I’m just gonna go ahead and quote you the Discovery Channel press release on this one, because otherwise you might think that there’s no POSSIBLE way what I’m talking about could actually be on TV:

From the producers that brought you MYTHBUSTERS comes an explosive new series, WEAPONIZERS (3 x 60 min) premiering on Discovery Channel US, May 11, 2009 at 9pm.

This new program combines creativity, military-like strategy and engineering as two teams of master builders — dubbed “Weaponizers” — turn ordinary vehicles into remote-controlled machines of destruction. With the pace and intensity of a video game, the vehicles are completed with live-ammunition machine guns and other seemingly ordinary objects that are transformed into powerful weapons. Building on the teams’ expertise — hot rod restoration, pyrotechnics, special effects, crash engineering and military weaponry — the opponents harness their ingenuity in a competition face off where the goal is to achieve victory by creating an indestructible vehicle.

In each episode, the teams convert regular rides such as a shuttle bus, an ice cream van and muscle cars into vicious vehicles. Using science, special effects, engineering, metal fabrication and a bit of fantasy, they construct and test their vehicles to ensure that they pack the biggest punch and are fully remote-controlled. Once all testing is complete, each team descends into respective underground control bunkers to command their vehicles for the two-round competition.

In round one, the teams undertake a challenge-based phase where the vehicles race to destroy or defend exploding targets such as medieval castles or Mad Max style fuel depots. Then in round two, the “Weaponizers” are thrown into a Carmageddon Round — the rules are: there are no rules. It’s a gloves off test of what expertise these teams can draw on to achieve victory, which in WEAPONIZERS’ terms means there is only one vehicle left standing!

A weaponized ice cream van, you say? I’ve got a picture of what that’s probably gonna look like, after the jump. (Read more…)

We initially wrote about the ReadyBot research group last October, and showed you the robot they’ve been working on to take over somewhere between 40% and 80% of your daily housework. ReadyBot’s First Law of Practical Robotics states: “Consumer robots generally will only do a job 80% as well as a human being, at best. If that isn’t acceptable, don’t use a robot.” The reason for this law is that getting a robot to autonomously do all the basic, straightforward stuff that takes up 50% or whatever of your housework (vacuuming the floor, doing dishes, etc.) is (in an extremely relative sense, mind you) not so bad, but as tasks get more and more specific complicated, getting it to do that last 10% or 20% (like changing a lightbulb) on its own is exponentially more difficult. And ultimately, it just doesn’t make sense to spend a lot of time and resources programming a robot to change a lightbulb when it may only find itself in a situation where it needs to know how to do that a couple times a year.

ReadyBot has been testing a new strategy with household robots: on-demand teleoperation, or “cloud robotics” as they call it. With cloud robotics, the robot is always connected to the internet, and all of the scripts that it uses to operate are streamed, which allows for dynamic upgrading of an entire class of robots. But the clever bit is that when faced with an unfamiliar or particularly complex task, the robot just calls for help, and a human supervisor (who is a resident of the same cloud) takes the robot over and guides it via cameras and a virtual 3D view, much like a video game (hence “gamer bots”). The operator also has the capability to write or alter a script, in effect “teaching” the robot to perform a new task. And thanks to the cloud, that lesson will be instantly available to robots everywhere else.

Since this system depends on human guidance, albeit in a limited capacity, it would probably involve some kind of subscription service. But the idea is that you can drastically reduce development costs, making the robot itself substantially cheaper overall.

[ ReadyBot ] VIA [ Technology Review ]

We’re not quite sure what the Sony Rolly is, but if you are, and you want one, now’s the time: normally $400 from SonyStyle.com, if you enter the coupon code “DEALNEWSROLLY250″ you can get it for just $150, along with free shipping. This deal is good for today (April 29th) only, and it’s just on the black version.

[ SonyStyle ] VIA [ DealNews ]

Robots Dreams has the scoop on some new itty bitty robot toys from Tomy. Details are apparently under embargo (although Lem managed to snag himself a couple, lucky sod), but we do know that they use the technology developed for the Robo-Q, which makes me think that they’ll probably be able to avoid obstacles and follow objects. There may be more, too, including “a set of surprising new interactive features.” They’re a little bit cutesy for my taste, but that can always be remedied with a dremel and a bit of paint… Assuming, of course, that the underlying hardware is worth messing with (and it’s cheap enough to risk mangling). And for the answer to that, it looks like we’ll have to wait a bit, but we’ll keep you updated.

VIA [ Robots Dreams ]

While not nearly as cute as Puff the firefighting dragon, this modified Rovio is probably more effective as an autonomous firefighting robot. Mounting a Halon fire extinguisher (which is a pretty serious extinguisher capable of smothering things like burning magnesium), the Rovio has been programmed to recognize fires, approach them, and activate its extinguisher. Of course, you’ll need to have a fairly small fire at ground level for this little bot to be very effective, but if you’ve got a bunch of little robots running around starting fires too, the Rovio could be just what you need.

[ Robots Rule ] VIA [ SlashGear ]

To commemorate twenty-five years since the first broadcast of “Koso Kihei Botomsu,” Yamato has released a 1/24th scale limited edition Scope Dog model called “The Last Red Shoulder.”

I have no idea what most of those terms are referring to. But, you don’t have to be a fan of 80s anime to appreciate this replica mech. Especially a replica that moves around via a remote control and shoots infrared LASERS at other replica mechs. Score a hit, and the controller vibrates. Fun! I don’t know if it’s $248 worth of fun, though… For that amount of money, you might as well just build your own mech. Or buy a servo for it, anyway.

I’ve got episode 1 of VOTOMS for you (with English subtitles) where you can see the Scope Dog Turbo Custom in action, after the jump. (Read more…)

Hey kids, Mother’s Day is coming up! It’s May 10th, but you knew that already. Aren’t you excited? I know you’ve all just been dying for another opportunity to show your mom how much you care (they can’t come often enough!), and what better way to do it than with a pretty (but useless) piece of robot jewelry. These pendants are all about an inch or so in length, include chains, and don’t cost much more than $20ish… Just don’t tell your mom that, and hope she doesn’t read BotJunkie.

[ Amazon ] VIA [ Robot Snob ]

Yesterday we posted about a robot that begs for money, and today we have a robot that actually delivers something in exchange for your donation. PaCo (which stands for Automatic Online Street Poet) wanders around in an obstacle avoiding wheelchair, using cameras to detect people. When it finds someone, it asks for demands change, and in return it generates a unique piece of poetry (based on a series of language algorithms connected to an online database), which it then recites and prints out for you.

PaCo is from late 2004, but despite its appearance, it actually seems to be relatively sophisticated. I only wish I could speak Spanish well enough to tell whether or not its improvised poetry makes any sense.

[ VIDA 7.0 ]

A judge in Sweden awarded a worker about $3000 in compensation for serious injuries sustained when an industrial robot designed to move rocks grabbed him by the head. The worker thought he had turned the robot off, but he hadn’t, and the robot was activated when he tried to repair it. The company probably has some safety liability, but it seems like it was mostly the fault of the worker, hence the $3000 judgment.

Seems fairly straightforward, right? But I bet you can probably see where this is headed…

Now, with all due respect to io9 (and I’m not intentionally singling them out, that’s just where I got the story from), their headline “Robot Beats Man In Sweden, Grabbing His Head and Shaking Him” is kind of misleading and, if I may say so, also kind of anti-robot and a symptom of media bias against robot accidents in general in that it attributes some kind of motive that obviously doesn’t exist. Industrial robots are tools. Big, dangerous ones. If instead of a robot it had been, say, a bandsaw that the worker forgot to properly turn off before messing with it, there would be no news here. But instead, all kinds of malicious motives are attributed to a piece of machinery that has none. If you need to replace a belt in your car but you forget to turn the engine off and it breaks your arm when you reach into the engine compartment, whose fault is that? Would anyone say that the car “assaulted” you? Of course not. The car was just doing what it was designed to do. And as we’ve discussed before, cars in general are arguably more robotic than an industrial robot is.

So, come on people, chill out. When robots come to kill us all, we’ll know it, but when accidents happen, especially accidents that are caused by a person not turning the robot off first, that’s all they are: accidents.

[ SvD In Swedish, translated here ] VIA [ io9 ]

Husqvarna, who we checked out at CES in January, has just released a new version of their robotic Automower system that includes an embedded text messaging service that the robot can use to let you know that it needs assistance. The mower will text you whenever it “gets disturbed,” which I guess means it’ll yell for help if it gets stuck on something or accidentally spots your neighbor doing nude yoga.

The Automower 260 ACX is bigger and faster than previous versions and is designed for people with lawns of up to about an acre and a half (that’s like having a football field out behind your house). You’ll need to stake out a perimeter wire around the whole swath, which the mower will cover in a pattern of hour of mowing followed by 40 minutes of charging. Husqvarna helpfully points out that mowing a lawn that size eats up about 120 hours of time, but I’m not sure that that that justifies the $5200 pricetag, especially if you have kids (yours or someone else’s, doesn’t matter) to do the grunt work for you. But there are other benefits, too: studies have shown that the Automower “scares off moles, Spanish slugs and other lawn predators, if you let it work at night.” No word on those damn kids, though.

[ Press Release ] VIA [ Engadget ]