Dec 21

El Paso resident finds Mexican Orbiter Mini drone in his front yard

Posted in: robot, Today's Chili, wargadget
When discussing drones, we usually think of the Af-Pak theater (or perhaps joy ridin’ UK teens), so it was with some amusement that we heard about a little border excursion that a Mexican UAV made into American airspace a few days ago. According to reports, the device — believed to be an Israeli-made Orbiter Mini — was being operated by the Mexican government (on its side of the border) when it experienced some sort of “mechanical malfunction” and crossed over to El Paso, Texas, where it was discovered on a resident’s front lawn last Tuesday. The Orbiter Mini, manufactured by Aeronautics Defense Systems, has a six foot wingspan and will stay in the air up to four hours.

El Paso resident finds Mexican Orbiter Mini drone in his front yard originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 21 Dec 2010 17:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceCNN  | Email this | Comments

No Comments | Tags:
Dec 20

Meet Romeo, grandma’s new french robot lover

Posted in: robot, Today's Chili

Our buddies over at Aldebaran Robotics in France, makers of the cute little Nao robot, have returned with a new elderly care robot, dubbed Romeo. The much larger humanoid stands 1.4 meters tall (a bit over four and half feet) in his gunmetal Speedo and weighs 40 kilograms (88 pounds). Romeo features 37-degrees of freedom, a four-vertebra backbone, articulated feet, a composite leg exoskeleton, and a revised actuator giving the robot safer control over its limbs. The clean-shaven bot also features a “partially soft torso” — at least until grandma unleashes her charms. The bot interacts via natural speech and gestures to perform tasks such as taking out the trash, lifting a cup with its four-fingered hand, or fetching food from the kitchen. Romeo will join a long line of robots destined to entertain and help care for the aged and infirmed when he’s unveiled in March at a cost of about €250,000 (about $330,000).

Meet Romeo, grandma’s new french robot lover originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 20 Dec 2010 13:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink DVice  |  sourceIEEE Spectrum  | Email this | Comments

No Comments
Dec 20

Prototype Pleo motion capture exoskeleton up for grabs: $2,400 OBO

Posted in: prototype, robot, sensor, Today's Chili

Still haven’t nailed down the perfect Christmas gift for that special someone in your life? Shame on you. Just kidding. But on the real, if you’ve got $2,397.99 and a lust for robotics, there’s hardly a better buy available right now than this. The concoction you’re peering at above isn’t apt to go on sale to the general public again anytime soon, as it’s a rare prototype motion capture exoskeleton that was used by (the now-defunct) Ugobe in the creation of Pleo. Word has it that this suit was vital to the R&D efforts surrounding the first edition of the outfit’s robotic dinosaur, with one Caleb Chung fitting in and hulking about as computers analyzed and recorded movements. So far as we can tell, all of the circuits and wires are still here, meaning that you actually could use this for R&D of your own provided you had the right equipment to read it. Unfortunately, it’ll cost a small fortune to ship a 350 pound crate anywhere outside of the continental US, but for those of you currently living overseas… well, here’s your excuse to relocate.

[Thanks, Colin]

Prototype Pleo motion capture exoskeleton up for grabs: $2,400 OBO originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 20 Dec 2010 12:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceeBay  | Email this | Comments

No Comments | Tags:
Dec 17

Open source DARwIn-OP bot can be yours for just $12,000

Posted in: Linux, robot, Robots, Today's Chili, video
A few weeks back we caught our first glimpse of the open source, modular DARwIn-OP developed at Virginia Tech’s Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory, also known as RoMeLa. Well, there’s more information available now about the upcoming little bot, so here’s what we know. Korean company Robotis is making available the bot’s open source software, schematics, CAD and fabrication manuals, in addition to selling the fully assembled robots. DARwin-OP was unveiled recently at the IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots, and is built on a 1.6GHz Intel Atom Z530-based FitPC2i which boasts a 4GB SSD, 2GB of DDR2 RAM, 802.11n WiFi. Shipments of the 17.9-inch tall humanoid robots are being sent to universities first at a price of $9,600, and will run $12,000 at full retail. Hit up the source links for a far more detailed look at DARwin-OP’s specs, and there’s a video after the break.

Continue reading Open source DARwIn-OP bot can be yours for just $12,000

Open source DARwIn-OP bot can be yours for just $12,000 originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 17 Dec 2010 18:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceLinux Devices, ieee Spectrum  | Email this | Comments

No Comments
Dec 17

Pleo RB robosaur now on sale for $469, Christmas now cleared to take place

Posted in: now available, now shipping, NowAvailable, NowShipping, on sale, OnSale, robot, ship, shipping, ships, Today's Chili, toy, Toys, video

Worried that your holiday celebrations just wouldn’t be able to take place without an autonomous robotic dinosaur roaming the halls and frightening the grandparents? Fret no more. With under a fortnight to go, Innvo Labs has managed to put the revitalized Pleo RB (Pleo Reborn, if you must know) on sale, with a stiff $469 getting you a newborn dinosaur with a Li-Polymer battery, a charging cradle and a training leaf. Yeah, a training leaf. Unfortunately, the MSRP here is a fair bit higher than the $350 that Ugobe charged for the original, but at least the price premium does include a tougher hide, a newfangled RFID sensing system and a stronger, longer-lasting battery. And really, who could say no to a smile like that?

Continue reading Pleo RB robosaur now on sale for $469, Christmas now cleared to take place

Pleo RB robosaur now on sale for $469, Christmas now cleared to take place originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 17 Dec 2010 08:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink CrunchGear  |  sourceThe Pleo Store  | Email this | Comments

No Comments
Dec 15

Gesture-controlled robot arm enables civilization’s most meta high five

Posted in: arm, robot, Today's Chili, video

This video, criminally, doesn’t actually show any high fives, but we’re sure the students at the University of Tsukuba have sustained endless LOLs over the past few months, pushing their gesture-driven robot arm system to the limits of human-robot high five interaction. The system itself is relatively simple: it uses two cameras to track a hand’s movements, including specific finger gestures, which are then processed and translated into robotic movement in real time. The end result is basically the world’s most elaborate claw machine game, as demonstrated above.

Gesture-controlled robot arm enables civilization’s most meta high five originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 15 Dec 2010 23:24:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceDigInfo TV  | Email this | Comments

No Comments | Tags:
Dec 15

Athlete Robot runs just a few steps before falling down, does it with style

Posted in: Japan, robot, Robots, Today's Chili, video
Since 2007, researchers at Tokyo University’s ISI Lab have been working on a prototype of a running robot, which we’ve seen several of in the past. Athlete Robot (as it is seemingly dubbed) is a little bit different though. While it hasn’t outwardly been given the humanoid treatment in any significant way, technologically, it works very much like a human. As you’ll see in the video below, early prototypes of the bot which were less ‘human’ like in design didn’t function as well as the newer version, which boasts McKibben artificial muscles and a biologically correct musculoskeletal system. Now, the robot still can’t run very far without falling over, but it’s impressive to watch its movements nonetheless.

Continue reading Athlete Robot runs just a few steps before falling down, does it with style

Athlete Robot runs just a few steps before falling down, does it with style originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 15 Dec 2010 21:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink PlasticPals  |  sourceYouTube  | Email this | Comments

No Comments
Dec 12

Sphero toy ball rolls itself, you control it with your smartphone

Posted in: Android, Apple, Games, iPhone, robot, robotics, smartphone, Today's Chili, toy, video
Don’t have the airspace required for an AR.Drone? Gearing up for its CES 2011 debut, Sphero is a small, robotic toy ball made by Orbotix, and controlled remotely via Bluetooth and your smartphone’s tilt sensor. A ball that moves by itself? Call us lazy (too lazy to roll a ball even), but we think this is a toy whose time has come. Sure, the whole thing is pretty straightforward, although we hope that once iPhone and Android developers get ahold of that open API we’ll see plenty in the way of augmented reality gameplay: a maze or a racing game of some sort would make this thing quite coveted, in our opinion. Catch a video of the prototype in action after the break.

Continue reading Sphero toy ball rolls itself, you control it with your smartphone

Sphero toy ball rolls itself, you control it with your smartphone originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 12 Dec 2010 18:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Gizmodo  |  sourceOrbotix  | Email this | Comments

No Comments | Tags: , , , ,
Dec 10

Anybots QB hands-on

Posted in: hands-on, robot, RobotApocalypse, Today's Chili, video

This week at GigaOM‘s NetWork 2010 conference in San Francisco, we briefly mingled with our robot overlords and survived to tell the tale. Anybots was letting its $15,000 QB telepresence robot decimate roam the crowd, and we were invited to interact with one and then take another for a spin by way of remote control. The experience was entertaining but still rather impersonal, mostly due to the lack of two-way video, something that’s billed as “coming soon.” There’s no word on whether the robots — which are starting to (literally) roll off the assembly line — were amused or not. Based on our abysmal remote-control skills, we can only assume our lives were spared for one reason: to write this post. Take a look at our videos after the break!

Gallery: Anybots QB hands-on

Continue reading Anybots QB hands-on

Anybots QB hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 10 Dec 2010 14:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

No Comments
Dec 09

Chinese hotpot restaurant gets robot waiters, may soon be serving droids as well (video)

Posted in: chinese, robot, Today's Chili, video

Why, it’s another robot-themed hotpot restaurant! This time we’re looking at Jinan — once famous for demolishing a whole stash of illegal arcade machines — up in north China, where a ballsy robotics manufacturer started trialling a robot-themed eatery. While there are still human chefs working back in the kitchen, some near-hundred customers will be served by six robots (about ¥40,000 or $6,000 each to build) that follow a white line to seat diners and deliver dishes. Oh, and don’t expect any slapstick comedy here — these bland-looking droids will only stop if you dare stand in front of them. You’ll have to hurry up, though, as this venue closes in about 16 days; but for those who can’t make it, we’ve got a video right after the break.

Continue reading Chinese hotpot restaurant gets robot waiters, may soon be serving droids as well (video)

Chinese hotpot restaurant gets robot waiters, may soon be serving droids as well (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 09 Dec 2010 09:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Dvice  |  sourceiQilu, Xinhuanet  | Email this | Comments

No Comments | Tags: , ,