Most of the time, it’s a bit frustrating to write about nanobots. We have to talk about them in the context of teeny tiny little scales that you can’t really identify with… 250 microns long? What does that even MEAN? CMU’s nanobots are barely, just barely, large enough to identify with. They’re about the size of a grain of sand, and you can see one in action alongside a penny:

So yeah, that’s still pretty nano, but I at least feel like I have some conception of the bot’s actual size rather than having to rely on an abstract measurement. These little guys are controlled via an external magnetic field, and by rocking back and forth very quickly, they can reach a top speed of 13 mm (60 body lengths) per second. They’re capable of movement on surfaces that are generally smooth and non-stick, and will work equally well underwater. Although most people would call these things micro-robots, all they really are are solid little magnets being pushed around by other magnets… But that’s okay, we’ll let it slide, ’cause they’re little and cute and all.

[ CMU Nanorobotics Lab ] VIA [ Communist Robot ]

This, right here, is why I love robotics. And why I wish I was better at the DIY stuff. These cheap and crappy R/C cars have been outfitted with a few simple sensors and microcontroller brains that enable them to follow walls and avoid obstacles. Apparently the programming is pretty simple, but the results are incredibly cool, especially when you get two of them together:

The logic controlling the cars can obviously be made as complicated as you want, but the great part is that it doesn’t have to be very complicated at all. The designer has started teaching the cars to drift through turns; you can check out some video of that here.

[ Wall Racers ]

Perhaps I was a bit hasty when I suggested that in the future, cows will be herded by autonomous robot helicopters. Or rather, I wasn’t being optimistic enough about the progress of cybernetics. The USDA and MIT have teamed up to create a cow monitoring and control system that’s basically a glorified iPod, complete with a “doughnut-shaped stereo headset worn over each ear” by the cow. The cowPods are actually better than their human counterparts in several ways: they’re solar powered, have integrated WiFi and GPS, and even come with magnetometers and accelerometers to “record the body orientation and configuration and the animal.”

The way the cowPod works is with simple positive and negative reinforcement. To round up the cows, the cowPods play “familiar “gathering songs” sung by cowboys during manual round-ups,” which I guess they associate with herding, although for me, cowboy music would be more negative stimulation. If the cows wander outside of a designated GPS area, the cowPods can play annoying or irritating music in one ear or another to direct them back to where they’re supposed to be, or (if necessary) deliver mild electric shocks.

It sounds like it could be an effective system if the cows decide to pay attention to it and can tolerate wearing headphones. I assume some serious research is going to have to be done to figure out what exactly cows prefer when it comes to grazing music… Since Mozart increases milk production, that might be a good place to start.

[ USDA ] VIA [ io9 ]

Ping Pong. It’s a serious sport, believe it or not. Serious enough, apparently, to deserve a dedicated ping pong robot, replete with dramatic ads and cliches:

The Robo-Pong 2040 doesn’t actually play ping pong with you, but it can fire those deadly little balls at you all day long at speeds of up to 75 mph. It can replicate pushes, chops, serves, counters, smashes, lobs, fast loops, and more types of spin than you can whiff a paddle at.

The Robo-Pong 2040 will cost you about $700 without the table, but it does come with a package of Robo-Balls.

[ Robo-Pong ]

The event that we’ve been waiting for since… Um… Last June is finally finally finally here. RoboGames 2008, baby. We’ll be bringing you pictures and video from as many events as we can get to, but there’s a ton of them, so the best thing for you to do is show up yourself. If you’re being held prisoner by aliens (aliens who aren’t fans of robots), let us know if there’s a specific event you’d like a look at and we’ll see what we can do.

Here’s what we have to look forward to:

For Immediate Release

THE INTERNATIONAL ROBOGAMES RETURNS TO SAN FRANCISCO
Facts at a glance:

Date: Friday-Sunday, June 13-15, 2007
Time: Noon - 10 PM.
Where: Fort Mason Festival Pavilion, San Francisco California
Cost: $20/adult, $15/kids 17-7, 6 and under free

“World’s Largest Robot competition” -The Guinness Book of World Records
“North America’s Top Ten Best Geek Fests” - Wired Magazine
“SportCenter Top Ten” - ESPN SportsCenter

The International RoboGames returns to San Francisco for its fifth year of hosting robot builders, engineers, scientists, and ordinary garage builders from around the world as they go for the laser-etched gold, silver, and bronze medals! Come to RoboGames for three solid days of mechanical sportsmanship, gearhead mayhem, and all the things your mom told you to never, ever do with science.

Read the rest of the press release and enjoy a super special bonus robot carnage pic, after the jump. (Read more…)

For better or worse, it looks like the days of the cowboys are numbered. In Australia, anyway. According to the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), unmanned helicopters would be the perfect tool to herd cattle. CSIRO’s Dr. Jonathon Roberts, who I guess has put a lot of thought into this sort of thing, says:

“Have the helicopter figure out where the cows are, know where they have to go and actually plan their path, move around and drive the cows in the right direction. There’s an advantage of using these helicopters they’re noisy and cows don’t like them so they should go in the opposite direction to the helicopter so just like the mustering is done now.”

That sounds like it would be a heck of a lot of fun to watch, if not entirely pleasant for the cows. There’s a ways to go in the software department before UAVs will be able to pull this off, but herding cattle with (piloted) helicopters is more common than you might think. Video example from Hawaii, after the jump. (Read more…)

It’s official: Wall-E is the best robot movie ever.

Frequent readers of BotJunkie have probably noticed that I’ve gotten a little bit excited about Pixar’s latest animated feature. I was at the first non-internal screening of Wall-E this Saturday, and let me tell you, despite the near sub-orbital altitude of my expectations, the movie exceeded them. By a lot. I’m not going to spoil any of it for you (the Pixar people asked us nicely not to), but as you would expect from Pixar, pretty much the entire movie is spectacular in both visuals and plot. As you might expect, there are tons of delicious little robot in-jokes, as well as homages to sci-fi movies from the past. And although Wall-E and Eve both look, and act, like robots, they manage to seem more human than any of the humans in the movie. I’d love to just keep on gushing, but honestly, I feel like I need to see Wall-E at least twice more before I’ll be able to appreciate it full.

So, get yourself some tickets for opening night (June 27). If you have to stand in line, in the rain, and the snow, barefoot, uphill both ways, do it. You’ll love this movie, I promise.

Oh, and BTW… The customary Pixar short that precedes Wall-E is just about the funniest thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life. I nearly died laughing. It involves a bunny and a magic hat and that’s all I’m going to say about that.

[ Wall-E ]

We wrote about this little guy a few months ago, but this new (ish) vid of him is worth watching, ’cause it’s Friday and I feel like ROCKING OUT!!!

And this, people, is what the Little Yellow Drum Machine does… He wanders around until he bumps into something, and then he drums on it. He’s got a recorder and a speaker built in, which lets him loop himself, or you too, if you feel like singing some accompaniment. Does it GET any more awesome?! NO!

More vids on the YouTube Channel.

VIA [ Fark ]

Okay, maybe not for you, not quite yet. But for ME! Because I sold my soul, and the souls of most of my relatives+pets+electronics+girlfriend, to wrangle myself a ticket to a WALL-E party and screening at Pixar this Saturday. I had to submit my name for a background check and swear up, down, and sideways that I wouldn’t bring along any recording equipment, but I will be coming back on Monday with a spoiler free and completely unbiased review of what I’ve already decided is the best movie ever made. Meantime, here’s a new little promo thingy to whet your appetite:

[ WALL-E ]

RoboFish are old news (and so are RoboTurtles, for that matter), but the Nonlinear Dynamics and Control Lab at the University of Washington has taken it upon themselves to give their robotic fish some schooling in schooling. Their fish are able to communicate with each other underwater using low power, low frequency sonar. It’s not a very high bandwidth way of exchanging information, topping out at about 80 bytes (32 or so numbers) per second. And even at that, half the information doesn’t make it most of the time. But that’s the great thing about schooling behavior: you don’t really have to know what’s going on.

Researchers found that in schools of real fish, most of them are just following whichever fish around them happen to act decisively. If only a third of a group of fish know where they’re going, it’s effectively the same as if the whole group knows. It’s this sort of really simple yet robust behavior that groups of the UW fishbots are trying to emulate, since it makes reliable communication far less necessary. Their first task (coming up this summer) is going to be to autonomously track a remote control shark, since that’s exactly what real fish like to do. If they can get that figured out, schools of autonomous robotic fish could be used to track real sharks, or maybe slightly less dangerous things, like whales. Or nudibranchs. Or humuhumunukunukuapua’a, because a fish with a name like that just has to be worth following. Probably gets into all kinds of shenanigans.

[ UW ]