The home robotics market has gotten a bit more diverse in the last year, and iRobot’s Roomba is facing some new competition. BotJunkie talked with Nancy Dussault Smith, Vice President of Marketing Communications at iRobot, about what’s keeping the Roomba the robot vacuum to beat. She discusses how iRobot has been improving the latest generation of Roombas, how the cleaning behavior of the Roomba is not random, and how she sees the Roomba as distinguishing itself from other vacuum robots such as the Neato XV-11.

The entire interview follows, after the jump. (Read more…)

Yes. We’ve got one. I had to do some things that no robot journalist should ever have to do, but I have a Neato XV-11 in my living room right now.

And a Roomba 560.

They’re just sitting there, staring at each other. You could cut the tension with a robot wielding a knife.

I know what you’re wondering… Which one is better?

Well, I’ll tell you. But not until next week, since I need some time to review both the Roomba and the XV-11, put together video of the latter, and let them bump into each other until only one robot is left sucking.

I have the XV-11 for just 24 hours (after which I think it’s been programmed to kill me), so if you have any specific questions you’d like answered, post a comment (quickly). And no, I won’t rip it open and show you the laser sensor.

Stay tuned.

We heard some rumors back in 2009 that Lockheed Martin’s SAMARAI UAV project had been killed off. In fact, Lockheed Martin themselves apparently confirmed that they had stopped developing the UAV since AeroVironment won DARPA’s nano air vehicle development contract to put some polish on their robot hummingbird. So, I’m not entirely sure what the background to this video is, but it shows a much more recent (and smaller, with a wingspan of only 12 inches) version of the SAMARAI.

The SAMARAI is certainly simple (at least, compared to AeroVironment’s UAV), and as the video shows, you can just chuck it into the air, and it can land on the ground and then take off again without needing much in the way of space or infrastructure. On the other hand, I’m not sure exactly how you’d go about mounting something like a camera on a spinning airframe (maybe sync the shutter speed with the rotation speed?), and in order to operate effectively indoors, the SAMARAI would benefit from some level of resilience to impacts. At this point, it seems as though a collision with a wall or doorframe would probably knock the SAMARAI a tad askew, causing it to spin out of control and decapitate everyone in the room.

Or maybe that’s a feature.

In any case (and we’ve pinged Lockheed Martin about the status of this project), I’m happy to see that they seem to have kept working on the SAMARAI. It was a good idea when trees came up with it, and it’s a good idea for flying robots, too. I’m definitely looking forward to seeing the 10 gram, 6cm, jet powered 6000 rpm final product.

[ Lockheed Martin SAMARAI (*.PDF) ]

Alright, before you roll your eyes right out of your head, consider that these robots are pretty much human sized (which creates all kinds of balance and power and control issues) and they’re autonomous. So really, they’re not half bad at soccer. They’re not necessarily half good, either, and they’re certainly not as good as their non-humanoid counterparts, but progress is definitely progress.

For the record, I’m a soccer player myself, which is the only reason I feel entitled to make fun of it… It was either that, or I make fun of American football or baseball, but everybody knows that neither of those sports have any boring moments, so there wouldn’t have been much of a joke there.

::cough::

[ Robonoble ] VIA [ CrunchGear ]

So, the autonomous valet parking is pretty impressive, for sure… But maybe you caught yourself thinking, “yeah, so what? I can do that.” Well, I bet you can’t do a backwards crazy-ass powerslide parallel parking job like Stanford’s Junior can. Robots ftw!

At ICRA last week, Stanford presented some footage of the latest trick they’ve been able to teach their robotic Volkswagen Passat. Driving backwards at 25 mph, Junior autonomously hits the brakes and starts to skid, at the same time rotating 180 degrees to (most of the time) end up neatly in a parking space. The video shows a couple different techniques: “closed-loop control” means that Junior is performing on the fly adjustments to its trajectory based on sensor data, while “open-loop control” means that Junior is simply executing a set of commands that result in a powerslide motion. Ideally, the entire maneuver would be closed loop, but the dynamics of a powerslide are too complex to model accurately. So instead, Junior uses closed-loop control during the lead-in backwards acceleration phase, and then transitions into open-loop control as the slide starts.

Now, part of the reason that Volkswagen/Audi are helping to fund all of this stuff is that eventually, they hope to use the technology in production automobiles to help keep us all safe. And, if you think about it, there are those occasional times where you see a parking spot open up behind you on the opposite side of the street with someone else about to snag it. By implementing this parking technology in consumer cars, you’ll be able to park that much faster, thus decreasing the amount of time that you’re on the road and therefore lowering your accident risk. Autonomous powerslide parking: it keeps you safe!

VIA [ IEEE ]

Micromouse competitions have been around for a long, long time. The little guy (or not so little guy) above was named Moonlight Special. He was created by Battelle Pacific Northwest Laboratories, a lab operated (now, at least) by the US Department of Energy. He competed in the Amazing Micromouse Maze Contest in 1979 (sponsored by IEEE Spectrum), with prizes that included an oscilloscope donated by Tektronix and a video computer system donated by Atari (SWEET!). Previously, most micromice had been simple wall followers, relying on the fact that if you hug one wall of a maze, you’ll eventually make it to the end. Eventually. Moonlight Special and its siblings were some of the first robots with actual brains and memories, able to remember turns and intersection and optimize their route after exploring the maze.

The ‘Micromouse’ is an intelligent robot with a microcomputer ‘brain’ and an ability to work out how to traverse a maze after just two trial runs. On the third run it goes from start to finish without bumping into a wall, or making a wrong turn. In this respect it is more intelligent than human beings and robot designers are working on how this type of robot can be used in a more sophisticated way — perhaps domestic robots to vacuum carpets and even run household appliances.

Ooo, those sound like good ideas! More on the mouse, after the jump. (Read more…)

We don’t have one of them fancy-pants high speed cameras, but someone else who was at RoboGames did, and they took some sweet footage. I can’t say I agree with their choice of background music (would have preferred something more blowy-uppy myself), but stick it out until the very end to see Last Rites punch a hole through the quarter inch steel floor of the arena.

That kind of thing makes me think twice about having my nose up against the measly double sheet of plexiglass that surrounds the arena as a spectator… But then I think a third time and decide to stop worrying and just love the bots.

[ MadOverlord ] VIA [ Make ]

We’re already familiar with Husqvarna’s robot lawn mower, but this beastly thing looks like it’s probably a lot more fun, since in addition to totally destroying your lawn, it’ll happy totally destroy anything else you decide to point it at. The Husqvarna DXR 310 is purpose built for tearing things (like buildings) to pieces. It weighs 2 tons and its extendable arm can be equipped with claws and jackhammers and other exciting stuff. It’s remote controlled, but it seems like if there was any circumstance where giving a 2-ton robot autonomy wouldn’t be a huge mistake, it would be one where the utter destruction of everything around it was actually the intention as opposed to just an unfortunate side-effect.

[ DXR 310 ] VIA [ RFJ ]

Stop me if you’ve heard this one, but:

AAAAA! ROBOTS WITH KNIVES!!! OMG EVERYBODY PANIC!!!!!

Instead of panicking, researchers from the Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics (which is part of the German aerospace agency DLR) decided to find out just what happens if a robot with a knife accidentally strikes one of us weak and fleshy humans. They equipped a lightweight robotic arm with a scalpel, a kitchen knife, scissors, a steak knife, and a screwdriver, and then tested various speeds of both stabbing and cutting to see what happened.

You probably won’t be surprised to hear that most test cases resulted in what would have amounted to serious injury or potentially even DEATH. So, if you have a robot arm, you should probably not give it a knife and then snuggle with it, at least not yet… But, part of the point of this research is to develop a collision avoidance system to make robots (with knives!) safer to work around. And as you can see from the video, the system is pretty effective.

Lots more video, after the jump. (Read more…)

Gestures are a very effective way for robots to communicate, since they don’t require speech and generally translate well across different cultures. Gestures also serve to emphasize emotion (in both humans and robots), and that’s what this cell phone with servo arms and legs uses them for. The robot is named Callo, and it’s able to translate text message emoticons into both facial expressions (on its LCD) and movement. Callo’s creators, Ji-Dong Yim and Chris Shaw from Simon Fraser University’s School of Interactive Arts and Technology, envision Callo being able to do things like physically emote for you in a video chat, sort of like the MeBot robot we took a look at back in March.

Of course, having bulky servo arms and legs probably isn’t the most practical thing for a cell phone, but the researchers are hoping to extend the concept to other personal electronics, like GPS systems, to a point where the devices can “interactively communicate with people and build long-term intimacy with them.” Sounds great, but I can just imagine my GPS screenpalming itself when I miss two turns in a row and then walking off my dashboard and jumping out the window after I ask it how to get from Berkeley to San Francisco without paying tolls.

[ IAT ] VIA [ Physorg ]