Last February we posted some video of a couple ABB industrial robots showing off some Fanta Can avoidance maneuvers. Level two of the challenge adds a third robot and drops the tolerance down to 1mm. That’s, like, really small. And the robots are moving, like, really fast. What ABB is demonstrating here isn’t the repeatability, or even the tolerance (which is, in fact, tighter than 1mm). Rather, it’s the fact that you can program a complex path into the robot and then bump up the speed to something inhuman without any part of the system flinching. Neat stuff.

Also, what the hell is “Exotic Thrill” flavored Fanta?

[ ABB Robotics ]

If a hexapod kit is a little bit out of your price range, how about a little bot that uses one motor and one servo, is made mostly of cardboard, and can be built in an hour? Yeah, sounds good to me too, but you won’t be shocked to learn that it’s a little more complicated than that, although not much more complicated. The robot is called DASH, which stands for Dynamic Autonomous Sprawled Hexapod (remember SprawlBots?), and it’s from the Biomemetic Millisystems Lab at UC Berkeley.

The principle behind this robot is that simple + cheap = just about as good as complicated + expensive, a philosophy that this lab as proven before with RoACH. And it really is simple, with the entire robot buildable in 59 minutes flat. Despite this simplicity, DASH is no slouch, able to motor along at a steerable 15 body lengths per second, which translates into 60 miles per hour if it was my size (how’s that for scary). Despite, or perhaps because of, its simple construction, DASH it can survive a terminal velocity impact of 10 meters per second, which means you could drop it off Mount Everest and it would hit the ground running. Plus, the pliable design and rotary leg motion give it the ability to climb over obstacles taller than it is.

The next steps for DASH involve trying out different leg designs and refining the steering mechanism. With such a simple and cheap robot, it might be fun if they put out a kit and sponsored a competition for the best leg design over different types of terrain or something. Oh well, I can dream, can’t it?

[ Biomemetics @ UC Berkeley ] VIA [ IEEE ]

From Pirates of the Caribbean to the Hall of Presidents, Disney has had Audio-Animatronic characters in its theme parks longer than anyone, so it’s not surprising that their Imagineers have been responsible for a considerable amount of development and innovation in that field.

And since the eyes convey a lot of emotion, they’ve developed a new type of mechanism for their characters that uses a single moving part, the eye itself, and electromagnets to create more realistic eye motions. Not only does it result in a more memorable experience for park goers, but since there’s no wear points, it’s also beneficial to the Audio-Animatronic characters (and the Imagineers who maintain them) who have to deliver the same performances all day long, week after week.

[ Disney Parks Blog - Hands, Eyes Convey Emotions For Disney's Audio-Animatronics Technology ] VIA [ Boing Boing ]

Okay, just for the record, Pez doesn’t count as candy. And the only circumstances in which I would be willing to subject my body to Pez is if it came out of this:

Oh, and remember the robot with unquenchable rage from back in August? He’s back. In a game. Where you unleash him upon all the rest of the bots with stuff, many of which are sort of animated. Anyway, it’s a solid few minutes worth of mindless fun. Check it out here.

As always, you can catch the other Bots With Stuff from last week over on The Shoebox Blog, including a robot with 5 golden tickets and a robot with a job as a henchman. This henchman.

[ Bots With Stuff ]

When it comes to robots, Robby from Forbidden Planet is a true icon . In fact, he’s so much of a celebrity that I remember him making cameos on popular TV shows back in the day. And now he can even make a cameo next to your PC! Unfortunately this version’s only 10-inches tall, but it does include 4 USB 2.0 ports and when connected to your Mac or Windows PC it will light up and play sound clips from the movie. $41.99 from BigBadToyStore available for pre-order now with an ETA of January 2010.

[ 10" Robby the Robot USB Hub ] VIA [ Chip Chick ]

Spherical robots are nifty designs, and they have several advantages over their wheeled counterparts: they adapt well to all kids of terrain (even water) and are completely sealed, making them ideal for planetary exploration. The big sticking point (as it were) of spherical robots is that they tend to get hung up on obstacles. They move by changing their center of gravity, but they can’t shift their internal mass outside of their own diameter, which means that they have a finite amount of leverage to play with and therefore can’t get themselves over obstacles of a given height, no matter how much power their motors might output.

Greg Schroll, a graduate student at Colorado State, has developed a spherical robot that uses gyroscopes instead of a movable mass for both drive power and steering. The gyros just have to sit there, and depending on which way they’re being spun, they exert torque on the robot to move it forward or turn it. The big advantage to this is that the torque exerted by the gyros increases as they spin faster, meaning that more powerful motor does increase the power of the robot, giving it the ability to literally jump out of holes:

Greg has been named one of Popular Science’s 10 Most Brilliant Innovators of 2009 for his work on this robot (among other things, like those badass air cannons in the video).

[ Popular Science ]

He might be devoid of any kind of A.I., glowing LEDs or even moving parts, but Splitterbot still has the potential to save the day if you ever wanted to share the music on your MP3 player with someone. Just remove his head and attach it to the headphone jack of your player, then insert a set of headphones into each of his eye sockets and two people will be able to enjoy the music instead of just one. (Assuming of course that some kind of Speakerbot hasn’t already saved the day.) Splitterbot also doesn’t need batteries, will work with any device that has a standard headphone jack and is available from ThinkGeek for just $7.99.

[ Splitterbot Headphone Sharing Robot ] VIA [ GeekSugar ]

This is Intel’s research robot, named Marvin. Marvin has just learned how to plug himself into a standard wall outlet, a feat that duplicates the skills of Willow Garage’s PR2. What’s interesting to me is how these two robots use substantially different techniques to complete the same task. After Marvin locates a power socket, his arm makes a series of passes along the wall with a sensor to locate the exact location of the outlet and then plugs himself in in one shot. Now that this proof of concept has been tested successfully, Intel plans to add more sensors to allow the robot to plug itself in without having to go through the whole raster scanning routine.

PR2, on the other hand, uses a brute force approach. It locates the general location of an outlet, and then stabs blindly (sort of blindly) until it gets lucky and makes a connection. Now, it’s easy to say that the Marvin is better at connecting to outlets than PR2 is because, well, that’s true. But arguably, PR2 is more efficient than Marvin. It doesn’t need a single dedicated plug sensor, let alone an entire array. That’s less upfront expense, less integration, less programming, and fewer things to break. Yeah, it takes a little longer, but the robot isn’t in a rush, and it’s not like you’re waiting around… It’s an autonomous system, and hypothetically, you’ll just never have to worry about it.

[ Intel Labs Seattle ] VIA [ Gizmodo ]

Created by Rob Meyer, this adorable 1/18th scale remote control R2-D2 could very well be the smallest astromech droid currently roaming the galaxy. He stands just 6 centimeters tall but is able to drive around and even turn his dome thanks to a set of 3 Solarbotics pager motors, and Rob intends to eventually outfit mini R2 with working LEDs as well.

[ Rob Meyer Productions ] VIA [ Make & Solarbotics ]

This, of course, is the epically awesome Halluc 2 robot being controlled using an interface that looks a lot like Novint’s also awesome Falcon haptic controller. If you’re not familiar with this style of controller, it’s basically a mouse that’s suspended in space with three arms, allowing you to move it in three dimensions. An added benefit is that the arms can provide an effective degree of force feedback. I tried out a system with pistol grip playing an FPS, and it was pretty sweet (recoil!).

Anyway, the “cockpit” that controls the robot uses two of these haptic controllers, probably one to control the robot directly and one to control other functions. It’s specifically designed for “a complex system with a lot of actuators and sensors,” and with robots trending towards the feature-rich and complicated, or as the Furo website calls the Halluc 2, a “super-tedious multi motor system.”

[ fuRo ] VIA [ I Heart Robotics ]