

As seems to be the case with most cool stuff, programmable humanoid robots are generally out of the casual interest price range for most people. RoboPhilo (Programmable Humanoid In Lifelike Operation) might just be able to fill that gap without sacrificing everything that would make owning a humanoid robot worthwhile. He may have an entry level price of ‘less than $500′ (or even less than that if you assemble him yourself), but RoboPhilo boasts an impressive 20 servos to allow independent control of his head, waist, thighs, and limbs along with a 24 channel controller (to add laser cannons, etc) and a fully programmable PC interface. He weighs in at 1.2 kilos with his battery, and stands a respectable 13 inches tall. The IR controller can control up to 4 robots independently for either RoboCup-style soccer games or fights to the death. It looks like there will be a few different colors available as of October 31; you can check out the PDF brochure here.

[ RoboPhilo ] VIA [ Robots Dreams ]

Natasha from the TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) Conference has just let us know that a new talk by Hod Lipson on self aware robots is now available for viewing on their website. You can check out the video here (and it is worth watching), but basically Lipson discusses two robot self-modeling projects of his. One of them is the Starfish quadruped robot that’s able to teach itself to walk (we wrote about it a few months ago), and the other project is the Golem Project, which some of you may remember from back in 2000. Read more after the jump. (Read more…)

It’s a general inevitability: things that are adapted (or constructed) to function efficiently on land will have issues getting around in the air, and vice versa. This is even true for most animals, with the notable exception of insects, which were the inspiration for the MMALV Morphing Micro Air and Land Vehicle. Like many other micro drones, The MMALV has a wingspan of 1-2 feet, flies around with a small electric motor and controllable tail and wing surfaces, and mounts a tiny video camera. Unlike other micro drones, the MMALV can land, fold up its wings, and then scurry about on the ground thanks to a pair of revolving legs. To get airborne again, it has to make its way to the second floor of a building and jump off (hey, at least it’s possible). Here’s a video:

The MMALV research is being funded by the Air Force and (be very afraid) the Department of Homeland Security, so expect to see one of these following you around and designating you a credible threat in the near future.

[ MMALV ] VIA [ Danger Room ]

When Millenia was released yesterday, humans thought they were getting a smart conversational robot. It was said that the robot could effectively communicate with people across all ethnicities, age groups and in any type of environment. They even said he was multilingual. He was a great PR bot too, capable of being used as a marketing, advertising, promotional, educational or entertainment tool. And hey, he even had Wi-Fi. How cool. Humans thought they had a C-3P0 at last. You know, human/cyborg relations. The kind of annoying bot that would tell you it was fluent in 6 million languages, including the binary language of bachi moisture evaporators.

Then everyone found out that this robot, who looks a bit cartoony in a creepy alien way, is really a remote presence device. That means that actual human beings remotely provide the voice and such. Oh well. But hey it still has Wi-Fi. That’s gotta count for something right? In short, this is not the droid you’re looking for. Move along!

[PRNewser] VIA [Engadget]