The blind have been using seeing eye dogs for a long time. In fact, the relationship between man and dog has worked out very well for those with handicaps. Some dogs even help paralyzed humans do all kinds of things around the house. So it was only a matter of time before robot dogs start showing up to help ease the workload of their flesh and blood counterparts. After all, no matter how useful a dog is to a handicapped owner, there are some things it just can’t do.

When was the last time a seeing eye dog read a book to it’s blind owner, for instance? RED the robotic dog, an acronym for Reading Eye Dog, does just that for the blind and reading impaired. Just hold a book up for RED to see and it’ll read the words on the page out loud so the person or persons can hear. Plus, the screen on the back of the dog allows viewers to follow along as RED reads, visually matching the highlighted words with RED’s voice.

It’s a concept for the moment, but is a great replacement for the audiobook, and would be a great addition to the classroom.

[Onomy] VIA [Red Ferret]

The Tokyo fire department has a well rounded robot helper, saving lives and keeping fire fighters safe. It moves using caterpiller tracks, so can roam over just about any terrain. Equipped with a camera and various other sensors, it is capable of measuring the level of carbon dioxide and combustible gases in the air.

If it encounters obstacles, they are not obstacles for long, thanks to two arms which can be controlled to clear obstructions in it’s path. The arms can be fitted with water or foam dispensers to aid in battling the fires themselves. Should fire fighters need to get an unconscious victim out of harm’s way, the robot has a special area where the patient can be secured and then taken away quickly.

I can easily imagine this robot coming in very handy for fire fighters in many areas, but somehow I don’t think they get much use out of it’s special features in the streets of Tokyo.

[New Launches]

WowWee has introduced Rovio, a new “telepresence” robot with the latest in micro-GPS technology from Evolution Robotics. Rovio has a Wi-Fi-enabled Web-cam that allows you to patrol your home while you’re away, from an Internet-enabled PC, console or mobile phone.

With the new GPS system you can drive the robot with shortcut “go-to” commands, like “go to the kitchen”, to make it easy to control the robot remotely over the Web or from your mobile phone. It also has a “patrol mode” where it will automatically send you pictures of specific locations you want to check.

Another cool feature is it’s ability to autonomously guide itself back on course if, say your kids pick it up and move it. When it gets thirsty for energy, it can navigate to its charging station from anywhere in the house, and dock with pinpoint accuracy.

It’s expected to launch in the second half of the year.

[Wowwee]

“Mr. Personality” is one of WowWee’s new fun companion-robots. He sure looks like he has a sense of humor, but whether he actually does remains to be seen. He displays his personality on an LCD screen that features animated and synced facial features. He will tell jokes, read your daily fortune and even answer any questions about the future. The user can download new personalities from the Internet via USB or an SD card.

Mr. Personality has a fully animated upper body, color LCD screen, several play modes like Bits, Crystal Ball, Fortune Cookies, as well as demo modes. He is also supposedly capable of detecting and avoiding obstacles with great success. He will tell you when he falls or when the batteries are running low. Other features include: a three-wheeled omni-directional motion base, 7 motors, 4 IR sensors, a built-in microphone for taking voice memos, 64 MByte of built-in memory, audio input connector and he requires 6 “C” batteries. The remote controller requires 3 AAA batteries. All in all, a pretty interesting fairly different robot.

[Wowwee]

Aside from looking like he is having his way with your iPhone from behind, this robot with the blender-looking head is pretty nifty. The Spykee Cell is another build-it-yourself robot from Meccano. It’s remote controlled via Bluetooth from a cellphone and can move and snap pictures, then transmit them back to the cellphone for permanent storage. The loudspeaker module gives it the capability of becoming a hands-free set, if you want to speak and hear through the robot.

[Spykeeworld]

Meccano is introducing 2 strange looking robots, the Spykee Vox and the Spykee Miss, each obviously being targeted at different genders apparently. Each robot has it’s own iPod dock, weirdly situated in their robot nether-regions, and are compatible with other mp3 players as well.

Both Vox and Miss are designed to obey voice commands in several languages, like English, French and Spanish. (One language at a time, or they will no doubt be confused) They can also can use their infrared module to command many appliances like TV’s and stereos. The user has the option to customize them by creating new motions and sounds on a PC or Mac.

No word yet on when these will hit the market, but look like a potential hit.

[Spykeeworld]

One of the cool things about working in an emerging high tech industry (which is what robotics undoubtedly is) is that you don’t have a be a big corporation with a correspondingly big R&D budget in order to create a useful product. iRobot PackBots are the standard in heavy duty, reconfigurable small field robots, but they cost tens of thousands of dollars or more, which is usually out of the price range of anyone except the military. Javier Rodriguez Molina, a graduate student at UCSD, has designed a robot called Gizmo that offers a lot of high-end field usability and flexibility in a package that costs less than $1000.

Gizmo’s primary feature is the ability to create a large (200m diameter) wireless network bubble, sort of like a LANdroid. Each Gizmo can link with other Gizmos to create an exponentially larger network. This allows Gizmos to communicate with each other and with controllers via computers, cellphones, remote controls, or whatever you want. The Gizmo platform itself is scalable and modular, and allows for mounting and control of cameras, sensors, arms, or (again) whatever you feel like sticking on there. While Gizmo currently runs on wheels, he can be fitted with treads or even, eventually, wings. Says Rodriguez, “people see Gizmo and immediately think of a new idea for what it can do. I’m sure it has important uses that we haven’t even thought of yet.” And that’s the whole point: making Gizmo flexible and inexpensive allows users to spend their money and brain power where it matters… Getting the robot to do exactly what they need it to do.

[ Calit2 ] VIA [ LiveScience ]

In Fact this little robot has a taste for wine. He’s what is known as a sommelier.(That’s fancy talk for a wine taster.) And that’s what got him into the 2008 Guinness World Records Book. They have recognized him as the world’s very first robot sommelier. He was developed by NEC and Atsushi Hashimoto’s team at Mie University. As far as robots go, he’s got one of the snootier jobs. You can almost feel him thinking that he’s better then you. And he is. He can accurately assess the type of wine and the ingredients by simply holding a sensor over the bottle.

This little guy is not a one trick pony either. If his divining of wine doesn’t impress you, he also has the ability to differentiate between various kinds of fruits and cheeses. Thankfully, this robot still resides in the lab, he’s not quite ready to piss off high society as a Robo-Know-It-All just yet.

[The Yomiuri Shimbun] VIA [Dvice]

Tatsuya Matsui is exhibiting robots with the ability to evoke human emotions, which is an absolute necessity if we are to get them in every home and be treated like a family member. A robot can’t live side by side with emotional humans, if it can’t share and respond in the emotional experience of humans. The exhibition is entitled “Flower Robotics”. Matsui believes that robots are like flowers. That they can be delicate and beautiful at the same time. He also believes they are endearing and need nurturing.

Take Posy for instance, a wedding maiden designed to express a 3-year-old girl’s pure view of the world. She can’t do much but proffer flowers, but never fails to evoke empathy in the viewer. This emotional response somehow manages to overcome the creep factor of the blank face and dead eyes of the robot.

Metri is a large and grub-like robot with soft skin that gropes about in a creepy fashion. Matsui is interested in our reactions to inanimate objects that seem to be alive. His machines somehow manage to sooth rather then frighten.

Palette, the mannequin robot is a white humanoid on a spotlighted black dais. Palette actually has a practical use though. By gracefully swinging its arms it can enhance the appeal of any blouse it wears. It’s resume already includes modeling for Louis Vuitton and Hane Mori designs. Plus, a vision sensor allows Palette to react to any viewers’ presence.

Tatsuya Matsui somehow succeeds in bridging the emotional gulf between humans and robots, where many others have failed.

[Japan Times]

It looks like a stealth tank with a digital camera attached, so you might be thinking warfare/spying as soon as you see this jet-black bot. The truth is, Sanyo has a much more mundane job for this crawling cam. It won’t be seeing any military action, but it will be spending some time in the “urban trenches”; think crawlspaces under apartments, office buildings and homes for example. Its job is to check for structural damage. It will crawl around beneath any given building, while being very adept at avoiding any obstacles in its path. A full charge will give it about 2 hours of life while it beams back live video of what it encounters.

The operator can zoom in on any areas of interest and hopefully find any potential problems that need to be fixed. You’ll have to wait until next year to get one. By then, you’ll hopefully have the $8,736 saved up and ready to spend. It’s pricey, but it does beat running into the odd snake or rat beneath your dwelling.

…Or you could mount a cam on a toy tank for a lot less.

[AkihabaraNews] VIA [EnGadget]