Another year, another Consumer Electronics Show! Our posting for the rest of this week is going to be intermittent, but SUPER HIGH QUALITY since we’ll be getting some of the first demos, interviews, and hands-on experiences with the sexiest new consumer robots of 2011 (like that cute little massage robot and iRobot’s new stuff). CES is a big show (like, really, really, super big), and while there’s a dedicated robotics zone, there’s usually a bunch of cool stuff hidden betwixt the booths in the dark recesses of the Las Vegas Convention Center… And we’ll be doing our level best to find it for you.

Of course, we’re not the only reporters at CES, so if you see something in the news and want us to do some firsthand reporting for you (yes, you!) just post a comment here or email us a tip and we’ll check it out.

If you’re interested in more than robots (psh), our sister site OhGizmo will have live coverage of, uh, gizmos and stuff from CES as well.

Here we goooo!

Along with the new Scooba 230, iRobot has today unveiled a redesigned version of the Roomba, the 700 series. There are three different models: the 760, 770, and 780, and similar to other Roomba series, they mostly seem to differ from each other in frills. Here are the core upgrades from the 500 series:

-New design is smaller and sleeker.

-Battery life is 50% longer than previous generations (although it’s not clear whether they’re talking about the ‘premium’ Roombas with the increased battery life).

-I’ll quote this from the PR: “Persistent Pass Cleaning Pattern – when Roomba senses excessive dirt and debris, it uses a brush-like, back and forth motion to focus its cleaning effort in the dirty area it has detected.” Interesting; we’ll have to see it in operation.

The 770 and 780 include a few extras not present in the 760:

-Also quoted from the PR: “Debris Detector uses an optical sensor to detect larger, soft particles on the floor like popcorn, lint or paper chads, so Roomba can respond by focusing its cleaning pattern to ensure deeper, concentrated cleaning in that area.” The 760 doesn’t do this, so we’ll have to find out how exactly this differs from the regular ‘dirt detect’ feature that the 500 series Roombas have, and whether that feature is present in the 760.

-They both light up an indicator light when their dust bins are full.

-The 780 has a fancy capacitive touch sensor interface. No more buttons!

The Roomba 760 starts at $449; the 770 and and 780 will certainly be more expensive, possibly in $50 increments but we’ll find out shortly… We’ll be getting our first look and hands-on at CES starting Tuesday, and we’ve just scheduled a personal demo and interview on Friday, so stay tuned.

We’ve been begging iRobot to come out with something new and different for years now, and with the success of the Neato XV-11 and the Mint Sweeper, they’ve kicked things up a notch (or two) with four new models: the Scooba 230, and Roomba 760 770 and 780. It’s probably no coincidence that CES starts on Tuesday, and we’re going to make sure to get some demos and an interview while we’re there. In the meantime, here’s the rundown on the new mini-Scooba, the 230, and there’s a video of it in action too.

-At 6.5″ in diameter and 3.5″ tall, it’s tiny, and much better at getting around bathrooms than a full size Scooba.

-Uses either regular water or a soap solution to wash, scrub, and then vacuum up the dirty water to clean your tile or sealed hardwood floors, just like a full-size Scooba. Clean and dirty water are kept separate.

-It’s got all the same navigation abilities as the rest of iRobot’s cleaning robots and can use virtual walls.

-Cleans in either a 20 or 45 minute cycle, depending on the size of the room, but offers ‘single button’ operation so I’m not sure yet whether that’s an automatic thing or not.

-The dirty water can be dumped out by holding the robot over the sink; fill it with clean water directly from a faucet. The brushes pop out for easy cleaning.

-Looks like there’s a dock of sorts, but it may not be self-docking or self-charging.

-$299, available this spring.

[ iRobot Scooba 230 ]

Here in the US, we’re used to robot sumo happening at an, um, relaxing pace. Not so in Japan, as you can see in this vid. It’s from the 2010 All Japan Robot Sumo Finals, specifically the human-driven competition. Unsurprisingly, due to the pace of the match, the robots themselves are doing a lot of the thinking:

The secret is that they build a lot of autonomous functionality into the R/C robots as well. The operator can give the command to attack, but the actual engagement and high speed opponent tracking, is built into the robots.

This makes me wonder what the point is of having a human in the loop at all… It seems like the robots might be able to do a better job of reacting quickly and making decisions in such a confined environment. There’s also a separate category for fully autonomous robots, and here’s that final:

I’m not entirely sure what those big white panels are for, but if I had to guess, I’d say that they’re designed to fool the opponent’s sensors somehow, and if you watch the video closely, they may have worked.

There’s clearly a convergence taking place between the human controlled and autonomous sumo robots, so it’ll be interesting to see how the competition evolves. It’s possible that the two separate competitive categories will combine into one, but it’s hard to say whether the humans or the robots will have the edge, at least at first. While the robots are definitely able to react faster, they’re also restricted by their sensors, and they have less experience with deceptive tactics. But if nothing else, robots are fast learners, and it’s probably only a matter of time before they make humans completely redundant, at least when it comes to sumo.

[ Robot Sumo Finals ] VIA [ Robots Dreams ]

Exercise is much less work if you can pawn the hard stuff off on a teleoperated robot. The system in this video is kinda like the physical master/slave system that we saw last year, combined with Willow Garage’s PR2 Kinect demo. While I’m sure this technology has at least a few practical uses, I’m personally hoping that all those humanoid robot competitions will start requiring Kinect teleoperation. Just imagine how much more entertaining it would be to watch robot combat and wildly gesticulating humans at the same time, kinda like this. And you know what, that sounds cool enough that maybe it should be made into a movie or something…

VIA [ I Heart Robotics ] and [ Robots Dreams ]

The Robo-One Humanoid Helper Robot Project challenges hobbyists to create robots capable of performing common household tasks. I’m not sure whose house these robots have been chillin’ at, but these common household tasks include getting drinks from a fridge, pouring said drinks, setting off a party popper, waiting until you’re hammered, and then giving you a shoulder massage.

And then the video cuts out, but you can fill in the blanks… Just make sure to ask it to deactivate its crotch cam before things get too crazy.

Happy new year!

VIA [ Robots Dreams ]

To film up close and personal with polar bears, the BBC (who knows a thing or two about making nature shows) decided that it would be kinda cool to deploy an entire fleet of little remote controlled, robotic cameras:

As you can see, the curious polar bears and the cameras didn’t always get along, and several of them were playfully destroyed. Follow the link below (or just go ahead and click here) to watch some of this destruction firsthand… It’s pretty damn funny to see a polar bear chasing a propeller-driven robot on skis across the ice and then trying to eat it.

Update- someone’s ripped the vid onto YouTube, enjoy it while it lasts!

[ BBC ] VIA [ Suicide Bots ]

Robots are potentially dangerous, but it’s usually hard to tell just how dangerous they are. You can make up as many ludicrous warnings as you want, but the only way to tell for sure is to let the robots just beat on people a whole bunch and see how bad it gets. At least that way, you get a worst-case scenario.

If you’re not quite that brave, you can be like Japan and use crash test dummies in a specially designed facility instead. Less entertaining and less accurate, but also less risk of death, and that’s probably good. Japan’s New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO), National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Automobile Research Institute (JARI) have all banded together and decided that it would be kinda cool to form a Robot Safety Center to test out robots to make sure that, among other things, they won’t go bonkers and kill you every time you turn on your microwave.

Most joking aside, this is a serious first step towards the acceptance of an industry that will (hopefully) be producing large consumer robots sometime in the near future. You’re probably not worried about your Roomba breaking your ankles, but when you’ve got something the size of a PR2 grabbing beers for you, it’s good to know just exactly how hard and how accurately it’s capable of chucking a bottle, you know?

For better or worse, this type of testing also means that we’re going to have to have to make some serious (and legally binding) decisions about what happens if a safety certified robot has an accident and hurts someone. At the moment, issues like these are a significant roadblock to the development of consumer robots: why should companies spend a bunch of money developing an awesome robot if they’ll be sued into oblivion the first time one of their creations has a little accident? There needs to be some sort of legal framework in place to deal with this stuff before it happens, and knowing what can go wrong is a good way to help plan for what might go wrong.

VIA [ Plastic Pals ]

This robot (you might recognize it, it’s an HRP-2) has been programmed to NOT AVOID OBSTACLES. I know, crazy right? Instead, it’s smart enough to either move obstacles out of its way when it needs to, or actually use obstacles to help it get around, as you can see in the vid above.

The system breaks down tasks into two stages. In the first stage, software developed by Lengagne’s colleague Karim Bouyarmane identifies objects in the robot’s surroundings that it can use to help complete a task – for instance, leaning on a table with its forearms to sidle past it and into a nearby chair. The software then calculates a number of poses that the robot could strike to make best use of the table for stability while it shuffles towards the chair and sits on it. Lengagne’s software then converts these static poses into one smooth motion, taking into account the forces operating on the robot in each position to ensure it does not lose balance.

I really don’t know why New Scientist makes it sound like using obstacles to your advantage has to be an old person thing… I’m not old (okay, I’m not THAT old) and I use objects to support my weight and maintain my balance all the time. It might not be strictly necessary that I do so, but I’m super lazy and it saves me energy, so why not? For robots, being super lazy just means that they’re more energy efficient and they put less wear on their motors and joints, which is almost as important.

As I’ve pointed out before, creative compromises like this are a great way to make progress in robotics. I’m sure it’s possible (and perhaps even ideal) to make a humanoid robot that can sit at desks and kick soccer balls without any form of support, but why bother? Humans are so capable because we know how to efficiently adapt ourselves to our surroundings, and robots are getting better at doing the same.

VIA [ New Scientist ]

As if it wasn’t bad enough that robots are stealing our jobs, this particular one actually rubs it in with facial expressions. Fraunhofer’s pi4 workerbot is fully equipped to take over from a human (or two) on an assembly line, with two 7-DoF arms with force-feedback hands and a set of three high resolution cameras sophisticated enough to let it inspect parts for quality. It doesn’t just put you out of work, though: stealing your job makes pi4 happy:

With great care, a robot picks up a gear wheel in one hand, a housing in the other, and places the two together. When they don’t immediately engage, it breaks off its movement. Slowly, it twists the gear wheel round a little and tries again. This time the wheel slots easily into its mounting. The robot smiles, and places the correctly assembled part on the conveyor belt.

The facial expressions are designed to provide feedback to managers… Happy means that the robot is hard at work, and bored means that it’s capable of working faster: “Please, let me steal someone else’s job too!”

[ Press Release ] VIA [ PopSci ]