Hasta La Gadget!

This robot fights the winter blues. A company called SuperDroid makes large remote-controlled snow plow robots. Use them to clear your front yard, push your cat back to your house, destroy your neighbor’s snowman and more from the warmth and safety of your home.

The robot has six 13″ tiller tires, each powered by a 24V motor. Its 52″ x 16″ snow plow blade is raised and lowered with the help of an air compressor.

Watch the robot do what it does best:

Unfortunately, it does require a remote operator, and isn’t autonomous. SuperDroid can also install additional batteries, chains for the wheels and cameras on the robot. They can even make it work over the Internet so you can control it even if you’re on another continent. But you may not want any of those add-ons once you hear the robot’s basic price. Each one costs an ice cold $7,900 (USD). Dig your browser out of the snow and head to SuperDroid if you’re packing that much paper.

[via Gadgetify]

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A small robotics company called UFactory is working on the uArm, a small version of the industrial robot arms we often see tirelessly moving about in modern manufacturing assembly lines. The uArm is about the size of a desk lamp and is controlled through an Arduino-compatible board.

The current build of the uArm is made largely out of laser cut wood or acrylic and uses four off-the-shelf servo motors. It also has three different “hands”: a gripper, a suction cup and a small circular platform.

uFactory currently has a Windows program that lets you control the robot through a mouse or a keyboard. They’re currently working on Android and iOS apps too.

The company also wrote an Arduino library for uArm, so if you’re familiar with the language you can program the robot through that as well.

uFactory promises to make its design files, hardware and software open source after its Kickstarter campaign ends.

Pledge at least $185 (USD) on Kickstarter to get a uArm assembly kit as a reward. I’m waiting for Iron Man fans to reenact this scene with their armored pets.

[via Gadgetify]

Robots that are made to perform certain tasks require a lot of processing power and lots of programming. If you bring in another similar robot, you have to complete that programming again. That may change in the future with a group of researchers testing out something akin to a robot brain based in the cloud called RoboEarth.

The test is the result of a project funded by the EU that has spanned four years. The researchers say RoboEarth is like the World Wide Web for robots. The idea is that robots could upload the steps needed to complete certain tasks to the RoboEarth platform and that way only one robot would need to be programmed and all others could get the steps from the cloud.

“At its core RoboEarth is a world wide web for robots: a giant network and database repository where robots can share information and learn from each other,” said Rene van de Molengraft, the RoboEarth project leader.

The RobotEarth system is being tested in a mock hospital room at Eindhoven University. One robot will roll into the mock room and make a map that will be shared with other bots via the RoboEarth system. The other robots will then navigate the room and give the fake patient drinks.

It all sounds really cool, and scary at the same time, like some sort of SkyNet precursor.

[via BBC]

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