This, people, is why you should invest $100 in an i-SOBOT. NOT-SO-DEADLY WEAPONS! Crossbow, sniper rifle, machine gun, rocket launcher, and light saber (!), after the jump. (Read more…)

We generally don’t do much in the way of theme posts around here, but I figured I’d spend 30 seconds and see what I could come up with via a Google search for “robot turkey.” Skipping over a robotic decoy designed to catch poachers and a song named “Let’s Talk Turkey” by band Ima Robot (see a video here), I found a robotic walking turkey developed by MIT waaaaay back in 1994.

Named “Spring Turkey,” the robot was MIT’s first bipedal walker. The 2 foot tall bot was connected to a boom arm to control roll and yaw and reduce the problem of walking to fundamentals, specifically pitch and coordinated joint movement. Spring Turkey was used to test walking algorithms until 1996, when it was replaced with Spring Flamingo. Spring Flamingo added feet and active ankles to the mix, and it was able to handle ascending and descending ramps at higher speeds than Spring Turkey.

Now, remember how dinosaurs are descended from birds? MIT went a little bit backwards and used their experience with Spring Turkey and Spring Chicken and evolved those bird legs into some dino legs, in the form of Troody. Troody is a 18 inch tall, 4 foot long, 10 pound robodino (most of a robodino) that can walk by itself. This was a pretty big deal back in 2001, and it’s no small feat today, especially for a top heavy robot with such spindly little legs.

After the jump, check out a video of Spring Turkey and Spring Flamingo doing their walking thing back in the day, and accompany Troody on its first field trip. (Read more…)

We wrote about micromouse competitions back in May, and this week, the annual All Japan Micromouse Robot Competition 2008 was taking place. The mice are capable of driving really, really fast, but the mazes they have to negotiate are full of sharp turns which limits their speed. One entry, Momoco8, attempted to overcome this by adding a vacuum system to their robot. Sort of like a reverse hovercraft, it keeps the mouse stuck to the floor and prevents it from careening out of control around turns:

Momoco8 finished the course in 7.1 seconds during its fastest run, which put it into sixth (!) place. The winner negotiated the entire maze in a mere 6.4 seconds.

VIA [ Robots-Dreams ]

This cute little metal robot sculpture is just a reminder that even robots (in all their perfection) have to excrete something, be it waste heat, gaseous exhaust, or spent uranium pellets. Whatever is coming out of this guy apparently turns toilet paper pink. He’s $95, including the toilet paper holder.

[ Bath Reader ] VIA [ Nerd Approved ]

When we posted about the robot flutist a few weeks ago, we mentioned that it was capable of playing along with humans. What it isn’t capable of is playing in an unstructured setting where it would be forced to display a (constrained) sort of creativity. Gil Weinberg’s lab at the Georgia Tech Center for Music Tech has been able to develop a pair of robots able to jam along with humans playing different instruments.

Haile, the perceptual robotic drummer detects the beat played by a human darbuka player and improvises based the human’s input. Shimon, the robotic marimba player, joins the session, detecting the beat and improvising based on the analyzed scale played by as human piano player.

“The processing allows [the robots] to analyze and improvise,” said Weinberg via telephone. “In one of the applications, we use a genetic algorithm… You have a population of something, and then you do mutations to all of these little things — in my case it’s musical motifs — mutations and cross-breeding between the musical genes, in our case, and then you have a new population that better fits to the environment.

…It runs [about] 50 generations of mutations that are cross-bred between the genes and tests whether this is similar to a motif that the saxophone player played, for example. And it plays something back that is a combination of musical genes of what the saxophone player played, what the piano player played — something that is unique that only can be the product of genetic algorithm.”

Their improv skills are, of course, no match for the Little Yellow Drum Machine, but not at all bad, I’d say, especially considering they have to contend with puny human musicians. One more jam session, after the jump. (Read more…)

Granted, Co-Robot is not the most impressive humanoid robot we’ve ever seen. But it has the ability to walk, fall over, get back up, and keep walking, all (mostly) by itself. I’m not even sure if Asimo can do all that. It comes in a simple to build kit and has only one motor (batteries are in the feet) and no servos. It operates entirely through gears and linkages and passive mechanical sensors, which is quite a feat of engineering in of itself. Co-Robot has three modes: walk, somersault, and dance, although it kinda looks like it’s trying to do all three at once in the video. It’s actually really impressive for only $20, if you ask me.

Available lots of places in Japan, but probably not many here in the States.

[ Co-Robot (Translated) ] VIA [ Robots-Dreams ]

First omelettes. Now pong. Next, THE WORLD! Or, you know, something. Looks like EPFL’s learning robot has been taught how to play pong, complete with distractions and witty banter. Personally, I’d be distracted enough just because I was playing pong with a robot, not to mention one that was insulting me. It would truly be an honor to be defeated and called a loser by this bot… At least for the first few times. After that, I won’t be held responsible for my actions.

[ EPFL ] VIA [ Engadget ]

This family photo taken at JPL shows three generations of Mars rovers: Sojourner, Spirit (or is that Opportunity?), and the somewhat less fetchingly named Mars Science Laboratory. It’s pretty neat to see the three robots side by side; it gives you a sense both of how big MSL is, and how small Sojourner was (click here for a picture with a person in it for comparison).

Sojourner is long frozen, of course, but Spirit and Opportunity are both still amiably working away, and it’s only been about 4 and a half more years than they were supposed to survive. Mars Science Laboratory is scheduled to land on Mars is mid to late 2010 and last for at least one Martian year (a little less than two Earth years). After the jump, check out the crazy way they intend to land this thing on the surface. (Read more…)

Lonely? MIT has the companion robot for you. It’s Huggable (that’s Huggable), who’s sort of like some robotic love child between a ConnectR, a Pleo, and a tribble (a robotic tribble). The end result is designed to be a much more tactile and friendly form for robotic companionship and telepresence. Pretty much his entire body is (or will be soon) covered in touch/force/temperature sensors, and he’s got cameras behind his eyes and a speaker in his nose and servo motors six ways to Sunday. Although Huggable is packed with way more hardware than your average bear, most of the actual number crunching (audio and visual processing, for example) will probably be done off-bear on a centrally located server which will wirelessly receive data from Huggable’s sensors and send back commands.

In addition to being an autonomous companion, Huggable is designed to be teleoperated. You can do this through your computer, with a second “slave” Huggable. The slave Huggable reproduces movements made to the original Huggable (wherever it is), and any movements you make on your end will be reproduced by the original. The computer tells you where and how the Huggable is being touched, and transmits live video and audio feeds.

The Huggable team still has some work to do before releasing a product that won’t kill you while you sleep, but in a couple years, Huggable may be available to hospitals and schools for some “thousands” of dollars.

[ Huggable ]

This is probably the most entertaining thing I saw at RoboDev this year. A group of students from UC Berkeley built themselves a Rubik’s Cube solving robot capable of solving as random a cube as you decide to stick it with. A little random, a lot random, it doesn’t matter… The robot (after a few seconds of thought) can typically solve a cube in 23 moves or less (sometimes way less). The robot is not only visually interesting (hey, it’s a cube!), but it’s also easy to use: show it the cube you want it to solve, and it’ll duplicate it for you, without, I assume, just replaying the randomization sequence on high speed reverse.

The guy in the video, Dan Dzoan, is no slouch himself… He was recently the world record holder in one-handed Rubik’s Cube speed solving. He may not be quite as fast as the robot he built (what irony!), but I’m not sure if the bot really counts as one handed, and it certainly can’t top this: