iCub, who we’ve met before (a few times), was designed to study cognition in children. Thinking, learning, development, stuff like that. As such, iCub was physically modeled on a two year old. Back when iCub was first designed, though, the technology didn’t exist to make functional hands that small, so the robot was equipped with a set of hands equivalent in size to an eight year old. This has just been fixed, with iCub now sporting a pair ‘o mitts appropriate for its age. iCub also got a new, springier pair of legs that should be better able to manage the inevitable faceplants that happen when a child (or a robot child) is trying to teach itself how to walk.

A couple more iCub pics, including a disembodied head, after the jump. (Read more…)

Last August, we posted about ECCE, an “anthropomimetic” robot designed to attempt to duplicate the muscular and skeletal functionality of a human. Kojiro is a robot from the University of Tokyo’s JSK Robotics Laboratory which was built based on the same kinds of ideas. At this stage, Kojiro’s highlight is his spine, which can bend and flex like ours do to allow the robot to move its torso. While it’s true that Kojiro’s spine doesn’t offer a range of motion that’s significantly different from (say) a couple axes worth of conventional servos, the big advantage at this point is that having a structure of artificial muscles, tendons, and bones makes the robot much more forgiving of impacts to both its own structure and whatever it may be trying not to crush. The disadvantage, however, is that such a complex structure is tricky to get to move just exactly the way you want it to, since you’ve got all kinds of different artificial muscles tugging different ways at the same time.

All of this research is focused on building robots that are more human-like, but I’m still wondering just why this is such an appealing thing to roboticists. I totally understand why learning from biological systems is important, but most of the successful applications that I’ve seen are bio-inspired rather than biomemetic, taking elements of biological design and using them to build better robots as opposed to building robots that are modeled on their biological counterparts. As both EECE and Kojiro show, humans are ridiculously complicated inside, and as research towards a potential anthropomimetic endpoint, it’s a good goal. My question, though, is that as a development perspective for practical robotics, are we better off (at this point, anyway) just letting robots be unapologetically robotic?

[ JSK Robotics Lab ] VIA [ IEEE ]

There are many roles on stage and screen that are entirely inappropriate for robotic actors, but that doesn’t stop humans from trying. RoboThespian aims to prove that as humans acting like robots is generally bad, robots acting like humans can be good.

Well, not really. He’s more of an interactive exhibit.

But still, he’s pretty talented, right? Here are some details on just how he does what he does:

Unlike most robots of this caliber, RoboThespian is available for purchase. In the box, you’ll get the robot itself, plus a full support unit, touchscreen control panel, and motion creation software. Not bad for about $82,000, especially considering that bad human actors cost way more and can’t necessarily be turned off.

[ RoboThespian ] VIA [ Wired ]

Back in 2008, we introduced you to Care-O-bot 3 from Fraunhofer IPA, the lovable lil robot that’s missing a limb. Well, Fraunhofer IPA recently open-sourced their software:

The Care-O-bot 3 software platform was recently ported to ROS and is fully available as open source. You can now go to the ROS.org wiki and find documentation on the many software packages that they’ve released.

This is great news! Developers will now be able to collaborate in making these robots do some truly amazing things, like accurate object recognition, which is becoming increasingly prevalent in consumer robotics as technologies develop. In Care-O-bot 3’s case, objects are first scanned in 3 dimensions via a camera in the head. Once the bot has a 3d image saved, it can compare that saved image to live images from its camera, to determine which object is which:

Congratulations to Fraunhofer IPA! It’s hard not to win in open sourcing software, wouldn’t you agree?

[ Fraunhofer IPA ] VIA [ Willow Garage ]

The Telecomunicator T1 is a two-stage robot designed by Telerobotics Laboratory in Japan. The purpose of the robot is to allow remote viewing and contact from a human-like form. In other words, if you need to be in a press conference in, oh, let’s say Zimbabwe, then with the help this awesome ‘bot, you can save yourself a frisking by that burly TSA guy at the airport.

The idea is simple, and the robot works in two stages:

Stage one is the robot itself, which can be worn by the poor Zimbabwean schmuck you coerce into going to the press conference on your behalf. The robot is literally “worn” like a backpack. The ‘bot is equipped with two cameras to provide a wide peripheral span, as well as servos to control the angle of the cameras, and sensors that detect movement of the carrier, and compensate for it. In other words, when that Zimbabwean turns around to grab a soda, the camera angle doesn’t change from your perspective.

Stage two is the tele-control assembly. This is what you’d be dealing with back at home. Basically, it’s VR (Virtual Reality) goggles coupled with a handful of sensors so that when you turn your head, the robot does as well, meaning that you control what you see, even in Zimbabwe!

The bot itself has a few other nifty features, the coolest one being that it looks human-like, or at least robot-human-like, so laypeople can recognize where to look if they want to make eye contact with the operator. It also has a microphone and speakers built in, so you can hear and speak remotely. Finally, the Telecomunicator T1 has a cute little arm that can wave (see 49 seconds into the video). This is great news for geeks everywhere- now we can get a girls attention… even in Zimbabwe!

[ Telerobotics Laboratory ] VIA [ Plastic Pals ]

From the folks at RSLSteeper in the UK comes BeBionic, “The next generation of fully articulated myo-electric hands.” Being myoelectric means that these hands can be controlled by electrical signals from the human brain. Not only can these bionic digits produce still art straight out of a zombie flick, they’re actually quite… dare I say… handy? “Complete with a range of naturally compliant grip patterns that provide repeatable accuracy, our powerful new hands combine innovative technology with life-like appearance.” In other words these things are AALLIIIVVVEEEEE… or at least pretty darn close to it. RSLSteeper has also released a nifty teaser video showing off just how accurate these things are:

Tell me those things don’t look awesome!

Now, maybe I shouldn’t be talking, seeing as I’ve made some pretty destructive robots, but as cool as these bionic hands look, I always find robots that are capable of actually hurting someone (read: Kung-Fu grip) the slightest bit creepy, and this is no exception. I mean, if we’ve learned anything from The Addams Family, it’s that hands with a mind of their own can only mean bad news.

At the same time, I do have to applaud RSLSteeper- if the BeBionic hands are as nimble as the video demonstrates, then they could have some very important applications, both in helping amputees, and in making more life-like androids.

What’s your take? Handy, or creepy?

[ BeBionic ] VIA [ Engadget ]

If you were to take either the robot’s costume by itself, the dancing by itself, or the music by itself, things would be normal. It’s the combination that gets a little weird. This robot is called, you guessed it, Dancing Doll, and she uses 25 servos, a couple gyros, and an accelerometer to bust all those polka moves without falling over. She only stands 60 cm tall, but (in case you were wondering) according to the website her real name is Alice and she’s “15 years old forever.” Oh, you want another vid now? You got it:

[ Dancing Doll (Translated) ] VIA [ GetRobo ]

When you first see the I-FAIRY, it’s exciting. It’s exciting because the I-FAIRY has sturdy looking legs, and looks like it can stand up and maybe even walk around. Buuuut, it can’t. It’s all a big lie. It can move its head and arms and swivel its torso back and forth, but all its really designed to do is sit there and provide information. Which is okay, I guess… You provide it with a bunch of prerecorded audio and it will detect when people are standing in front of it and start talking, automatically generating its own movement program as it does so.

And it has light up eyes. Yay!

I-FAIRY is brought to you by Kokoro, a part of Sanrio Group. Yep, Hello Kitty does robots.

[ Kokoro ]

I know the following about these images: they come from the November 2009 edition of Kokoro News (which is in Japanese). The guy in the picture is Dr. Javier Movellan, and the robot next to him is “Diego-San.” They’re from the Machine Perception Laboratory at UCSD. Since I can’t read Japanese, I don’t know what this robot is for or why on Earth it has a gigantic baby head. I also don’t know why these pictures were included in the article:

Look, we’ve been over this before… You don’t. Make. Robot. Babies. Humans are hardwired to respond in a particular way to other humans in general, but more specifically when it comes to babies, and we can instantly tell when something’s wrong and it’s like a punch to the gut. Like, it’s not just mildly creepy, it’s seriously #@$*%^ up.

I’m quite sure that Diego-San is an incredible robot doing incredible research, and hopefully we’ll get more details on that, but seriously now, whoever put that head on there needs to get out of the lab a little more.

If anyone cares to translate the article and let us all know what’s going on with this thing, there’s a PDF at the read link below.

[ Kokoro News (PDF) ]
[ UCSD Machine Perception Laboratory ]

Next door to CES is the Adult Entertainment Expo, and as a journalist, it’s my obligation to go. And I heard that the world’s first sex robot was going to be making its (her?) debut. The official press conference is on Saturday, and they’re saving the actual robot features until then, but I spent about 10 minutes interviewing the CEO of True Companion about the robot to get an overview and some background.

We’ve got a video after the break that’s probably NSFW, since it shows a scantily clad (but not naked) android and there is some mild discussion of sex. I’d probably call it PG-13, but certainly not R or X. If this type of thing bothers you, no worries, just skip this post. (Read more…)