SPARK stands for Starter Programs for Advanced Robotics Knowledge, and it’s iRobot’s new program to help improve robotics education for students in elementary school through college. While not too much seems to be happening at the moment, SPARK does have a lot of promising partners, including FIRST, CMU, BeatBots, Topobo, and even Paro… There’s a lot of potential here, and of course we here at BotJunkie are wildly in favor of anything that makes robotics more accessible to students, especially younger students who may not even realize that robotics is something they can learn how to do.

All too often, programs like this don’t get past the concept+slick website phase, which as far as I can tell, is where SPARK currently is. But hopefully with the backing of iRobot and its partners, something substantial will become of this program. We’ll keep you posted.

[ SPARK ] VIA [ RSN ]

Several times a year, friend o’ the blog Trossen Robotics hosts a contest for roboticists. This time, the contest was to write a tutorial or tutorials on some aspect of robotics that would make sense to someone with little or no experience on the topic. The winners of the contest, announced last week, include tutorials on everything from So You Want To Build A Robot to Obstacle Avoidance in the Real World to Prototyping a PCB with Desoldering Braid. There are plenty more tutorials available, and the Trossen Robotics community as a whole is a fantastic (and friendly) resource for anyone with any level of interest in, or experience with, robotics.

[ Trossen Robotics Tutorial Contest Winners ]

Thanks Andrew!

Building robots isn’t easy, and everybody has to start somewhere. Me? My first robot was a cute little photovore, but I had to teach myself to solder in order to build it. If that’s a big first step for you (it’s okay to admit it), iBotz kits are small, cheap, fun, and a good way to get yourself (or your kids) introduced to the amazing and spectacular world of DIY and hobby robotics, no soldering (or other experience) necessary.

The kits come in several different designs with different interactive capabilities. The cheapest (a little car that runs away from sounds) is only $30, while the most advanced (responds to sounds, avoids obstacles, and follows lines) is $65. This is easy cheap enough that after you’ve built it and played with it for a while, you should have no problem taking it apart again to hack it up into something different and/or better.

[ iBotz ] VIA [ Trossen ]

Last time the Charles Milby High School robotics team from Huston tried to get LARA, their LEGO Autonomous Robotic Android, to Michigan for the Robofest competition, they used FedEx. Big mistake. LARA arrived two weeks late with a fractured spine. So this year, thinking that it would be easier, they just bought her her own ticket.

“(We) almost did not get her on the plane: sent to two different scanning sites, TSA inspected with x-ray, physical, photos, chemicals, bomb squad, extensive interviews with TSA and FBI and bomb squad…finally we were allowed on since one of the inspectors saw the robot on the news through a story on RoboFest and I was wearing a ST Lawrence RoboFest t-shirt.”

And with that, LARA ended up in seat 5A on Continental Airlines. No, you still can’t bring a bottle of water, but an android? No problem!

LARA is anatomically correct in that she has a skeleton, muscles, and even a nervous system. Although she may not look like it from the pics, she can stand up on her own. She responds to verbal and gestural commands and is made entirely out of LEGOs, and her creators are hoping to make her into a kit that other schools can build and use as an educational tool.

There’s some video of LARA on the Team RoboBuffs YouTube channel, but it’s pretty random and doesn’t seem to involve the robot actually, you know, doing anything.

[ Press Release ] VIA [ GetRobo ]

As part of health and sexuality education, 13-15 year old students are being given robot babies to help illustrate why they might want to wait just a little bit longer before having kids of their own. The animatronic babies require constant attention including feeding, burping, rocking, and diaper changes, and just like a real baby, the robot babies will cry incessantly until you figure out the correct action key (there are keys for food, changing diapers, etc.) to insert into a slot in their back.

The babies help to teach cooperative parenting skills:

“[People on the street] look at you like you’re an easy prostitute,” said classmate Sarah. “One guy said, ‘Can I be your baby daddy?’”

As well as fostering family development:

It was hard on other family members, too, one student said. “I had to have two babies. My dad ripped the battery pack out of the first one.”

Software inside the babies monitor how well their parents are doing. Teachers are able to set the difficulty level of the babies, from easy to medium to hard to crack baby:

The “crack baby” shows the devastating effects of substance use by a pregnant woman. It bears a painful facial expression and cries frequently and heartbreakingly. “I had the crack baby,” said one student. “It was crying and screaming. Its head did a 360.”

At this particular school in Brooklyn, girls are required to take care of their robot babies for three days and two nights, while boys can either take a baby for 24 hours or write a paper. Educators are trying to stress that “it’s important that women take control of their sexual and reproductive health. If a young woman gives birth, most of the time she will be the person responsible for the child.” It seems to be quite effective for boys as well, however:

“Babies cost a lot of money,” said Kevin, who started out thinking he would have a child at 18 but gradually upped it to 40 during the interview.

Sounds like a good plan to me, Kevin.

[ Brooklyn Eagle ]

(Image from a different article)

Not everybody gets to experience how awesome robots are firsthand. And this sucks, because robots are really really awesome. And I have to think that part of the reason that robots needlessly scare people is that they’re still something that’s a little bit esoteric. Bots 4 Tots is trying to change all that by introducing kids to robots at a young age (between 10 and 15), and they’re trying to do it for free.

Starting May 31, kids in the Chicago area will be able to sign up for 2 hour workshops in groups of 5 where they’ll build themselves (with plenty of expert assistance) a little robot out of a kit. It doesn’t cost anything, but Bots 4 Tots is depending on donations of $25 per kid to get everything to work, and if you care about the future of robotics (you do care, don’t you?), you can help them out here.

I’d love to see this kind of thing expand to more cities than just Chicago. Let’s face it, robotics is intimidating, what with all of the electronics stuff and mechanical stuff and computer stuff and stuff and stuff. And unfortunately, our culture is a lot less DIY-y than it used to be, especially for kids. Offering free and friendly workshops seems like it could be a great way to get kids started in robotics… And from a narrowly corporate view, a small investment in time and money now could help inspire a bunch of lifelong roboticists who will grow up to spend all of their government bailout bonus money on robot parts and kits. It’s win win, so let’s get on this, shall we?

[ Bots 4 Tots ]

Thanks Don!

This robot, called “Saya,” is supposed to start teaching primary school in Japan. All by herself. She can take attendance, speak several languages, display facial expressions, and even get angry, a trait which I’m guessing will come in quite handy. I hope she runs on batteries, ’cause if she can be unplugged, I doubt she’ll last very long in a classroom full of elementary school kids. She might have more success in high school, though, especially if she dresses like she did at Wired’s NextFest:

Aaaaand I’ve just given BotJunkie a new Uncanny Valley tag. But seriously, I wonder if Japanese kids will be creeped out by Saya? Or is Japan just so much more technologically advanced than we are that it’ll be completely normal to them? If Saya does end up being perceived as normal, I’d be curious as to whether she/it qualifies as ‘teacher’ normal, or ‘overhead projector’ normal…

[ Telegraph ] VIA [ Space Daily ]

Last week, we posted about iRobot’s new YouTube channel. I sort of rhetorically asked the question that iRobot mentioned in their video: why is Roomba round?

I guess someone over at iRobot must read BotJunkie (woohoo!), because they’ve actually answered the question on YouTube:

Okay, I’ll admit it, I’m impressed. It took iRobot a single day to have the answer up on YouTube, given by one of the engineers involved in the original design. It wasn’t just my question, either… iRobot has answered a few others so far, including what the most expensive component of the Roomba is, when Roomba will run Linux (PackBots already do, I think), and what iRobot thinks about medical robots. Looks like all you have to do is leave a comment on this video, and they’ll get right back to you. It’s a great idea they’ve got going on here, and I really hope they can keep it up. As for me, I have a couple questions that I’d love to have iRobot answer:

-What can we expect in the Roomba 700 series?
-When can I get an iRobot Mowmylawnba?

Or more seriously, how about this one: is there anything that iRobot has learned through the development and deployment of the PackBot and other military/industrial robots that has influenced iRobot’s home robots, or vice versa?

After the jump, find out the answer to this question: does the Roomba even have a vacuum in there somewhere? (Read more…)

You know those flute lessons your parents made you take when you were a kid? Yeah, it’s all futile now, because they have a flute playing robot who can play everything you can play, only better and more robot-like. And just to give you an extra kick in the metaphorical (or actual, as the case may be) nuts, this robot not only plays the flute, it teaches other poor saps how to play the flute, too.

Waseda University’s flutist robot has everything a human flutist could possibly ask for, including two lungs, two arms with hands and fingers, a tongue, vocal cords, lips, and a silly hat. The really cool part is that it’s all functional: the robot plays the flute just like you do (assuming you play the flute), with all the same body parts (fake body parts) working the same way. His eyes contain cameras that can track the finger movements of other musicians, enabling him to adjust his tempo to match. And since he can see what you’re playing, he can critique your performance: “the robot is able to evaluate the performance of flutist beginners, as well as provide feedback to the student, in order to improve the performance.” I’m sure that goes over well.

The inventors suggest that bands or orchestras made up of deft robotic players could provide entertainment. They don’t specify what sort of entertainment, but I think it should involve music and other stuff, like violence. Or maybe I’m just not enough of a classical music fan.

More of me ranting discussing some things, after the jump. (Read more…)

This neat little flash game called Light Bot does a pretty good job of teaching basic programming without making it seem like you’re learning anything. Give it a try. If you like this game but are a little bit intimidated by DIY or hobby robotics, relax, it’s practically the same thing. In some cases, it’s exactly the same thing… Just queue up a sequence of movements (or functions, which are just a bunch of movements in a row stuffed together) in a graphical environment and click go. Yep, that’s really all there is to it, on a basic level, so get yourself a real robot and give it a try.

[ Light Bot ] VIA [ Eggshell Robotics ]