Looks like Fujitsu’s getting into the cuddly companion robot market with this robot teddy bear, who can laugh, wave, and won’t ever judge you. With 12 actuators the bear can perform some 300 actions, and with touch, grip, and tilt sensors, it’s reasonably interactive. Fujitsu seems to want this robot to serve the same general function as Paro: it’s got enough interactivity to promote emotional bonds, and (most importantly) is fuzzy and snugglable, making a good choice for a companion robot.

If this robot looks a little bit familiar, it’s because we’ve seen something just like it before… MIT’s ‘Huggable’ robot, from back in 2008. Both robots have generally similar capabilities, except that the MIT bear is more geared toward interactive telepresence while the Fujitsu bear seems to be more of an autonomous companion. Not much seems to have come of Huggable recently, though, so for the moment, Fujitsu has the monopoly on robot bears. Non-violent ones, at least.

VIA [ Engadget ]

Feeling like you need a little extra metallic carnage in your life? Combots is back, bringing robot destruction to the San Francisco Bay Area. Flamethrowers, spinning titanium bars, carcinogenic fumes from friend batteries, and the salty tears of roboticists washing over a floor littered with the smoldering splinters of their creations. Yeah, it’s that good. Plus, there’s beer. Beer that’s on fire.

Combots takes place October 23rd and 24th from 2pm – 7pm at the San Mateo Event Center. And hey, guess what? We’ve even wrangled you a sexy 20% discount on tickets to the event. Just go here to buy them, and then enter this code: BotJunkie-m3L. If you don’t, I’ll be sacrificed to the winning heavyweight robot, and you wouldn’t want my blood on your hands, would you? Would you?

See you there!

[ Combots Cup V ]

When you have a 1,360 square mile military facility that needs patrolling, robots are the way to go, or at least that’s the position starting to be adopted by the US Army. Why? Simple: using mobile robots instead of permanent infrastructure (like fixed cameras and motion detectors) saves $6 million in up-front costs plus an additional $1 million a year in maintenance.

The robots being used at the Hawthorne Army Depot (which stores tens of millions of cubic feet of low-level radioactive waste) are somewhat unsexily called MDARS (Mobile Detection Assessment Response Systems). They’re diesel powered, with a top speed of 20 mph, and they can stay on duty for 16 hours. Most of the time, MDARS do random fully autonomous patrols, using RFID tags to check the status of locks and gates. If they notice something out of the ordinary, a human can take over, using cameras, microphones, and speakers to interact with whatever needs interacting with. The bots are currently unarmed, so short of running someone over they can’t do much more than observe, although they are certainly capable of mounting remote controlled weapons.

[ NNSA Press Release ] VIA [ Danger Room ]

This hair washing robot from Panasonic made the rounds last week, but I figured it was one of those things where good video was important, and DigInfo News came through today. One thing that the video doesn’t elaborate on is how the robot is actually scanning the user’s head shape in three dimensions to figure out just the right amount of pressure to apply, and it’ll use that shape to remember who you are and what shampoo and massage settings you like.

In general, Panasonic is trying to create a robotic infrastructure to help Japan (and the rest of the world) deal with an aging population that’s going to need more and more support. As such, this system is primarily targeted at medical environments and not for installing in your bathroom. Yet.

[ Press Release ] VIA [ DigInfo ]

I’ve accepted the inevitability that robots are taking our jobs, but it takes a truly evil mind to design a robot to put Grandmothers out of work. This robot cake decorator works sort of like a Spirograph; the cake rotates in a circle while an arm moves back and forth depositing frosting. A separate arm drops those little silver balls that you wonder whether you’re really supposed to try and eat. It was designed by Katherina Mischer and Thomas Traxler, who helpfully included a picture of a redundant Grandmother:

[ mischer'traxler ] VIA [ DesignBoom ]

Well, I totally forgot about Murata Girl’s birthday on September 23rd. Sorry about that, I know you’re all disappointed. But now that she’s a year older, she’s learned how to negotiate a curvy balance beam, which is a good 100% curvier than the straight balance beam she was wheeling on last year.

So, we’ve got Murata Boy riding a bike, Murata Girl riding a unicycle… Next? Murata Dog on a pogo stick. It’s just logical progression, right?

VIA [ Plastic Pals ]

I love this picture, but the especially cool bit is that the artist (Drew Olson) took the time to explain what he was going for and how he did it, including how the piece changed as he was drawing it:

“For this image I tried to channel some of my main influences, and some of my favorite robots. I’m a big fan of the bot designs from Miyazaki’s “Castle in the Sky” and “Nausicaa”, as well as the clunky “The Iron Giant” look. I like how they’re fantastical, yet somewhat grounded in reality.

I wanted to create the sense that the robot is broken down, and whoever is in that hut has been there for a long time. I’ve heard a couple of different interpretations on what people think is happening in the image, but my original idea was for the pilot of the bot to have become marooned on an alien planet, powering his life support from the robot’s energy.

This piece came together fairly quickly, but I had to work through some other more unsucessful ideas first. A lot of the time when I’m starting an illustration I’ll start with a few quick thumbnail sketches and choose one. From that point I’ll work up a black and white rough, and then begin to lay down color washes on top. However, this time I just started drawing, and edited the piece as I went along. There were variations where he was in a more desert environment, and one where instead of a hut there was a city on a hill, making him look HUGE. As I worked on it I changed it to a jungle planet, added the hut, and changed the face design a number of times.”

There are (currently) five more images in this series from Robot Entertainment, in which video game artists are given free reign to create a piece of robot concept art. Check out the others at the link below.

[ Robot Entertainment ] VIA [ io9 ]

[If you can't see the above clip, it's probably because you have AdBlock enabled and CBS is whining about it]

I watched The Big Bang Theory for the first time last Thursday, specifically because Willow Garage’s Texai was guest starring, along with Steve Wozniak. While the show was funny at times, it was a little too much HEY WE’RE A GEEKY TV SHOW ::POKE POKE POKE:: for my taste… It’s sort of like The IT Crowd except absent any sort of comedic reserve or understatement. Certainly, having Texai and Woz guest starring makes it totally worth watching, but unless PR2 shows up next week, I might go back to Antiques Roadshow.

Wow, apparently we do TV reviews here on BotJunkie, who knew?

The Big Bang Theory is new every Thursday on CBS at 8pm.

This is a set of all of the different long exposure pics that I’ve taken while doing reviews of cleaning robots. I spent a likely excessive amount of time reviewing each robot in detail (and you can read those reviews at the links below), but really, the pictures explain the cleaning patterns better than I ever could. It’s illuminating (so to speak) to see them all right up against one another, so here they are:

iRobot Roomba 560, 45 minutes

Neato Robotics XV-11, 12 minutes

Evolution Robotics Mint (Sweeping Mode), 15 minutes

Evolution Robotics Mint (Mopping Mode), 23 minutes

Three very different robots, three very different cleaning techniques. Check out the individual reviews for more details on each.

[ iRobot ]
[ Neato Robotics ]
[ Evolution Robotics ]