Robots

It's official: Dr. Trung doesn't have a day job. He's been tweaking his fembot "Aiko" for almost a year now, and his latest creation is a rather amazing hand that can be used for Aiko or for human augmentation. The last time we saw them the hand was a clumsy golf glove affair, but now Trung has slimmed it down to more feminine, creepo proportions, while keeping the five movable fingers and pretty stunning dexterity for what seems to be a primarily individual effort on the part of Dr. Trung. The...

Robotics Trends, a division of EH Publishing, Inc., announced that MobileRobots Inc has joined RoboDevelopment Conference and Exposition 2008, the International Technical Design and Development Event for the Personal, Service and Mobile Robotics Industry, as Gold Sponsor. The 2nd Annual RoboDevelopment Conference & Exposition will be held November 18-19, 2008 at the Santa Clara Convention...

The RoboBuilder robotics kits from a Korean company of the same name (or is it IRobou?) is now available for purchase from Trossen Robotics. The kits, which are similar to the Bioloid robotics kits from Robotis, employ modular components, like motors and sensors, to allow builders to quickly create a wide variety of robotic creations....

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Robots The Nervous Squirrel's Furby Gurdy (version 2) isn't the first music maker we've seen that's better understood when viewed during an out-of-body experience, but it's certainly one of the strangest. The circuit bent Furby sequencer, which is linked to a Korg SQ-10 in the demonstration vid after the break, combines centuries-old musical methods with some of the strangest characters to ever grace planet Earth. We could talk for hours on end and still not do this t...

The Nervous Squirrel's Furby Gurdy (version 2) isn't the first music maker we've seen that's better understood when viewed during an out-of-body experience, but it's certainly one of the strangest. The circuit bent Furby sequencer, which is linked to a Korg SQ-10 in the demonstration vid after the break, combines centuries-old musical methods with some of the strangest characters to ever grace planet Earth. We could talk for hours on end and still not do this thing justice, so just click throug...

Filed under: Robots We're not even going to front -- we had all but forgotten about Erector's Spykee. Granted, it didn't do itself any favors by showing off at CES and then doing nothing for the next seven months, but we digress. If a pre-order page on Amazon is to be believed, the Spykee Spy Robot should be released on October 15th. It's sporting a hefty $299.99 price tag and a recommended age of 8-years and up, but we'll need to see some actual shipment notifications later this fall before we ...

We're not even going to front -- we had all but forgotten about Erector's Spykee. Granted, it didn't do itself any favors by showing off at CES and then doing nothing for the next seven months, but we digress. If a pre-order page on Amazon is to be believed, the Spykee Spy Robot should be released on October 15th. It's sporting a hefty $299.99 price tag and a recommended age of 8-years and up, but we'll need to see some actual shipment notifications later this fall before we really get our hope...

The Tech Shop in Menlo Park, CA is offering a class on how to build a 60-pound combat robot. Here is your chance to build your own fire-spewing, buzz-saw wielding combat robot with the help and guidance of veteran combat robot builders! In this 2-day full-weekend class, you and your team member will learn to create a...

Filed under: Robots Industrial robots are big, stupid, and dangerous. Walk between an automated welder and the SUV it's assembling and you'll find yourself fused to the frame, destined to sit unwanted at the back corner of some dealer's lot. But, keeping bots and humans separated on an assembly line isn't always practical. Enter ARoS, a machine that's not only capable of working safely with people, but being totally condescending while doing it! In a demonstration video it repeatedly tells its h...

Everyone needs a little LEGO love, every now-and-then, so here’s some nice robots built by Jas Nagra....

VIA may be ditching its traditional motherboard business, but it looks like its not wasting any time in stepping up its efforts to get its more specialized boards and chipsets into as many devices as possible, and it's now taken advantage of the Taipei International Robot Show to show off their potential for robotics. Leading the way is Lynxmotion's Johnny 5 robot above (yes, that's actually its name), which has been outfitted with VIA's new EPIA P700 board and VX800 unified chipset just for th...

Industrial robots are big, stupid, and dangerous. Walk between an automated welder and the SUV it's assembling and you'll find yourself fused to the frame, destined to sit unwanted at the back corner of some dealer's lot. But, keeping bots and humans separated on an assembly line isn't always practical. Enter ARoS, a machine that's not only capable of working safely with people, but being totally condescending while doing it! In a demonstration video it repeatedly tells its hapless helper how i...

We've seen methods for hooking house plants up with their own Twitter account, but there's hardly anything more satisfying that building a robot to read back all those feeds from the thousands of people you're undoubtedly following. Ganzbot is a decidedly low-budget robot that relies on an Arduino Decima to control the head actions and a USB cable to receive up-to-date status information. Have a look at the innards as well as a few words being spoken just after the jump.Continue reading Video: ...

At the 18th annual International Aerial Robotics Competition (IARC), Georgia Tech came away as the winner, with prize money of $27,000. The event, which was held on July 28th - Aug. 1st, 2008, marked the conclusion of the 4th Mission of the IARC, with a new mission being released for the 2009 competition....

As we've seen, snake-like robots have long since move beyond the realm of nightmares into a frightening reality, and they just seem to keep on getting more and more plentiful. This latest one comes to us from UK-based OC Robotics, and has the notable distinction of being just a half-inch in diameter and a full 24 inches long, which is apparently just the ticket the US Department of Defense was looking for (it's currently testing the bot). Like other similar bots, this one boasts a camera and to...

Filed under: RobotsAsk any animation modeler about the "uncanny valley," and you're sure to get at least a grimace, if not a groan. Said term describes the long-standing barrier which refers to the perception that "animation looks less realistic as it approaches human likeness." Image Metrics is hoping that a newfangled approach used to create Emily (pictured there on the right) will finally allow animations to look more like humans and less like "corpses." As you could probably surmise, the sec...

Filed under: Robots What could possibly provide us more joy and mirth than a Segway? How about a Segway-inspired bot that fails spectacularly on a consistent basis? The tech in play here is quite simple, and the fact it can stand as long as it does being that top heavy is actually pretty surprising. The best news? Hit the read link for a guide to making your very own fail bot at home. It's fun for the whole family.Continue reading Miniature "balancing" robot is sad, hilariousRead | Permalink | E...

Robot designers are currently duking it out for the British army in hopes of nabbing the hearts (and pocketbooks) of England's fighting force. In a makeshift "wartime European village," scientists and researchers are putting their helper-droids to the test as Army officials look on and investigate how the automatons might serve alongside troops. Some of the robots being looked at include a "Moon buggy" which remotely patrols for enemies via thermal imaging and then sends the data back to a comm...

What could possibly provide us more joy and mirth than a Segway? How about a Segway-inspired bot that fails spectacularly on a consistent basis? The tech in play here is quite simple, and the fact it can stand as long as it does being that top heavy is actually pretty surprising. The best news? Hit the read link for a guide to making your very own fail bot at home. It's fun for the whole family.Continue reading Miniature "balancing" robot is sad, hilarious...

Filed under: Home Entertainment, Robots Color us stumped and incredibly excited. We've discovered this totally useless yet endlessly amazing DVD player / Terminator head out in the wilds of the internet, but finding any information deeper than people exclaiming "this is awesome" is, in a word, difficult. Look, we're not saying that we want to find the company that makes these, order 100 of them, rip out their guts and replace them with those electronic rat brains, swap the eyes for stereoscopic ...

Filed under: Robots, Transportation digg_url = 'http://digg.com/space/ESA_s_six_wheeled_Mars_bot_prototypes_ready_to_kick_some_mar'; ESA is showing off its new "ExoMars" bots, Bruno and Bradley, who are being prepped for a 2015 mission to the red planet. The six-wheeled bots are being designed to carry a significant scientific payload, oriented around the search for life, but won't slouch in the maneuverability department, with six independently rotating wheels. In addition to independent movem...

ESA is showing off its new "ExoMars" bots, Bruno and Bradley, who are being prepped for a 2015 mission to the red planet. The six-wheeled bots are being designed to carry a significant scientific payload, oriented around the search for life, but won't slouch in the maneuverability department, with six independently rotating wheels. In addition to independent movement, the wheels can also be locked into "wheel walking mode," where treacherous terrain can be traversed by crawling instead of rolli...

For those of you that just can’t get enough robot news, you should definitely check out the Robots Podcast. The show is now produced in part by Markus Waible, of Talking Robots fame, who kindly sent us a note letting us know about the show. Markus also writes for the IEEE Automaton blog, which is...

Filed under: Robots It looks like a group of researchers from the University of Reading are making a solid run at the title of mad scientists of the year (in the best sense, of course), with them now boasting that they've developed a robot that's controlled by a "biological brain." That's not quite the sci-fi sight you may be imagining, however (though it's close), with it instead made up of some 300,000 neurons taken from the neural cortex of a rat fetus, which are contained in multi electrode ...

Robotics Trends, a division of EH Publishing, Inc., announced the RoboDevelopment Conference & Exposition Academic Outreach Program, which provides colleges and universities with free Exhibit Hall Passes and discounted Conference Pass registrations for students, educators and researchers, as well as complimentary exhibit space for select universities. RoboDevelopment, the international technical design and development event for...