The 3rd annual Human-Robot Interaction Conference was held in Amsterdam about a week ago. The winner of the Lego Mindstorms Student Design Competition was Phobot, a cute little robot who’s scared of things:

Phobot expresses himself through sounds, postures, movement, simulated heartbeats, and movable eyebrows. He runs a program that emulates a learning process: in the beginning, Phobot is naturally curious, but scared of even small objects. If you hold his hand and assure him that everything is okay (aww!) he’ll get used to an object of a given size, and start to dance a little bit. Using this method, you can accustom him to larger and larger objects until he becomes invincible. Phobot was conceived as a companion to children who are scared of things; the idea is that by helping Phobot to overcome his fears, it will be easier for the child to understand their own.

[ Phobot ] VIA [ Physorg ]

The Samsung Hauzen VC-RE70V vacuum robot is one of the few foreign models I’ve seen that isn’t a poorly disguised and partially dysfunctional knockoff of an iRobot Roomba. In fact, it’s got a mapping feature that is a noticeable departure from the way Roombas operate. A small camera in the Hauzen takes pictures of its surroundings and creates some kind of map, which it uses not only to clean more efficiently, but also to return to it’s charging dock and (if necessary) resume cleaning where it left off. This means that the Hauzen will clean much more faster and more efficiently than Roombas do, with their random, insecty logic. The advantage of the Roomba’s approach, however, is that it cleans each spot 3 or 4 times during one cleaning cycle. It remains to be seen which approach is best, or even if there is a best approach. The Hauzen is supposed to be released later this month in Korea, so hopefully more details will be forthcoming.

VIA [ I4U News ]

The speed and precision of the ABB IRB 340 FlexPicker robotic, um, arm, is pretty wild. It’s the world’s fastest industrial robot, able to accelerate at 10gs, as the arm goes from zero to 280mph in 1 second (after which it hopefully slows down again). Able to handle payloads of up to 2kg, it’s optimized for short and fast pick-and-place cycles, requiring as little at 0.4 seconds per cycle. The system includes a camera that can detect any object that doesn’t conform to a set of standards, which makes the FlexPicker perfect for working with food. The video below shows FlexPicker systems sorting croissants, stacking sausages, and boxing muffins, realtime:

Terrifying, isn’t it?

[ ABB FlexPicker ] VIA [ Hacked Gadgets ]

This is Jerry. He’s a dachshund, and he has the best damn dog toy in the world:

I was hoping the robot would try and chuck the little puffball dog that shows up two minutes in, but no dice. Guess I’ll have to wait for version 2.0 and the sequel.

VIA [ Digg ]

Boston Dynamics has quite a reputation for innovative of methods bot locomotion (like RHex), but some of their most popular (best funded?) projects are of the four legged sort. We introduced you to LittleDog here on BotJunkie last September, and loyal readers might even remember his brother, BigDog, from when we covered him on OhGizmo two years ago. BigDog has come a long way since his first few tentative steps… The DARPA funded, gear-hauling quadruped is now able to carry a staggering 340 pounds over terrain that would challenge a human carrying nothing. And he survives being kicked in the ribs with way more grace than I do. Check it out:

[ BigDog ] VIA [ Automaton ]

Whee!

I found this on YouTube. It’s a robot on a swing, and the description (and most of the comments) are in Japanese. If any multilinguals out there would care to do us a favor and interpret, we’d be much obliged.

[ YouTube ]

Being the senior editor of an illustrious robotics blog, I feel that when I dance the robot, it’s my obligation to provide a realistic interpretation of current state of humanoid robotics, which is why I dance like this. Now that I can point to this little dancing robot toy as the latest advance in robot locomotion, I can finally unleash my inner creativity and dance just like it does. Aw yeah, pump it up, pump it up! Woohoo!

[ Iwantthat ] VIA [ Nerd Approved ]

Here’s the scenario:

An aggressive regional power with robust integrated air defenses, ballistic/cruise missiles, and weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and chemical WMD capabilities has attacked a U.S. ally. Offshore, a Navy Carrier Strike Group prosecutes enemy submarine and surface forces. Nearby countries refuse basing rights to U.S. forces, and the closest secure bases are thousands of miles distant. From the first hours of the conflict, ultra-long endurance Navy UCAVs hold the entire battlespace perpetually at risk, identifying emergent targets and denying the enemy the sanctuary of strategic depth. Networking with other joint sensors and shooters, Navy UCAV assets detect, track and identify enemy air defenses, surface and submarine forces, missile launchers, C2 nodes, and WMD sites. Joint commanders working with the Navy fleet and carrier strike group assets prioritize targets and assign them to persistently orbiting unmanned aerial systems. The Navy UCAV’s flexible payload enables battle managers to match the right weapon to each target, while its onboard sensors update the targeting picture through weapon release and damage assessment.

The US Navy wants this all to be a reality by 2025. According to DefenseTech.org, the Navy is actively seeking competitive prototypes of an unmanned combat air vehicle to replace F/A-18s on aircraft carriers, which is a fairly major step. There are lots of upsides, though, including lower costs, increased time on station, higher survivability, and lower risk. Northrop Grumman is clearly in the lead when it comes to UCAVs after beating out Boeing’s X-45 program to win a $635 million development contract from the Navy, and it seems like the focus is probably going to remain on Northrop Grumman’s X-47, with other companies contracting out some of the construction. The X-47B is a strike fighter sized high subsonic unmanned carrier based aircraft with a combat radius of 1500 miles, a ferry radius of 3500 miles, and a payload of 4500lbs (weapons or sensors) carried internally. The first flight of a full-sized demonstrator platform is set for November of 2009, with carrier trials to be completed 3 years later. More info, pics, and video, after the jump. (Read more…)

[Update: It's now up on YouTube]

I’d like to think I’m pretty restrained when it comes to most of the stuff I write about. If it’s cool, I say it’s cool, but I don’t gush. Except for Wall-E. Wall-E makes me gush. Yes, you can quote me on that. I am happy, nay, ecstatic to report that there is a new trailer up on Apple/Disney/Pixar’s Wall-E site, and it’s packed (packed, I tell you!) with new footage, including bits and pieces from all of the super secret stuff I saw at WonderCon and actual honest-to-goodness people. It’s not on their YouTube site yet (and if I upload it myself it’ll just get pulled), so you’ll have to click through to watch. But it’s totally, completely, horrifically worth it. Watch it. Now. NOW!

Also available for download in HD here.

[ Wall-E Trailer ] VIA [ io9 ]

On Monday I wrote about a quad rotor Microdrone mounting a squirt gun, currently in use by the British Transport Police. Today I ran across this video of a quad rotor helicopter with an independently aimable, camera equipped airsoft gun mounted on the top. It doesn’t appear to be a UAV in this configuration, and I’m kinda wondering why they didn’t mount the gun on the bottom of the aircraft. Still, it’s pretty effective looking, and not something I’d particularly want to be in the sights of.

From what I’ve dug up, the quad rotor platform is called the Pegasus (no relation). It can lift a 7 pound payload for 8 minutes, and once version includes a “garage” mounted underneath that can deploy an R/C scout car. More information about that can apparently be found on the RcGroups.com forums, which has been down (for me, at least) for the last few hours. I’ll check back tomorrow, or if you notice anything, feel free to post about it in the comments.

[ UAV Airsoft ] VIA [ Suicide Bots ]