August 30, 2010
CMU just posted this new vid of their Snakebot (Modsnake) climbing a tree and looking around. It’s still tethered, but it’s a snake, so that just makes it seem more snakey. This isn’t the first video we’ve seen of CMU’s Snakebot climbing stuff, but it’s the first one we’ve seen outside of the lab, so that counts for something, right? Sure! [ CMU Biorobotics ] VIA [ Hizook ]
August 26, 2010
We already knew that in some specific cases, robots are better pilots than humans, but this footage from Rockwell Collins really drives home the fact that under extreme circumstances, there’s just no out-flying a robot. This small autonomous demonstrator suffers all kinds of damage, but not only does it not crash, it keeps on flying its mission and then lands. For the record, humans are pretty adaptable too, but this next one takes the cake: Let me just reiterate what’s going on here: the aircraft has no aileron control and is rolling randomly, but is still able to navigate in three dimensional space (it’s flying in a big circle) by using its other control surfaces in conjunction with whatever its roll angle happens to be. At roll speeds of up to 500 degrees per second, there is no way a human could do this, but to the robot, it’s just not that big of a deal. This technology is great for UAVs, of course, but personally I wouldn’t mind in the least if every airplane I flew on had this capability sitting dormant in a subroutine somewhere until the wing falls off and everybody starts to PANIC and then realizes oh, it’s fine, apparently we don’t need that wing anyway. Next up: cut-rate airlines invest in adaptive intelligent flight control technology, auction off wings and tails. [ Rockwell Collins ] VIA [ I Heart Robotics ] and [ DIY Drones ]
August 25, 2010
Getting oil out of water isn’t that hard, on principle. What is hard is getting a huge amount of oil out of an even huger amount of water. If you think about it, this is really a perfect task for a swarm of robots, since it’s simple and repeatable and just needs to be done over and over (and over and over and over) again. With this in mind, MIT’s Senseable City Lab has created Seaswarm, a swarm of networked oil spill cleanup robots: Seaswarm is designed to be simple, cheap, and efficient. To collect oil, the robots use a wide belt covered in a special hydrophobic nanofabric (about the consistency of a paper towel) that sucks 20 times its own weight in oil (and other pollutants) out of water. The belt moves around like a treadmill, which passes the befouled nanofabric back to be cleaned while simultaneously propelling the robot forward. The video talks about heat being used to separate oil from the nanofiber, while the description on the Seaswarm website makes it seems like the oil is squeezed out using rollers… Whatever floats your robot, I guess. What I’m not too sure about is where all of that captured oil goes. Using their solar panels for power the bots can collect for several weeks at a time, and the more oil they collect, the heavier they’ll get, and the more energy it’ll take to keep them moving. The website does mention that the oil will be ‘digested,’ which I assume implies microbes, but they’ll either have to collect oil very slowly or have some wicked crazy hungry bugs to be able to get around the problem. Seaswarm is designed from the water up to utilize swarm behaviors. To combat a spill the size of the recent one in […]
August 24, 2010
Vecna Technologies sent along this new video of BEAR, their Battlefield Extraction something Robot. I don’t immediately see any new capabilities, but BEAR does show a penchant for wanton (or premeditated) destruction, smashing through doors and car windows with no apparent sense of remorse. BEAR’s selling point (besides the cute ears) is its ability to lift ludicrous amounts of weight while simultaneously balancing on two extendable treads, which enables it to be (potentially) more useful than a human for performing certain heavy lifting and moving tasks. With all of that power comes a corresponding amount of infrastructure, though, and for BEAR to be really useful in the field it’s going to need to be both durable and easy to repair, and that huge betubed hydraulic backpack looks kinda fragile. [ Vecna Robotics ] Thanks Andy!
August 16, 2010
Now, two of our favorite things in the world just so happen to be ice cream and robots. So combining the two could only lead to awesome things, right? Well, that’s Yaskawa-kun is: a robot that vends ice cream. And yes, it’s super fantastic. Currently working a Tokyo Summerland, Yaskawa-kun has a touchscreen ordering panel, and you can even watch him make your treat for you. While the video below is pretty impressive, this is one thing we just need to see for ourselves. Continue reading Robot sells ice cream, we love him for it Robot sells ice cream, we love him for it originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 16 Aug 2010 18:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink CrunchGear | source Robonoble | Email this | Comments
August 15, 2010
My plane left Hong Kong just after midnight. I spent my last hours in China wandering the halls of the Hong Kong International Airport. The shops were all closed, the lights were dim, the cast cosmopolitan. I should have taken more pictures, but I wanted to find an outlet to charge my batteries and spend my last few precious minutes online, since I had no idea what my access would be like in Japan. The smoking room at HKIA was small and filthy, but it also had the highest ratio of beautiful young women to lonely old men I’ve seen. Near the smoking room was a prayer room, where I snapped this. I landed at Haneda at 5 am, after passing by Mt. Fuji just as the sun was rising. It was beautiful. The international terminal at Haneda is tiny, no more than two dozen chairs in the waiting area. I made it through customs quickly and looked around for Kosuke. I didn’t really know who I was looking for, but I didn’t see anyone who looked like they were looking for me. After a few laps around the terminal I decided to find somewhere to hang out for a while. I sat down and made myself visible and failed to find a wireless signal and didn’t really know what to do with myself. I went to the bathroom, which had both a traditional Japanese toilet and a robotic toilet from the future that was clearly labeled “Western Style”. The fact that I was in Japan with no idea where I was going and no back up plans or internet to coordinate any back up plans suddenly began to sink in. Around 6am I started worrying that either Kosuke showed up at the wrong terminal or expected me to meet […]
August 15, 2010
The next two days were wonderful and strange. I was taken to a large house in a beach front town named Onjuku in the prefecture of Chiba, where my Great Uncle, Tomoshisa Aoyama (my maternal grandmother’s youngest brother) owned a house that he designed himself on a half acre of land. It was a mixture of traditional Japanese design with a modern twist, so there was lots of open space in the central living area, which was unique to Japanese architecture. You can see something of the layout of the house in the Facebook pictures. You can make out in the pictures that the only real furniture in the house was a long wooden board that served as the main dining table, propped up on cardboard boxes and lined on both sides with pillows, and a very expensive looking leather sofa set and a fancy wood table. Furniture in Japan is always expensive, and this seemed particular classy. So classy, in fact, that my uncle Tomo was featured in the official Onjuku community brochure. If you go to this page and click on the first link with the “NEW” animated gif, you get the official brochure in pdf format. On the second page is a picture of Tomo in his leather couch, answering some question in Japanese and generally looking like a VIP. Soon after I arrived and met the people as best I could without sharing a common language, and was able with some complicated gestures to work out the family relations, Tomo took out an old scrap book of pictures of my mom’s family, which I looked through carefully and pointed and shared some laughs with the family. I was also offered a beer, which I drank and then began to feel quite sick. Unfortunately this was also […]
August 14, 2010
The first prototype of a Nao robot that can develop emotions as it interacts with a human caregiver has been completed. A team across Europe was led by Dr. Lola Cañamero of the University of Herefordshire in the UK to develop the bot, which differs in several significant ways from those that came before it. These robots develop over time in much the way that a child does, learning to interact with and respond to the human beings around them. Modeled after human and chimpanzee childhood development paths, they are programmed to be highly adaptable to the people around them, and to become attached to whatever person is most suited to its needs and ‘personality’ profile. Over time, the more they interact, the more they learn and bond to the human being. These little ones, moreover, are capable of expressing a wide range of emotions, including anger, frustration, fear and happiness. The next steps are to research the bots’ emotional and non-linguistic behavior, and to move toward combining linguistic and non-linguistic communication to become further attached and adapted to them. Yes, we want one. Prototype of robot that develops emotions on interacting with humans officially complete originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 14 Aug 2010 12:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | source University of Herefordshire | Email this | Comments
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