This is, no kidding, the second strap-on robotic tail that we’ve had the pleasure to post about. Unlike the mood tail, the SiliFulin (I don’t think it’s an April Fool’s) doesn’t care how you feel, but it does pay attention to your body movements and will move itself accordingly. With enough practice, small movements of your hips can control the tail, making it look natural. Just what you always wanted, right?

[ Ryota Kuwakubo ] VIA [ DigInfo ]

Geoff pointed out Peter Oravetz’ website, where he’s got an entire gallery of robot drawings. I’ve posted a few more after the jump, but be sure to take the time to read what the artist has to say about his work:

It’s always been entertaining for me to watch someone verbally and physically abuse a copy machine, a T.V., or any other electronic device. Obviously they don’t have feelings so there is no way they’ll ever yield to threats or sympathize with frustration. Moreover, they are made by us and can only do what we program them to do. Since humans aren’t perfect, robots will never be perfect either. We can program them to perform tasks perfectly but once a hurdle is presented unexpectedly, like a wall placed in their path, everything comes to a halt. This problem of how they can be so smart and yet so stupid is what interests me, as well as our efforts to empower them with Artificial Intelligence (or AI) so that they may figure out how to leap over these hurdles by themselves.

AI must be a frustrating program to bestow upon a robot. Every aspect of free motion has to be programmed, every form of potential danger must be introduced… At least humans instinctively know they have hands but robots have to be taught that they have hands (or clamps). They may be capable of great feats of strength or be able to compute calculus in microseconds but they still have the mind of a new born baby. I suppose that robots with AI will eventually show glorious moments of humanity, especially when they make mistakes. These moments, depicted in the the ‘Robots!’ series, are truly the purist display of the mimicry of humanity, revealing the curiosity, love and humor that we as humans hold so dear. The images reflect the robots’ utter stupidity and their wonderfully endearing attributes as they attempt to become human in their own way.

More art, after the jump. (Read more…)

You can’t find LG robot vacuums here in the US. You also can’t find ads for robots like this (or this or this or this) in the US, nor (as far as I know) can you find soccer tournaments exclusively for robot vacuums. To promote their new RoboKing, LG is sponsoring a vacuum-only robot soccer tournament in Seoul, where they’re expecting 32 teams to battle it out with remote controlled vacuum bots for prizes that include LG 42″ LED TVs. Get your registration on here.

VIA [ Akihabara News ]

The first Geminoid robot (the HI-1) was constructed to look like its creator, Hiroshi Ishiguro. He’s a handsome guy, but I’d much rather spend time with his latest creation: the Geminoid F, where F stands for Female. Geminoid F is a robotic copy of a woman in her twenties, and like Geminoid HI-1, it’s designed to mimic a human as perfectly as possible. At the same time, Geminoid F is far simpler, relying on only 12 facial servos as compared to the 50 or so in the HI-1. Also, all of the actuators and air servo valves and stuff fit into the Geminoid F’s torso, whereas the HI-1 required a big external box to get it to work.

Geminoid F is remote controlled, but it uses a clever camera interface that will (for example) watch for you to smile and the cause the robot to smile at the same time:

Geminoid F will go on sale for about $100k, and Kokoro (who’s going to be selling it) anticipates that it’ll be used in places like hospitals:

“We’ve already got some data showing that the robot gave patients psychological security by nodding and smiling at them, when patients were checked on by doctors,” said Satoko Inoue, spokeswoman for Kokoro.

While Geminoid F is certainly more lifelike and stuff, I really don’t think that the basic assertion that androids are useful because they give patients a special sense of psychological security because of their human-ness is entirely valid. We’re just not good enough at making androids yet, and it shows. This is one of the things I appreciate most about the design of (for example) Paro: they chose a baby harp seal as a form for a comfort robot because pretty much nobody has ever met a baby harp seal, so when you’ve got a robot one, you have nothing in your head to compare it to that might creep you out our leave you disappointed. Pleo is the same way (ever met a real dinosaur before?). The issue with robots (and this is where the Uncanny Valley comes into play) arises when they’re trying to be something they’re not, and we pick up on that deception. I use the word “deception” because that is what we then tend to focus on: that this robot is trying to fool us somehow, and that makes us substantially less likely to trust it.

[ Press Release ] VIA [ IEEE ] and [ AFP ]

Thanks Erico!

Michael wrote in asking if we were familiar with a tethered monopod hopping robot that he remembered from sometime around 1995. He provided this picture to help us out (I hope you don’t mind, Michael, it’s a great picture!):

Personally, I remember that robot too, and after a little bit of poking around, I’m pretty sure I found it:

Called the “3D One-Leg Hopper,” it was the second ever robot built by the MIT Leg Lab, back in 1983. The robot was a testbed for for experiments on active balance and dynamics in legged locomotion. The leg was powered by compressed air, while the hip was moved with hydraulics, and the robot was capable of hopping in place, following paths (at up to 4.8 mph), and could withstand a shove. Both Michael and I remember video of the latter, but I haven’t been able to find any… The website does have a pretty terrible video of the hopper in action, which you can see on YouTube here.

You’ll find more old walking robots from MIT’s Leg Lab in this November 2008 post.

[ MIT Leg Lab Robots ]

Thanks Michael!

You only need to watch the first 12 seconds of this video to see CubeStormer‘s new LEGO NXT cube loader in action, but it’s pretty cool. And to think how much time I wasted building spaceships out of LEGOs when I was a kid…

[ YouTube ]

Back when we broke the news of Stanford’s new robotic Audi TTS, Shelley, we didn’t get to see much in the way of video of the car in action besides a few brief teasers. Wired got a chance to ride along for a couple 40mph laps around a dirt track (::JEALOUS::) and brought back some video:

Shelley is on track to race up Pike’s Peak all by herself this September, but Stanford’s goal isn’t to create a robotic racer. Well, I mean, it is. But in general, they’re trying to figure out how to program a car to save your butt when something bad happens. By figuring out how to get a car to drive itself on the very edge of performance, eventually, your car will be smart enough to take over for you in an emergency and pull some crazy and nearly impossible stunt to keep you safe. As long as it’s a Volkswagen, of course.

VIA [ Wired ]

I’ll bet you thought that EATR, the robot that uses biomass (but not people, they swear) to refuel itself, was just another weird DARPA concept, especially based on the excessively MS Paint-y sketch. But according to a press release, Cyclone Power has completed the Cyclone Mark V, which is the biomass steam engine that will actually be running the thing:

Just a friendly reminder that EATR doesn’t have to eat people to function… It simply finds us to be tastiest. Most of the time, it’ll be digesting (burning) vegetable matter that it finds, a pound and a half of which will allow it to travel a mile. Now that the engine is complete, they just have to mount it on a vehicle, give it a vision system and arm with a chainsaw, and tell it who what to chase down and, um, harvest. In other words, this thing is alarmingly close to being fully armed and operational. Remember: you don’t have to run the fastest, you just have to run slightly faster than someone else.

[ Press Release ]

An infinite number of PR2s, huh? And you’re just going to make them “available to researchers?” I can think of a couple of other things you could do with an infinite number of PR2s, and most of them end up with me being in charge of the world. BWAHAHAHA!

Um, just don’t look here, plz. Kthxbai.

[ Willow Garage ]

It’s not quite the real thing, but it will run around your desktop, take notes for you, and keep you up to date on the latest news from Honda (um, yay?). It’s a free download over at the Honda website.

[ Honda ]