Back in July we wrote about the DelFly, a fully controllable micro air vehicle equipped with camera that weighs all of 3 grams. Researchers in Japan are working on a slightly smaller ornithopter that tips the scales (or doesn’t) at 0.39 grams, using flapping wings modeled on a butterfly with a rubber band as a battery. It’s not quite as sophisticated as the DelFly, but the biological inspired design is, if I may say so, rather beautiful. Using high speed video, the designers have determined that the most efficient wings for forward flight are wings with micromolded veins (for stability) flapping at 10 beats per second. My guess is that they will find that the closer the wings are modeled on those of an actual butterfly, the more efficient flight will become. And yes, that absolutely means an awesome paint job.

VIA [ Smart Machines ]

We’re still a little bit snowed in here in the Northwest, so while I dig myself out, here’s an R2-D2 dance video to keep you entertained:

VIA [ Gizmodo ]

We have a foot or so of snow here in Portland, Oregon. It’s completely paralyzed pretty much the entire pacific northwest. Rain, we can handle. We’re good at rain. Snow, not so much. Doesn’t seem to faze this PackBot much, though… Looks like it would make a pretty awesome remote control ATV.

Hopefully you’re all enjoying your holidays and tolerating your families and learning how to operate your shiny new robots. Don’t forget, we’ve got the huge and crazy Consumer Electronics Show coming up starting January 6 in Las Vegas. BotJunkie will be there covering all the latest and greatest (and trying to score a bunch of robot swag to give away). It’s gonna be awesome!

[ iRobot @ YouTube ]

I can’t find too much information on these little MicroClipper robots, which is somewhat surprising, since they seem to run competitions along with the popular MicroMouse events. Clippers operate in the same mazes as the mice, except they have to deal with a bunch of randomly placed cans. Each can in the maze must be flipped, and then the robot has to get back to its starting position. So, the robots have to figure out when they’ve covered the entire maze (or flipped enough cans), and then determine the fastest way back to the starting point from wherever they flip their last can, a task made more complicated by the fact that there’s a bunch of really annoying cans in the way. Plus, when the bot flips a can, it has the ability to decide where to put it back down, and that decision could have a significant effect on how fast it can get back to the start of the maze after completing all of the flips. So many variables… It would drive me nuts, but it looks like fun.

[ MicroClippers ]

Have a happy nondenominational holiday season, with much <3 from us here at BotJunkie. I hope you get a big fat Roomba under the tree menorah pole celebratory object of your choice. And if not, well, you’ll have to sacrifice a bunch more humans to the robot gods, and maybe, just maybe, you’ll get one next year.

[ BeatBots ]

It looks kinda like a magic trick, but this extendable instrument mast mounted on an iRobot PackBot extends up to eight feet tall, which is 24 times higher than the 4 inch height of the mast in its fully retracted position. It’s not called Zipper Mast for nothing: three flexible metal strips are “zipped” together to form a stable vertical support. The strips are flexible enough to be rolled up for storage, which is how such a long mast can fit into such a small package. A pretty brilliant idea, if you ask me. Diagrams of how the system works, after the jump. (Read more…)

Sadly, this 49 foot tall Asimo float from Honda won’t actually be marching. But it will be tipping its hat to the crowd, apparently. And it’s made out of, um, rice. And lettuce. For real. It’s nice and eco-friendly, but I’d rather have less vegetables and more actual robot, you know? Unless maybe they’re planning to serve it up as a salad course at the end of the parade…

[ Honda ] VIA [ DVICE ]

A few months ago, we posted about some little solar powered UGVs that you could drive around, over the internet. It’s pretty cool. Looks like you can do sorta the same thing with an i-SOBOT, using your computer to play 1v1 soccer against another i-SOBOT, physically located who knows where. You do have to download a little program to get this to work, unlike BP’s slick flash interface… But, you’re not limited to just a game of soccer, either. The website, hosted by Robot Services Group, also offers robot “test drives,” where you can remotely operate a few different varieties of humaniod robots. Not a bad thing to try out if you’re considering putting down some real money on one of these things, even if they are pretty damn cheap nowadays.

[ Robot Services Group ]

This sign, posted over at Trossen Robotics, is in a nutshell why I lock myself in my room with a bunch of robots and computers for 23 out of 24 hours every day. Not necessarily ’cause of the abuse bit, but man, humans are just so infuriatingly human sometimes…

[ Trossen ] VIA [ Robots-Dreams ]

Since iRobot is taking its sweet time releasing an efficient and reliable and cost effective lawn mowing robot (we know they’re working on it, though), other companies have stepped in to take advantage of lazy yard owners. The latest robot isn’t a humanoid or a sheep and you don’t have to build it yourself… It’s SmartMow, and (for a limited time!) it only costs $749.

SmartMow features three cutting blades that combine to cut a foot wide swath of grass, stuffed into a lawn-camo body that weighs only 17 pounds. The lithium battery pack will power it for 2-3 hours (enough time to mow about a sixth of an acre), after which the bot returns to its home base for a four hour recharge. One of the problems with robotic lawn mowers is that it’s hard for them to tell where your lawn ends and where exactly you want them to mow, so until someone develops a reliable grass detector (and I’m not sure why this has not been done yet, honestly), SmartMow relies on the traditional if low-tech solution of a manually installed edge wire to keep the robot contained and out of your petunias.

You can pre-order a SmartMow for spring 09 delivery with a down payment of $175 plus another $525 when it’s ready. Supposedly, over time SmartMow will save you a substantial amount of money compared to a lawn care service, but it’s going to be laziness, not financial incentives, that really get this thing moving… Except that you have to clean your lawn of all debris before unleashing SmartMow. Oh well, so much for being lazy.

Video after the jump. (Read more…)