We were sort of wondering what WowWee’s new Roboscooper was really capable of, and this video of it in action sort of shows some stuff. Kind of. I’m still vaguely wondering if there’s any sort of localization system besides simple obstacle avoidance, although I’m guessing not at this point. And while golf might be cool, does it actually aim? I guess for $70 you can’t really be too picky, but WowWee set the bar pretty high with Rovio and it would be nice to see something from them that was both fun and had the potential for more.

Incidentally, that poor little kid could impale people with his hair… But, maybe that’s normal. In, um, Australia, or something.

[ WowWee Roboscooper ]

You might remember Daniel Wilson from (among other things) his Keepon snuggling escapades, but he’s also the artistic and technical brains behind such books as ‘Robopocalypse‘ and ‘How To Survive A Robot Uprising.’ It’s now looking like Steven Spielberg will be directing a movie adaptation of the former, which will start shooting in January of 2012 for a 2013 release. The movie is about the human race’s attempt to survive an apocalyptic robot uprising, and it strikes me that it would have been smarter (or at least, better for humanity in general), if ‘How To Survive A Robot Uprising’ had come out on film first… But that book has only just been picked up for a movie by Jack Black, of all people. This doesn’t mean that Black is going to act in the movie, he’s just picked up the rights to make it, so we’ll have to see what comes of that.

Of course, it’s hard for me to condone movies about robot uprisings and Robopocalypses and stuff… But, as long as people can take these movies as they’re intended (as fiction), I guess that’s okay. Meantime, I’ll be bracing myself for the inevitable slew of breathless “Robopocalypse: Could It Really Happen?” articles that’ll be popping up as soon as the first trailer for the movie hits.

Sigh.

Robopocalypse (the book) should be available in June of next year, and How To Survive A Robot Uprising is in stores now.

[ Robot Uprising ] VIA [ Deadline ] and [ io9 ]

TUM’s PR2 (named James) and another resident robot named Rosie have teamed up to make some pancakes. This is pretty awesome. But all the stuff that’s going on before the actual pancake making even starts is just as awesome. To begin with, James as no idea how to make pancakes. So, he does what we would do, and looks up the recipe on the internet. From instructions he finds there, he’s able to generate his own pancake-making program, which includes using image recognition to determine what the right bottle of pancake batter looks like when he goes searching for it in the fridge. Both robots are also able to dynamically adapt to errors and obstacles and show up in their environment, common in a real kitchen.

As we’ve seen before, pancake flipping isn’t easy, but Rosie manages it with finesse. And I have to admit: when Rosie flipped that pancake, I clapped in real life. And I may have giggled.

So, how long until I’ve got a couple robots in my kitchen serving me pancakes whenever I want? Considering that this particular pancake likely involved about a million dollars worth of robotic hardware, it might be a while… But the autonomy and adaptability demonstrated here are laying the foundation for a James/Rosie lovechild in every home and pancakes for one and all.

VIA [ Willow Garage ]

On Tuesday, we posted a video from iRobot showing a Roomba in a floor coverage lab test. In the video, it appeared as though the Roomba missed some areas in the center of the room, but this is because there were pegs in the floor (which you can’t really see, even in HD) designed to simulate the legs of furniture, and the robot was cleaning around those. So, the coverage pattern was really pretty good.

The whole suite of features that I was talking about in that post are now called iAdapt. It’s important to point out, though, that iAdapt is not anything new, it’s just a way for iRobot to refer to their cleaning features in a market environment where consumers now have a choice between robotic cleaning systems offering lots of new technology. 500 series Roombas have had iAdapt all along, iRobot just wasn’t calling it that.

While it may be true that most consumers aren’t really aware of the technology that allows the Roomba to do what it does, calling it iAdapt isn’t going to solve the core perception problem of Roomba not being intelligent, or at least, not being as intelligent as other cleaning robots that can localize themselves. As commenters on our previous post pointed out, iRobot isn’t in trouble yet, because they’ve had the market to themselves for so long and they still have much more brand recognition than either Mint or Neato. But, it’s just too easy to look at (say) Neato and Roomba side to side and say that Neato is smart and fast and Roomba is dumb and slow, even if it’s not at all true, which it isn’t. It would be another thing if Roombas were substantially cheaper, but they’re not, and iRobot likes to push the expensive ones anyway.

Even though I don’t think that iAdapt is going to do much for Roomba as a brand, it (and the media event in NY where it was discussed) signals that iRobot is starting to understand that it’s no longer enough to just produce a cleaning robot… It has to be a technologically sophisticated cleaning robot, in a competitive sense, as consumers are presented with multiple options. Does this mean that iRobot will be introducing something new in the near future? We keep hoping that it’ll happen, and I’m sure that it will happen eventually… But the longer iRobot waits, the harder it will be for them to win back consumers who have purchased a different, “smarter” cleaning robot instead.

[ iRobot: Engineering Awesome ]

The picture, btw, is the setup for a long exposure floor coverage demo. You can view the result at the link above.

[ Tom Gauld ] VIA [ Eggshell Robotics ]

On Monday, Barack Obama opened the (first ever) White House Science Fair with the following:

“One of the great joys of being President is getting to meet young people like all of you — and some of the folks in the other room who I just had a chance to see some of their exhibits and the work that they were doing. It’s inspiring — and I never miss a chance to see cool robots when I get a chance.”

Wow, me neither! Also introduced at the event was a new DARPA initiative to give resources to students to help them build those aforementioned robots. BTW, I’m still waiting to hear back on that anti-robot takeover czar position…

[ The White House Blog ] VIA [ Robot Living ]

EARL (that would be, Enhanced Automated Robotic Launcher) is a second generation bowling robot. Let me explain to you why a bowling robot is necessary at all: apparently, EARL is “invaluable in the many studies necessary to keep up with the ever-changing bowling ball industry… [EARL is] the future of bowling research.”

Hmm. That’s worth pondering for a minute or two.

Well, I won’t pretend to understand it, but that doesn’t mean I’m not impressed with the fact that EARL can throw bowling balls at 24 MPH and spin them up at 900 RPM, much faster than a human is capable of, which I guess is why people seemed to assume that the robot would win… Does it say something about the state of robotics, or something about the sport? Either way, bowling seems like a game with an extremely limited amount of random variables, and sooner or later (probably sooner) the only thing worthy of a news story will be a robot arm not bowling a perfect 300.

Incidentally, how many points is it worth in bowling if you destroy an RV?

[ Bowlingdigital ] VIA [ CNET ]

This is ChefBot. Or rather, this was ChefBot. ChefBot loses at making Creme Brulee, but wins at SparkFun’s Antimov Competition, where robots are required to perform a pointless task while destroying themselves in the process. I’m not sure how anyone could construe making a Creme Brulee as pointless, but as you can see, the robot does a pretty good job on the destruction part. And ChefBot didn’t even take first place… That honor went to this robot, who was just trying to cut a piece of cake for a teddy bear birthday party:

Poor robots. But I laughed anyway.

[ SparkFun ]

These cute little blocks are called Cubelets. Each one is a robot, with unique programming, capabilities and behaviors. But, the magic happens when you stick the blocks together, and they cooperate to create an entirely new robot:

Each Cubelet has a tiny computer inside of it and is a robot in its own right. So when you put blocks together, you’re actually making a robot out of several smaller robots. Each block communicates with its neighbors, so you know that if two blocks are next to each other, they’re talking. If you make a simple robot by connecting a Light Sensor block to a Speaker block, they’ll start to talk, and when the light in the room gets brighter, the Speaker will get louder. Actually, you’d need a third block to make this work: every robot needs a Battery block to run. Next, you could swap the Speaker for a Drive block, and when the light gets brighter, the robot will drive faster. A third category of blocks is the Think Blocks: maybe you’d want to put an Inverse block in between the Light Sensor and Drive blocks. Then, the robot would drive slower as the light gets brighter. This simple communication between adjacent blocks is what gives the kit a little bit of magic.

The basic kit (which you can pre-order now for $300) includes 20 Cubelets:

Action Blocks: 2 Drive, 1 Rotate, 1 Speaker, 1 Flashlight, 1 Bar Graph
Sense Blocks: 1 Knob, 1 Brightness, 2 Distance, 1 Temperature
Think/Utility Blocks: 2 Inverse, 1 Minimum, 1 Maximum, 1 Battery, 2 Passive, 2 Blocker

More info on each Cubelet is available on the website. And to clarify, there are no wires involved, and no programming, so Cubelets are suitable for children as young as 5. Technically Cubelets are in beta testing, so it’ll be exciting to see some of the combinations that people come up with.

Speaking of, I will award one extra tasty virtual cookie to whomever can convincingly figure out just how many different permutations of robot you can make with one set of 20 Cubelets, keeping in mind the following:

-Each Cubelet has either 5 or 6 attachment points (depending on what it does)
-The same set of Cubelets functions differently when arranged differently
-Cubelet permutations must be able to exist in physical space (tricky!)

We’ll ignore the fact that using (say) two inverse blocks in a row is functionally identical to not using any inverse blocks, and just assume that a Cubelet robot that has a different size or layout counts as a different robot.

Good luck! :)

[ Modular Robotics ]

iRobot’s YouTube channel has been sadly dormant for the last few years, after a promising 2009 launch packed with weird prototypes and engineer answers. Yesterday, iRobot uploaded a whole bunch of new videos focused on showcasing the features of the Roomba, perhaps feeling a little bit left out after all the recent buzz about the Neato XV-11 and Mint.

The above video, for example, shows a lab test of floor coverage. However, I can’t help but point out that it’s not clear just how long the robot took to achieve this amount of coverage (but it seems like it was a pretty long time), and that it missed areas in the center of the room. It’s the same sort of thing with the rest of the videos: yes, Roomba can follow walls, and yes, it can vacuum around chairs. But these features (besides dirt detection, which is admittedly both handy and cool) are no longer distinguishing, and again, we haven’t seen any significant improvements to the underlying technology for years, while other companies innovate and introduce new products.

I love iRobot, I just really miss their continuing commitment innovation when it comes to consumer robotics.

[ iRobot @ YouTube ]