Robotics

Overheard - Transformers in real life

Autonomous, intelligent robots are great, but when they look like classic Transformers characters they’re even better. Chris Davies, Chiara Robot with WiFi b/g, articulated claw & Pico-ITX brain [Video]

The handiwork of Mellon University’s Tekkotsu lab, the Chiara Robot has six independent legs, a claw arm with six degrees of freedom, and a combination of webcam and IR rangefinder for spotting objects and obstacles.  Even better, this is no simple lab project: the Chiara Robot will actually be manufactured and sold by RoPro Design.

I admit, Chiara is cool, but I don’t think it’s got the beat when it comes to looking like a classic Transformer character.  The WR-07, created by Nakamura san at Himeji Soft Works, is a robot that morphs from car to humanoid and back.

Overheard - New BigDog video

Boston Dynamics has released a new video of BigDog, their military transport quadruped.  This is one robot you want to keep an eye on — very cool.  According to Boston Dynamics PR:

BigDog is a quadruped robot that walks, runs, and climbs on rough terrain and carries heavy loads. BigDog is powered by a gasoline engine that drives a hydraulic actuation system. BigDog’s legs are articulated like an animal’s, and have compliant elements that absorb shock and recycle energy from one step to the next.

Here’s LittleDog -- I think it looks like a bat.

Overheard - Roadable aircraft, meet George Jetson!

Glenn Pew has posted an interesting video on the first test flight for the Transition, the “flying car” that’s currently causing a blogswarm.   As a kid, I spent my summers at the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) Fly-In out in Rockford, Illinois.  My dad was a pilot and he loved home-builts, restorations and prototypes.  He would have flipped for the Transition!

My favorite quote about the Transition? “They spent months proving that it could drive. Earlier this month, with little fanfare, they proved it could fly.”

If you’re interested in  learning more about the prototype, here’s a peek inside the cockpit from AVWeb.

Overheard: American market soft on robots

If iRobot had made a 4-foot-tall Roomba with a face and a hand to hold a vacuum hose, the company wouldn’t have sold more than ten units. Lance Ulanoff, Why can’t American consumers handle the future that robotics is willing to offer?

Yesterday CNN had a short article about the RG3, a new robot lawnmower for golf courses.  One of the challenges in developing the mower was figuring out how to ‘teach’ the robot boundries so it would know when to stop mowing.  According to Scott Jones, RG3’s navigation system uses a combination of ultrasonics and infrared to triangulate its location within a perimeter that’s created by four beacons.  Basically, it works like Roomba, my favorite robot of all time.

I’ve had Roomba for four years now — yet when I talk about how it starts itself up each day at noon, cleans the entire downstairs and then puts itself back on the charger, people look at me like I’m making it up.

I don’t get it.  We Americans are perfectly willing to accept that our telephones can be used to view movies, listen to audiobooks, play games and send and receive mail — but when it comes to believing that a robot can be more than a toy, we’re skeptical.

——–

BTW, here’s some of my other favorite robots…

(If you can’t see the video, allow pop-ups and refresh the page)

BigDog military transport robot

Supply chain distribution robots

Robot playing the flute

Toyota robot playing the trumpet

Video: Robot demonstrates face recognition

Kind of cool!

Overheard: Robots take over distribution centers at Walgreens and Staples

The scene is a constant swirl of activity, like a ballroom dance, with dozens of robots and pods in motion at any one time. APICS The Association for Operations Management, Dance of the Bots

Robots move completed orders to a staging area. When the truck is ready, all the pods that have completed orders for that destination get up and move to the loading dock.

Check out this video from AT&T TV. You’re watching Kiva Systems robots. The little orange roomba-like robots follow adhesive bar codes in a high density grid pattern on the floor. They communicate with a centralized server in a big game of “Mother May I?”

Contest: Degrees of freedom

How many degrees of freedom (DOFs) does the flute-playing robot from Waseda University have?

Leave your answer in the comments and I’ll send somebody with the right answer a TechTarget shirt. Check back Friday, November 9 to see if you won. There’s no real reason for doing this contest. I just have shirts and thought it would be fun. :-]

Overheard: Six degrees of freedom

Typical industrial robots feature a 6-axis configuration, or six degrees of freedom. Toyota’s trumpet-playing robot has 29 degrees of freedom.

The robot’s right hand has three DOFs to manipulate the trumpet. It has a Pentium III processor as the main CPU and a Linux RT/OS. Toyota has already developed nearly 100 robot-related patented technologies and plans to commercialize humanoid robots by 2010.

Overheard: It’s very cool — military transport

Watch what happens when the guy kicks this thing.

BigDog, as this robot is known, is powered by a gasoline engine. That’s the buzzing you hear on the video. It’s got an on-board computer that controls locomotion and uses sensors for joint position, joint force, ground contact and ground load. It’s got a laser gyroscope for balance and a stereo vision system so it can see where it’s going. Inside it’s got more sensors to monitor BigDog’s hydraulic pressure, oil temperature, engine temperature, rpm, battery charge etc. So far, the robot has successfully trotted at 3.3 mph, climbed a 35 degree slope and carried a 120 lb load. It’s being developed by Boston Dynamics with funding from DARPA.

Overheard: Robot goats will save the planet

Forget about how old you are. Which one would you rather throw your trash into? The Big Belly municipal trash compacter that looks like a FedEx box, or the robot goat?

I’d rather feed the goat. So would the folks in Spokan, Washington. So would the people in Tokyo.

Spokane’s Riverfront Park garbage Goat was created by artist Paula Turnbull. You put litter in front of the goat’s mouth, and a vacuum sucks the trash in and compacts it. The metal goat appears to eat the litter, making grumbling noises and providing entertainment while you keep the environment green. Spokane’s had their goat since 1974.

Edogawa Kyotei took the idea one step further. Get it? FUR-ther.

Ok, I apologize. I will grow up. Right now.

Here’s the story: Edogawa Kyotei is a race course for hydroplane speedboats. It’s a popular tourist attraction in Tokyo. The drivers are professional and the crowd bets on the winners. It’s similar to horse racing in the United States.

If you’ve ever been to Saratoga for the races in August, you know that the grandstands and grounds are covered with losing tickets. People watch the race, check their ticket when its over, jump up and down if they win, or throw their ticket on the ground if they lose. It’s the same at Edogawa Kyotei.

So the managers at Edogawa Kyotei brought in a robot goat to encourage the crowd to keep the park clean.

The genius part is not that they added fur to their robot.

The genius part is that they started a viral marketing campaign to spread the message that feeding the goat a losing ticket — any losing ticket — would improve the person’s luck on future bets. They added more fun to the fun and got a cleaner park.

Sure beats the threat of a $100 littering fine.