Update 2- It’s all back, yay!

Update- Apparently Flyfire is a secret still, since it looks like MIT has pulled the video, plus the website, just an hour or so after we posted this. Weird…

The problem with true three dimensional displays (displays that you can walk around) is that they require pixels to be floating in space. This has been done with lasers and plasma, but such technologies are super expensive and limited in many ways. MIT’s SENSEable City Laboratory in collaboration with ARES Lab (Aerospace Robotics and Embedded Systems Laboratory) has hit upon the idea of creating huge free form three dimensional displays out of individual “smart pixels” made up of micro helicopters carrying LEDs:

Gigantic 3D displays made up of swarms of micro helicopters that can be released into any open space… How awesome is that?

We’ve talked about the benefits of swarm robotics before: it’s relatively cheap because the individual robots are simple, if any one robot breaks it’s easy to replace, and it’s easily scalable since you can just toss more bots into the mix. You can even use swarms to compensate for things like batteries: if you initially launch your robots in waves, you can have a whole other group of standby robots that dynamically replace the performing robots as their batteries run out, flying up with their LEDs off to switch places without anybody noticing.

The tricky part, of course, is getting everything to work together. MIT has big plans for the system, though…

The Flyfire canvas can transform itself from one shape to another or morph a two-dimensional photographic image into an articulated shape. The pixels are physically engaged in transitioning images from one state to another, which allows the Flyfire canvas to demonstrate a spatially animated viewing experience. Flyfire serves as an initial step to explore and imagine the possibilities of this free-form display: a swarm of pixels in a space.

You could even play an HD movie on system… Let me see, to play a movie in 1080p (trying to get it to do 1080i with half the number of bots would be pretty interesting but probably impossible, unless you could get them to do barrel rolls at 60 Hz or something to form the interlacing) you’d need over 2 million micro copters to form the base screen, plus however many more are required to swap out for recharging. Fun to think about, but maybe it would be better to just stick with standard def, since you’d only need about 350,000 bots.

While the video is a rendering, the robots are real enough, and hopefully we can expect to see some live demos of the entire system sometime soon.

[ Flyfire ]

This is Crowbot (not this). Crowbot was designed by Hiromi Ozaki (with help from a couple of experts in crow intelligence), and can reproduce a variety of crow calls. By choosing the right calls, Crowbot can attract crows, repel crows, and from the looks of it, seriously confuse crows:

Oh, and there’s more… (Read more…)

Oh, if only ’twere this easy…

$15, available for a severely limited time.

[ shirt.woot ]

I saw some of Sarah Dungan’s awesome robot prints at the Edwardian Ball over the weekend, and had to share.

The robot prints aren’t up on her Etsy store at the moment, but if you want one, you might try sending her an email through her website at the link below.

[ Industrial Fairytale ]

Just in case you’re not familiar:

1. Robots aren’t supposed to squish humans.
2. Robots have to sweep up when humans tell them to.
3. Robots are allowed to shoot humans if they’re unhappy.

Today only, shirt.woot. $10 shipped.

[ shirt.woot ]

We wrote about Nils V├╢lker’s rolling orbital Bluetooth operated thing back in July, and since then, he’s been busy developing this light drawing robot (among, I assume, other things). The principle behind this bot is simple: moving lights + long camera exposure = cool. Very cool. It’s tricky to do, though, especially if you’re trying to draw anything with precision. But robots are great at precision, and if you want a light drawing made up solely of straight lines, Nils’ robot does a bang-up job:

[ Nils V├╢lker ] VIA [ Designboom ]

This illustration is from a children’s book called Hello, I’m Robot! which was published in the Soviet Union in 1989.. . Notice the evolution from abacus to digital calculator in one generation. Check out more images after the jump, although the one above is the best one, I’d say

[ A Journey Round My Skull ] VIA [ BB ]

There’s an entire blog dedicated to concept robot artwork. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, should I? Here’s a few samples:

by Goro Fujita (we like his art!)

More, after the jump. (Read more…)

At RoboExotica in Vienna (it’s the European version of this) one of the most entertaining robots this year was this Adult Mario system, a regular game of Mario hooked up to a booze dispenser that mixes you a drink based on how well you play. Do well, you get rum and coke. Do poorly, and the robot mixes in water. Run out of lives, and the robot throws the drink in your face.

Just kidding.

But there are other cool features, like fans that blow in your face when Mario runs and lighting that matches the background of the level you’re on. You can also swap cartridges (not really) and play Bartris instead:

Of course, the robot can be configured to mix any sort of drink using any sort of game. The possibilities are endless… Contra J├ñgerbombs, here I come.

[ Roboexotica ]
[ Nonpolynomial ] VIA [ DigitalTools ]

If these weren’t already sold out, I’d be all over them. At $45 each (there’s a set of 6), these 6.5″ tall ‘Bertie Mk2′ figurines are beautifully battle scarred in that way that made Wall-E so endearing. More pics:

As I said, the pre-order is entirely sold out, but hopefully these robot toys will become available again in January.

[ Tenacious Toys ] VIA [ Boing Boing ]