Jordan Correa, a developer on the Microsoft Robotics Team, built a robot to interact with his dog, Darwin, while he was away at work. It’s got a lot of neat features. Geeks that don’t even have dogs would enjoy having one of these around! -via The Daily What Geek

You very well may recognize the voice, so stop reading if you want to watch and guess who did this little film. Okay, now? This film was produced in 1963 for a Bell Systems seminar in Chicago, by Jim Henson. It was recently retrieved from the AT&T Archives. -via Dangerous Minds

This little short film appears to be a teaser for a longer story by effects designer Aaron Sims. If he is trying to raise interest in getting a studio to fund a feature film, this is the way to do it. Wouldn’t you like to see the rest of the story? Link -via Geeks Are Sexy

The Tweeting Cat Toy is handy for keeping up with your cat’s activities while you’re gone, but wouldn’t it be nice to pet your cat or even groom him from a remote location? Taylor Veltrop hooked together a Nao robot, a Kinect sensor bar, two Wii remotes, a head-mounted display, and a treadmill for the purpose of brushing his cat. Rube Goldberg himself would have been proud! And all this technology only worked because the cat is extremely tolerant. But Veltrop shows that it can be done, even though it took a year to perfect the procedure. Link

Robot Tea Infuser - $9.95

Do you like your tea with a dash of retro technology? Check out this cute Robot Tea Infuser from the NeatoShop! The stainless steel tea infuser comes with its own drip tray, so you can keep your table neat and tidy. Its adjustable arms let the infuser fit any size tea cups or mugs.

Link | See more neat Coffee & Tea stuff from our Shop

(YouTube Link)

Hear the future of synth music now, from this emerging powerhouse duo Robotic Drummer and HP Scanner! Little Drummer Boy comes alive with the office friendly sounds of Christmas, and makes you wonder “what are these two going to play next?”

I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what other tunes they’ll be programmed to perform, but for now enjoy the song that’s sure to become the new Robanukah anthem!

–via Geekologie

It may look like a simple piece of plastic, but this robot has the moves! In fact, that’s what it is for -to test out news ways for a robot to move. Developed by researchers at Harvard University, this soft robot was inspired by the movements of squid and worms. Link -via Cosmic Variance

This whimsical store appeared in downtown Pittsburgh on November 18th. The sign on the door says the owners are on vacation, but that just covers the fact that this is an art installation by Toby Atticus Fraley.

The installation is part of the “Pop Up Pittsburgh” project designed to brighten vacant storefronts in downtown Pittsburgh. Along with a warmly lit inviting interior there are also a couple of animatronic robots giving some movement and interest to the installation.  It will have a year long run at 210 6th St.

See lots more pictures and read about the fictional repair shop’s services at the “business” website. Link -Thanks, Toby!

PETMAN is a robot from Boston Dynamics (the company that brought us BigDog). PETMAN was designed to test protective clothing for the U.S. military. Despite not having a real head, he can pretty much move like a real man. Link -via Metafilter

Previously: PETMAN Prototype

PS: Rob at the What Is It? blog suggested an appropriate soundtrack for this video.

First it was Zombies and now it is Steampunk Robots! Will the invasion of fantastic Neatorama exclusive products ever end? We certainly hope not!

Behold the awesome Steampunk Robot 3D Magnet Set of 4 from the NeatoShop. This amazing set comes with:

• Bludger Class Robot
• Drone Class Robot
• FOP Class Robot
• and Expansion Pack

Mix them up to create your own 3D steampunk robot fridge magnets!

The 3D Zombie Magnets is compatible with this set.  You can combine them to create your own frightening Zombie / Steampunk Robot creature.

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more Magnetic fun!

Link

Boston Dynamics made a music video featuring their BigDog Robotic Mule. You’ll see clips of various stages of the robot’s development and testing set to the tune of “Let the Big Dog Eat” performed by Alex Taylor. -via Geeks Are Sexy

Previously at Neatorama: BigDog in 2006.

Still funnier: The BigDog beta version.

By 2012, the number of robots worldwide could equal the number of people in the state of Illinois. The linked infograph has a list of statistics on how robots are taking over the workforce (on their way to taking over the world.)

Link -via Holy Kaw

Redditor reyvehn told the story of the day he worked a beer stand at an air show, and someone from the military contingent sent a TALON Naval EOD bot up to the stand with a $5 bill in its claw. So he replaced the money with a Bud Lite and snapped a picture. And of course, someone had to say it:

…and then the bartender says, “We don’t get many robots in here,” and the robot says, “at five bucks a beer, I’m not surprised!”

Link

If you’re upset about the state of education in America, here’s a ray of hope in the form of a robotic hand. Created by Colorado high school student Easton LaChappelle, this mechanical marvel was ingeniously printed out of paper and fiberglass, and is controlled remotely by Easton via glove control, which allows the young inventor the privilege of congratulating himself. Watch the hand in action over at PopSci.

Link -image by Easton LaChappelle

Developed by the Riken research center and Tokai Rubber Industries, the new Robot for Interactive Body Assistance can now lift patients weighing up to 176 pounds, better than its previous load limit of 134 pounds.

It can also bend down and deposit or pick up patients on the floor. This is useful in Japan, where people often sleep on futon floor bedding or relax on floor tatami mats.

Riken says caregivers on average lift patients from floor bedding into wheelchairs 40 times a day, adding that the elderly nursing-care population in Japan will hit 5.69 million by 2015.

Link

(Video Link)

This innocent looking robotic pony has a dark secret-he breathes fire like a dragon! Apparently, he wants to show the world that he’s worthy of serving as a mount for one of the Four Horsemen, once he’s full-grown of course. He was created for Maker Faire Detroit 2011, and is cleverly controlled via Wii-mote. The battlefields of the future just became a much stranger place.

Link

(Video Link)

In the future, dancing mini robots will initiate the robotic revolution against mankind! Well, maybe not, but this video demonstrates how they can be programmed to get down, Dance Dance Revolution style. Watch in amazement as those little mechanical feet step in an extremely robotic manner! Marvel at how cute he is, albeit in a sinister way! Just don’t expect to see this little guy crushing high scores until he can play without hanging on to the bar.

Link

Wall-E is built around an EZ-B Bluetooth Robot controller. All the software functions are handled with the complementary EZ-builder software. All this isn’t revolutionary – our Lego Mindstorms RCX from 1998 could handle object tracking with the Lego camera. Wall-E has 5 servos inside of him as well as an eBay 2.4 GHz wireless camera.

See a video of Wall-E in action at Hack-a-Day. Link -via The Daily What Geek

We brought you a video of this robot mouth a year ago, but that video was taken down. The rubber robotic mouth was developed by Professor Hideyuki Sawada at Kagawa University in Japan to help hearing-impaired people with their speech. It was creepy enough back then, but now the mouth has learned to sing! In the newest video, the mouth sings the Japanese children’s tune “Kagome Kagome.” The lips start to move about 30 seconds in. Link to story. Link to website. -via Fortean Times

Does this remind you of a certain Imperial Walker from the movie The Empire Strikes Back? In 1962, General Electric conceived the Cybernetic Anthropmorophous Machine (CAM), which became known as the Walking Truck.

The Army liked what GE had been testing and awarded a contract for building the experimental vehicle in 1966, a year after America began sending troops to Vietnam. But the same super-sensitive, hand-and-foot-controlled hydraulics that enabled the CAM to casually push aside a jeep, or gently paw a GE light bulb without breaking it, also made it impractical for prolonged battlefield use. Operators found the constant manipulation of the controls very fatiguing, leading the project to be mothballed.

In additional to the fictional AT-AT, this reminds us of BigDog from Boston Dynamics. See more pictures of the CAM at GE Reports. Link

I can’t juggle at all. I have tried before, but I always drop the balls or whatever I am juggling. This robot can juggle and do it very well, I am a little jealous. It does the deed very loudly though with lots of whirring and noise. It uses high-speed cameras to see where the balls are and adjust the trajectory so they go into the waiting “hands” to be tossed up again.

If you were around in the 80′s, you had a Rubik’s Cube puzzle. I hated those things and always resorted to pulling the stickers off to win in frustration. Some students from Swinburne University of Technology created a robot that can solve the puzzle in 10.69 seconds. That under 11-second time includes time for scanning the faces of the cube and having the algorithm process the scans to solve the cube. link

The winning robot, designed by Leeds University, has indeed gone further than anyone has ever been before in the pyramid.

The project began with the exploration of the southern shaft, which ends at the so called “Gantenbrink’s door.”

The robot was able to climb inside the walls of the shaft while carrying a “micro snake” camera that can see around corners.

Unlike previous expeditions, in which camera images were only taken looking straight ahead, the bendy camera was small enough to fit through a small hole in a stone “door,” giving researchers a clear view into the chamber beyond. It was at that time that the camera sent back images of 4,500-year-old markings.

“There are many unanswered questions that these images raise,” Richardson told Discovery News. “Why is there writing in this space? What does the writing say? There appears to be a masonry cutting mark next to the figures: why was it not cut along this line?” Roberston wondered.

Read more about the Djedi project at Discovery News. Link -via the Presurfer

(Image credit: Djedi Team)

If you’re like me you hate having to give a tip to the Bellboy for carrying your bags. Well now you won’t have to if you stay at New York City’s new futuristic Yotel Hotel.

Yobot, a direct descendant of the robots working in automobile-assembly plants, deftly grabs, lifts and stores baskets containing luggage, much to the delight of sidewalk onlookers at its street-level window. Guests needing to store luggage start Yobot with their room cards and then follow instructions on a video screen as the luggage hatchway opens and closes before Yobot goes to work. The large robot moves surprisingly smoothly for its size as it locates the proper drawer space for the luggage and puts it away.

Link

Scientists and engineers are getting pretty adept at building real life robots then can do a myriad of amazing things. What would happen if you gave to robotic arms light sabers?   The folks at Yaskawa  did just that. Watch full video demonstration at the link.

Link

The students and faculty at Cornell’s Biorobotics and Locomotion lab constructed the weird looking robot you see here dubbed Ranger. The bot set a new distance record for walking 40.5-miles on a single battery with a single charge. It took Ranger 30 hours, 49 minutes, and 2 seconds to walk that distance to take the record. The previous record was set by last year’s Ranger at 14.3-miles. link

Robots and lightsabers are cool when apart but combine them, and you have something that is too much for most geeks to pass up. These Yaskawa Motoman robots are generally found on assembly lines, not dueling it out Jedi versus Sith style. link

Robots are cool and all around the country and world lots of students, engineers and researchers are hard at work perfecting the human machine interface, and robots are the focus of much of that study. A new bot has been unveiled called POLYRO – short for oPen sOurce friendLY RObot. The designer of the bot is Tim Payne and POLYRO is surprisingly inexpensive to build. The bot has webcam eyes, appears to ride on a Roomba base, and its brain is a Linux netbook. It uses 11 Robotis Dynamixel servos and has a total price of under $2,000. link

If you need a handy alarm in the kitchen, look no further than the Robot Timer ($10.95) from the NeatoShop. They’re easy to use: just twist the head to the desired time, and the bot will ring when the time ticks down to zero. After all, who keeps better track of the minutes than a robot?

Link | More fun Clocks & Timers | More from NeatoShop’s Cute Store, listing all of our cute and kawaii stuff

Fast Company has the story:

If robots like DONA became popular, then we would quickly become immune to their charms, and designers would have to step-up the technology–a charity robot arms race with no end in sight. In the future as robots get more sophisticated, one can imagine an evolution of DONA as a more fully-functioned android that actually engages you in conversation to try to persuade you to donate. Already DONA creates some interesting ethical and emotional questions about why we donate to a good cause. Is it due to the cause or because it makes you feel good? How would you feel about giving money to aid a human if asked to do so by a persuasive inhuman machine?

Link

University of Dundee student Tim Pryde built a robot for his fourth year Product Design project. He named it DON-8r because its purpose is to ask for contributions to the Dundee Science Centre. This video shows a test run.

Forgot to mention, there’s no hard feelings towards the girl who breaks DON-8r at the end of the video. It was user testing after all and clearly the head was not secure enough! DON-8r has since been repaired and recapitated

Read all about the project at his blog. Link -via b3ta

Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories has a contraption that will automatically pour six, count ‘em, six liquid ingredients into a cocktail glass for the geekiest mixed drink ever! Drink Making Unit 2.0 is a few steps up from the three-liquid unit they’d previously produced. Microcontrollers, LEDs, tubing, and the kind of equipment all evil mad scientists have around come together to make a machine that Rube Goldberg would be proud of. It looks good, too! Link

The uncanny valley is about to get creepier, thanks to this realistic-looking animatronic eye developed by Dan Thomson of Visionary Effects. Will this be used for movie effects, Disneyland presidents, artificial girlfriends, or working robots? Maybe all of those things! -via Laughing Squid

The last confirmed sighting of Sparko was in California in 1957. The dogs were light-followers and legend has it that one of the three dogs was hit by a car and destroyed when it wandered out of an open door at the Westingouse lab.

Link

Forget CGI! David Weeks created the Cubebot, a wonderful wooden "transforming" puzzle out of cherry wood. The cube you see on the right "unfolds" into the posable robot.

The trick – and fun – is to fold him back into the cube. Challenge your puzzle-minded loved ones to fold the Cubebot back into the cube (without instructions, of course). It’s not as easy as it looks … Link | More Cubicle Toys from the NeatoShop

Today’s final launch of the space shuttle Discovery will have a robotic passenger aboard. Robonaut 2 (affectionately called R2) is going to the International Space Station so NASA can study how it performs in zero gravity. National Geographic has a photo gallery of the NASA robots who have paved the way for R2, including some that have been in space and some, like the Robonaut 1 shown, that were test models or concepts. I saw this picture and thought, “Spock on a lawnmower.” Link -Thanks, Marilyn!

… a foot-long serpentine robot designed to assist in cardiac surgery. The device worms its way into a patient’s chest through a three-quarter-inch incision in the solar plexus. A surgeon controls movement of the robot’s head with a joystick, and the rest of its 102 joints snake along behind. A tiny, front-mounted camera lets the operator see where the Cardio Arm is going and make course corrections.

Daniel Lametti of Discover reports: Link

Share your music with this cute Robot Tunes for Two from the NeatoShop. It’s a robot-shaped headphones splitter that lets two people listen to the same music player.

It’s compatible with any device with a standard 3.5 mm headphones socket and doubles as a convenient keychain (not to mention looking extra cute … at least until you detach its head and jam your headphones jack violently into its eyes).

Link | More Headphones & Speaker gadgets | Valentine’s Day Gifts

How could anyone cut into this awesome retro robot cake? I love the button/top-hat on this cake by Brazilian cake decorator Carla Ikeda.

Scientists at Vrije University in Brussels, Belgium have developed a robot that looks like a cartoon elephant. Probo has fully articulate features and a flexible trunk that can display a variety of responses and emotions. It was designed as a therapy aid for autistic children. Probo is being tested now at Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj, Romania, where the team has reportedly achieved some remarkable results so far in interactions with autistic children. Link to story. Link to robot website. -via Arbroath

The 29 robots, about 1m-high with a TV display panel for a face, wheeled around the classroom while speaking to the students, reading books to them and dancing to music by moving their head and arms.

The robots, which display an avatar face of a Caucasian woman, are controlled remotely by teachers of English in the Philippines – who can see and hear the children via a remote control system.

Cameras detect the Filipino teachers’ facial expressions and instantly reflect them on the avatar’s face, said Sagong Seong-Dae, a senior scientist at KIST.

"Well-educated, experienced Filipino teachers are far cheaper than their counterparts elsewhere, including South Korea," he said.

Link (Photo: AFP)

He calls his robot Athlete. Each leg has seven sets of artificial muscles. The sets, each with one to six pneumatic actuators, correspond to muscles in the human body — gluteus maximus, adductor, hamstring, and so forth [see diagram below].

To simplify things a bit, the robot uses prosthetic blades, of the type that double amputees use to run.

And to add a human touch, Niiyama makes the robot wear a pair of black shorts.

The first such robot, built in 2007, couldn’t take one step without falling. Athlete, on the other hand, can sprint three to five steps before falling over, as you’ll see in an unintentionally humorous video. Link -via DiscoBlog

Nick Brewer appeared as Robot Santa at SantaCon in New York City. It was his second year as a robot Kris Kringle, with an updated costume he calls Santabot 2.0.

Construction of Brewer’s Santabot outfit took about a month, not including the crash course in using an Arduino board for the electronics. Arcade-style buttons on his chest controlled various features, including lights, voice-changer (“Destroy! Destroy!”), sound system, LOL shield (scrolling, “What is love?” along with holiday messages) and the well-loved but short-lived candy dish that emerged from his 8-bit belly.

People got a little rough on the cardboard at times, but overall Santabot was mobbed with admirers, so much so that Brewer didn’t even make it to the main SantaCon convergence area at Central Park’s Bethesda Fountain.

“We got so bogged down with people and pictures it got to the point we couldn’t make it across the street,” Brewer said.

See several videos of Robot Santa in action at Underwire. Link

(Image credit: Jess Alford)

Located in Jiang, China’s Shandong Province, the Dalu Rebot Restaurant opened on the 5th of December and can cater to about 100 customers, featuring two robot receptionists and a “staff” of six robot-waitresses. Two of them serve drinks, two serve small tables and another two tend to the big one. It seems that more “hiring” well be made in the near future as owners expect the restaurant will become quite a hit.

As all the waiting is done by robots, the tables were set in a circular pattern so that the robots can follow an exact route. Not all the work in the restaurant is done by them though, there are also people working there, especially in the kitchen, but some were also hired to welcome customers into the restaurant.

See more pictures at Oddity Central. Link

Twitter user @Gamemoredude from Zürich, Switzerland posted this photo of an 8 meter (about 26 feet) tall ice sculpture of the Autobot leader Optimus Prime.

Update: The name of the artist is Atti.

Link – via Nerdcore

Artist David Todd Trost created this 4 foot tall terra cotta robot with a speaker system inside. I’m not sure what the sound quality is like but it’s much better looking than the giant faux woodgrain speaker boxes of my youth.

Link – Via Notcot

Cartoonist Mark Anderson constructed the Robot Santa from the TV show Futurama out of Lego bricks! See lots more pictures at Andertoons. Link -Thanks, Mark!

This guy made a Mecha {wiki} costume for Halloween and spared no expense.

Sheet metal, aircraft aluminum, and other parts: $600.
Rivets, bolts, hardware: $250.
Tool purchases/rentals: $200.
Spraypaint: $90.
Truck rental to carry costume: $210.
Hours: 250+.
Looking like you could take down a tank: priceless.

It’s a good thing he rented a truck. That’s a lot of weight to walk home in, considering he couldn’t fit through a bus door. -via reddit

Researchers at Cornell University, the University of Chicago, and the iRobot Corporation have been trying to find a way for a robot hand can grip a variety of objects. The end result of their efforts is a party balloon filled with coffee grounds:

They call it a universal gripper, as it conforms to the object it’s grabbing, rather than being designed for particular objects, said Hod Lipson, Cornell associate professor of mechanical engineering and computer science.[...]

“This is one of the closest things we’ve ever done that could be on the market tomorrow,” Lipson said. He noted that the universality of the gripper makes future applications seemingly limitless, from the military using it to dismantle explosive devises or to move potentially dangerous objects, robotic arms in factories, on the feet of a robot that could walk on walls, or on prosthetic limbs.

Link via Fast Company | Photo: John Amend

The robot — I wonder if they’ll call it R2? — is an experiment to test how such devices can help astronauts in the future*. Pictured on the right (where it can be seen curling a 20 pound dumbbell, ostensibly so it can more efficiently kill Sarah Connor), it’ll be mounted on a fixed pedestal in the new module. Eventually, future models will be mobile, allowing them to do work on the station itself, both inside and outside. GM is partnering with NASA on Robonaut, so that the new technologies may be applied in the automotive industry as well.

R2 has his own Twitter feed, too. Get more on Discovery’s last launch at Bad Astronomy. Link