Hasta La Gadget!

We recently wrote about a robot named Robi who is a member of the Japanese family.
Now, Dentsu Inc. has announced the names “Kirobo” and “Mirata” for two humanoid communication robots being developed under the KIBO ROBOT PROJECT, a joint research project being carried out in collaboration with the Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology, the University of Tokyo, ROBO GARAGE Co., Ltd., and Toyota Motor Corporation.
This project is developing a friendly …

You may already know about the four-legged robot from DARPA and Boston Dynamics; we’ve talked about it in the past and how it’s supposed to help out military troops by carrying supplies over rough terrain and beyond. Now, the BigDog robot can throw objects, including concrete cinder blocks. However, instead of using one of its four legs, it actually uses an extending arm (which looks to be the robot’s head and neck) to throw objects.

Boston Dynamics ended up recording a video of the robot throwing the cinder block across the testing field, and it’s quite impressive, but also extremely freaky and scary at the same time. You can watch as the robot grabs onto the cinder block and picks up while attempting to keep its balance. However, just as you think the robot might tip over, it flings its arm around and tosses the cinder block a good 30 feet or so.

Cinder blocks aren’t light by any means. They can weigh anywhere from 20 to 30 pounds, and most of us would have to use two hands to pick one up. After that, we’d probably only be able to throw one half the distant that the robot threw its cinder block. In any case, you now know that robots are capable of throwing heavy objects straight at you.

Of course, we’re not quite sure what the implications would be for a military robot that’s going to be used for carrying supplies. We’re guessing the arm could be used for moving small obstacles out of the way, or maybe hurling heavy objects (like cinder blocks) at enemies. Whatever the case, we now know what robots are capable of if they ever turn on us.

DARPA’s BigDog robot can throw cinder blocks farther than you is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
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Ever wondered how it feels like to wear a robotic suit on your daily walkabout? Japan, a country where robots rule (all right, I am saying that with extreme liberty. Robots do not “rule” there per se, but rather, the proliferation of robots in everyday life as well as culture is extremely well known), might soon help fuel an explosion of “robo mania” of sorts, by approving a new robot exoskeleton suit for a global rollout sometime down the road.

What you see above is a robot suit that is known as the “Hybrid Assistive Limb”, or rather, HAL for short, which has been specially developed to help and assist both the elderly and disabled to get around, and the mission to spread the wonders of HAL around the world has been aided by the receipt of its global safety certificate in Japan yesterday, which means a worldwide rollout is on the cards.

The Hybrid Assistive Limb comes across as a power-assisted pair of legs that were developed by Japanese robot manufacturer Cyberdyne (good thing it is not a company known as Skynet!), and Cyberdyne has quite a proven track record for robotic assistance tools, where they have come up with somewhat similar robot arms in the past, too.

A quality assurance body in Japan issued the certificate that was based on a draft version of an international safety standard where personal robots are concerned, and a full certificate for the finished product is tipped to be approved later The HAL holds the honor of being the first nursing-care robot that was certified under the draft standard, according to a ministry official. HAL is powered by batteries, where it is capable of detecting muscle impulses in order to anticipate and support the user’s body movements.

You cannot buy one off the shelf just yet though, as it remains on lease (some 330 of them) across 150 hospitals, welfare and other facilities in Japan since 2010, where it costs $1,950 thereabouts to rent a suit for the entire year.

Source
[ Japan approves worldwide sale of robot exoskeletons copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

Play-time at quadrocopter boot camp.

Filed under: Robots

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Via: Huffington Post

Source: Robohub

In Japan, since the nuclear disaster that began in 2011, innovation and development has been put into the cleanup effort.
Here is a video from Japan Times that shows a prototype of a decontamination robot developed by Toshiba Corporation. This could be used to take the place of humans risking their health in dangerously contaminated areas.
It is guided remotely through computers and video game controllers and uses dry ice and a vacuuming process to remove radioactive material.
This type of …