It may have been a full 25 years after RCA first imagined the Roomba, but the Tomy Dustbot, which you could buy in 1985, does just about everything our favorite household vacuuming robot does. Well, mostly.

Kind of.

Okay, not really, but it does vacuum things, and it does have edge sensors to keep it from throwing itself down stairs in a desperate bid for your attention, something that is thoughtfully included in Roombas. The Dustbot does best the Roomba in one department, I would argue: personality. As Dustbot vacuums, his eyes flash, and he pretends to sweep things with his cute little broom and dustpan. Aww!

[ The Old Robots ] VIA [ Robots-Dreams ]

This video, from iRobot’s YouTube channel, is entitled “Inching Tube Test: Will it Break Out?” According to the caption, it’s a software model of some kind of “complex robot” that was being tested in a virtual environment. Anyone have any guesses as to what iRobot may have been (or is) working on here?

[ iRobot @ YouTube ]

Imagine if you will a world where human beings drive giant mechas around to get from place to place. Imagine also that the humans drive these giant mechas from seats mounted in a place that, if the bots were humans, you wouldn’t be allowed to straddle in public. The Chobu 01 was created by Japanese 3D artist Kazushi Kobayashi, and is from “a parallel 50s where the robots are the most popular transport system.” Pardon me, can you point me in the direction of this parallel universe of which you speak?

There are only 200 of these 1/12 scale models, and if you want one, they cost $315 and you’ll have to assemble it yourself. Lots more possibly naughty pics of Japanese schoolgirl types riding piloting the Chobu can be found over at Hobbymedia.it.

[ Chubu (Translated) ] VIA [ GeekAlerts ]

A few months ago, we wrote about a robot helicopter that uses simple optical flow to navigate. The following video shows an iRobot Create using another conceptually simple technology to find its way around an office:

Basically, all the robot is doing is finding straight lines in the camera image, drawing those lines out, and then steering towards the point at which they converge. If there’s no convergence (if the lines are horizontal across the image) the robot knows that it’s looking at a wall and it needs to turn. It’s also able to recognize orange cones as landmarks.

Of course, this is only going to work somewhere with reliable geometry, like floors, walls, ceilings, windows, etc.. A completely blank webcam image of something like a white wall, or a complex image with no discernible straight lines like an outdoor scene, would most likely confuse this software. However, it’s designed for a specific environment and appears to work reliably and efficiently in that environment.

So, here’s a wild idea… Wouldn’t it be cool if someone could bundle together a bunch of these simple but environment-dependent navigation technologies into one package that a robot could dynamically access based on which proves to be more effective in whatever environment it finds itself in? Yeah, that would be cool. Someday, someday.

[ Hackszine ] VIA [ GoRobotics ]

Want to add some robot style to your puny human existence? It doesn’t get much easier (and cheaper) than this: a silver painted ceramic robot lamp for 30 bucks from Urban Outfitters.

[ Urban Outfitters ] VIA [ Geeky Gadgets ]

As much as we love the cheap and easy programmability of WowWee robots, one of the downsides is the lack of direct access to their functions… You generally have to use their hand controllers, which gets tedious and makes it hard to set up long sequences. The Go-Robo software gives you much more direct access to WowWee bots through your computer via the WowWee RoboRemote IR controller, letting you stream commands or even set up long sequences involving multiple robots. Like, say, you want to script out a music video to The Lion Sleeps Tonight:

Good times, good times. Go-Robo Studio is available from Q4 Technologies starting at about $90.

[ Go-Robo ] VIA [ Tech Digest ]

Radish pickin’ is tirin’ work, boy howdy. Tirin’ enough that farmers in Japan are gettin’ a robot exoskeleton’ to help ‘em out:

The Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology has developed an agriculture robot suit designed specifically to help out with tough agricultural work like pulling radishes. The suit has eight motors fitted over the shoulders, elbows, back and knees to provide a power boost to the wearer. The current model weighs a hefty 25 kilograms, but developers hope to halve the weight and have it on the market in two years, retailing for between 500,000 and 1 million yen.

If they can manage to sell 100 suits, each one will cost only about $3300, which is a bargain compared to some of the other exoskeletons we’ve seen. There are no specs on how much exactly the suit will boost your strength, but picking radishes (which generally requires 30kg of lifting force) is made half as difficult, and other tasks that require holding your body in awkward positions (like pickin’ strawberries) can be completed with “virtually no exertion.”

$3300 for a robotic radish pickin’ exoskeleton? Sign me up.

[ Mainichi ] VIA [ Japanprobe ]

Another Bacarobo winner, the Kintore-Z robot does push-ups. Then one of its arms falls off. And then things really get weird:

Hellooooo nightmares.

VIA [ Pink Tentacle ]

[Direct Link]

This minute long video is someone’s list of their top 10 combat robots. We’ve actually covered every single one of them here on BotJunkie:

-Sarcos Exoskeleton (not really a robot, I’d say, but oh well)
-Crusher UGV
-Predator UAV
-Ripsaw UGV
-RHex
-LittleDog (um, “combat”?)
-Talon
-BigDog
-MAARS

…Except the first one, Mule. Oh well. 9/10 ain’t bad, right? And it’s not because we’re all about the military bots; it’s just that for better or worse, that’s where all the grant money goes.

Now, those of you familiar with robots might notice a few GIGANTIC ERRORS with this video, first and foremost the mislabeling of a Global Hawk UAV as a Predator, and showing it firing a missile, which it doesn’t do. Also, I’m pretty sure that some of the footage of the Foster-Miller Talon robot is actually of an iRobot PackBot… It had better be, because otherwise that’s a pretty serious omission, IMO.

An entire playlist of detailed footage of every bot on the top 10 list, after the jump.

(Read more…)

If you can get past the first 30 seconds of obligatory snideness, there’s some bitchin’ CGI robot fighting:

VIA [ Suicide Bots ]