This Manoi humanoid robot is somehow able to go from a headspin pretty much directly into the splits. Is that even physically possible? Probably not, and that’s why robots are better than humans.

VIA [ GetRobo ]

This pudgy robot is called the Rotundus GroundBot. Isn’t that adorable? It’s a security bot that’s designed to patrol large, mostly flat areas, although it’s apparently capable of all sorts of off-road fun including deep snow, mud, sand… And it floats. If such robustness seems like overkill, it’s because the original concept was developed as the European Space Agency was looking for an exploration vehicle to send to Mercury. Anyway, You might think that something like this might be hard to drive, but it’s not. It’s kinda like a video game, except that you get either a 2D or 3D view of up to 360 degrees that operators say “makes you feel you are actually there, sitting in GroundBot, looking out.” You can also set GPS waypoints to have it navigate autonomously.

GroundBot is about 2 feet in diameter and can carry 5 pounds payload (i.e. cameras and sensors) at speeds of up to 6 mph. Onboard batteries can keep it going for up to 16 hours. It’s hard to tell what’s going on inside the bot, but my guess is that it uses the same basic design as the orbs of Orbswarm: a steerable mass that changes the center of gravity of the sphere. Ooo, wouldn’t it be awesome to see some kind of orb on orb battle? Having been nearly run over by orbs a bunch of times, I’ll be putting my money on Orbswarm.

[ Rotundus ]

Hidden somewhere behind the 9,000 lens flares in the new Star Trek movie is R2-D2. Where? Nobody knows, but if you can spot him, you could win some kind of prop from the movie. This (probably) isn’t heralding the Trek/Wars crossover that lonely fan fiction authors are desperate for… Star Trek director J.J. Abrams obviously just wanted to pay homage to what is the best sci-fi movie franchise ever. Aaaaaand I’m going to start running away now.

If you think you spotted Artoo, describe the place and email it to facebook@paramount.com with “STAR TREK Easter Egg Sweepstakes” in the subject line.

VIA [ MTV ]

Those little Ember robotic LAN nodes that we wrote about on Monday have shown up in an iRobot video. There isn’t really any new information here, but I was impressed by how effective the little flippers are at getting the bot up and over obstacles that look impossibly tall. It doesn’t look quite big enough to climb stairs, but as long as it can make it over railroad tracks and curbs, it should have no trouble getting around typical urban environments.

VIA [ Danger Room ]

Snoozy isn’t an especially sophisticated robot, but as far as emulating a sloth goes, he does a pretty good job by not doing anything at all besides breathing. Inside his fuzzy body, Snoozy has an Arduino board, some pumps, and a latex glove. He not only inflates and deflates, but also inhales and exhales, just like a real sloth (how exciting!), although leaf breath (sloths eat leaves, right?) has yet to be implemented. The general idea was to create a toy that offers a passively tactile and relaxing experience, and it looks like it’s probably a pretty comforting bot to snuggle with. There are still a few bugs to be worked out (the pumps are a tad on the loud side), and there’s no information about an eventual product yet, much less pricing… Whatever it ends up costing, though, it’ll probably be way, way cheaper than a Paro.

[ Justin Blinder ] VIA [ BBG ]

Last week, we brought you a long exposure picture showing the path that a Roomba takes while cleaning a room. Turns out that other people have had the same idea, and there’s a Flickr pool devoted to long exposure Roomba art. Adding an LED or two makes for an even cooler picture; check out a couple more images after the jump. (Read more…)

This thing has been around for quite a while, but we haven’t covered it yet, so here ya go. It’s called Halluc 2, and it was designed by the Chiba Institute of Technology to function as a reconnaissance and rescue robot that can move over any sort of terrain. Halluc 2 uses 56 individual motors to power its eight three-jointed legs. The legs can all move independently, and have powered wheels on the ends which can be flipped around to be turned into feet depending on the surface Halluc 2 is trying to navigate. There are three different modes: vehicle, animal, and insect. In vehicle mode, Halluc 2 uses its wheels, whereas in the animal and insect modes, it walks with its legs underneath it for compactness or spread out for stability… The entire video is worth watching, ’cause Halluc 2 can do a bunch of cool stuff:

Reportedly, they’re working on one of these that a human can actually ride.

[ Future Robotics Technology Center (Translated) ] VIA [ Robot Watch (Translated) ]

And thanks to Hacked Gadgets for the reminder that this thing exists.

Why spend time and energy trying to develop a nano-sized robot motor when you can just wrangle up a couple thousand bacteria to push you around? Researchers at the NanoRobotics Laboratory at the École Polytechnique de Montréal have created robots that measure only 300 micrometers on a side, complete with a solar panel, a pH sensor, and a communication circuit. When the robot senses elevated pH levels, it sends signals to an external computer, which directs a swarm of bacteria to push the robot towards the area of higher pH.

The bacteria themselves are quite interesting. They produce their own magnetite crystals, which they use to navigate along the Earth’s magnetic field lines looking for nice places to live. They can somehow tell which way they’re going, and they also respond to light, persistently swimming parallel to magnetic field lines when illuminated. It looks like this is how such precise motion is achieved: by changing magnetic fields and illumination, the external computer is able to direct the bacteria exactly where to go.

All of this is happening in a petri dish right now, but sometime somehow the researchers envision using this technique for medical purposes… Since nanobots propelled by thousands of magnetic bacteria is exactly what I want running around inside my body.

[ TR ] VIA [ Engadget ]

iRobot, in its infinite wisdom, seems to have decided to start releasing information on development projects and prototypes on their PackBot Facebook page. Yes, PackBot has its own official Facebook page. So, this was breaking news as of about two months ago, but apparently nobody noticed until Robot Stock News (in a moment of boredom, I can only assume) Facebooked them. Anyway, you may be familiar with the LANdroid program from back in 2007, the goal of which is to develop a swarm of ‘disposable’ (i.e. $100ish) robots capable of creating a adaptive wireless network in urban environment. You might also remember that iRobot got a chunk of DARPA funding to try to make it happen, and here’s the result: ‘Ember.’

Ember weighs in at only a pound, and is about the size of a small paperback book. Like its cousin the PackBot, Ember uses flippers to help it climb obstacles and self-right. It accepts just about any kind of USB or SDIO radio payloads, including 802.11 WiFi, cellular, Bluetooth, Zigbee, etc.. Also like the PackBot, it’s robust enough to be thrown, and has some kind of onboard obstacle avoidance (eventually it should be semi-autonomous), mounts a small camera on top, and looks to be controlled by a little tiny touchscreen.

Ember is still a prototype (it’s at stage one of the DARPA program), but it looks like it more or less works. Also, it’s kinda interesting just how much Ember looks like the original DARPA concept. One more pic, after the jump. (Read more…)

See that sock? That’s your missing sock. That robot stole your sock. But hey, at least he’s washing it for you, and he’s having a good time, too. Bubbles!

You can catch the other two Bots With Stuff from this week over on The Shoebox Blog, including a robot with dentures and a robot with significant damage.

[ Bots With Stuff ]