The uncanny valley is not a physical place, but rather, it is the idea of a robot being so human-like in behavior, that it can get rather creepy to boot. Artist Jordan Wolfson has crossed into such a territory as you can see from the video above, where this masked animatronic robot will gyrate to a slowed-down version of “Blurred Lines”, in a rather enticing manner. Right now, this animatronic robot remains on display at the David Zwirner Gallery until April 19th next month.
The military and government in the US is putting a lot of research and money into developing robots for various uses. DARPA is trying to build robots that can be … Continue reading
This is what 80′s rockers would have looked like if they were robots. This robotic band goes by the name Z-MACHINES. It sounds like a human band if you close your eyes, but if they are open you know that they are robots, ready to kill us after the show.
The bot called March bangs multi-colored cables in time to the music. Behind him, the drummer Ashura has 22 arms and is playing four times faster than a human. Cosmo is the keyboardist with green lasers hitting each key. The guitarist has 78 fingers, and can shred way faster than you can:
This robo-band was created by engineers at the University of Tokyo and uses around 300 kilowatts of electricity. They are a big hit in Japan since they made their stage debut at a “Future Party” in Tokyo last year.
It’s all fun and games until no one returns from their concerts.
iRobot’s Ava 500 smart telepresence robot has gone on sale, autonomously mapping out your office, industrial facility, or anywhere else, and then allowing you to remotely log in and wander … Continue reading
There are several different brands of robot vacuum cleaners on the market today and they all promise to do the same things. They will clean the floors in your home … Continue reading
Before you can finish reading the title of this post and this sentence, The Cubestormer 3 Robot would have solved the Rubik’s Cube puzzle about three times or more. Bazinga! … Continue reading
In the world of robotics, a faction of the field focuses on what is termed soft robotics. In the case of some MIT researchers, their soft robotics work have resulted … Continue reading
Back in 2011 we featured a couple of humanoid robots designed to play table tennis. Industrial mechanic Ulf Hoffman recently unveiled a similar robot that he and his friends have been working on for the past couple of years. He calls it the Ulf Hoffman Tischtennis Roboter (Ulf Hoffman Table Tennis Robot) or UHTTR-1 for short.
As you can see the robot’s arm is on a rail mounted at one of the ends of a ping pong table. It’s made of aluminum, making it light enough for its servos to rapidly ferry it across the length of the table. It may only have one arm, but the robot has two things we don’t have: a second pair of eyes. Four cameras mounted at the top corners of the room track the ball’s position and send that data to the UHTTR-1′s software.
Ulf hasn’t said much about the robot’s program, but as you can see it has a variety of settings that help define its play style, including speed and spin. It even seems to have difficulty levels. I’m a bit worried about that “Evolve” setting.
We didn’t see it put to the test in the video, but I think you can beat the robot with a well-placed drop shot. Then again when you’re dealing with a robot that can evolve, all bets are off. Grip your browser and head to Ulf’s blog for more on his robot.
Suck at Flappy Bird? Don’t worry, most humans do. Even if you’re smart, the game is so silly it won’t reward your intelligence. But do you know how you could outsmart Flappy Bird? By building a Flappy Bird terminator. Two guys from China used their frustration to make a robot who basically kicks ass at Flappy Bird. Watch it. It uses a webcam to figure out how many taps is needed to clear the pipes and a robotic arm made from an old hard drive and a tip of a stylus. Hasta la vista, birdy.
Typically, when we talk about Foxconn, we are talking about the Chinese company and its production of Apple gadgets. Foxconn does have customers other than Apple, but Apple is one … Continue reading
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