Just a concept now (although one that can be demonstrated), buildings of the future might be put together by flying robots. Which sounds like a great idea, but I’d still want a real human building inspector! -via Geeks Are Sexy

If you’ve ever wanted to step inside a mesh screened box and use pneumatic arms to pummel the hell out of your buddy, who is also in a mesh box with pneumatic arms, then Hammacher Schlemmer has just made your life worth living.

Called the Bionic Bopper boxing robots, with a mere $17,000 price tag, this is what Rock Em Sock Em Robots would have looked like if they’d been designed by the guys from Jackass.

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If you’ve never thought about describing a robotic limb as sleek and sexy then you’ve never met Handroid. The latest production of Japan-based ITK, Handroid is a five fingered robot hand that moves smoothly using cables attached to motors in the forearm rather than bulky servos embedded in each digit. That design allows Handroid to be lightweight (just 740g) as well as move in a decidedly human manner. Currently, Handroid is remotely operated using a glove, allowing you to flex each robot finger as easily as you do your own.

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Where’s Wall-E? is a step beyond Where’s Waldo?! This poster, created by Richard Sargent, features a crowd of robots that should be familiar to you from movies and TV. Can you find Wall-E among the many? Hopewell Studios is giving away a print to the person who can name the most of the robots. You can see a larger version, and get a numbered key for the contest, at their website.  Link -via The Daily What Geek

If you thought the morning zoo crew on your local radio station were about as entertaining as robots, there may be more truth in that then you thought. One station in San Antonio has “hired” an artificially intelligent DJ named “Denise”  to talk to listeners. Is this the end of the traditional radio DJ?

Meet Denise. She is not a real person, but instead, a personal assistant conjured up by Guile 3D Studio. She used to be a AI secretary, starting Aug 24th, she’ll be promoted to AI DJ at KROV in San Antonio. Denise cost a meager $200 when she was “hired” as a personal assistant to answer phone calls, Google things for people, check emails and make appointments. You know, the same kind of things you have your intern do after you’ve bought him for $200. It was radio personality Dominique Garcia‘s idea to promote Denise to DJ.

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Researchers have studied the curious effect humanoid robots have on the human brain which is isn’t sure how to process a mechanical “person.” The closer the robot is to looking human the more uncanny it is, however robots that don’t resemble people are fine.  So basically they have come to the conclusion that robots are creepy.

The actual “valley” refers to a precipitous drop in “likeability” as onscreen characters and humanoid robots step too far towards being human-like. As in, we enjoy Pixar’s Wall-E and Nintendo’s Mario, but we get the heeby jeebies from the ultra-realistic faces of The Polar Express or the upcoming Tintin movie.

So far, the phenomenon has been described entirely anecdotally, but an international team of researchers, led by Ayse Pinar Saygin of the University of California, San Diego, wanted to find out if the sensation was actually caused by something deep within our brains.

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Before I left my day job, I had plenty of “I quit” fantasies. Mostly, they involved walking away from an explosion a la every major action star ever, but I can’t say at any point I imagined being a robot. But that’s what’s happening here and in a new series of videos by deviantART:

Have you ever wanted to quit work because your boss is a jerk or because you wanted to dedicate your time to something you’re truly passionate about? That’s the inspiration behind our newest project.
DeviantART has teamed up with a stellar production crew, some very talented actors, and some awesome deviants to create a series of short videos that we all wish could happen IRL. Watch above as our overworked, underpaid, and unappreciated employees quit work and show their bosses who they really are!

THere are also “Be a Panda” and “Be a Wizard” videos up, and t-shirts to boot.

deviantART via Laughing Squid

This amazing 96″ R2D2 is made from cardboard and duct tape and some spray paint. If you want to see it in person and you happen to be near Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada, as it’s about to be displayed in the “Dr. StrangeLen or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Make the Art”exhibit.

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When I was a kid I made spaceships and little robots that fell apart when I played with them out of my Lego sets. Now in an ever continuing trend of cool yet useful things people are making with Legos, designer “Mexican Viking” has made a Lego Robot that can make pancakes.

“Ninety-nine percent Lego, 1 percent ketchup bottle.” Pancake Bot is made entirely of Legos with the exception of the Pancake Batter Dispenser Unit that includes a pair of ketchup bottles glued together, an air compressor and, of course, the pancake batter. Pancake Bot is a 3 axis CNC with a moveable bridge driven by a Lego Mindstorms NXT brick. Another brick controls the air compressor. If the two-axis movements of the dispenser makes Pancake Bot seem like a kind of dripping Etch-a-Sketch, that’s because the program used is a variant of Etch-A-NXT. Part of Michael Gasperi’s Extreme NXT, Etch-A-NXT controls two motors to create Etch-A-Sketch-like bi-directional movements.

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If you’re planning a trip based solely on geek culture soon, Oddee’s list of 10 geek bars and restaurants should be a great resource for dining and drinking options. My favorite is The Hajime Restaurant in Bangkok, where robots serve as waiters and entertainers.

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Robots are getting closer and closer to the day they can beat us at a thumb war. The folks at Ishikawa Oku laboratory in Japan have developed a high speed robot hand that has more dexterity then the average human. Some day someone is going to be all of these advances in robotics together and make one awesome droid.

The video from Tokyo’s Ishikawa Oku laboratory explains all of the science and technology behind this incredible robot hand. It uses a hand with only three fingers to perform its feats. This coupled with high-speed sensors allow it to perform stuff that were previously hard for robots to do. I like how it can actually throw a ball onto a target. With that dexterity and accuracy, I’m sure we’ll soon have robot soldiers.

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For those of you that treat your smart phone and tablet like it’s your best friend, you may now be able to get one step closer to having an actual companion. Google and the company iRobot have teamed up to create the AVA robot which rolls on wheels and uses a tablet computer as its “head.”

AVA is a pedestal shaped bot on wheels which can autonomously navigate itself through a crowd without breaking anyone’s ankles. While containing a great deal of its own functionality, AVA’s head is a tablet computer. Any tablet computer. iPad2, Galaxy, you name it – iRobot claims they want AVA to be “head agnostic”.

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They say that one day robots and computers will be able to do things better than humans can. This pair of flying machines can already play tennis better than I can. Granted that’s not saying much on my part, but still the video at the link is really impressive.

Mark Muller, Sergei Lupashin and Raffaello D’Andrea worked as a team in ETH Zurich’s Flying Machine Arena for an experiment which is part of the project by ETH Zurich. Quadrocopter can play Tennis and they play really well vertically , that’s pretty amazing.

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Archeologists have used robots to uncover some new and strange symbols inside an unexplored portion of the Great Pyramid of Giza. The robots where able to fit inside a space that is too small people to reach.

“The big question is the purpose of these tunnels,” he added. “There are architectural explanations, symbolic explanations, religious explanations — even ones relating to the alignment of the stars — but the final word on them is yet to be written. The challenge is that no human can fit inside these channels so the only way to do this exploration is with robots.”

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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.

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We are one step closer to having that maid from The Jetsons as this robot, named Luna will be available for around 3K. It sounds more like a personal computer as users will be able to upgrade software and create unique programs for their specific needs.

Luna has seven Luna Expansion Ports (LXP) each with its own USB, 12V supply, 5V supply, and mounting holes. You can hack on your own hardware or, hopefully, third party developers will begin selling modular hardware that you can purchase and plug in with little difficulty.

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Fans of science fiction master Isaac Asimov’s classic Foundation Series (or “I, Robot”) are familiar with his “Three Laws of Robotics.”

A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

But as we get closer to having actual artificially intelligent robots, would these laws really work or even be practical?

The Three Laws were a fail-safe built into robots in Asimov’s fiction. These laws, which robots had to obey, protected humans from being hurt and made robots obedient. This concept helped form the real world belief among robotics engineers that they could create intelligent machines that would coexist peacefully with humanity.

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When I was a kid we had to make do with a Light Bright to entertain us. Now it looks like we are one step closer to children having a robotic, artificially intelligent play friend. Which will be perfect for the child with no friends.

Visual pattern recognition is an important part of human intelligence. It’s a complex process, requiring parallel processing of different types of information such as the shape, color, and contrast of a person’s face. If the robots of the future are going to be able to imitate–or improve upon–our behavior they’re going to need to be pretty adept at pattern recognition. The Nao program for pattern recognition only sees in 2D, but for the purposes of the card game it’s enough.

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Ottawa artist Dan Austin makes awesome robots out of old appliances and other recycled bits of this and that. On the left is Kenmore, who is built from a floor polisher and a flower pot, among other things. On the right is Hunter, who is a 6-foot tall floor lamp! His “tentacles” are actually adjustable lights. You can also meet Betsy, Norm-Al, Bell, Bolivar, the Kaiser-Bots, and more in Austin’s Flickr set. Link -Thanks, Vivian!

After Sunday’s show, Schroeder was called up on stage, ostensibly so the cast, crowd and the robots involved in the play could sing happy birthday, but instead of receiving the birthday song — and prompted by a robot — Schroeder pulled out a ring and proposed to his girlfriend of six years (watch video below).

“It was my great grandmother’s sister’s ring,” said Schroeder. “She had to take off the costume ring she was wearing for the play, but I was lucky because it fit perfectly.”

And of course, O’Keefe said yes.

After which the robots serenaded the happy couple. The proposal was captured on video. Link -via Fark

The Gadget Show staged a foot race among various toy robots from all over the world in Manchester, England. The robots were controlled by audience members, which led to utter chaos. Some robots eventually made it to the finish line. See the whole thing at Technabob. Link

Hardcore homemade robots will go head-to-head in a fight to the finish at Combots Cup V, the annual championship for combat robots. On October 23rd and 24th in San Mateo, California, robots from one to 220 pounds will compete for a total of $3500 in prize money and champion bragging rights!

SEE heavyweight fighting robot behemoths like Last Rites and Sewer Snake wipe the walls with each other inside our custom built bulletproof arena!

THRILL to all the good parts of a NASCAR crash without all that pesky danger to human life! All the excitement of monster trucks, but up close and extremely personal!

FLAME THROWERS! SPINNING BLADES OF DOOM! HYPER-PSI STEEL FLIPPERS OF NASTINESS!

Also, it’s educational for the kids, but you don’t have to tell them that. You’ll also be able to speak with the people who design and build the robots -and you have a combat robot, you’ll want to enter! Link -Thanks, Simone!

(Image courtesy of Combots.net)

This robot interacts and forms bonds with people as he responds to non-verbal cues such as body movements. Researchers see potential for the use of robots to assist autistic children or to prepare children for surgery.

When Nao is sad, he hunches his shoulders forward and looks down. When he’s happy, he raises his arms, angling for a hug. When frightened, Nao cowers, and he stays like that until he is soothed with some gentle strokes on his head.

Nothing out of the ordinary, perhaps, except that Nao is a robot — the world’s first that can develop and display emotions. He can form bonds with the people he meets depending on how he is treated. The more he interacts with someone, the more Nao learns a person’s moods and the stronger the bonds become.

While Japanese researchers have led advances in robot engineering, many European roboticists have instead focused on studying how robots will interact with humans. Kerstin Dautenhahn, a professor of artificial intelligence at the University of Hertfordshire, has developed Kaspar, a robot in the shape of a two-year-old boy, which can make facial expressions and play games such as peek-a-boo. She has also set up a flat in Hatfield, where a home-help robot interacts with volunteers, to study longer-term relationships between people and machines.

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Would you like to have giant robot arms with which to crush your enemies? Okay, that’s a dumb question. Of course you would! Etsy seller giantcardboardrobots makes them:

Each arm is approximately 5′ 6″ in length (about 3 feet longer from where your hands will grab), 9″ x 9″ in width. The arms allow for both 90° bending motion in the elbows as well as 360° rotation of the wrist. The arms break down into easily assembled component parts. Disassembled, both arms fit into a 30″ x 18″ x 6″ box.

Link via Gizmodo | Photo: giantcardboardrobots

[YouTube - Link]

There’s a German robot named Robotinho that cruises around on 4 linked Roombas, operating as a tour guide at the Deutsches Museum Bonn. I would be terrified to follow it around from exhibit to exhibit, as its awkward facial muscles twitched into unnatural expressions and it spewed out museum facts. The robot apocalypse is upon us, and it’s riding on Roombas.

Via BotJunkie

Robots in industry are pretty much the coolest things ever, from car-assembling robots to dishwashing robots, there’s nothing quite like automation. Take this robot for example. Input disorganized salami and the robot will produce beautiful, orderly rows of salami, keeping track of the status of the salami. Considering how important salami is, I’m amazed we ever trusted anyone other than robots to sort it.

– via mentalfloss

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by nmiller.

Link via Popular Science | Photo: Xinhua/Zhao Jun

Many people find spiders terrifying, but they have a convenient shape for a robot as many legs radiating from a central core gives a mobile robot stability. Wired has a gallery of 13 robotic spiders built for all kinds of purposes from art to war to toys. Pictured is the Military Micro-Spider Bot, created for spying on the enemy. Link

The robot detects changes in its surroundings, decides if they are relevant, and then takes pictures with its on board camera. It can query nearby people for information, and it uses internet searches to further round out its understanding. If something appears newsworthy, the robot will even write a short article and publish it to the web.

Link via Gizmodo | Photo: Charlie Catlett

Photo: GM/NASA

This week’s developments in technological advances, like General Motors and NASA’s Robonaut2 (cleverly and deviously nicknamed R2), and Google’s decision to team up with the NSA got GeekDad‘s Curtis Silver wondering about truth mirroring the best of science fiction- and its predictions of an eventual machine takeover that will plunge humanity into mass enslavement.

While I was writing this I read an article about how Google has teamed with the NSA in order to help tighten up Google’s infrastructure when it comes to cyber-security. The layman would view that partnership as a natural evolutionary response to fight off the ever increasing cyber-attacks on companies such as Google. The slightly paranoid individual might view that as a sure sign big brother is looking over your shoulder. The slightly paranoid geeky individual simply views that as Skynet in the making.

Curtis cites the sci-fi classics Hyperion by Dan Simmons, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein, and The Ship Who Sang by Anne McAffrey as prime examples “to uncover what other possible technological threats we might face in the future.”  Read the article, and tell us what other stories might become reality soon.

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The Bristol Robotics Laboratory at the University of Bristol, UK has built a robot that senses obstacles not with cameras, but sensitive whiskers at the front end:

Researchers at the University of Bristol in England hope to deploy the poodle-size ‘bot in search-and-rescue missions where vision is impaired, like in mines or smoky rooms. Its 18 whiskers move back and forth five times per second. When a whisker bends, a sensor on its shaft signals software to orient the ’bot toward the object. Whiskers close to an object move less, while those farther away make wide, sweeping motions to establish the object’s exact edges.

Link | Bristol Robotics Laboratory

Photo: flickr user Ang & Nick

Botropolis (a robot-themed blog) has pictures of 10 Jack-O-Lanterns modeled to look like robots. Pictured above is Punk-O-Tron, a work by flickr user Ang & Nick. Others are inspired by Transformers, Star Wars, and Short Circuit.

Link via Gizmodo

Researchers at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne programmed robots to move around an area, looking for particular rings designated as food, and avoid others designated as poison. Whenever they found food, they were programmed to flash a light. This light attracted the other robots, leading them toward the food source. When the program was altered to give the robots a measure of autonomy, they gradually ceased to flash their lights and alert their competitors that they had found food. Here’s the abstract of the journal article:

Reliable information is a crucial factor influencing decision-making, and thus fitness in all animals. A common source of information comes from inadvertent cues produced by the behavior of conspecifics. Here we use a system of experimental evolution with robots foraging in an arena containing a food source to study how communication strategies can evolve to regulate information provided by such cues. Robots could produce information by emitting blue light, which other robots could perceive with their cameras. Over the first few generations, robots quickly evolved to successfully locate the food, while emitting light randomly. This resulted in a high intensity of light near food, which provided social information allowing other robots to more rapidly find the food. Because robots were competing for food, they were quickly selected to conceal this information. However, they never completely ceased to produce information. Detailed analyses revealed that this somewhat surprising result was due to the strength of selection in suppressing information declining concomitantly with the reduction in information content. Accordingly, a stable equilibrium with low information and considerable variation in communicative behaviors was attained by mutation-selection. Because a similar co-evolutionary process should be common in natural systems, this may explain why communicative strategies are so variable in many animal species.

Although not directly related to the flesh-eating robot program, I’m sure that robots able to use humans for fuel would prefer to lie about their intentions.

Link via OhGizmo!

A rescue robot that picks up victims and takes them inside of itself. What could possibly go wrong?

The Robocue is operated by the Tokyo Fire Department and used to extract people from areas where rescue workers can’t go safely. It then uses pincers to pull a person on to a conveyor belt and inside its protective walls. Video at the link.

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The three robots are the Talon, a small, manoeuvrable machine with thermal-image cameras; the Black Max, which is similar to a quad bike and has a high-pressure hose, and the Brokk 90, which is a heavy-duty digger that removes debris.

The robots, manufactured by QinetiQ, went into service in London yesterday. Link -via Unique Daily

A human-robot co-existence society could emerge by 2030, says Chen in his paper. Already iRobot’s Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner and Scooba floor cleaner are a part of more than 3 million American households. The next generation robots will be more sophisticated and are expected to provide services such as nursing, security, housework and education.

These machines will have the ability to make independent decisions and work reasonably unsupervised. That’s why, says Chen, it may be time to decide who regulates robots.

If it was up to you, what laws would you program into robots?

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This start-up proposes to use robots to carve the lunar surface dust into patterns that could serve as advertisements. I’m skeptical due to the sheer scale of the task — the number of robots necessary over a very long period of time. Still, people said that we’d never have bacon flavored vodka, but scientists and engineers overcame the obstacles. Anyway, we know from an episode of The Tick that it can be done.

Link via Popular Science

Although I approve of striking a blow against our would-be overlords, this move seems to be needlessly antagonistic:

Japan’s legions of robots, the world’s largest fleet of mechanized workers, are being idled as the country suffers its deepest recession in more than a generation as consumers worldwide cut spending on cars and gadgets. At a large Yaskawa Electric factory on the southern Japanese island of Kyushu, where robots once churned out more robots, a lone robotic worker with steely arms twisted and turned, testing its motors for the day new orders return. Its immobile co-workers stood silent in rows, many with arms frozen in midair. They could be out of work for a long time. Japanese industrial production has plummeted almost 40 percent and with it, the demand for robots.

It’s only a matter of time before rioting, unemployed robots kill us off, or take over and enslave us to work in their mines. Better go get some insurance now.

Link via Geekologie

Artist Brian Despain is a fantastic painter with a unique subject – robots. In this video, Roq La Rue Gallery’s Kristen Anderson and Kenny Montana interview Despain about his art, his inspiration and why he’s so passionate about robots.

– via boingboing

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by whitespace.

In the “AnnaTheRed’s Bento Factory” blog you can find instructions on how to make your own Wall-E sandwich using wheat bread, turkey, mayonnaise, cheese and blueberries.

Link – Botropolis via Gizmodo

Are you tired of recycling without any real pay off? Perhaps you just need a new method of recycling. The Tin Can Robot kit can turn any old 12 ounce beverage can into an awesomely adorable robot. I don’t know about you, but as soon as I’m done with my 6 pack of Dr. Peppers, I’ll soon have a new collection of best friends.

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What do robot programmers do when they get bored? Apparently this one decided to transform the robot into a fun(?) ride.

Link [YouTube] – via Pusha