A special ROBO-ONE style combat event took place in Japan last weekend. To participate, robots had to be modeled on (or at least dressed up as) a fictional robot character from one of the productions of Japan’s Sunrise Corporation, which is probably most famous for bringing us Gundam. And Cowboy Bebop.

The video above pits a gigantic RX-78-2 Gundam (one of these) against a human sized Blue Comet SPT Layzner, and the outcome is (hilariously) just about what you’d expect. I, unfortunately, am in no way qualified to speculate on which one of these bots would win if the real (fictional) versions met on the battlefield, but I invite any authorities on the subject matter to post in the comments and let us know whether or not it really would be such a short (and undignified) battle.

VIA [ Robot Watch (Translated) ]

The ROBO-ONE humanoid robot competition was held in Toyoma, Japan last weekend, and by all accounts (sigh, I need a travel budget) Takeshi Maeda’s OmniZero.9 totally stole the show, and you can see why. I don’t know what kind of servos that thing is using, but I need some to debone my hot dogs.

Of course, OmniZero.9 wasn’t the only cool robot at RoboONE… Lem over at Robots-Dreams has put together a few more (non-embeddable) YouTube vids of the highlights:

Hammerhead shoots an arrow

Kinopy plays the xylophone

VIA [ GetRobo ] and [ Robots-Dreams ]

Last week, we posted an excellent NOVA video on the DARPA Grand Challenge, which took place in 2005. A few years after that came another DARPA sponsored competition for robot cars called the DARPA Urban Challenge, and while there isn’t a NOVA special on it, I did find this overview video that’s worth watching. Near the end, DARPA director Tony Tether likens the DARPA challenges to Kitty Hawk: in of itself, it may not seem like much, but it’s an important first step in the development of a technology that may come to revolutionize the way we travel.

[ DARPA Urban Challenge ]

As cool as Mech Warfare is, the barrier to entry (in terms of both skill and money required) is relatively high, since (for year one, anyway) pretty much everyone had to design and construction their robots from scratch. With this in mind, Lynxmotion (remember them?) is working on a biped Mech kit that includes everything you’ll need right out of the box, from a camera system to airsoft guns. Here’s what they’ve got so far:

Pretty awesome, huh? It’s supposed to be “low cost,” but when it comes to robots, that could mean just about anything… We’ll keep you posted.

[ Lynxmotion Forums ] VIA [ Trossen Robotics ]

If you couldn’t make it to the closed set filming of the latest season of BattleBots and your cable package doesn’t include CBS College Sports (a channel that I didn’t know existed), the BattleBots YouTube channel at least gives you a taste of what kind of action BattleBots has to offer and how it differs from similar events like RoboGames.

The BattleBots TV season is tentatively scheduled to kick off in December of this year, and BattleBots is already location scouting for a 2010 season in Miami, San Francisco, and, uh, Buffalo, with filming to begin in March or April.

[ BattleBots ]

The 2nd annual Blaser Robot Battle laser tag competition will be held September 13th. In Japan. Which, last time I checked, is really, really far from California. Sigh. Yet another event to add to the schedule for RoboGames 2010… Too bad Good thing I’m in no way in charge of that. Anyway, this sport looks to be pretty straightforward, with 2v2 or 4v4 humanoids outfitted with laser guns and sensors, trying to score the most points by shooting opposing robots or bases. The video shows some POV cameras, but it doesn’t look like they were actually being used for competition, unlike Mech Warrior. My recommendation: next time, how about some upgraded weaponry.

VIA [ Robots Dreams ]

These innovative rescue robots are competing in a rescue robot contest in Japan. As far as I can make out, the objective is to navigate a simulated earthquake disaster zone (via what looks to be remote control), locate a fake kid under a pile of debris, remove the debris, and then somehow get the kid to safety. This last bit is the most interesting, with the robots demonstrating all kinds of different ways of picking up the fake kid, from the reliable (but boring) arm/ramp method to giant plastic scoop things to a cute little deployable grabber bot. And of course, all of this is made infinitely more awesome by the cartoon opening.

If this footage tickles your fancy, there’s a longer version of the same vid on YouTube… It’s got a lot of non-robot stuff in it, but there’s some extended fake kid rescue scenes that are worth a look starting at about 4 minutes in. There now, doesn’t all this just make you feel so much better about earthquakes? I’m actually looking forward to it, now that there are so many robots that can come rescue me.

[ Rescue Robots (Translated) ] VIA [ Robot Watch (Translated) ]

The 12th annual AUVSI AUV competition took place last month down in San Diego, California. For those of you not up to date on your acronyms, AUVSI is the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, and AUVs are Autonomus Underwater Vehicles. The AUV competition puts fully autonomous mini-subs through a complex obstacle course where they have to navigate, detect objects, and perform tasks all on their own, without sinking or being eaten by sharks. In addition to recovering a briefcase which was full of either secret documents or a school of mackerel, the robots had to fire torpedoes at a target or drop bombs on a series of vehicles and structures inexplicably located underwater.

The overall winner was Cornell University, who managed to autonomously complete all of the course objectives in the allotted time. This isn’t entirely surprising, considering the experience CMU has with autonomous vehicles. (Yeah, I’m an idiot. -Ed.)

Video from the final competition day, with spectacular footage of a robot sub firing its torpedoes, after the jump. (Read more…)

The little plastic robot who climbed the Grand Canyon on a pair of Panasonic Evolta AA batteries has set its sights on a new world record: the longest distance traveled by a radio controlled car on (I assume) one set of AA batteries. The Evolta robot has been totally redesigned for this, complete with a little tricycle thing that homes in on an infrared remote. While the record is more or less entirely pointless, the robot is cute enough, and it does make me want my next set of disposable AA batteries to be Evoltas… Too bad I only use rechargeables.

If you want some Evoltas to test out on your robot, you can find them on Amazon.

VIA [ Plastic Pals ]

My apologies that this video kinda sucks, but it does get better after a little bit… The announcer human moves and the camera human seems to get their spaziness under better control. We posted a video of humans playing against robots of this size about a month ago, and I think you’ll agree that these bots make a much better game of it. Like, check out the defensive skills at 6:20… The robots are shifting between man to man defense and guarding the goal, and are able to anticipate passes and cut them off. And then they score.

They SCORE!

Against some friendly half-assed humans, admittedly, but it was an actual goal nonetheless. I can’t imagine it will be very long at all (a few years, maybe) before robots of this type (i.e. non-humanoids) will be able to give even skilled and determined humans a tough game, especially once someone writes some aggressive tackling software.

[ RoboCup 2009 ]