Due to the nature of just about everything related to Arse Elektronika, this is just to let any interested parties (human or robot) know that Arse Elektronika 2009 has been scheduled for October 1-4 in San Francisco and more information (including talk, workshop, and performance abstracts) is available on the website, which is generally SFW as long as you’re not reading aloud.

We’ve had mixed reactions to our coverage of this kind of thing, so if you have particularly strong feelings about what you would or would not like to see, let us know in the comments… And if you have no idea what we’re talking about, there’s an extremely extremely extremely NSFW post and video of the first Arse Elektronika event from 2007 that you can see here.

[ Arse Elektronkia 2009 ]

Several times a year, friend o’ the blog Trossen Robotics hosts a contest for roboticists. This time, the contest was to write a tutorial or tutorials on some aspect of robotics that would make sense to someone with little or no experience on the topic. The winners of the contest, announced last week, include tutorials on everything from So You Want To Build A Robot to Obstacle Avoidance in the Real World to Prototyping a PCB with Desoldering Braid. There are plenty more tutorials available, and the Trossen Robotics community as a whole is a fantastic (and friendly) resource for anyone with any level of interest in, or experience with, robotics.

[ Trossen Robotics Tutorial Contest Winners ]

Thanks Andrew!

The 2nd annual Blaser Robot Battle laser tag competition will be held September 13th. In Japan. Which, last time I checked, is really, really far from California. Sigh. Yet another event to add to the schedule for RoboGames 2010… Too bad Good thing I’m in no way in charge of that. Anyway, this sport looks to be pretty straightforward, with 2v2 or 4v4 humanoids outfitted with laser guns and sensors, trying to score the most points by shooting opposing robots or bases. The video shows some POV cameras, but it doesn’t look like they were actually being used for competition, unlike Mech Warrior. My recommendation: next time, how about some upgraded weaponry.

VIA [ Robots Dreams ]

Pleo does not, fortunately, come with the ability to dance to Britney Spears songs while wearing funny hats. That is Britney Spears, right? These new moves come courtesy of an alpha version of a Pleo SDK, or software development kit. The Pleo SDK (PDK) should allow more direct access to Pleo’s underlying controls, in addition to the various home-brewed bits of software that are currently available, like MySkit.

From what I’ve been able to gather, the most important part of the PDK might be the the code for things like Pleo’s social programming, which could potentially allow Pleo’s autonomy (read: personality) to be modified as well. This is a little ways away, though… As I understand it, access to an SDK gives clever programmers the tools they need to build user-friendly programs to give less adept people the ability to control hardware on a level that they’re more comfortable with. The availability of the SDK is the first step, but it’ll take a little bit for it to get worked into something for your average end user. The good news is that it looks like Ugobe intentionally made Pleo easy to hack and customize in this way, so we’ll keep you updated as progress is made.

Oh, and just a reminder that Pleo is going to resume production (resume, not necessarily with anything new), but it’s currently about $150 on Amazon, which is only $10 over the manufacturing cost, and about $50 under the wholesale price.

[ BobThePleo ] VIA [ Engadget ]

This is just exactly what RLS feels like. And after watching all those commercials on TV, I’m 100% positive that I have it. Too bad I’m not a robot or I could just shut that leg off… Or have it replaced, for that matter.

As always, you can catch the other Bots With Stuff from last week over on The Shoebox Blog, including a robot with a friend who keeps sending upsetting pictures to its phone, and a robot with less than half to go! Congrats Chris!

[ Bots With Stuff ]

“Le Petit Prince” is a little robotic greenhouse that’s one of the finalists in Electrolux’s 2009 Design Lab competition. The concept is cool (if not entirely practical): each plant gets its own little robot, which seeks out whatever nutrients and other resources the plant needs… But it really should win just because of the artwork:

[ Electrolux Design Lab ] VIA [ Tuvie ]

It looks as though the robotics industry has collectively decided that the best way to make a robot appear both strong and not creepy is to give it a cute pair of bear ears. And why not? As researchers at Japan’s Institute of Physical and Chemical Research point out, the best way to make RIBA, their Robot for Interactive Body Assistance, not freak people out is to not try to make it look human at all. Good call, guys.

RIBA is designed specifically for the task of transferring patients in and out of bed, which is one of the most physically demanding and potentially dangerous nursing tasks. RIBA’s body is made of foam, and its arms and body are touch sensitive, allowing direct and intuitive motion control. RIBA can detect faces and respond to spoken commands, and although it has a limited amount of autonomy (they’re working on this), it’s designed to work along side human assistants, taking care of the heavy lifting.

RIBA’s 135 pound weight limit may be practical in Japan, but it certainly wouldn’t be nearly as useful here in the US, where 135 pounds is about the weight of the average post-brunch pre-lunch snack. What would it take to enable RIBA to lift significantly more weight? Probably something like a giant hydraulic backpack. A previous version of RIBA from 2006 could lift only 40 pounds, so it’s not going to take long before smaller and more powerful motors enable RIBA and BEAR to lift heavy loads without straining their “I’m just a cute little bear” metaphor too far.

[ RIBA (Translated) ] VIA [ Pink Tentacle ] and [ Robot Watch (Translated) ]

Little Big Love was animated in stop-motion by Tomas Mankovsky over a period of six weeks for a cost of about $500. His website has a series of pictures detailing how the film was made that’s definitely worth a look, if for no other reason than to distract you from the sad ending.

[ Little Big Love ] VIA [ Geeks Are Sexy ]

It’s gratifying, somehow, to see a robot that appears to struggle with a Sudoku puzzle just about as much as I do. Designed by Hans Andersson (already well known for his Rubick’s Cube solving NXT robot), the Sudoku Solver in fact has an easy time solving the puzzle, it just has a hard time figuring out what the puzzle is. After making one pass to figure out whether there is a number in each cell, it goes back and does a careful scan followed by some image processing to decide what each number is, creating an entire matrix for the puzzle and then, finally, crunching the numbers.

This whole process could certainly be made much faster and easier with the addition of a wide angle camera and some fancy pattern recognition software, but part of the charm of this robot is that it’s able to do what it does using only LEGO parts.

[ Sudoku Solver ] VIA [ Pocket Lint ]

This, apparently, is the trick Nao has up his nonexistent sleeve that’ll help him pick up chicks. Personally, I can throw a Frisbee slightly better than Nao, but it hasn’t helped me pick up chicks at all, unless you count picking them up off the ground after your wayward Frisbee smashes into the side of their head. Oh well, I can only assume it’s because I don’t live in Japan.

Watch Nao dance (’cause Nao likes to dance), after the jump. (Read more…)