Hasta La Gadget!

Honda’s ASIMO robot has certainly wowed viewers for a few years now, but is there really a day when we can actually purchase an ASIMO to help us out around the home? You know, like those robots in I, Robot, which are supposed to help us humans with our everyday chores. The Honda ASIMO is no slouch in terms of mobility, as it walks, runs, take the stairs, just like any other normal human would be able to. Apart from that, it is also dextrous enough to open up a bottle and serve you a drink, or shake hands politely with a stranger. The folks over at Honda have given the ASIMO humanoid robot an upgrade, and boy are we thrilled.

In its debut at a Manhattan hotel, ASIMO chirped in English, “Hello New York! Thank you for coming today!”, using an audio recording of a teenaged boy. Looking like a miniaturized astronaut, the ASIMO stands at 1.3 meters in height and tips the scales at 50kg. Short for “Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility”, the most recent ASIMO model paraded showed off its increased flexibility and balance, in addition to having knowledge in communication using sign language, not to mention being able to run at speeds of up to 9km/h. It is hoped that the Honda ASIMO could one day be perfected so that it can help out the elderly in their everyday tasks.

New Honda ASIMO Displays More Human-like Movement , original content from Ubergizmo, Filed in Robots, asimo, honda,

Look at these amazingly cute robots. Steve Talkowski made these robot images for an art challenge called March of Robots. They look like actual toys or models, but sadly they don’t exist in the real world.

They are all rendered in 3D, some with photographic backgrounds. They are amazing works of art. If he 3D printed these robots as toys, I would totally buy all of them. I’d be broke, but I would have some swell robot buddies.

You can see more of them at Talkowski’s Behance page. He should at least sell some prints. This is some sweet geek art. The man sure knows how to create some cool robots.

[via Laughing Squid via Neatorama]

A bunch of student employees at The University of Alabama in Huntsville’s Systems Management and Production Center (SMAP) have come together and worked using both inspiration with innovation in order to roll out a $250 motorized wheelchair that will be able to perform the work that is equivalent to that of a $20,000 robot. Sporting a Ricoh panoramic camera that is attached to a mast, this machine will roll into position as it snaps a shot, which will then be stitched together in an app and viewed over a smartphone in a matter of seconds. Given the moniker Johnny Five, it will be remotely controlled manually, although the final design will include a tiny onboard computer that lets it operate in an autonomous mode.

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$250 Wheelchair Transformed Into Johnny Five Geo-Positioning Robot original content from Ubergizmo.

Check out this paper airplane folding and launching machine that a group of engineers built. Great. Yet another machine taking our jobs. This time they are putting kids and bored office workers out of business.

Sure, they aren’t the best planes ever and they aren’t folded that sharply, but they do manage to fly a few feet. A machine did that. I bet the T-800 can’t make a paper plane this good.

We already have a machine that will twiddle your thumbs for you. What’s next? A machine that throws pencils up to stick into the ceiling? It will probably be a human’s job to get them down so the machine can do it again. Damn paper pushers. And folders. Do not let this in your office.

[via Geeks are Sexy via Geekologie]

Portable printers are nothing new, but they’re usually as wide as A4 sheets. Because obviously they have to accommodate paper right? ZUta Labs looked at the problem differently. The most important part of a printer is the part that prints, i.e. the print head. So they took that part out of a traditional printer and made it fit on your paper instead of the other way around.

ZUta Labs’ PocketPrinter is a small robot that’s meant to go on top of the paper you want to print on.  It uses omnidirectional wheels to navigate on paper, a small ink cartridge and a battery that lasts up to one hour per charge. You can send a file to be printed from your desktop computer, but Zuta Labs is also working on mobile apps so that you can wirelessly queue files from your mobile devices.

There are significant tradeoffs to its size though. The PocketPrinter’s pace is a glacial 1.2 pages per minute. Also, the lone ink cartridge means you can only print in grayscale. ZUta Labs is planning to make a full color model in the future.

Command-P a browser window and pledge at least $180 (USD) on Kickstarter by May 10 to get a PocketPrinter as a reward.