I spotted this little tankbot at RoboDevelopment. His most notable feature is his treaded wheels, which can change their shape to adapt to terrain. The track itself is made of a stretchy material, and the bot can change its tracks from circular to… um… a sort of trapezoid (I guess) by deploying tread extenders from inside the wheels:

Wheels are good for going fast and for maneuvering, while tracks are good for traction and maximizing weight distribution to move over rough terrain. This bot does both, on the fly. Its tail includes a guidance camera, and also serves as a lever of sorts to help balance the robot and help it get over obstacles taller than itself. The Galileo wheel technology is being marketed to the military, agricultural machinery, and might also be a good way to drive a wheelchair, thanks to its ability to climb stairs. Personally, I’m hoping for a set of Galileo winter tires for my car.

[ Galileo ]

On sale today only and possibly for a very limited time, as is with all things on woot. Not a bad deal, considering that one of these is still $90 (+shipping) from Amazon (or rather, from Target). If you’re interested in what Roboquad can do, check out this post over on OhGizmo.

[ woot! ]

Boston Dynamics is quite innovative when it comes to robot locomotion, and RHex is no exception. His appendages are able to provide wheel-like mobility with leg-like traction when necessary. If you’ll be operating in a primarily aquatic environment, you can switch out the legs for paddles, and RHex is equally at home. A completely sealed body means that RHex can operate just fine in virtually any situation, and he’s wirelessly controllable from over half a kilometer away with both front and rear cameras. Want one to play with? Apparently, they’re available, but I don’t really want to know how much an RHex would be… My guess is something on the order of six arms and legs.

[ RHex ]

You know that huge technological void that separates you from the generation preceding you? One could argue, if one chose, that the reason it’s there is because you grew up in a totally different tech environment. Progress moves so fast that it’s pretty much inevitable. I, for example, am great with computers, but I’m curmudgeonly about cell phones, texting, and social networking. It’s not that I don’t get it, it’s more of a get off my lawn sort of thing. With all that in mind, I think it’s an excellent sign that toddlers get along so well with robots, even if they do nothing but giggle. Toddlers now are the robot consumers (the the economical sense, not the hungry sense) of tomorrow.

This robot is named QRIO (”curio”) and was originally developed by Sony as a follow-up to the now deceased AIBO. All that QRIO was programmed to do with the toddlers was not kill them (obstacle avoidance sensors), giggle when its head was touched, sit down sometimes, and lie down when its batteries died.

“We expected that after a few hours, the magic was going to fade,” Movellan says. “That’s what has been found with earlier robots.” But, in fact, the kids warmed to the robot over several weeks, eventually interacting with QRIO in much the same way they did with other toddlers. Eventually, the children seemed to care about the robot’s well being. They helped it up when it fell, and played “care-taking” games with it – most commonly, when QRIO’s batteries ran out of juice and it lay down, a toddler would come up and cover it with a blanket and say “night, night”.

That is soooo cute! You know, I think a robot that did nothing but giggle when I patted its head could make me pretty happy, too.

VIA [ New Scientist ]

At Tokyo’s Edogawa Kyotei boat races, they have found an innovative way to soothe the bruised egos of those left holding losing tickets. Presumably, their solution also helps to keep trash in it’s place. What is it? You get to feed your losing tickets to a robot goat, of course. When a ticket is placed in the goat-bot’s mouth, a sensor is triggered, telling it to start chewing away at the ticket. You just know they are taking bets on how many tickets it will take before a finger is devoured.

His diet consists of about 500 tickets per day. Those who provide the meals believe that the goat-bot will bring them luck in the next race. Somehow I doubt it. If that were true, the goat would be starving.

[asahi] VIA [Gizmodo]

The DARPA Urban Challenge for robotic vehicles concluded on Saturday, with Carnegie Mellon’s robotic 2007 Chevy Tahoe, named Boss, taking top honors and the $2 million first prize. In contrast to the first DARPA Grand Challenge in 2004, where no robots completed the course, there were six finishers this year, although the last few took longer than the six hour time limit. Still, it’s a pretty impressive feat for a robotic car to spend six hours on the road completing tasks among other cars with no human guidance whatsoever. Here’s some short clips from the event; hopefully we’ll see more video in not too long:

The critical point here is that all of the robots were able to make good decisions when confronted with complicated variables and rapidly changing situations. The top three committed NO traffic violations over the 60 mile course. The deciding factor then became speed, and at an average speed of 14 mph, Boss won out by a 20 minute margin over second place Stanford (average speed 13 mph), winners of the first DARPA Grand Challenge in 2005.

[ DARPA Urban Challenge ] VIA [ Danger Room ]

Building things inevitably involves hauling a bunch of stuff from point A to point B, and it’s no different on the moon. With this in mind, NASA and JPL have been working on ways to transport equipment around the lunar surface, and here are two designs:

This Chariot lunar truck prototype was designed and built in only 11 months, an astounding pace for a NASA project. Each wheel has an independent suspension, and is driven by two 3hp electric motors. In low gear, Chariot can bulldoze or dig trenches with a pushing force of 4000 lbs, and in high gear it has a top speed of 15 mph. These specs refer to the Earth (1 gravity) prototype… On the moon, Chariot will be able to carry between 3 and 6 times as much, climb a 25 degree slope, and range out to 100km.

Athlete is much like Chariot, in that it has six wheels around a central platform. However, Athlete’s wheels are on legs. The wheels can be locked, and Athlete can actually walk by moving its legs like a spider. Also, the legs feature modular tool attachments powered by the wheel drive motors. The center platform has a pair of stereo cameras on each face, making Athlete easy to teleoperate. From the video, it sounds like Athlete is meant to be incorporated into a landing system, which will provide payloads with instant, intelligent lunar mobility. Planned improvements include things like the ability to traverse “vertical rock faces or sandy slopes at the angle of repose by using a launchable/releasable grappling hook.” Badass!

[ Chariot ] VIA [ Engadget ]
[ Athlete ] VIA [ Robots-Dreams ]

The DelFly II, developed by the Delft University of Technology, is one of those miracles of construction that, at first glance, doesn’t seem to be physically possible. In a 16 gram package, this ornithopter can fly for at least 15 minutes (at a maximum speed of 30mph) or hover in place for 8. It can take off and land vertically, and can even fly backwards. It’s fully out of sight controllable thanks to realtime onboard streaming video (!). Since it uses flapping wings, it’s quiet, efficient, and robust enough to fly comfortably in wind and survive collisions with objects. Check out the video:

The most amazing thing is that this design is the LARGE version. Currently in development is the DelFly Micro, which will be a third this size, followed by the DelFly Nano, which should have a wingspan of only 5cm, making it effectively invisible. These bots will be used for espionage (of course), but also (the designers suggest) for disaster relief or airborne pollution tracking. It’s worth noting that DelFly is based in the Netherlands, which is probably the only reason why they have yet to be consumed by the US military. Maybe, just maybe, there might be some hope of commercial availability.

Okay, probably not, but I can dream, can’t I?

[ DelFly ] VIA [ Danger Room ]