If you’ve ever had trouble justifying the expense of a telepresence robot, today is your lucky day. The WowWee Rovio, which is $230 right now on Amazon, is currently on Woot for $99 plus $5 shipping. This deal is only good for 24 hours, or until it sells out. Get clicking!

[ Woot ]
[ WowWee Rovio ]

[ Cross posted from OhGizmo.com ]

When it comes to being a robot vacuum the G182, available from Chinavasion, does everything you’d expect a reasonably equipped model to do these days, like automatically dock with the charging base when the battery gets low, and it comes with a wireless IR virtual fence to keep it from wandering into places it shouldn’t go.

But the inclusion of a remote controlled pan and tilt IR-equipped webcam, which has the unfortunate side effect of ensuring it won’t fit under most couches, means the G182 also doubles as a remote cleaning tool and surveillance unit that can be controlled and monitored from anywhere in the world you have a net connection. It connects to your home wi-fi network providing both a live video and audio feed, and the whole setup is perfect for anyone who’s ever worried that someone might break into their home only to be horrified to find the floors are dirty. How embarrassing! ~$500.

[ Intelligent Robot Vacuum Cleaner with Wireless IP Camera ] VIA [ OhGizmo ]

This is Rogun, a Korean humanoid robot especially notable for its glowering expression as well as its impressive 1 meter height. Rogun is designed to be a sort of telepresence robot, in that it can wander around your house and make sure everything is in order, streaming video to your mobile device using an integrated WiFi, WiMAX, or HSDPA connection.

When its not playing security guard, Rogun will woo your children with singing, dancing, guitar, and videos playing on its chest-mounted LCD. It has 26 degrees of freedom and its hands can grasp with 0.5kg of pressure, which is fortunately not enough to crush fragile human fingers, because it seriously looks like it wants to.

The video makes it looks like Rogun doesn’t have much in the way of capabilities or intelligence that you wouldn’t be able to find on any number of more conventional (i.e. without a slick plastic exterior) hobby-type humanoids. And, uh, it seems to be plugged in. However, here’s what it’s supposed to be able to do:

• Recognition of moving objects
• Posture/gesture recognition
• Environment recognition
• Sound recognition
• Face recognition

This video was uploaded in 2007, though, so I suppose it’s possible that Rogun is now fully functional and ready to take over your house. If anyone speaks Korean, make sure and check out the KornTech site for the rest of us.

[ KornTech ] VIA [ Gadget Ideaz ]

Google, and companies like Google, are out there to help us. They take the personal information that we give them, and make sure that it’s as available to us as conveniently as possible in as many forms as we like and from wherever we may be. Problem is, Google can’t be everywhere, so sometimes there are questions that it can’t answer… Questions like, “where did I leave that book I was reading last night?” Wouldn’t it be great if you could just Google that?

You can’t, yet. But you can Gåågle it, with your very own GåågleBot. “GåågleBot” is pronounced just like “Googlebot,” which is Google’s automated web indexer. “Gå” means “go” in Swedish, and the GåågleBot is a go-go mobile indexing robot created from a Roomba. GåågleBot goes about its normal vacuuming business, but as it does, a camera mounted on the front sends images back to a webserver via a wireless card. Using some optical character recognition software, the images are scanned for text, and anything that shows up is added to a searchable index.

At the moment, searching the index only returns the relevant image. So, if you’ve lost your book, GåågleBot can tell you whether it’s seen it, but not exactly where, although the picture it shows you might provide some clues. Problem is, without some modification, Roombas have no idea where they are in a room (beyond what information they can gather from their dock and virtual walls), but if you were to turn something like a Mint Sweeper or a Neato XV-11 into a Gååglebot, it might actually be able to tell you that the book you were reading last night is partially hidden underneath a stack of magazines. Uh, robotics magazines. Yeah.

You can find all the code to make your own GåågleBot at the link below.

[ GåågleBot ] VIA [ GoRobotics ]

Zibits, the cute new line of robot toys from Senario, promise to “take the world by storm,” presuming that you think of the assemblage of robots as droplets of rain. In any case, these bots certainly have some merit. Senario says they’ll be able to move forward, and rotate 360 degrees (presumably, the bots can’t back up), and are controlled via IR remote.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about these bots is their price tag- they’ll be retailing for $9.99 a pop, which to me is quite impressive. With the advent of infrared control in consumer robots, prices have been slowly, surely going down. Instead of having to use expensive radio receivers and transmitters, companies like Senario are using cheaper IR control systems, which are almost as effective in robots like these… until you take them out into bright sunlight, and the IR receiver gets confused.

Does the lower price justify the quality?

[ Senario ] VIA [ Robot Snob ]

Just a few days ago, we covered the Telecomunicator T1, a telepresence robot being designed by a Japanese firm. Well, the folks at Willow Garage have put together a telepresence ‘bot of their own: Texas, a nifty robot that lets an employee telecommute from hundreds of miles away.

It’s interesting to watch the video, and understand just how simple and effective these robots can be. The robot receives control data sent via wireless internet access from the controller. This means that as long as you and the bot have an internet connection, you’re good to go.  But what really strikes me is that this isn’t some big project that Willow Garage is working on- it’s not their attempt to market “the next big thing.” No. Texas is a side-project, a hobby, something that they did because it was easy for them (well, they do work with robots), and it made sense to use company time to make this bot, allowing one employee to do his job better.

Maybe I’m reading too far into this, but that really strikes me. In a world that’s requiring more and more connectivity between people around the world, telepresence is becoming easier and easier, and Texas from Willow Garage is a fine example of the trend.

[ Willow Garage ] VIA [ AI Robotics ]

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 ]

We’ve seen a bunch of different spherical robots within the past year, so it makes sense that somebody decided to turn one into a toy. Unfortunately, rather that doing something interesting or especially clever, MechRC has just stuck a RC car with big wheels inside a bubble. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, seeing as the robot is supposed to cost all of $40. I’d say that it would be cheaper and easier to do as a DIY project, but it probably wouldn’t be, even if you’d likely get better results (or at least more creative ones). Look for Spheroidz in time for Christmas 2010.

[ MechRC ] VIA [ I4U ]

You’re looking at the Navy’s newest recruits: from left to right, CS3 Scooba Stevens, Chief Miles O’Brien, and ITSN Unger. I kid you not, that’s what they’ve been named. The iRobot Scooba and Roombas are just part of an entire assemblage of robots who clean the floors on the USS Freedom, one of the newest and most ridiculously expensive warships in the Navy.

Apparently, the robots are generally free to roam around the ship on their own… Crew member still have to do some sweeping, but the robots help keep things tidy on a day to day basis. Give it a couple years, or maybe a decade, and the robots will be running the ship while humans do the sweeping. I’ll be more efficient that way.

VIA [ Military Times ]

Like the look of Evolution Robotics’ little Mint sweeperbot? If you don’t, you should probably watch the demo a few more times. It’s so cute! And effective! Thanks to an “overwhelming” response at CES and beyond, Mint is now available for pre-order. The promised “under $250″ price is unsurprisingly $249.99, and a $20 down payment will reserve yours for delivery this summer.

[ Mint Pre-Order ]