Congrats to “Rob,” who is the winner of the first ever BotJunkie contest. We used Random.org to generate a random number between 1 and 69, the total number of entries. The whimsical lords of atmospheric noise decided on 49, which turned out to be Rob’s comment: “Robot SWAG!!! Sweet!” Yes, yes it is. We’ll be in touch via email.

Many thanks to all of you who entered. This went pretty well, and we’ll be coming up with some with some more robot stuff to give away soon. Until then, you’ve still got time to enter to win Digital Innovations gear and a $100 Amazon gift certificate, or an Acer Aspire One netbook, over on OhGizmo.

Remember these cute little guys? We wrote about them in August of 2007… They’re swarm robots from Switzerland that have the ability to interact with each other to complete complex tasks that a single bot, or a few bots, can’t accomplish on their own. The neat thing about this particular swarm is that the units can physically grab onto other units, creating what is arguably one big, modular robot.

The swarm is capable of diagnosing and solving problems completely on its own, and somebody seems to have had the bright idea of asking the swarm to figure out how to carry off a poor little girl:

I’m sort of curious where the bots were taking her, and what they were planning on doing with her when they got here there. But on second thought, maybe there are some things I’m just better off not knowing…

[ Swarm-Bots ] VIA [ Make ]

We’ve been keeping our eye on Northrop Grumman’s X-47B Unmanned Combat Air System for over a year now, and it’s looking like the drone is just about to hit reality. The first of two $300 million drones is now complete, and is scheduled for a maiden flight sometime in 2009.

Unlike the Predator and Reaper drones which are remotely operated, the UCAS is designed from the ground up to be autonomous. It’s going to have to get checked out on things like aerial refueling and carrier landings, but as we’ve seen, some of the most challenging tasks for pilots are easily accomplished by robotic systems. Personally, I have very little doubt that the UCAS is going to be able to replace human pilots and aircraft in many, if not most, situations… What remains to be seen, however, is what level of autonomy the armed and robots will be allowed.

Specs on the X-47B, after the jump. (Read more…)

This is it, folks. We’ve made it to the future. According to RCA (remember them? I don’t) waaaay back in 1959, the future would have little robots that would scurry around and vacuum your floors. After finishing, the robot “returns to niche, readies itself for next job.” Sound familiar? It should. The form factor of this “mechanical maid” is very similar to that of the Roomba, albeit with a slightly less rotund personality. Not bad for a 40-odd year prediction… Now where’s my jetpack?

VIA [ Gizmodo ]

Back in April, we posted about Chop Shop’s weRobot t-shirts, which feature silhouettes of fifty-one classic and modern robots. Unsurprisingly, the shirts were hugely popular, and Chop Shop sent us a free one as a thank you for helping expose its fifty-one bots worth of awesomeness to the internets. And guess what… Now we want to send it to you!

What do I win? One weRobot t-shirt, brand spankin’ new, black with white robots, in a men’s medium.

How do I enter? It’s a cinch: just leave a comment (one comment only, we’ll be checking) with a valid email address on this post, and we’ll pick one at random. Your comment can be anything, but if you want to say something about what you like or don’t like about how things have been going on BotJunkie, I’ll be reading them all and taking notes. :)

Who can enter? Anyone, as long as it’s just one entry per person. You don’t have to be a US resident or anything like that.

When does it end? Commenting on this post will be closed sometime after midnight Friday night (depending on when I get home from my obligatory wild partying), and we’ll announce the winner on Saturday.

Good luck, and happy holidays from us here at BotJunkie.

[ Chop Shop ]

Looks like Boston Dynamics’ BigDog has made the swim over to Japan and has gotten busy weirding people out over there, too:

And in case it wasn’t abundantly clear, no, this isn’t the actual BigDog… It’s BigDog Beta (or a knockoff), a cheaper and more, um, organic version of the actual pack-carrying robotic quadruped.

[ BigDog ] VIA [ Japan Probe ]

Somebody from Society Of Robots was on hand recently to check out the 2008 Thailand Rescue Robot Championship for urban search and rescue (USAR) bots. The robots (autonomous or teleoperated) navigate a complex and challenging simulated urban environment looking for a fake human body. The video is a little bit slow (the promo banner above being unforgivably misleading), but there’s still some good robot footage… Part 1 is below, and you can watch Part 2, after the jump.

On to Part 2… (Read more…)

A santa hat. A reindeer. An unmanned robot armed with a big machine gun. Yep, that’s what the holidays are all about, around here at least, although when it comes to unmanned armed robots this is about the best we can hope for. Foster-Miller (makers of all kinds of serious military and security bots) has put together this 2009 calendar featuring their hunky Talon robots and their slightly-less-hunky operators. I wish I could tell you where to get one, but you probably have to be a major government contractor or a legitimate journalist (sigh) before you can expect one in the mail.

[ Danger Room ]

Today only, Woot.com is selling two (count ‘em, two) Roomba 415s for a shockingly low $155, which includes FedEx express shipping to get them to your door before xmas. They’re no 500 series (and they’re refurbished), but who really cares, it’ll automatically clean your floor and the floor of whomever you choose to bestow the second one upon, and look very cute (and very cheap) while doing so.

[ Woot ]

There is apparently no limit to the creative ways that one can use a KUKA robotic arm (or two). So, why not turn a couple into what have got to be some of the world’s most complicated and expensive record players? As you might expect, the “juke_bots” do more than just play music: they can autonomously “delay, accelerate, fragment, and distort” the tunes, and swap out different records whenever they feel like it. And they feel like it, apparently, when you throw money at them. Yes, that’s right, these robots operate on tips.

Industrial robots requiring tips… If this catches on, we’re in some serious trouble.

[ robotlab (Translated) ]