The video we took at Maker Faire of a rather graphic encounter between a Ugobe Pleo and a ComBot has made its rounds of the internet, and as you might expect, the response has been somewhat mixed. I have to admit, I can’t really watch it myself, it’s pretty disturbing, especially since it goes on for a long, long time. Pleo is just too cute and friendly for that sort of thing, and I don’t even own one. People who DO own Pleos have been getting seriously upset, and Ugobe has taken notice. I’d like to restate unambiguously for the record that the Pleo in the video was an unsolicited donation by the Ugobe people at Maker Faire, but it now looks like that despite the wave of publicity it provided, Ugobe at large wasn’t particularly pleased with what happened… ugobeSarah posted this response on the PleoWorld Forum:

Hey all,

The folks that were behind this stunt did it without authorization or approval. It seems the prankster spirit overcame them, and FYI, there was quite a ruckus here in the office about it today. Many people were shocked and appalled, including the UGOBE reps at our Maker Faire booth!

We ourselves make emotional bonds with Pleo too!

Thanks for your concern! It is perhaps a small consolation to know that the Pleo destroyed was a factory prototype?

It won’t happen again under our watch!

I’m finding this whole situation pretty fascinating. When it comes right down to it, what’s the difference between the Pleo in the video and the ComBot that destroyed it? They’re both robots that can’t think or feel in the broader sense; they just execute commands based on external stimuli. Sure, Pleo looks cute and all. But more importantly, Pleo is sophisticated enough to get humans to suspend (to some extent) their disbelief in the fact that Pleo is made of servos, circuit boards, and lines and lines of code. We (yes, I’m one of those people) can get emotionally attached to this completely artificial life form and get upset on principle when one of them is needlessly and violently destroyed. It’s not just the emotional attachment, either: it’s the subsequent reminder that underneath Pleo’s cute exterior and adorable personality lie something incomprehensible and alien.

So, keep your skin on, Pleo. Maintain the illusion, because I want to believe that you’re alive.

[ PleoWorld ]

Sylvain Calinon, who we’ve featured on BotJunkie before (twice, in fact), sent us an email talking about some new work from the Learning Algorithms and Systems Laboratory at EPFL. They’ve been working on robot (controlled with a Wiimote) that can be interactively taught to perform tasks. In this case, the robot is taught to prepare an omelette, which is way WAY more impressive than it sounds. Check it out:

Teaching a robot in this manner can obviously be frustrating at times, but research like this is critical for practical home robotics. Relying on custom programming just isn’t versatile enough for the tasks that robots are going to be asked to do, and interactive (and adaptive!) learning is, after all, how we humans teach ourselves and each other. Ideally, a future iteration of this robot would simply be able to watch you perform a task, and interpolate how to do it itself, or even how to provide meaningful assistance. And even more ideally, they’ll be just as spunky as this little guy.

[ LASA @ EPFL ] (Thanks, Sylvain C.)

It may not be the most talented poker dealer in the world, but hey, it’s a robot, and it was built as a school project by some anonymous YouTuber:

Introducing the “iDeal”. It’s the worlds best automatic poker dealer! Perfect for your home poker games and fits on the edge of a table. Features include:
- PIC microprocessor coded in C
- preprogrammable games such as texas holdem (shown in video), bridge, gin, omaha, etc
- IR player position sensing using bicycle reflectors as indicators
- ultrasonic player distance sensing which determines how far to shoot the cards

Doesn’t look like much of a flop there, but I’m still reasonably impressed.

VIA [ Coolest-Gadgets ]

I take it back, I take it all back, there’s NO WAY the Wall-E toys are anywhere near this cute:

[ Wall-E ]

Robert Lesser has been collecting robot toys for 30 years. The only reason he stopped collecting was because he’d “acquired all the great robots and space toys”. Looking at his collection, you can see that he’s not kidding. The collection has spent the last seven years in museums, and it’s now up for auction, meaning that if you have about $30,000 lying around, you could be the owner of the Jupiter robot (operational, with packaging) pictured above. There are 200 more pieces in the auction, all in museum quality condition, and it’s totally worth paging through the online catalog. Make sure to check out the packaging on the boxes; some of it is spectacular. I’ve posted a few of my favorites, after the jump. (Read more…)

Disney brought the Wall-E toys that we wrote about last week to Maker Faire, and I took this video of a demo of the Ultimate Wall-E… It’s pretty much what you’d expect, albeit (okay okay) slightly cuter than I might have thought:

The other toy, the much smaller and less sophisticated iDance Wall-E, looks just about as detailed as the Ultimate Wall-E.

He’s really quite a spunky little guy… He’s able to dance, sort of, and he makes some noise, and although you can plug your MP3 player (or whatever) into him, he won’t do anything as cool as sync his movements to it. He did have a habit of falling over backwards, but maybe that’ll be worked out by the time these toys come out this fall.

[ Press Release ]

The ComBots Cup was the main event at Maker Faire for anyone even remotely interested in robots and carnage, and this year’s battles certainly did not disappoint. Armored and weaponized remote controlled bots were unleashed against one another in a giant arena where spectators are protected from flying metal shrapnel by sheets of 1 inch thick lexan, quarter inch I-beams, and steel plates. Each battle lasts 3 minutes or until one robot is immobilized, incapacitated, thrown out of the arena, or completely destroyed. In the event that both robots remain functional, a panel of judges awards points based on damage and aggression. Fortunately, there’s plenty of damage and aggression to go ’round… Here’s some video of four of my favorite battles from over the weekend:

Video really doesn’t do justice to the experience of watching two robots that weigh a couple hundred pounds attack each other with titanium spinners traveling at several thousand RPM. If you can possibly get to an event, go.

So, as you can see from the video, these robots aren’t just blindly pounding away at each other… A substantial portion of the battle involves strategy, movement, and the skill of the driver. After each battle, win or lose, the robots get taken back to the pit area to get checked out, tuned up, have their batteries charged, and in some cases, their weapons switched out depending on what bot they’re fighting next. It’s exciting, and it’s awesome. ‘Nuff said. Some pics of the pit area, after the jump. (Read more…)

Maker Faire was this weekend, and I’ve got tons (TONS) of robot footage, including some wicked awesome video of ComBot battles. It’s kinda 3am, though, so I’ll be posting some of that tomorrow, but I wanted to make sure and put up this little gem from the very end of the ComBots tournament, when Ugobe decided that it might be fun to bring a Pleo along to watch the action. Just a warning: if you have a soft spot for cute and cuddly robots, you may not want to read this entire article.

This is Pleo. You remember Pleo, right?

Pleo is sweet and cuddly.

Pleo likes to snuggle.

Hey, what are you doing…?

Wait, what’s Pleo doing in the middle of the Combots arena? Oh. Oh no. Please don’t, not Pleo!

Video after the jump. It’s pretty graphic. (Read more…)

This weekend, I’ll be checking out Maker Faire, where there are guaranteed to be hordes (hordes, I tell you, HORDES!) of robots, both benign and excessively dangerous. In the latter category, I’m especially excited about the Combots Cup, “the top prize in combat robots.” I have no idea if that’s true or not, but I don’t care, because there are things that I do know: There will be robot death. There will be robot destruction. And there will be pictures and video. So stay tuned… Non-robot coverage can be found over on OhGizmo.

[ Maker Faire ]

We wrote about Festo’s Air_ray last year on OhGizmo. If you haven’t seen it, it’s totally cool, and Festo has taken the concept of sea creatures flying in air a step further with this beautiful robotic jelly. The bell of the AirJelly is filled with helium to provide lift, and lithium-ion batteries provide power to the tentacles which propel the jelly through the air:

Festo’s Aqua Jelly operates on generally the same principle, except underwater. And it’s autonomous and has LEDs! Soothing video of a few of them swimming around, after the jump. (Read more…)