“Mr. Personality” is one of WowWee’s new fun companion-robots. He sure looks like he has a sense of humor, but whether he actually does remains to be seen. He displays his personality on an LCD screen that features animated and synced facial features. He will tell jokes, read your daily fortune and even answer any questions about the future. The user can download new personalities from the Internet via USB or an SD card.

Mr. Personality has a fully animated upper body, color LCD screen, several play modes like Bits, Crystal Ball, Fortune Cookies, as well as demo modes. He is also supposedly capable of detecting and avoiding obstacles with great success. He will tell you when he falls or when the batteries are running low. Other features include: a three-wheeled omni-directional motion base, 7 motors, 4 IR sensors, a built-in microphone for taking voice memos, 64 MByte of built-in memory, audio input connector and he requires 6 “C” batteries. The remote controller requires 3 AAA batteries. All in all, a pretty interesting fairly different robot.

[Wowwee]

Aside from looking like he is having his way with your iPhone from behind, this robot with the blender-looking head is pretty nifty. The Spykee Cell is another build-it-yourself robot from Meccano. It’s remote controlled via Bluetooth from a cellphone and can move and snap pictures, then transmit them back to the cellphone for permanent storage. The loudspeaker module gives it the capability of becoming a hands-free set, if you want to speak and hear through the robot.

[Spykeeworld]

Meccano is introducing 2 strange looking robots, the Spykee Vox and the Spykee Miss, each obviously being targeted at different genders apparently. Each robot has it’s own iPod dock, weirdly situated in their robot nether-regions, and are compatible with other mp3 players as well.

Both Vox and Miss are designed to obey voice commands in several languages, like English, French and Spanish. (One language at a time, or they will no doubt be confused) They can also can use their infrared module to command many appliances like TV’s and stereos. The user has the option to customize them by creating new motions and sounds on a PC or Mac.

No word yet on when these will hit the market, but look like a potential hit.

[Spykeeworld]

I’m spending most of the week in Las Vegas at the 2008 International Consumer Electronics Show. Don’t worry, there will be plenty of bots, I’ve already spotted some new stuff from Wowwee, and iRobot will be there too, among many others. So stay tuned as I hit the exhibit floor (make that floors) tomorrow, and be sure to check out my gadget coverage over at OhGizmo.

[ CES ]

“Doll Face follows a machine’s struggle to construct its own identity. The machine with a doll face mimics images presented on a television screen and ultimately self-destructs from its inability to adopt a satisfactory visage.” This video was created by Andy Huang, who goes on to use the phrase “post-modernity,” but don’t hold that against him, it’s a cool video. And let’s be honest, ladies… You know you want a robot that can do that for your face, right? Right? Okay, maybe not.

[ Doll Face ] VIA [ Mental_Floss ]

Kawasaki’s Cube-Kun isn’t the first robot to be able to solve a Rubik’s Cube quickly, but he’s the only one who can do it in the blink of an eye. Granted, this kind of skill comes about 20 years too late, long after the nerdiest of nerds have mastered their own cubes and gone on to bigger and better things like blog writing and XBox Live. But it’s still cool even if the Rubik’s cube is no longer the fad it once was.

The robot was created with absolutely one goal. To master the cube quickly. And it succeeds admirably. He has a flat-panel display for a head and uses built-in sensors to determine the current position of each square on the cube. This tells him how to solve it as quick as possible. So basically, he does the same thing that nerds in the 80’s did. He’s just faster. And much much cooler.

[TokyoMango] VIA [Engadget]

Robotics researchers have long been envious of flying insects, many of which are able to perform all sorts of spectacular acrobatics despite their small wings and smaller brains. Researchers at Harvard University have created a robotic fly the size of a penny that is actually able to fly using a wing structure and motions based on, you guessed it, a fly. The robofly weighs 60 milligrams (the equivalent of a few grains of rice), and beats its 1.5cm wings 120 (!) times per second. Most impressively, the actuating composite motor that powers the wings is 5 times more powerful for its weight than the muscles of a real fly.

You’ll notice in the video that the robofly takes off while attached to wires. Currently, there is no on-board power source, although that’s step 3. Step 2 is going to be making the fly controllable somehow, which (I’m guessing) is going to be (to put it mildly) tricky. Robert Wood, the designer of the fly, is taking a very biological approach to the project, but he’s not letting it constrain him, which I find to be pretty progressive:

Success meant that Wood could finally turn to those questions that weren’t worth asking until the fly took off: Is the shape of a fly’s wings (a less-than-optimal design which Wood improved on in his robotic version) a biological limitation, or does it somehow aid the fly’s aerodynamics? Does a four-winged insect offer a design improvement? Even questions of evolutionary biology come into play: Why did all the four-winged arthropod flyers of the late Carboniferous period evolve to have two wings?

It’s great how the process of designing a biologically inspired robot may actually help to answer questions about evolutionary biology. By creating a fly from scratch, we get a glimpse of how and why flies are so good at being flies… Hopefully this same philosophy might be extended to other biobots.

[ Harvard Magazine: Robotic Fly ]