We’ve got some big news. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (aka IEEE) really, really likes what we’ve been doing at BotJunkie, and they want to make us a part of their flagship online and print publication, IEEE Spectrum. Specifically, they’ve got a robotics blog called Automaton, and BotJunkie is going to be moving there.

Now, please don’t panic or anything. IEEE likes BotJunkie ’cause we’re BotJunkie, and when we move over there, we’re going to keep things snarky and fun and keep writing about what we like to write about. Just because IEEE is a professional organization doesn’t mean we’re going to turn all professional. We’ll have the same type of coverage that you know (and hopefully) love, just in a slightly different place that gives us more options and opportunities to do cool robot stuff (more on that later).

On a personal note, I started BotJunkie (with the help of OhGizmo’s David Ponce) back in 2007. We didn’t know what was going to happen with it, and at the time, I hadn’t the least idea of how to write about robots. In 2009, we celebrated our thousandth post, and it’s now 2011 and we’re nearing our two thousandth. I love writing about robots, but it’s you guys, our readers, who really make it worthwhile. You’ve helped us grow BotJunkie into something special, which also happens to be one of the largest dedicated robotics blogs in the known universe. Every time one of you reads, or emails, or comments, it makes me both weirdly happy and more determined to bring you the most awesome robotics news.

So, thank you. Thanks for reading, thanks for making BotJunkie into something amazing, and I really hope you’ll all come along as we evolve into something even better.

You probably still have questions, but don’t worry, we’ve got answers!

-What’s going to be different?

The big change is that we’re going start posting our articles on IEEE Spectrum’s Automaton robotics blog. To keep enjoying our robotics articles, you’ll want to head over there, since we won’t be posting here anymore.

-What’s going to be the same?

We want to be clear about this: the reason we’re teaming up with Automaton is that they really like what we’ve been doing here at BotJunkie, largely because YOU like it. They don’t want that to change, and it’s definitely not going to. We’re going to be posting about the same types of things, in the same format, with the same tone and length, just in a new place with a new name.

-What’s in it for us, your loyal readers?

Lots of stuff! Firstly, we’re going to actually have a team of incredible people to write about robots. Even though I like to use the word ‘we’ when I talk about BotJunkie, it’s really just me (Evan), and it gets lonely around here sometimes. More people = more sweet robot articles. We’re not going to spam you with stuff, but at the moment, there’s more going on in the robot world than I can write about by myself, and with IEEE, we’ll be able to cover more.

Secondly, we’re going to be able to branch out a little bit, posting some longer and more in-depth articles in addition to our regular daily content. This means more interviews, more reviews, and more videos. You may not have heard of IEEE, but it’s actually a pretty big organization, and we may end up with some new strings we can pull to get our hands on awesome exclusives.

Finally, those of you who have been reading for a while might remember that I constantly bemoan the fact that BotJunkie doesn’t have a travel budget. Well, Automaton does! We’ll be heading to places like China, Japan, and Europe to bring you live coverage and breaking news from robotics conferences and events worldwide.

-What the heck is IEEE?

IEEE is the world’s largest association of engineers and technologists, and their mission is to “advance technology for the benefit of humanity.” They should really toss an ‘and robots’ on there at the end, but we’ll let it slide, for now. They’ve got something like 400,000 members worldwide, they publish several hundred peer-reviewed journals, they put on a bunch of international conferences, and they also develop electronics standards. Like, you know how Wi-Fi is also called 802.11? It’s actually IEEE 802.11, ’cause IEEE developed it. Same with FireWire. Not bad, right?

-How do you even pronounce ‘IEEE’ anyway?

It’s “eye-triple-ee.” I know, it’s weird.

-What does IEEE know about robots?

Tons. IEEE has an entire society devoted to robotics and automation, creatively called the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS). They have their own magazines and journals, and they also put on a bunch of super cool robotics conferences, including ICRA (the giant International Conference on Robotics and Automation) and more specific conferences like IEEE-RAS Humanoids, which is all about humanoid robots. We’ll be collaborating with RAS on interviews, exclusive stories, and more.

-What’s Automaton?

Automaton is the robotics blog of IEEE Spectrum, IEEE’s-award winning news and features magazine. The blog is edited by the capable and handsome Erico Guizzo, and has contributors worldwide. I’ll be stepping in as Senior Writer, and coming up with daily content just like I’ve been doing here on BotJunkie.

-What’s going to happen to the BotJunkie website?

The homepage that you see when you go to BotJunkie.com will soon automatically redirect you to IEEE Automaton; this’ll happen Wednesday or thereabouts. All the new content we write will go up on Automaton, not here, and there’s already some robot awesomeness there waiting for you!

-What about all those articles you have in your archive?

All that content is my blood, sweat, tears, blood, blood, and lots more blood and tears. It’s not going anywhere. We’ll be copying some of the best stuff over to Automaton’s archive, but any bookmarks or links you have to pages on BotJunkie will still work just fine, and you can still browse the archive by clicking here: http://www.botjunkie.com/page/1/

-What’s going to happen to my RSS feed?

You’ll need to change it. Automaton’s RSS feed can be found here: http://spectrum.ieee.org/rss/priv/blog/automaton

-Can I still send you tips?

Of course you can, we love tips! And, we’ll have more people around to take your suggestions and actually write them up, which has been a bit of problem in the past. My email address, evan (at) botjunkie (dot) com, will keep on working.

-Don’t abandon us! Why are you selling out to the Man, man?

Aw, c’mon, don’t be like that! We wouldn’t be doing this if we didn’t think that it would be good for you and good for us too. We’re going to keep doing exactly what we’re doing, just in a place where we’ve got a little more support and a couple extra people to help us produce the fantastic robot content that you know and love.

Got more questions about what’s going on? Post ‘em in the comments, and I’ll get back to you straightaway.

Another year, another Consumer Electronics Show! Our posting for the rest of this week is going to be intermittent, but SUPER HIGH QUALITY since we’ll be getting some of the first demos, interviews, and hands-on experiences with the sexiest new consumer robots of 2011 (like that cute little massage robot and iRobot’s new stuff). CES is a big show (like, really, really, super big), and while there’s a dedicated robotics zone, there’s usually a bunch of cool stuff hidden betwixt the booths in the dark recesses of the Las Vegas Convention Center… And we’ll be doing our level best to find it for you.

Of course, we’re not the only reporters at CES, so if you see something in the news and want us to do some firsthand reporting for you (yes, you!) just post a comment here or email us a tip and we’ll check it out.

If you’re interested in more than robots (psh), our sister site OhGizmo will have live coverage of, uh, gizmos and stuff from CES as well.

Here we goooo!

Our posting on BotJunkie has been a little bit lighter over the last week as we’ve all taken some well-deserved time off to suffer through holidays and family… It’s times like these that you really appreciate how great robots are, since most of the time they do exactly what you tell them to do and they generally come with prominent ‘off’ switches.

We’ll be catching up as the new year rolls around, and for the first week in January we’ll be on the ground at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas to bring you all the latest new robot stuff for 2011, so stay tuned for that.

Meantime, enjoy these festive robot vids, as well as the picture up top, which we stole from Neato Robotics’ Facebook page.

This first one comes from EPFL, and features an AirBurr MAV and what looks to be some kind of EyeBot:

Nao’s doing his best, but it looks like it’s just not his Christmas this year:

ETH’s quadcopters have figured out how to play jingle bells on a real piano:

That balancing robotic cube sculpture thing has decked itself out for the holiday:

And lastly, for those of you who may not be surrounded by family this season, Wieden+Kennedy has a suggestion for you involving telepresence robots:

Spotted anything else related to holidays and robots? Post in the comments so we can all share in the heartless and steely holiday spirit.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of robot deals (actually, it’s just a couple things that have shown up in my inbox), but if you’re looking to buy a robot for yourself or someone else (or yourself), here are a few places to get you started today:

-Pololu has discounts of up to 60% (!) on a variety of electronic bits, pieces, and even complete robot kits

-Trossen Robotics is offering a flat 10% off everything in stock, using coupon code “cyber10″

Also, Robots.net has a few extra deals, including black friday specials from HobbyPartz.com

Got any hot tips for your fellow robot enthusiasts? Post ‘em in the comments.

William Cox and his new robot community project site RobotBox (which is now fully armed and operational, by the way) are sponsoring a cash prize for anyone who can reverse engineer the sexy laser sensor in the Neato XV-11. The prize started out at $200, but has now doubled, thanks to some generous donations from Matt Trossen and another forum member at the Trossen Robotics community.

All you have to do to claim the prize is get the sensor to output useful 360 degree distance data and release your source code under an open source license. Easy! And it might actually be easy… The sensor is reputed to be hackable without too much trouble, someone just needs to make it happen.

[ RobotBox ]

Do you own a robot? Are you are a robot? Either way, Carnegie Mellon wants to hear from you as part of their 2010 Robot Census. Initially, the idea was to just count up all the robots at CMU (547), but the project has since expanded to all robots. Everywhere. So that they can get proper representation and federal funding, or something.

Of course, in order to qualify for the robot census, a robot has to be, uh, a robot. So what’s a robot? According to CMU’s Heather Knight, who’s running the show, “everyone agrees there are 3 minimum requirements. These are the minimum, but not sufficient requirements: They must act in the world, sense the world, and they need to have computation.”

The “minimum but not sufficient” bit is in there to preclude registering a thermostat as a robot, but this brings up all kinds of questions about just what exactly a robot is. I would just say that robots are like profanity: you know it when you see it.

Register your robot here.

[ Robot Census ]

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 ]

This just in FROM THE WHITE HOUSE:

In July, the heads of the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Science and Technology Policy identified robotics as one of the Administration’s R&D priorities for the President’s FY2012 budget.

Robotics is an important technology because of its potential to advance national needs such as homeland security, defense, medicine, healthcare, space exploration, environmental monitoring and remediation, transportation, advanced manufacturing, logistics, services, and agriculture. Robotics is also nearing a tipping point in terms of its usefulness and versatility as technologies such as software, chips, and computer vision continue to improve.

OSTP has been working with Federal agencies and the research community to identify concrete steps that the Administration can take to promote U.S. leadership in robotics.

As part of this effort, five agencies teamed up to issue a joint solicitation for small business research for Robotics Technology Development and Deployment (RTD2). Small businesses can apply for research funding for a wide range of topics, including robot-assisted rehabilitation, robotics for drug discovery, and robots that can disarm explosive devices.

Expect to see more to come in the months ahead from a newly energized and collaborative Federal robotics community!

Federal robotics community, you say? I had no idea there was such a thing. There’s a robotics caucus, but I’m not sure what they actually do. Regardless, what you should take away from this announcement is that now is a good time to start commercializing that deathbot you have in your basement, because you can now apply for some cash from the government to make it even deathier. The RTD2 grant (heh) is under the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program, and Phase 1 of the grant is worth up to $100,000 for six months. You can apply even if you’re just a sole proprietorship, so individuals are eligible for this grant.

While the grant is pretty wide open, each of the five participating agencies has provided some examples of the specific areas that they’re most interested in, and unsurprisingly DARPA is extremely specific about what they’re looking for:

-Develop and demonstrate novel robot actuators that exceed the safety and efficacy of human muscle. To be safe, an actuator must have low minimum stiffness and low stored energy, even during fault conditions. To be effective, an actuator must have high force density, high (potentially logarithmic) force resolution, sufficient bandwidth, and be robust against unexpected collision. In addition, DARPA seeks approaches that do not rely on exotic or expensive materials or processes, and approaches exhibiting potential for low-cost manufacturing.

So, in a nutshell: make it do everything but not cost anything. Sweet, let’s get right on that!

Seriously, though, there are lots of opportunities outlined here, so take a look at the info at the link below and find a project that you’d be perfect for.

[ Grant Information ]
[ White House Blog ] VIA [ Suicide Bots ]

I couldn’t find an awesome enough picture for this article, so feel free to do my job for me and link to one in the comments and I’ll stick it up there.

Building robots has never been a cheap hobby, but you can offset the expense a bit simply by winning this contest sponsored by Trossen Robotics. They want you to make a robot, any robot, and as long as it’s more super incredibly awesome than any other robot ever made it’s pretty much guaranteed to win one of these prizes:

Here’s a peek at the hexapod, on the loose at RoboGames:

You’ve got between now and December 1 to come up with something awesome, and of course, the real prize is that you’ll certainly get featured here on BotJunkie if you win. Good luck!

[ Trossen DIY Contest ]

The Singularity Summit is scheduled for August 14-15 here in SF, and if you’re interested in seeing what the future might be like (without just waiting until it gets here), a bunch of smart people will happily tell you their thoughts on what might be in store for us as a species. Speakers include Ray Kurzweil (of course), James Randi, Dr. Irene Pepperberg, David Hanson of Hanson Robotics, and many more.

So, what’s “The Singularity?” See it on a graph, after the jump. (Read more…)