Matt Bunting, a senior at the University of Arizona in electrical engineering, built himself a hexapod as a final project for his class on cognitive robotics. Built mostly from spare parts, the robot uses an Intel Atom processor powering an Ubuntu OS computer. A Logitech QuickCam mounted on the front of the bot watches what happens when movements are initiated, and uses the changing scene to determine what effect the movements are having. This lets the robot adaptively learn how to move, rather than relying on programming:

“One of the things I wanted to explore was the idea of reinforcement learning. What I wanted to do was not preprogram any of those walking algorithms, I wanted it to figure out how to walk straight forward on its own,” Bunting said. “It has the ability to figure it out itself.”

Bunting’s professor Tony Lewis says the bot’s learning algorithm can be applied to tasks other than walking. If a leg breaks or a motor gets damaged, for example, it can relearn how to walk. The robot even has foot contact sensors that can be used for terrain adaptation.

Pretty cool, right? A couple days after Matt posted a video of his bot on YouTube, Intel ordered themselves two copies to take on an international publicity tour for the Atom processor. Then, the company who provided Matt with the servos, CrustCrawler Robotics, asked Matt to help develop software for some of their hexapod kits.

So, let this be a lesson to all you DIY roboticists out there: if you build something cool, Intel will buy it, and you’ll be offered a job at a robotics company.

[ University of Arizona ] VIA [ Crave ]

I don’t watch TV, but if I did, I would find DJ Roomba pretty funny:

While not an official iRobot accessory, I imagine it wouldn’t be too hard to pull off with a trip to Brookstone and some duct tape. Where exactly to find music with DJ Roomba lyrics, however, is a different story.

VIA [ Engadget ]

Now, I’m totally in favor of a National Robotics Week… I just wish we’d have a National Robotics Year instead. And that it would be an annual event. But until that happens, April 10-18 of this year has been designated National Robotics Week (and a day?) by iRobot along with an “alliance of top industry, academic and non-profit organizations” that includes AUVSI, FIRST, CMU, MIT, Stanford, and a bunch of other people.

There are a number of events scheduled, from competitions to parties to factory tours all around the US. It’s a wonderful idea, having a National Robotics Week full of exciting robot-y things… Just do the industry a favor: if you decide to go to one of these events because you think robots are awesome, bring along someone you know who doesn’t think that robots are awesome, and show them what they’re missing out on. Robotics has an incredible core of devoted people, but part of our job has to be showing everybody else why, and how, robots are going to be an important part of our lives in the future. Not the forever from now flying car jetpack future, but the next few years future. It’s not something anyone needs to be scared of or intimidated by as long as they understand, and hopefully National Robotics Week can take a crack at making that happen.

[ Press Release ]
[ National Robotics Week ]

This Heineken pouring robot from Middlesex University was strutting its stuff at the Kinetica Gallery in London recently, driving around a table and pouring beer (a very little bit of beer) on demand. The bot is equipped with obstacle avoidance sensors as well as a sensor on top that you can wave at to signal the robot to stop and serve you… Plus it has what looks like a giant emergency STOP button just in case it decides to, uh, try and run over someone. Don’t kid yourself, though, there’s (potentially) a lot of energy in a beer keg, so in the event of a battery fire, it would likely be best to panic.

If you’re interested in having a robot serve you a drink, flirt with you, and/or dump a beer all over itself, there’s an event here in San Francisco called BarBot, which is just like, but not exactly the same, as RoboExotica/RoboExoticUS. BarBot will be at DNA Lounge on Feb 17th and 18th… $10 advance, $15 at the door.

VIA [ Engadget ]
[ BarBot ]

I was too busy taking a nap to watch the Super Bowl, but fortunately the important parts of it are now up on YouTube. For what it’s worth, Intel, with the amount of money that this commercial probably cost you, I bet you could have made an actual Jeffrey.

Jeffrey has his own Facebook page, of course, complete with vacation photos and wisecracks in binary. Here’s his bio:

Activities: Beeping, moving around stiffly, applying logic to problems, speaking in monotone, computin’ and figurin’, weightlifting

Interests: Binary Code, Quantum theory, sensory robotics, differential calculus, grilled cheese sandwiches, muscle cars, full contact chess, flight simulator games, number crunching and going for long rolls on the beach.

Favorite Movies: Terminator, Short Circuit, Tron, Star Wars, The Matrix, Iron Giant, A.I, and the Ernest series.

Favorite Music: Daft Punk, Crystal Method, Rush, Moby, Fatboy Slim, Massive Attack, The Zep, Chemical Brothers. Pretty much all electronica. And Crunk.

Favorite Books: I, Robot; 1984; old Commodore 64 user manuals (still hilarious).

Favorite TV Show:
Battlestar Gallactica, Robot Chicken, Star Trek, Lost, Battle Bots, Top Chef, Jeopardy,The Jetsons, America’s Next Top Rocket Scientist and Anderson Cooper 360

Mmm, grilled cheese sandwiches… I like this robot.

[ Jeffrey @ Facebook ] VIA [ HowToWeb on Twitter ]

Participants in DARPA’s ChemBots program are busy producing some pretty cool (and weird) robots. Already, we’ve seen a blob robot from iRobot as well as a creepy looking concept from Boston Dynamics. Video above comes from Virginia Tech’s RoMeLa Lab, and shows their ChIMERA robot, which is an acronym for “Chemically Induced Motion Everting Robotic Amoeba.” Everting is the Word Of The Day, it means “turning inside out.” And that’s just what this robot does: it’s a tube filled with goo that moves forward by continually pulling the outside of its body around and in through the middle of the tube. There are several advantages to this; the entire robot is pliable (allowing it to fit through opening smaller than itself) and it’s also completely sealed with no external moving parts. It can move by placing tension on parts of itself, or by using a system of expanding and contracting plastic rings, or using chemicals (!):

The “do something to something” is probably (this is my best guess, anyway) applying a chemical to the robot that causes the skin to contract. This is some serious outside the box innovation… The chemically induced movement could be powered by a liquid battery, or even perhaps by ambient chemicals in some kind of solution (water? blood? toxic waste? who knows).

The only real issue here is that it’s not entirely clear how a robot like this would interact with its environment. It could push things around and perform passive sensing, but it’s not like you could mount a camera and manipulator arm on one of these… At least, I can’t see how that would work. Still, it’s one of the coolest (and weirdest) robots we’ve seen in a while, and it’s still just a work in progress.

[ RoMeLa ] VIA [ Hizook ]

Oh, if only ’twere this easy…

$15, available for a severely limited time.

[ shirt.woot ]

This badass looking android is Robonaut 2, a joint project of NASA and General Motors. Robonaut 2 is an evolution of Robonaut 1, who was spawned by NASA and DARPA and had an ATV for legs. R2 emulates the upper torso of a human, and is designed to work closely with humans using the same tools that humans use. GM, for its part, is interested in advanced industrial robots:

“For GM, this is about safer cars and safer plants,” said Alan Taub, GM’s vice president for global research and development. “When it comes to future vehicles, the advancements in controls, sensors and vision technology can be used to develop advanced vehicle safety systems. The partnership’s vision is to explore advanced robots working together in harmony with people, building better, higher quality vehicles in a safer, more competitive manufacturing environment.”

You have to wonder, though, whether creating a robot that looks and functions like a human is really the best way to do it. There already is a robot in space: Dextre. Dextre doesn’t look especially human, but he has two 3 meter long arms, each with seven offset joints, which is a couple more than we’ve got last time I counted. I understand that a robot that emulates a human in form and function will likely be more intuitive to control, but there may be some compromise when it comes to capabilities and options.

Now, I’m a huge fan of human spaceflight. I don’t think there’s any substitute for the inspiration afforded by having members of our species leave our planet. That being said, while I don’t know what the exact numbers are, I imagine that the cost and effort of sending a human into space is split something like 5% science, 95% making sure that they don’t die. This isn’t exactly the most efficient path to discovery. Of course, that 5% science may be 100% stuff that only humans can do in person, but I really do think that robots are the practical future of space exploration 95% of the time. I want humans to travel to Mars… Heck, I want to be one of them. But realistically, in the short term, I think our limited resources are better spent on intrepid robots like Spirit, Opportunity, and Cassini.

[ Robonaut 2 ] VIA [ Engadget ]

I’m not entirely sure why this robot is a robot, but it performs a useful purpose and looks fierce while doing so. Built by students from J T Engineering College in Gujarat, India, the robot is connected wirelessly to sensors embedded in the ground and can somehow detect impeding earthquakes about 3 hours before they actually hit… Something about soil and water temperatures and vibrations and stuff that I don’t entirely buy. When it gets a signal of impending doom, it’ll send out warnings over the internet, which is a good thing since I wouldn’t count on it to run around looking for you.

[ Oneindia ] VIA [ Gizmowatch ]