November 4, 2010
I have to say, this is simultaneously one of the most and least conventional climbing robots I’ve ever seen. We’re used to all kinds of weird stuff like claws and geckos and electroadhesion, but these robots just climb up with boring arms and legs and hands and feet. Which is actually kinda interesting. Apparently these guys (called Yume Robo) aren’t exactly new… They’ve been climbing up and down a 15 meter high wall, every 20 minutes, for the last 184 days, until just last week. They’re dressed in silver work suits, but I don’t claim to know what they heck those antennae are for. One more vid, after the jump. VIA [ CrunchGear ]
November 1, 2010
SCHEMA is a conversational humanoid robot at Waseda University in Japan with some pretty serious skills. As you’ll see in the new video they have posted (which is embedded below), SCHEMA is able to participate in a three person conversation without losing the plot, and is perfectly capable of understanding which speaker is which and what has been said by whom. It’s an impressive performance, to say the very least. Continue reading SCHEMA robot shows off its conversation management skills in a group setting SCHEMA robot shows off its conversation management skills in a group setting originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 01 Nov 2010 12:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | source PlasticPals | Email this | Comments
October 31, 2010
Blekko’s alternative search engine — a $24 million venture-backed project that’s been three years in the making — is today launching its public beta. With the official rollout, Blekko is also releasing several new features designed for both mainstream and the site’s super users. As you may recall, Blekko is designed to eliminate spam search results, allowing users to search just a subset of the web through its proprietary slashtag technology. The most significant upgrade to Blekko’s search engine is the addition of slashtags that auto-fire for queries that fall into one of seven categories: health, colleges, autos, personal finance, lyrics, recipes and hotels. Every time a Blekko user’s query is determined to be in one of these categories, Blekko will automatically append the associated slashtag to the query and limit results to just the subset of URLs that fall under that slashtag. The auto-fire functionality is designed with passive searchers in mind and aims to eliminate friction for first-time users. The technology that powers these auto-slashtags was developed through an extensive research and development phase that involved analyzing the relationship between queries and the type of spam results they typically generate. Blekko plans to introduce auto-slashing for additional categories moving forward, but selected to launch with ones that represent a high volume of search traffic and are typically laden with spammy results. Health, lyric and financial queries on Google or Bing, for instance, will return results dominated by poor quality content farms or malware-hosting sites. Those same searches on Blekko yield results only from high quality sites. Blekko’s slashtag formula works because of passionate users who take the time to add and edit URLs for category slashtags. As such, the company has released new features to enable users to apply to be editors for slashtags as well as share […]
October 28, 2010
It’s been a little while since we’ve posted a micromouse vid, so here’s a good one. It’s from a competition in Chubu, and the winner completes its final run in 5 seconds. Or maybe 4. Skip to 4:30 if you’re interested in the speed but not the exploration phase. I can only assume that micromice are approaching some kind of asymptotic maximum speed when it comes to maze solving, but I’m optimistic that people will still keep on inventing ways of making them faster and more efficient… Vacuum power was one, and I’m sure there are more. It’s an interesting problem, though, because there has to be a compromise between speed and stability, which may involve slowing down, as this high speed video shows: That robot is Tetra, who we’re already somewhat familiar with, but in this competition it took second place to the winner in the first vid, a micromouse called EggTorte. [ RobolaboN @ YouTube ]
October 27, 2010
It’s been a few years since we checked in with Actroid, a bot we first saw way back in 2005. What you’re looking at above is Actroid-F, Kokoro Co. Ltd. and ATR‘s latest iteration of the creepy humanoid robot that can mime the operator’s facial expressions and head movements with unbelievable (but not quite human) accuracy. Her current job is to act as “as an observer in hospitals to gauge patient reactions.” We guess that’s one way to get around euthanasia laws. See what we mean in the video after the break. Continue reading Actroid-F: the angel of death robot coming to a hospital near you (video) Actroid-F: the angel of death robot coming to a hospital near you (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 27 Oct 2010 02:18:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink] PlasticPals | source RoboTimes | Email this | Comments
October 27, 2010
When we got our hands on the Vuzix Wrap 920AR at CES we saw a promising piece of gear without too many practical applications. And where do things stand, nearly a year later? Available now (aside from a “30 to 45 day delay” on all orders) the headset is strictly developers only. According to Pocket-lint, the company is only eighteen months away from clear AR glasses with heads-up displays — and, believe us, we’d love to see that — but in the meantime, your hard earned $2,000 will get you the glasses, a Vuzix VR Manager license, and access to the Vuzix SDK. So, who’s going to be the first to pitch us a system for Augmented Reality comment moderation? We’d love to some new and novel ways to “downrank” a few of our favorite commenters, if you get our drift. Vuzix Wrap 920AR dev bundle available ‘nowish’ with clear AR glasses 18 months away originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 27 Oct 2010 18:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink Pocket-lint | source Vuzix | Email this | Comments
October 27, 2010
Lockheed Martin’s original pack-hauling robot was named (appropriately enough) MULE, which stood Multifunction Utility/Logistics and Equipment… Vehicle. MULE got canceled at the beginning of this year, though, and its effective replacement seems to be the SMSS, or Squad Mission Support System. SMSS is completely autonomous, and will either follow behind a soldier or follow preset GPS waypoints, all while avoiding obstacles with its conspicuous and fragile looking LIDAR system. It can 1200 pounds of gear, has a range of over 200 miles, and also functions as a mobile gear charger. The long-term vision of this system can accommodate armed variants, while improving its reconnaissance, surveillance and target acquisition capabilities within the concept of supervised autonomy. A squad-size manned or unmanned support vehicle is critical to today’s asymmetrical and urban battlefields. It sounds like Lockheed Martin’s long-term vision is basically to turn SMSS into what MULE was supposed to be: a six wheeled platform that, in addition to hauling equipment, could (by simply adding some modular accessories) also be used for this sort of thing: Of course, MULE was undoubtedly going to be super expensive and much harder to develop, but it had the potential to offer tons of flexibility, which personally I think is the key to the future of the military in general. Oh, and that thingy it used to get past the barbed wire? It looks an awful lot like one of these. Anyway, I guess it’s good to see that Lockheed Martin’s original concept isn’t totally dead, it’s just kinda sad when an awesome robot gets made so much less awesome, even if it is substantially more practical. [ SMSS ]