Since 1994, Carnegie Mellon has been running the Mobot Slalom competition, where home built autonomous robots follow a white line through a sequence of gates as fast as they can. To complicate matters, the lines diverge and converge at several points, requiring the bots to have some sort of built-in reasoning. They also have to deal with uneven terrain, inclement weather, and have to fit through the 18 inch square gates. There’s this rule about the design of the bots:

“Animals (except primates) may be used to assist with vehicle control as long as such use is humane (does not harm the animal in any way) and conforms with applicable University regulations.”

Intriguing… Too bad the website doesn’t elaborate.

[ Mobot Slalom ] VIA [ Communist Robot ]

I’m just glad it didn’t somehow scramble his innards.

[ Wall-E ]

I don’t watch much American football. Every time I do, there seems to be a whole lot of standing around followed by a bunch of identical looking guys piling on top of one another. And then it happens all over again. Not so with robot American football… Check it out:

Okay, so arguably, this is more like soccer or rugby than American football, but still, it’s blindingly fast and packed with action. I’m a fan.

[ Robot Football (In Japanese) ] VIA [ Robots-Dreams ]

When you need a forest fire controlled, you can either use a little bug, or you can this gigantic, saw-equipped robotic behemoth. I know what I’d be more entertained to watch… This forest fire “Clear Cut” robot is sadly only a model, albeit a very detailed one, containing about 600 parts and built over a period of 6 months by student Jordan Guelde. The concept is that this robot tromps around the perimeter of a fire, clear cutting trees and underbrush to prevent the fire from spreading. Is it excessive? Who cares, look at those huge freakin’ saw-arms. One more pic, after the jump. (Read more…)

These little laser-equipped robots may not scare you that much, but this is how it all starts: right now, they’re a foot tall, but give them a couple generations and they’ll be crushing us under their giant metal feet. In the meantime, though, we get to watch these KHR-1HV humaniod remote controlled robots take part in a 4 v 4 game of laser tag:

Gameplay seems to be a lot like a conventional game of retail laser tag: run around and shoot anything that moves on the way to the enemy base, where you mindlessly pound away at the sensor ’cause it’s worth the most points. In this case, hitting another robot causes it to fall over and become incapacitated for five seconds and the team loses a point. Games last five minutes, and the winners (I assume) get to strip the losers for spare parts.

[ Impress (Translated) ] VIA [ Engadget ]

This friendly robotic pachyderm likes nothing better to have a dirty urinal inserted into his rear, at which time some mysterious mechanical guts work their magic, and about 10 seconds later, poof, the urinal is all nice and clean and sterile and smelling (I assume) of sweet elephant backside. His little yellow hat is just adorable, and I guess the whole trunk concept is sort of cute, but from a slightly different angle, it kinda looks like… Oh, nevermind. Just watch the video:

VIA [ Engadget ]

Later today, Halifax Health will be webcasting a live robot-assisted gynecologic oncology surgery. The robot assisting (or actually performing the surgery) will be (surprise surprise) a da Vinci surgical system. Here’s the scoop, kind of:

Watch it online here, starting at 7pm EST.

[ Halifax Health ] VIA [ Communist Robot ]

I’m not sure whose idea it was to put some poor kid’s dolls inside this maze, but it’s a good thing that a bunch of very capable robots are competing to find them all. RoboCup Rescue (the video above was taken at a German warm-up event) challenges robots to navigate and map a complex 150 square meter three dimensional maze of blocks, stairs, and pipes that simulates a disaster area… Something like what my office will look like when the next big quake hits San Francisco. Anytime now. No? Not yet? Okay, moving on.

The dolls wiggle around, make noise, emit CO2, and get warm, just like real babies/people. The robots are completely autonomous, and are scored both on how many dolls they find and how accurate of a map they construct while doing so. Currently, the time it takes for autonomous robots to survey an area and then produce a map usable by search and rescue teams is on the order of 10-20 minutes, which is just too long to be practical, but as with everything else these days, faster/better/cheaper is a future inevitability.

[ RoboCup Rescue ] VIA [ New Scientist ]

After some past fiascoes (you should probably not click on that link), you’ll have to wait until after the jump to check out this t-shirt. It’s a visual metaphor that’s funny and pretty tame, unless you say it out loud. (Read more…)

The Georgian Defense Ministry (this Georgia, not that one) says that a Russian MiG-29 Fulcrum has shot down one of their unarmed Hermes 450 reconnaissance drones. Russia is dismissing the report as “nonsense,” but Georgia has video footage taken by the drone up until the very end:

Okay, I know this has international incident written all over it, but it’s a pretty sweet video. The drone was shot down in Abkhazia, which is a separatist territory backed by the Russians. It’s certainly not anything like shooting down a manned aircraft, but it’ll be interesting to see how much this exchange escalates.

After the jump, a video from 2002 showing a US Predator drone engaging an Iraqi MiG-25. (Read more…)