In December of last year, we saw an unmanned helicopter system mounting a shotgun. The Army has had the same idea, except their unmanned helicopter system is much bigger, and packs a sniper rifle instead. The Autonomous Rotorcraft Sniper System (ARSS) is based on the Vigilante 502 unmanned helicopter, a half ton beast that can fly at 120 mph for over 5 hours. The Vigilante can carry up to 150 pounds of payload, which is more than enough to mount small and medium caliber machine guns, a shotgun, a beam immobilizer, or in this case, a sniper rifle.

The rifle currently mounted on the ARSS is a RND Manufacturing Edge 2000 Rifle firing .338 Lapua Magnum cartridges at up to 10 rounds per minute. The key feature of the ARSS system, though, is the turret mount, which is actively stabilized to allow for precision shots in flight. The mount includes dual zoom cameras, and the entire system is controlled remotely with an Xbox 360 controller.

The ARSS is scheduled to begin airborne testing this July.

[ Vigilante and Space Dynamics ] VIA [ Popular Mechanics ]

CNET got a chance to sit down with Colin Angle, CEO of iRobot, and asked him a bunch of questions ranging from military robots to consumer robots to robot ethics to why humanoid robots are largely a waste of time. I’ve quoted some of the most interesting (IMO) passages here and after the jump; you can read the entire interview over on CNET.

The Roomba is still the center of focus for iRobot?

Angle: The Roomba is certainly the largest revenue driver at this point. It has a head start, it was the first thing that we did, and while the brand iRobot entrusts that the products we make are truly practical–they’re not gimmicks and actually work– that helps the subsequent products come up quicker. The Roomba still has a relatively tiny penetration–we’ve sold over 3 million of these robots. It sounds like a big number, and it is, but compared to the number of households in America, it’s a tiny number.

Our users are very passionate about the product, they tell their friends and so forth. We’ll continue to see, just driven by our installed base, more people, more success, driving more Roomba sales, and then with sales of the other products moving along nicely, but still in the shadow.

We keep at it. We’re not done. The mission of the division is to keep working at robots that will help tackle the dull, the dirty, and the dangerous–the routine maintenance tasks that we’re faced with, and once we’re done with that, trying to turn our focus to the people who live in the homes and with this notion of helping people live more easily, more independently. It’s early days. You know, we can vacuum. We can vacuum well, and scrubbing is coming along and so forth. But there’s so much more a robot could do as far as helping you come home to a house that is exactly the way you want it, with no need for you to go and do these maintenance types of tasks.

What would be the next thing to tackle?

Angle: Well, we don’t actually talk about what we’re doing next. It’s sort of, in the future here’s the body of things.

Still no lawn mower.

Angle: There’s the lawn mower, there’s cooking, there’s windows, there’s more stuff going on in the bathroom with your tub, and doing laundry, folding laundry, putting stuff away. Once we get manipulation on the robots at consumer price points, those are all very real, very doable sorts of things. Shoveling the driveway.

(Read more…)

Faces are very complex and hard to effectively duplicate, as we’ve seen over and over. Really, at this stage in robotics development, the best idea is to just ditch the human face all together and focus on specific features which communicate information. And in humans, that’s the eyes. Yoichi Yamazaki from the Hirota Lab at the University Of Toyko has developed a robot that communicates exclusively through eye movements, which is important, since that’s all the robot is: a pair of eyeballs with some eyelids attached.

Eyes have a wide range of nonverbal signals, ranging from “hey baby” to “get away from me you creep.” The robot eyes have no problem being just as expressive, but the tricky part is determining what connotation goes with what particular position. Researchers put their eye robot to the test by asking volunteers to evaluate random expressions, and used the results to create a matrix that associates those expressions with particular emotions. This information will eventually be connected to a speech recognition and synthesis program that ideally will be able to interpret and reproduce both verbal and nonverbal communication, something that robots, so far, really suck at.

[ Yoichi Yamazaki ] VIA [ MIT ]

Here’s another glimpse inside the minds over at iRobot… It’s a robot that was designed to “efficiently climb up and down full-height stairs.” I’m not exactly sure what they mean by ‘efficiently,’ in this case… It kinda looks like it’s working pretty hard and not getting anywhere very fast.

Now, I think it’s great that iRobot has all of this exciting R&D going on, or if not exactly R&D, at least a lot of people who can get really creative with robots. I just wonder sometimes when all of that expertise is going to translate into a consumer product that will be just as exciting as the Roomba used to be. And no, the Looj 2 wasn’t it. I mean, the Roomba was amazing back in 2002, and it’s still decent enough, but no matter how much iRobot gussies it up it’s still going to get eclipsed pretty soon by other bots with more advanced features. I want to believe in you, iRobot, but the cool and innovative stuff is going to need to get further than your YouTube channel.

[ iRobot @ YouTube ]

With a little modification performed by Jabba the Hutt, R2-D2 made for a quite capable (if a bit clumsy) drink serving robot. This coffee table, on the other hand, does none of that. It just sits there and is, presumably, quite expensive. Might I suggest you build your own much more capable drink serving robot, or your own much more realistic R2-D2… It’ll be nearly impossible but totally worth it, I promise.

[ Yab Design ] VIA [ Nerd Approved ]

P.S.- If you’d rather see the totally weird and NSFW alien/robot hybrid going through puberty video that I decided not to post about because it was totally weird and NSFW, click here. You’ve been warned.

What would happen if you placed a helpless (but cute) little cardboard robot in the middle of New York City, with plaintive instructions to strangers to help it find its way? My first guess would be that it would get stolen. Or broken. Or stabbed/shot/mugged. Student Kacie Kinzer decided to see for herself, so she created Tweenbots, which are adorable little robots that do nothing but move in a straight line at a constant speed, without any guidance or obstacle avoidance whatsoever. All they have is a little flag asking passers by to help them reach their destination. Here’s what happened:

Details, after the jump. (Read more…)

Back in April of last year, we reported that Cyberdyne had begun constructing a facility to mass produce their strength-enhancing exoskeletons. The HAL exoskeleton uses sensors attached to your skin to sense when you move your limbs, and then it assists those movements, effectively increasing your strength by anywhere from 2 to 10 times, with a battery life of up to 2.5 hours.

Cyberdyne initially said that the HAL exoskeletons would be available for rent (in Japan) for about $2200 a month by the end of 2008, but it now appears that they’re ready to start selling the exoskeletons straight up for $4200 each. The only disappointing bit is that the annual production is only supposed to be 400 units, which means you and I are pretty much guaranteed not to get one. However, Cyberdyne originally planned to ramp their production up to “tens of thousands” of suits, so maybe in the next couple years… They’ll be available first in Japan, and then probably in the EU, and most likely to people with disabilities first. So yeah, it’s gonna be a while for most of the rest of us, but better maybe sometime than probably never.

[ Cyberdyne ] VIA [ Slashdot ]

This fearsome little robot is named Puff, and he fights fires:

Puff wanders around autonomously, avoiding cliffs and obstacles, until he finds a fire. Then, using a fan underneath his chin, he puffs away (quite effectively, it seems) until the fire is out. Puff also has a panic mode, where if he can’t put a fire out after two tries, he flees.

Puff is built on an Arduino tracked platform, while the skin is just a paper cutout that you can download from Canon. A matching body and tail are in the works. Also in the works is some kind of pyro system, so that Puff will be able to start fires as well as put them out. Sounds like fun, but if I were Puff, I’d be a little bit nervous, what with a body made of paper and all.

Video of Puff’s panic mode, after the jump. (Read more…)

So what happens when evil robots do bad things? Easy: they repaint themselves, and then we have noooo idea which ones are the evil ones. But I’ll give you a secret little hint: it’s all in the eyebrows.

Don’t forget to catch the other two Bots With Stuff from this week over on The Shoebox Blog, including a robot with a muffin top, and a robot with a stolen banjo.

[ Bots With Stuff ]

Exmovere Holding company’s Chariot system is a sort of wrap-around Segway that turns your lower half into a robot on wheels. You control it intuitively by moving your torso around inside the machine; this lets you keep your hands free and concentrate on other things. Although you can simply step into the Chariot and go, it was specifically designed to help members of the US army, to “offer dignity, strength and increased mobility to those who were wounded serving our country.” That sounds great, except I’m not entirely sure about the dignity part at this point. Ever seen someone tooling around on a Segway? Not especially dignified.

The top speed of the current version is about 12 mph, but Exmovere is working on a “performance-oriented Chariot” that will either be faster or incorporate machine guns or something like that. No word as of yet on price or availability, but we’ll keep you updated.

Oh, and we should probably mention that while what you see in the above video is almost certainly fake, the design itself seems to be legit. Engadget did some digging and found that the thing in the video is the bottom have of a Showbots robot suit. Go figure.

[ Exmovere Press Release ] VIA [ Daily Mail ]