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 ]

This nifty DIY treadmill work station from 8th Light lets you work out bugs in your code… while you work out. It may not technically be a robot in itself, but it certainly fits in the category of “things robot geeks would be interested in” — it’s a very cool concept, and who doesn’t like a little multitasking?

Basically, what Doug from 8th Light has done is taken a treadmill, removed the control console, and put a desk in its place. With these modifications, he can work on his computer while he walks on his treadmill.

I [sic] few years ago when we were buying furniture for the first 8th Light office I came across a piece called the WalkStation. It was an adjustable height desk with a treadmill underneath. I had just started to get myself into better physical shape, and thought this would be a unique way to change a sedentary job into an active one. The price tag turned out to be way to high ($4500+).

Fast forward to January 30th, 2010. At ORDCamp, Zach Kaplan, founder of Inventables, gave a presentation about Dr. James Levine and the research he’s done creating active computer workstations. It turns out that Dr. Levine is the guy behind the WalkStation that I had seen earlier. Zach had thrown together a treadmill and a laptop desk to try out the concept and was raving about the benefits. It was the motivation that I needed to finally get to building my own treadmill desk.

Nice work, Doug. Here’s to innovative ideas in robotics, design, and exercise equipment! A nicely written build report can be found at the 8th Light blog, linked below.

[ 8th Light ]

Rubick’s Cube solving robots have gotten commonplace enough that I don’t generally post about them unless they’re especially cool, like CubeStormer. It’s not just that CubeStormer is built out of LEGO bricks, or that it’s incredibly fast at solving cubes, or that it has its own logo, but just look at it. It belongs in a sci-fi movie. It should be eating spaceships or something. But until it figures out how to do that, it’ll keep challenging the best human Rubik’s Cube solvers (and their robots).

VIA [ Gizmodo ]

Matt Bunting, a senior at the University of Arizona in electrical engineering, built himself a hexapod as a final project for his class on cognitive robotics. Built mostly from spare parts, the robot uses an Intel Atom processor powering an Ubuntu OS computer. A Logitech QuickCam mounted on the front of the bot watches what happens when movements are initiated, and uses the changing scene to determine what effect the movements are having. This lets the robot adaptively learn how to move, rather than relying on programming:

“One of the things I wanted to explore was the idea of reinforcement learning. What I wanted to do was not preprogram any of those walking algorithms, I wanted it to figure out how to walk straight forward on its own,” Bunting said. “It has the ability to figure it out itself.”

Bunting’s professor Tony Lewis says the bot’s learning algorithm can be applied to tasks other than walking. If a leg breaks or a motor gets damaged, for example, it can relearn how to walk. The robot even has foot contact sensors that can be used for terrain adaptation.

Pretty cool, right? A couple days after Matt posted a video of his bot on YouTube, Intel ordered themselves two copies to take on an international publicity tour for the Atom processor. Then, the company who provided Matt with the servos, CrustCrawler Robotics, asked Matt to help develop software for some of their hexapod kits.

So, let this be a lesson to all you DIY roboticists out there: if you build something cool, Intel will buy it, and you’ll be offered a job at a robotics company.

[ University of Arizona ] VIA [ Crave ]

This Heineken pouring robot from Middlesex University was strutting its stuff at the Kinetica Gallery in London recently, driving around a table and pouring beer (a very little bit of beer) on demand. The bot is equipped with obstacle avoidance sensors as well as a sensor on top that you can wave at to signal the robot to stop and serve you… Plus it has what looks like a giant emergency STOP button just in case it decides to, uh, try and run over someone. Don’t kid yourself, though, there’s (potentially) a lot of energy in a beer keg, so in the event of a battery fire, it would likely be best to panic.

If you’re interested in having a robot serve you a drink, flirt with you, and/or dump a beer all over itself, there’s an event here in San Francisco called BarBot, which is just like, but not exactly the same, as RoboExotica/RoboExoticUS. BarBot will be at DNA Lounge on Feb 17th and 18th… $10 advance, $15 at the door.

VIA [ Engadget ]
[ BarBot ]

Icosatetraped does, in fact, mean “twenty-four legged.” I’m not sure how to inject “soft” into that word (icostatetrasquishaped?), but this robot does have 24 soft legs. Or rather, 8 legs are soft (and moving) at any one time, while the other 16 are pressurized to carry the weight of the bot. It can move at about 1 meter per minute, which isn’t especially fast, but who cares, look at all of those little legs go! Made from plastic medical tubing, particle board, a bunch of solenoids, a Mac Mini, and some 24 volt rotary vane compressors salvaged from Gulf War nerve gas detecting equipment, this is about as DIY as it gets, and it’s awesome.

VIA [ Boing Boing ]

Um, holy cow. That horizontal bar robot that nearly killed itself on a dismount last December has all of a sudden learned how to pull what looks to be a full release front pike somersault. Yeah, so it forgot to hold on afterward, but that’s trivial.

Damn. I’m seriously impressed.

[ Hinamitetu @ YouTube ]

Someone from the CKBot group at UPenn’s Modlab spent the summer at Willow Garage and decided to leave an impression on a researcher there by hiding an armed and questionably dangerous robot in the ceiling of his cubicle. A remote control raises a cutout section of ceiling tile, and the robot fires ping pong balls down at the hapless human below.

Obviously, this is a capability that PR2 needs to be endowed with to be successful in the workplace… I’m sure someone is getting right on that.

[ Modlab ]
[ Willow Garage ]

First, just let me say that this group of cooking robots (collectively named “Cooky”) is totally coo. As you can kinda see from the video, their development environment is completely open and simple to use, allowing you to coordinate multiple robots performing different tasks with different ingredients. And that’s great.

Thing is, this is such a good example of why robots don’t really work in the home yet. Yes, it’s true that while the robots are making your soup, you can go do other things… But you still have to do all of the prep work and spend a bunch of time setting up the system. And then you have to clean up. And of course, there’s all the programming (although hypothetically you can just download the soup you want). Most household robots are sort of at this stage, with the possible exception of the Roomba, although even the Roomba (in my experience) is just barely above the break even threshold when it comes to time spent futzing with the robot and prepping the floor versus time that would be spent doing the vacuuming yourself.

[ Cooky ] VIA [ GetRobo ]

This is just great. .. Daniela Rus’s laboratory at MIT is in a Frank Gehry-designed building that’s covered with giant windows and shiny metal, which is a bad combination when it’s sunny out and you’re trying to see your computer monitor. Custom window shades would have been too expensive, so instead, in 2007 members of the lab just built themselves a robot called Shady:

Directed via Bluetooth, Shady autonomously climbs up the truss system supporting the windows and unfolds a shade to block just that little spot of sun that it needs to. Researchers suggest that robots using Shady’s movement technique might be good for clambering around construction scaffolding or power line towers, and they’ve started simulating MultiShady, which combines a bunch of cooperating Shady bots with passive bars. Couple enough of these together, and you can make all kinds of self assembling and dynamically reconfigurable structures, and even GIANT ROBOT TRUSS PEOPLE:

Watch it dance by clicking here.

[ Shady ] and [ MultiShady ] VIA [ IEEE ]