You may think that all of those crazy robot competitions that we like to cover are just fun and games, but there’s a serious side. Really, there is. For reals. Mindful of this, ROBO-ONE held the second annual Humanoid Helper Project last weekend, where teleoperated human-sized robots completed (or attempted to complete) three seemingly simple tasks, including pouring liquid from a plastic bottle into a cup, carrying ping-pong balls on a tray, and a 30 minute endurance race. I don’t know about you, but the last two would be a bit of a challenge for me, and they certainly were for the robots:

Keep in mind that these are not huge companies (or even small companies) with robots that cost millions (or even tens of thousands) of dollars. These are hobby robots. Big, fancy hobby robots, but still hobby robots. The winner was the robot with the round head, who showed a remarkable (and consistent) amount of dexterity. Now if they could only start running ROS, they could start a bottle squeezing competition too.

[ Robo Helper ] VIA [ GetRobo ]

Wondering what to do with all of that left over chocolate from Valentine’s Day? I’m not, because I ate all mine, and they aren’t in Japan either, where they held a big contest for robots with chocolate box exteriors. The 4th annual TIROL-CHOCO Robot Competition featured bipedal robots with bodies built using TIROL-CHOCO boxes racing each other and competing in chocolate target practice as well as chocolate carrying.

VIA [ Biped Robot News ]

We got a terrifying peak at Castrol’s free kick robot in September of last year, but it looks like now it’s almost finished. Weighing in at around two tons (!), the actual kicking part of the machine is powered by an automobile engine (!!) that stores up energy in a flywheel, which releases it to the steel and carbon fiber leg all at once. The resulting kick tops 200 kph, and as you can see, it’s not something any goalie would want to sacrifice themselves for:

Blink? Here’s the slow-mo:

That tarp could have been your face. Yay robots!

VIA [ GetRobo ]

Last year, the fastest micromouse we saw made it through a maze in 6.4 seconds. This year, they’ve gotten even faster. Apparently there was some question as to whether a micromouse could break the 5 second barrier when it comes to getting through an expert class maze (which I think are somehow standardized in turns/length), and although it didn’t pull it off in official competition, a mouse called Tetra managed to make it through the maze in a seriously scant 4.7 seconds in a demonstration:

Nobody is quite sure how or why this mouse is so fast, but some experienced people have some ideas… David Otten, a 22 year veteran of micromouse competitions, after the jump. (Read more…)

Yeah, so it goes about how you’d expect. The robot in the ring is the Genuine Great King Kizer, a 1 meter tall 9 kilo humanoid with 37 servos and 25 degrees of freedom. Every 18 months or so, designer Naoki Maru has doubled the size of this robot, which means that it’ll be playing soccer with Hajime 33 sometime in 2011.

Meantime, let’s get some industrial robots and see if one of them can pin the guy in the tight shorts. Or just, you know, crush him.

VIA [ GetRobo ]

Do you like robots? Are you in the SF Bay Area, or anywhere else with cash to burn and/or a private jet? Combots Cup IV is the weekend after next (December 19th and 20th) at the San Mateo County Fairgrounds <. Unlike RoboGames, which has a whole bunch of different types of events, Combots Cup is all about combat, combat, popcorn and cotton candy, and combat, ranging from 30 to 340 pound robots.

If you can't make it, BotJunkie will be there for ya, but if you're anywhere within 24,901.55 miles of the fairgrounds, you have no excuse. Tickets are on sale now, here.

[ Combots Cup ] VIA [ Suicide Bots ]

Latest contender for the Uncanniest Robot of the Year Award (speaking of, I think we should have an Uncanniest Robot of the Year Award) is Doka Harumi, an entrant in the Robo-One dance competition during IREX on Saturday in Japan. Shockingly, shockingly, she didn’t win. I honestly can’t figure out why. It’s a robot/schoolgirl dancing to J-pop. In Japan. What, were there not enough tentacles or something? If you want to see the winner, you can click through at the end… It’s not nearly as impressive as some of the losers and the special guests. More vids, including an appearance by Manoi, after the jump. (Read more…)

Andrew Alter’s monstrous Mech Warrior “Hagetaka” that we previewed before RoboGames back in April ended up being just to monstrous for its own good. Andrew scaled things back a bit (but not too much) with Giger, a 5 kg, 24 servo (including 16 of those terrifying RX-64s), ten thousand dollar completely custom walking humanoid. The gait still needs a little bit of work, but remember, it’s being developed from scratch and there are a heck of a lot of servos (and other electronics) to coordinate. Besides being totally badass in its own right, Giger is going to get a weapons upgrade for Mech Warfare competitions, namely an arm or two replaced with airsoft guns.

Building a robot like this, or even a robot not nearly as complicated and/or expensive as this, takes a truly staggering amount of work and skill. Adrenalynn over on the Trossen Robotics forums has helpfully posted a series of 20 steps that will guarantee that you just might have a working Mech in time for RoboGames next April:

How To Win At Mechwarfare: 20 Simple Steps

1. Assemble a true walking ‘bot that can handle the payload
2. Teach it to walk
3. Teach it to walk untethered
4. Refine the walking
5. Integrate the camera and scoring system
6. Teach it to walk again
7. Teach it to walk untethered again
8. Increase the capacity of your batteries
9. Teach it to walk again
10. Teach it to walk untethered again
11. Add a turret and gun(s) – lighter the better
12. Teach it to shoot with some accuracy
13. Teach it to shoot with some accuracy untethered
14. Teach it to walk again
15. Teach it to walk untethered again
16. The night before/day of the event when it all blows up, start at step 1.
17. Discover that your wireless system doesn’t work for squat in the noisy RF environment. Tweak and Tune all day.
18. Finally get everything working the last day/couple matches
19. Burn up a servo (or three)
20. Rinse/Lather/Repeat

After about 100 hours of work, Giger is currently at step 4. But there’s nothing to worry about, ’cause there’s still plenty of time before step 16, where everything blows up at the last minute and you have to start over anyway. Yay robotics!

[ Let's Make Robots ] and [ Trossen ] VIA [ MAKE ]

If you can’t justify buying yourself a humanoid robot to play with, ask yourself this question: what would you do if a little wooden doll was stuck at the end of an obstacle course? Huh? Yeah, that’s right, you’d just stare helplessly as it continued to be little and wooden. If you had a humanoid robot like a Robovie-PC, though, you could send it in to rescue the little wooden doll, earning its undying little wooden gratitude:

This is not at all the motivation for participants to build humanoid robots and send them in after little wooden dolls as part of a rescue robot contest in Japan. The remote controlled bots had to contend with barriers and blocks and a time limit, but after rescuing the doll, it was theirs to do with as they wished.

Don’t ask.

[ Rescue Robot Contest (Translated) ] VIA [ Plastic Pals ] VIA [ Engadget ]

We make it to some robot competitions in person here on BotJunkie, most of which are within 5 bucks worth of gas money from our world headquarters on my sofa here in Berkeley California. We also cover a bunch of other competitions around the country, and even internationally, but most of what we hear about comes from Japan or Europe. There are robotics communities all over the world, though, and they meet up at events like the Baltic Robot Sumo Cup, which was held in Klaipeda, Lithuania. Events included Mini-Sumo, 3kg-Sumo, and Roomba-Sumo:

It looks like it was a fairly large and definitely successful event, with the help of some seriously top-tier sponsors like iRobot and ABB, who I kinda wish I’d see on event banners around here more often.

[ Baltic Robot Sumo ]