Filed under: Robots

It’s official: Dr. Trung doesn’t have a day job. He’s been tweaking his fembot “Aiko” for almost a year now, and his latest creation is a rather amazing hand that can be used for Aiko or for human augmentation. The last time we saw them the hand was a clumsy golf glove affair, but now Trung has slimmed it down to more feminine, creepo proportions, while keeping the five movable fingers and pretty stunning dexterity for what seems to be a primarily individual effort on the part of Dr. Trung. The next step seems to be feedback sensors, and we still haven’t seen this bolted onto Aiko, but we like where this project is headed. Video is after the break.

Continue reading New Aiko hand sheds the clumsy glove, attains exciting new levels of creepiness

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Robots

The Nervous Squirrel’s Furby Gurdy (version 2) isn’t the first music maker we’ve seen that’s superior understood when viewed during an out-of-body experience, but it’s certainly one of the strangest. The circuit bent Furby sequencer, which is linked to a Korg SQ-10 in the demonstration vid after the break, combines centuries-old musical methods with some of the strangest characters to ever grace planet Earth. We could talk for hours on end and still not do this thing justice, so just click through and mash play to see what we’re referring to. We’re warning you, though — we haven’t seen anything this weird since Smash Mouth’s lead singer showed up at an Intel press event.

[Via Hack-A-Day]

Continue reading Video: Furby Gurdy makes “music,” trips you out

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Filed under: Robots

We’re not even going to front — we had all but forgotten about Erector’s Spykee. Granted, it didn’t do itself any favors by showing off at CES and then doing nothing for the next seven months, but we digress. If a pre-order page on Amazon is to be believed, the Spykee Spy Robot should be released on October 15th. It’s sporting a hefty $299.99 price tag and a recommended age of 8-years and up, but we’ll need to see some actual shipment notifications later this fall before we really get our hopes up. C’mon Erector, don’t let us, um, down.

[Via I4U News]

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Filed under: Robots

VIA might be ditching its traditional motherboard business, but it looks like its not wasting any time in stepping up its efforts to get its more specialized boards and chipsets into as many devices as possible, and it’s now taken advantage of the Taipei International Robot Show to show off their potential for robotics. Leading the way is Lynxmotion’s Johnny 5 robot above (yes, that’s actually its name), which has been outfitted with VIA’s new EPIA P700 board and VX800 unified chipset just for the show. That, VIA says, offers a whole host of advantages over other systems, including “far easier” software development. Of course, VIA also sees plenty of potential beyond hobby kits, with it also showing off an EPIA Mini-ITX-based version of the Vecna Battlefield Extraction-Assist Robot (or BEAR), and it touting the benefits of its Pico-ITX platform for all sorts of “extremely space constrained robotics designs.”

[Via Far East Gizmos]

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Filed under: Robots

Industrial robots are huge, stupid, and dangerous. Walk between an automated welder and the SUV it’s assembling and you’ll find yourself fused to the frame, destined to sit unwanted at the back corner of some dealer’s lot. But, keeping bots and humans separated on an assembly line isn’t always practical. Enter ARoS, a machine that’s not only capable of working safely with people, but being totally condescending while doing it! In a demonstration video it repeatedly tells its hapless helper how incompetent he’s, then, after putting on one lousy nut itself, states “I enjoyed your help!” We figure he says that to all the meat-bags, but you can see and decide for yourself after the break.

[Via Digg]

Continue reading Bossy assembly robot states you’re doing it wrong

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Filed under: Robots

We’ve seen methods for hooking house plants up with their own Twitter account, but there’s hardly anything more satisfying that building a robot to read back all those feeds from the thousands of people you’re undoubtedly following. Ganzbot is a decidedly low-budget robot that relies on an Arduino Decima to control the head actions and a USB cable to receive up-to-date status information. Have a look at the innards as well as a few words being spoken just after the jump.

[Via MAKE]

Continue reading Video: Ganzbot reads Twitter feeds aloud, looks fashionably low-rate

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Filed under: Robots

As we’ve seen, snake-like robots have long since move beyond the realm of nightmares into a frightening reality, and they just seem to keep on getting more and more plentiful. This latest one comes to us from UK-based OC Robotics, and has the notable distinction of being just a half-inch in diameter and a full 24 inches long, which is apparently just the ticket the US Department of Defense was looking for (it’s currently testing the bot). Like other similar bots, this one boasts a camera and tool on its tip, and it can be operated using a joystick, which actually controls each of the independent “vertebrae” that makes up the arm. As you might have guessed, the company is already hard at work on even longer versions of the bot, but if you’re not willing to wait for that, you can apparently put in an order for one of its current models right now.

[Via Crave]

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Filed under: Robots

Ask any animation modeler about the “uncanny valley,” and you’re sure to get at least a grimace, if not a groan. Stated term describes the long-standing barrier which refers to the perception that “animation looks less realistic as it approaches human likeness.” Image Metrics is hoping that a newfangled approach used to create Emily (pictured) will finally grant animations to look more like humans and less like “corpses.” As you could probably surmise, the secret is the tech’s ability to survey and replicate the most subtle of movements, though even Raja Koduri, chief technology officer in graphics at AMD, doesn’t see the line between reality and fiction being blurred before 2020. We’ll see what Emily’s posse has to say about that.

[Thanks, Przemek]

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Filed under: Robots

Robot designers are currently duking it out for the British army in hopes of nabbing the hearts (and pocketbooks) of the UK’s fighting force. In a makeshift “wartime European village,” scientists and researchers are putting their helper-droids to the test as Army officials look on and investigate how the automatons might serve alongside troops. Some of the robots being looked at include a “Moon buggy” which remotely patrols for enemies via thermal imaging and then sends the data back to a command center, a helicopter that can be maneuvered in tight urban spaces, and a RC automobile with what appears to be a pile of digicams mounted on top of it. The winners of the competition will be announced Monday, but you can hit the read link and see a video — replete with annoying British TV presenter — of some contestants.

[Thanks, Jack]

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Filed under: Robots

What could possibly provide us more joy and mirth than a Segway? How about a Segway-inspired bot that fails spectacularly on a consistent basis? The tech in play here is quite simple, and the fact it can stand as long as it does being that top heavy is actually pretty surprising. The ideal news? Hit the read link for a guide to making your very own fail bot at home. It’s fun for the whole family.

[Via technabob]

Continue reading Miniature “balancing” robot is sad, hilarious

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