Some people might complain that Roombas are slow. This turtle, on the other hand, seems to be hanging on for dear life.

Or maybe not. It’s a turtle, I can’t tell if he’s having fun or not.

Or she…? Ok, I give up. Is there a herpetologist in the house?

VIA [ Neatorama ]

Robots Podcast episode #50 is not only their fiftieth episode (pretty impressive, right?), but they’ve managed to make it a two parter packed with interviews of twelve different roboticists. Here’s the lineup:

- Rolf Pfeifer: Embodied AI and Robotics
- Mark Tilden: Robot Toys
- Hiroshi Ishiguro: Androids
- Oscar Schofield: Underwater Robots
- Steve Potter: Brain Machine Interfaces
- Chris Rogers: Education Robots
- Jean-Christophe Zufferey: Flying Robots
- Dan Kara: The Robot Market
- Kristinn R. Thórisson: AI
- Terry Fong: Space Robots
- Richard Jones: Nano Robots

You can download the podcast as an mp3 here, or subscribe via iTunes at this link.

[ Robots Podcast ]

Thanks Sabine!

Robots may be getting laid-off left and right due to the lousy economy, but at least they’re easily retrainable, and as long as you’ve got some programming know-how, you can get them to do all kinds of exciting things. One company called Autofuss has taken a trio of ex-industrial six axis Fanuc s430iL robots and turned them into professional camerabots. As you’d expect, they’re very fast and extremely precise, and as long as you don’t need them to, uh, move or anything, they can produce spectacularly smooth and complex shots over and over without screwing up or complaining.

Recently, the Autofuss robots (they’re named Puck, Gilda, and Rosie) worked on an ad for Louis Vuitton. The robots aren’t actually doing much fancy moving, but the commercial has Sally Ride and Buzz Aldrin and Jim Lovell in it, so that’s pretty awesome all by itself. Check it out, after the jump. (Read more…)

One solution to getting robots to perform complex and/or variable tasks is to teleoperate them. Arguably this removes a significant portion of having a robot in the first place, but there will inevitably be tasks that even the most complex and well programmed robot just won’t be prepared for. If you’ve been reading BotJunkie for the past three years, you may remember Monty, a telepresence humanoid from Anybots. Monty was a bit difficult to control, and at the very least required some training.

Mahru, a humanoid under development by the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) and Samsung Electronics, makes teleoperation a cinch by using a motion capture suit (kinda like this guy built in his basement, but anyway…). Most notable is the smooth and quick responses that the robot makes, at least in its upper torso… They’re still working out some software kinks with the legs:

The idea is to eventually implement instant, full body remote motion control of a robot. Pair that up with immersive virtual reality and maybe a force feedback mechanism, that that would make an unbeatable telepresence system. You would still have to walk around, though, which may necessitate getting yourself a giant hamster ball so that you could move without actually going anywhere.

Mahru also dances (sort of). More video, after the jump. (Read more…)

You might not think of the internet smiley emoticon as something that some guy just invented, but that’s exactly what happened. Scott E. Fahlman, a faculty member at Carnegie Mellon, came up with it on September 19, 1982. Three years ago, he established the Smiley Award, and this year, Keepon won with this:

(o.o)
( )

Which you can abbreviate to:

(o.o)

I have no idea what emotion (o.o) is supposed to convey, and actually, the award is for Keepon itself, not the appropriateness of the emoticon. But who cares, it’s cute.

[ BeatBots ]

Last year at RoboGames was the very first Mech Warfare competition. Like, ever. And it was pretty cool. But this year was exponentially more awesome. Mech Warfare pits walking robots armed with airsoft rifles against each other in a detailed cityscape. The robots are controlled remotely, but the catch is that you can’t directly see your robot. Instead, competitors rely on wireless cameras mounted on the bots themselves to see where they’re going, kinda like the old Mech Warrior computer game. I’d tell you more about how it all went, but I’m sure you’d rather just watch the video:

Next year, things are going to get even more epic. The arena will be increased in size, and a couple new match types will be introduced, including 2 on 2 matches and attack and defense, where the defending robots will be able to use things like autonomous turrets to help keep the attackers from capturing a target. The hardcore class will be back next year too, where instead of airsoft guns, the robots will be allowed to use things like missiles and flamethrowers. You can keep up to date with all the latest happenings in the Mech Warfare world at the official website, and also on the Trossen Robotics Forums.

One or two more pics, after the jump. (Read more…)

Stanford’s Biomimetics Laboratory is full of all kinds of neat stuff, and when we were checking out Stickybot during National Robotics Week, we got a tip about this awesome perching UAV, developed by Alexis Lussier Desbiens.

“A flock of small, unmanned air vehicles flies quietly into a city, maneuvering among the buildings. They communicate as they search for places to land, not on streets or flat rooftops but on the sides of buildings and under the eaves, where they can cling, bat or insect-like, in safety and obscurity. Upon identifying landing sites, each flier turns toward a wall, executes an intentional stall and, as it begins to fall, attaches itself using feet equipped with miniature spines that engage small asperities on the surface. Using its propeller in combination with its limbs, the flier can creep along the wall and reorient for a better view. With opposed pairs of spines, the flier clings tenaciously to resist gusts of wind and ride out inclement weather. The fliers stay attached for hours or days, consuming little power and emitting no sound as they monitor the area. When finished, they launch themselves with a jump and become airborne again, ready for their next mission.”

As you can see from the vid, the UAV uses little spines like Spinybot as opposed to a sticky material like Stickybot. At this point, spines are much more effective at adhering to rough surfaces, while the synthetic gecko toe material only really sticks to smooth surfaces (unlike geckos themselves). Despite the differences between the two sticking technologies, the challenges to stickiness are similar: you need pliable toes that can individually conform to a surface at a specific angle, and if you don’t get that, you lose sticking efficiency and (possibly) your robot.

Alexis and his partners will be presenting their paper on perching UAVs at ICRA next month.

[ Perching Project ]

Perhaps inspired by Pleo’s epic Combot battle, Willow Garage decided to put one of their Texai telepresence robots in the RoboGames combat arena to see what would happen. Unlike poor Pleo, however, the Texai found itself up against a friendly little drink serving robot called Phun Bot, built by Jerry Serafin. Violence ensued:

The lesson here? It’s obvious: use ROS or else Texai will kick your bot’s ass. BAM.

[ Texai ]

I’m heading down to RoboGames today (Sunday) to take more pics and vids, especially of the Mech Warfare and Firefighting competitions and anything that’s autonomous. I have to do some last-minute traveling tonight, so this is just an update to let you know that I probably won’t be able to edit all the video together until Monday or Tuesday… I’ll have it up as soon as I possibly can, though, I promise!

RoboGames 2010 kicked off yesterday, and so far it’s shaping up to be another spectacular event. Most of the competitions start tomorrow, and today was largely taken up with the preliminary rounds of combat. I’ve put together a highlight video of some of the action:

Remember, there’s way more going on at RoboGames besides just combat… You can check out the entire schedule of events here. If there’s anything specific you’d like me to focus on, post a comment and I’ll see how many places I can be in at once.

[ RoboGames ]