Robots have lots of trouble with stairs, which is unfortunate, because we humans like our stairs. We’ve seen a variety of stair climbing robots over the years that aren’t modeled on humans, ranging from the slightly complicated to the very complicated to the extremely complicated.

Arek over at Let’s Make Robots put together this elegant stair climbing robot using servos and plywood in four hours for about $70. Is it fancy? No. Does it work? Yes. It might be worth experimenting what the upper limits are as far as payload goes, but it’s awesome to see such a simple concept be so successful at overcoming a complex problem. Kudos to Arek, and you can see the latest version (which is slightly more complicated but also more effective) here.

[ The Climber ] VIA [ Eggshell Robotics ]

You might be familiar with ZINK if you’re an OhGizmo reader, but if not, ZINK is a special kind of heat sensitive paper that allows for instant color printing without ink. It’s showing up in the next generation of Polaroid-y cameras that poop out completed prints. Seriously, see for your self. Anyhoo, ZINK is sponsoring a design competition “to imagine new and innovative solutions that enable and enhance printing with the ZINK Technology,” and one of the finalists is David Bulfin’s Inchworm robot.

The robot uses suction treads to crawl along walls covered with ZINK wallpaper, and as it moves, a thermal unit on its belly prints out text or pictures or designs of your own. The bot is connected to the internet, so can continually update your walls with the latest and greatest from social networking sites or RSS feeds or whatever else you want. When it has covered your entire house, simply stick up more paper and let the bot keep on doing its thing… It’s sort of like having every room in your house covered with a giant screen that refreshes reeeeeaaaaally slowly.

[ Zink Concept Finalists ] VIA [ Core77 ]

If you need to have something picked up and put down again very quickly and in a slightly different place over and over again, the M-1iA could very well be the robot for you. The latest industrial offering from FANUC features six axes of movement in a package that weighs only 17 kg, ideal for installation in your factory, kitchen, or bedroom. It has a built-in vision system that allows it to precisely locate small objects and move them, perfect for assembling little things with lots of bits like 10-key keyboards:

And, uh, I have no idea what it’s doing at the end of the assembly process in that video, but it kinda freaks me out. More freaky video of robots like this, after the jump. (Read more…)

Tom, Dick, and Harry here are trying to figure out how to sing. Starting off with a few random notes, the robots kneel in a circle and make noises, while listening to themselves and each other. After a few days of experimentation and cooperative emulation, each robot gradually figures out how to sing short melodies, while mimicing the melodies that the other robots sing. It’s a very ground-up method of learning, and might even be a precursor to language development. While not nearly as impressive as other robot jazz musicians, robots that learn in this fashion have the potential to be much more adaptable than robots that start off with some idea of what they’re doing. Not better sounding, necessarily, but more adaptable.

Now, I don’t claim to be much of a music critic (I’m a big fan of bagpipes, after all), but maybe this singing is just too advanced for us humans to appreciate. Maybe in a few hundred years or so, we’ll be in awe of these robots’ talents. You know, it would be like rock music showing up in the 1800s, or kitchen appliance cover bands today… Just not something our brains are equipped to process at our present stage of development.

[ Future Music Lab ] VIA [ Robots.net ]

The fact that Skeletor appears to be a robot should finally put to rest the question of who the master of the universe is. Sorry He-Man, you lose, but then, you’re a man, so the fact that an evil robot is superior should come as no surprise, especially around here.

You’ll find the final two Bots With Stuff that we missed from a couple weeks ago over on The Shoebox Blog, including a robot with a baboon’s butt and a robot with antiquated technology.

[ Bots With Stuff ]

No, you can’t touch this, because if you do, those pants will grab you by the face and suffocate you. Don’t laugh, I’ve seen it before.

You’ll find the other two Bots With Stuff that we missed from a couple weeks ago over on The Shoebox Blog, including a robot with the stomach flu and a robot with an eating disorder.

[ Bots With Stuff ]

Alright, what with RoboGames and all, we’ve gotten a little behind with our Bots With Stuff. The plan is to get caught up over the weekend, with Special Weekend Edition Bots With Stuff. Meantime, enjoy today’s Bot With Stuff… What, you didn’t seriously think that Superman was biological, did you?

You can catch the other two Bots With Stuff from last week over on The Shoebox Blog, including a robot with a speech impediment, and a robot with… Well, a robot with a bunch of stuff that makes him seems like a jerk.

[ Bots With Stuff ]

It’s big, it’s metal, and it reads! It’s named Ninomiya-kun, and it’s made out of 25 kilos worth of aluminum, because… Well, because aluminum is shiny, or something. The robot has two giant camera eyes which can read the text out of a book in some kind of (also aluminum) pagey turny thingy. The backpack contains the image recognition software, which is currently able to differentiate between over 2000 kanji, hiragana and katakana. This, I’m guessing, is why the bot has to have such huge eyes: to be able to discern small differences between characters while reading at speed. It’s not exactly the most portable of bots, though… Someone should just get the poor thing a Kindle already.

VIA [ Pink Tentacle ]

This is just plain weird, folks… It’s a wall mounted robot with an arm, a camera, and a bioreactor. See all those little pegs? They’re designed to encourage spiders to build their webs there. When a fly gets stuck in the web, a camera (the thing on the right) records what happens for you to, uh, watch later or something. After the fly hasn’t moved for 10 minutes, a robot arm (on the left) plucks the fly out of the web and deposits it into a microbial fuel cell, where it provides power for the robot. Yes, the robot eats flies. It’s kind like EATR, only more gross.

And the poor spider starves, I guess.

This bizarre pest control prototype is brought to you by Auger-Loizeau, and we have more of their pest-powered furniture over on OhGizmo.

[ Auger-Loizeau ] VIA [ New Scientist ]

The switched reluctance motor in Dyson’s new DC31 handheld vacuum is capable of spinning at a staggering 104,000 revolutions per minute:

“The motor turns ten times as fast as a commercial aircraft, five times as fast as a Formula 1 engine and more than twice as fast as the most powerful industrial milling machines.”

All that, and it’s half the size and weight of comparable motor of the same power. You can buy it inside a vacuum next month for just over $200.

So why am I posting about a vacuum part? Because I want someone to install this as a spinner motor in a combat robot.

That is all.

[ Dyson ] VIA [ Telegraph ]