If you haven’t heard of RipSaw before, this thing is nuts. A sort of supercharged, all terrain tank, RipSaw’s 650hp engine can drive it from 0-50 in 3.5 seconds, with a top speed of 80 (!) mph, over just about any terrain. And now, it doesn’t need us anymore, thanks to some new GPS guidance. The video below shows several different versions of RipSaw, including a piloted vehicle, a remote controlled vehicle, and the early testing stages of a completely autonomous version. PS- Cheezy audio totally not my fault.

Yours for approximately $200,000.

[ RipSaw ] VIA [ Danger Room ]

Back in August, the Pentagon chose Northrop Grumman’s X-47 UCAV for a major airforce contract, pretty much killing off Boeing’s X-45 drone program. It’s not even December yet, and already Northrop Grumman has a “100% structurally complete” X-47 UCAS-D (that would be, Unmanned Combat Air System Demonstrator). All that’s left to do before it’s ready to go is subsystems installation, lots and lots of testing, and figuring out how to get it to land and take off on an aircraft carrier. Huh, looks easy enough in the video…

[ X-47B UCAS ] VIA [ Danger Room ]

In this somewhat abusive video, the researchers are trying to get a robot named Justin to hit himself, or hit (ahem) his two balls together, but Justin is having none of it: he knows exactly where his arms are in relation to the rest of his body at all times, and is able to prevent collisions. To figure out where the different parts of his body are, Justin uses feedback from the artificial muscles in his arms, which is analogous to how humans do it. When you touch your nose with your eyes closed (or try to), you’re using kinaesthetics to know where your arm, hand, and finger is without looking. Instead of relying on pre-programming, Justin is able to self-model his appendages to dynamically prevent accidents.

If you’d like to know more about Justin, please see the citation in the comments or visit http://www.phriends.eu/.

VIA [ New Scientist ]

With the Christmas season fast approaching, we here at BotJunkie are only too happy to help you make that list for Santa. There are just so many bots, you can’t hope to find them all on your own. What follows is a sampling of just some of the robot goodness that we want to stuff in our stocking. We can’t possibly chronicle every cool robot in one list, but we will be back with more before Christmas.

10. The Mr. Clock Radio. All the cuteness of a robot at night, but come morning he wakes you up in a variety of 30 different methods. Some very annoying. Everything from gently asking you to get up, to barking drill sergeant-style orders. He’ll tell you your fortune too and read the time out loud. He can wink and blink, react to light or motion, and play music via AM, FM or iPod/MP3. If you know a slacker who absolutely needs a wake-up bot, you can get one for $79.99.

(Read more…)

Here’s a strange case of monkey see, monkey do, with a bionic twist. In February of 2005, Scientists at the University of Pittsburgh successfully created a robot arm and hand that could be controlled by a monkey’s thoughts. Now they’ve stretched that experiment across the globe. Researchers at Duke University implanted electrodes in the brains of two rhesus monkeys and studied the electrical impulses that drive their legs. Next they mapped signals to specific leg movements and used a monkey in North Carolina to transmit signals via the Internet to the Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International in Kyoto, Japan, in order to control robot legs on their end.

They are hoping that this may eventually lead to mind-controlled robot legs for humans that are paralyzed. Robot legs of the future will be just a matter of routine thought.

[New Scientist] VIA [The Raw Feed]

TUCAV stands for Train Cable Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, which may sound a bit confusing, but the above video explains the concept well. Designed by an Israeli company called Planum Vision, the TUCAV system offers quite a few advantages, primarily when it comes to reliability and cost effectiveness. Since the system runs on rails (cables, rather), complicated autonomous navigation is unnecessary, although the vehicles (including both a little airplane and a dirigible of some kind) do have the capability to detach from the cable and fly around on their own (doesn’t seem like they can reattach, however). Power and communications to the vehicle are supplied through the cable, a much more reliable method than wireless transmission, and from the look of the video, the aerial vehicles may be able to generate lift as they get pulled along by the cable car below, saving energy. The overall design is meant to be a compromise between ground surveillance and aerial surveillance, and as such, some sacrifices are made, the most obvious one being that everybody knows pretty much where the vehicle is most of the time (since it’s usually attached to the ground cable system).

It looks to be a very reliable and inexpensive way to provide 24/7/365.25 surveillance of any fixed zone, such as a border or a perimeter. Of course, it’s a lot more convenient NOT to have to built the railway to get surveillance… But in areas where observation zones aren’t going to change, we could see a system like this in action. I mean, cool little airplanes, zeppelins, and trains? I’m sold already.

[ Planum Vision ] VIA [ TFOT ]

We’ve seen it in our popular culture for decades. Heck, even Sigourney Weaver killed the Queen Alien after jumping into a Mech-suit exoskeleton. It is fast approaching reality. These suits are not just something to give you super strength so you can help the elderly, like the one we reported on in October. The bugs are being worked out by the military so we can kill and crush enemies more effectively.

Sarcos, a Utah-based startup, has just shown a prototype robot that can work like an exoskeleton for US soldiers. It basically mimics every movement the human operator makes.
The soldier just needs to climb inside. Once within the structure, they can lift super heavy objects and do lengthy physical exercises without becoming fatigued. They are able to run, jump and even dance. They are estimating that it will take about 5 years to complete the project.

Let’s hope they lock these things up. Have you seen Full Metal Jacket? Now imagine if a disturbed private got a hold of one of these. I would hate to be in the shoes of that abusive Boot Camp Officer.

Video and links after the jump.
(Read more…)

Bipedal robots are getting fairly good at walking in straight lines, but changing direction is another matter. In order to turn in place, most bipedal robots do an awkward sort of rapid bouncing between one foot and another to slowly rotate, which requires a lot of balance and is a waste of energy. This little 50cm tall robot, developed by Masano Koeda of Ritsumeikan University, is able to perform a maneuver called the “Koeda shuffle,” rotating at the hips and shifting its balance to smoothly turn 90 degrees while maintaining its center of gravity (which is how we humans do it). This enables the robot to turn in place while carrying a load, which is a necessary skill for any useful household bipedal humanoid. It’ll be even more useful after the robot figures out how to turn while on a slope, or on rough terrain, or while teaching you to do a passable waltz.

VIA [ Digital World Tokyo ]

If you’re one of those form-over-function types, and have a thing for robots (and you probably do if you’re reading this), here are a couple very cheap robots that don’t actually do anything besides add a little bit of extra robot-ness to the world.

Amazon Box Robot

Should go on sale for $15 in December. Perfect for a robot rumble. Um, do I have to pay for shipping…?

Jellibots

I don’t know the price or details on these guys, besides that they’re available in Australia and they look to be stuffed (so how much could they possibly cost?). One of the few opportunities to hit someone with a robot and damage neither. Good times.

VIA [ Gizmowatch ] and [ Robots-Dreams ]

One of the most annoying things about airplanes and helicopters is their dependence on a suitable place to land. Of course, helicopters are much more versatile than airplanes are, but they still need a large, reliably flat and stable surface. Landing any sort of aircraft on a boat, much less a moving truck, is dangerous under the best of circumstances and usually impossible most of the rest of the time. It’s becoming clear how much precision autopilots are capable of, and researchers at Georgia Tech and MIT are taking advantage of robots’ skill at flying to perform acrobatics designed to make drone launch and recovery much more versatile.

This video shows a small, autonomous helicopter developed by Georgia Tech landing on slopes ranging from 45 up to 60 degrees. Although the surface that the helicopter lands on is velcro, it’s possible to have the helicopter reverse the pitch of its rotors on landing, which would push it down onto the landing pad. Notice how the helicopter is able to recover from a missed landing in the middle of the video. Skills like this, combined with adaptive sensors, would allow a drone to land virtually anywhere, even on a non-level moving surface.

Both an airplane propeller and a helicopter rotor operate on the same principle: air moving rapidly over a spinning, curved surface generates thrust. It turns out that if you’ve got a small enough plane and a big enough engine (i.e. a drone), you can actually make a helicopter out of an airplane, using the propeller as a rotor. It’s tricky and requires a lot of fine manipulation of the wing and tail control surfaces, but autopilots excel at fine manipulation, and MIT has been able to create an autopilot program to transition an airplane from vertical takeoff, to horizontal flight, to a vertical landing:

The US Air Force actually messed around with a concept sort of like this back in the 50s. Although it was jet powered, the X-13 also took off and landed from a suspension rack. It’s worth noting that it was nearly impossible for the human pilot to accomplish this maneuver.

VIA [ New Scientist ]