The last Wiimote controlled robot arm we saw came at us with a couple tennis balls and a sword… So I dunno, d’you suppose these 15 ton Wiimote controlled grapple arms are more dangerous? Less dangerous? Either way, someone needs to get these things working with some actual 2 player Wii games… I’m thinking, Wii Boxing. Just imagine it, it would be epic.

[ Entity Crisis ] VIA [ Gizmodo ]

Worried about hostile micro air vehicles landing on you and exploding? Yeah, me too. One way to solve the problem would be a robotic bat, like this one being developed by Gheorghe Bunget from North Carolina State University. They’re taking all of their cues from a real bat, for reasons we’re very familiar with: “We are trying to mimic nature as closely as possible,” [ Bunget's advisor, Dr. Stefan Seelecke ] says, “because it is very efficient. And, at the MAV scale, nature tells us that flapping flight – like that of the bat – is the most effective.”

The skeleton of BatMAV (as it’s called) was created on a rapid prototyping machine, but most of the focus is going into the joints and muscles. Shape memory alloys are the key here: a super bendy one that “remembers” its original position is being used for joints. For muscles, a thin shape memory metal strand that contracts when heated duplicates the real thing, with the added advantage that the material changes its resistance as it contracts, providing a basic motor feedback system.

Of course, it’s easy enough to conceptualize such a system, and quite another matter to actually construct one. The skeleton is the easy part. Heck, hooking up the joints and muscles is probably (relatively) the easy part, too. The hard part is going to be to get BatMAV to flap its wings in a controllable manner while also developing enough thrust to achieve liftoff, to say nothing of carrying on-board power and a relevant payload. But I’m not worried: if they can make a robot hummingbird, a robot bat can’t be far behind.

[ BatMAV Thesis (PDF) ] VIA [ Physorg ]

Last month, we posted a video of Willow Garage’s PR2 robot autonomously navigating an office environment, opening doors, and plugging itself into standard power outlets. All of these tasks are deceptively simple, and in the above video two engineers from Willow Garage give a good account of just how difficult it can be to get a robot to pick up a power plug and get it into a wall socket. Tasks like these are going to be crucial to the development of flexible and reliable home robotics, and it’s fascinating to see evolution (for lack of a better word) in action.

For more details (on stuff like software and algorithms), you can view a presentation on Milestone 2 here.

[ Willow Garage ]

We wrote about Sega’s Dream Cat Venus back in January, when details were still sketchy about the robotic pet replacement. Looks like details are still sketchy, but it’s confirmed to be shipping by the end of the month, and for less than we thought, at about $110. I’m sure it will have all the artificial mewing and purring and yowling you can handle. Oh, and the brain wave thing? This picture showed up in the Sega Toys press release:

I have no idea what it means, but that woman has a Dream Cat in her lap, what looks like some EEG sensors on her skull, and there’s a weird graphic to accompany it. My entirely baseless conclusion is that the Dream Cat Venus can read, and possibly feed off of, your brain waves. It is also possible that the Dream Cat Venus can in fact alter your brain waves and make you buy more Dream Cat Venuses. Is it likely that any of this is even remotely true? Nope. Should you panic anyway? Sure, why not!

You can pre-order Dream Cat Venus from GeekStuff4U for about $140. Yeah, it’s a mark up, but that’s what you pay to get these robot goodies from Japan here in the states.

[ Press Release (In Japanese) ] VIA [ CrunchGear ]

As the designer of this microbot says, “at this point in time, I believe this may be the world’s smallest wheeled robot with a gripper. That will no doubt change, tomorrow or next week, when someone builds something smaller.” Until that happens, this 1/20 cubic inch robot looks like it takes the prize, differentiating itself from other tiny robots with the addition of a gripper.

Wondering how all the electronics and motors fit inside that tiny little robot? Here’s the secret: they don’t.

The motors, batteries, and microcontroller are all mounted underneath the surface that the robot operates on, and magnets on a 2 axis CNC pull the robot along with the field that they create. From what I can tell, rotating the field controls the gripper arm. There’s an Instructable on the whole thing if you’d like details, and the same guy also has instructions for building a slightly larger microbot with onboard hardware, here.

[ Instructables ] VIA [ Make ]

The appeal of fast food isn’t just that it’s fast and cheap and delicious… It’s that it’s standardized. It doesn’t matter what McDonald’s you go to or when you go there, and you don’t even have to look at the menu. The Big Mac is going to taste like every other Big Mac you’ve ever had. It’s predictable and comforting. Since robots are awesome when it comes to precision repeatability, it’s only natural to set them up as fast food chefs, with the added benefit that they can make it just the way you like it, time after time. And I mean exactly the way you like it.

This robot was created by Yoshihira Uchida, and makes ramen noodle soup at Momozono Robot Ramen in Japan. Customers place their orders on a computer, and the bot whips up a steaming bowl of soup in about two minutes, adding soy sauce, salt, and other fixin’s in precisely the one in approximately 40 million combination that you desire. A human still has to add the noodles by hand, but that’s being worked on.

The other side to this, of course, is that some people enjoy a limited amount of unpredictability. I’m not much of a chef myself; I get endlessly frustrated with recipes that call for “pinches” of things and adding other things “to taste.” The goal, I guess, is to let you add some individuality to the food. But even this is something that a robot could easily accomplish, whether through the use of random variables, or just by surprising you with someone else’s recipe. What would you prefer; the same mechanically precise soup every time, or some variation that might be better sometimes and worse other times?

VIA [ Mainichi ]

Experienced BotJunkies should have no problem with this one… If you’re unsure, have a look at some of our Uncanny Valley posts, and you’ll figure it out.

VIA [ BBG ]

This transforming Norton Commander was created by Steve Twist for his undergraduate degree in Computer Visualization and Animation at Bournemouth University. It took him eight months, which is a slightly shorter amount of time than it would have taken to build the real thing.

VIA [ Gearfuse ]

Luckily, he’s a robot, so those nubs are repairable. Not so for you, kiddies: have a safe and fun (and safe) 4th of July. And if you don’t live in the US, well… Just go blow something up anyway, I’m sure everybody will appreciate the sentiment.

You know what, on second thought, don’t.

You can catch the other two Bots With Stuff from last week over on The Shoebox Blog, including a robot with very disappointed parents, a robot with one of those upside-down tomato plant thingies , and a robot with implants (!).

[ Bots With Stuff ]

< html >
< head >
< title >Awesome Shirt< /title >
< META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOFOLLOW">
< /head >
< body >
Another robotastic offering (and an HTML in-joke at the same time) from Chop Shop, best known (around here, anyway) for their 51 robots shirt (which, incidentally, is now available for pre-order with glow-in-the-dark robots). The Robots No Follow shirt is yours for $20.
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< /html >

[ Chop Shop ] VIA [ io9 ]