Hasta La Gadget!

Its been a few years since we last checked in on NASA’s All Terrain Hex Limbed Extra Terrestrial Explorer rover — aka, Athlete. Now a half-scale working prototype standing 15 feet tall, weighing 2.5 tons (about 2,300 kg), and capable of a 1.25 mph (2 kmph) top speed has been set loose for testing by its Jet Propulsion Laboratory creators. Its first task, set to begin next month in Arizona, will be to complete a test circuit of at least 25 miles (about 40 km) in two weeks under its own power. Failing that, we hear Woz is looking for a dance partner. See what we mean in the video of Athlete demonstrating a flare for cargo transport after the break.

Continue reading NASA’s Athlete Mars rover does a little dance, gets down tonight (video)

NASA’s Athlete Mars rover does a little dance, gets down tonight (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 18 Aug 2010 03:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Now, two of our favorite things in the world just so happen to be ice cream and robots. So combining the two could only lead to awesome things, right? Well, that’s Yaskawa-kun is: a robot that vends ice cream. And yes, it’s super fantastic. Currently working a Tokyo Summerland, Yaskawa-kun has a touchscreen ordering panel, and you can even watch him make your treat for you. While the video below is pretty impressive, this is one thing we just need to see for ourselves.

Continue reading Robot sells ice cream, we love him for it

Robot sells ice cream, we love him for it originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 16 Aug 2010 18:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Researchers at the University of Leeds have employed a robotic yellow submarine to fund and begin documenting a massive river under the sea, known as a submarine channel — the first ever directly observed. The river is so large that if it were on land, it would be the sixth largest river in the world. The torpedo-shaped autosub itself is a 23-foot long, unmanned craft which can be programmed to stay just safely above the channels where they’d encounter damage. It’s equipped with an underwater speed camera which enable the team to observe in detail the flows within the channel. While little is known about what kind of lifeforms may lurk in these waters, the team’s research puts science a little closer to understanding these unique rivers, and its full report will be published later this year in Geology.

[Image credit: R. Flood, ]

Robotic yellow submarine finds massive river under the sea, tons of other trippy stuff originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 16 Aug 2010 12:40:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The first prototype of a Nao robot that can develop emotions as it interacts with a human caregiver has been completed. A team across Europe was led by Dr. Lola Cañamero of the University of Herefordshire in the UK to develop the bot, which differs in several significant ways from those that came before it. These robots develop over time in much the way that a child does, learning to interact with and respond to the human beings around them. Modeled after human and chimpanzee childhood development paths, they are programmed to be highly adaptable to the people around them, and to become attached to whatever person is most suited to its needs and ‘personality’ profile. Over time, the more they interact, the more they learn and bond to the human being. These little ones, moreover, are capable of expressing a wide range of emotions, including anger, frustration, fear and happiness. The next steps are to research the bots’ emotional and non-linguistic behavior, and to move toward combining linguistic and non-linguistic communication to become further attached and adapted to them. Yes, we want one.

Prototype of robot that develops emotions on interacting with humans officially complete originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 14 Aug 2010 12:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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As it turns out, industrial-strength robot arms are good for more than amusing hijinks and the occasional assembly line — a team of researchers at Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics have turned a KUKA KR 500 into the ultimate Formula 1 simulator ride. Outfitting the six-axis, half-ton lifter with a force-feedback steering wheel, pedals, video projector and curved screen, the newly-christened CyberMotion Simulator lets scientists throw a virtual Ferrari F2007 race car into the turns, while the cockpit whips around with up to 2 Gs of equal-and-opposite Newtonian force. There’s actually no loftier goal for this particular science project, as the entire point was to create a racing video game that feels just like the real thing — though to be fair, a second paper tested to see whether projectors or head-mounted displays made for better drivers. (Projectors won.) See how close they came to reality in a video after the break, while we go perform a little experiment of our own.

[Thanks, Eric]

Continue reading Robot arm takes engineers for a virtual reality Formula 1 ride (video)

Robot arm takes engineers for a virtual reality Formula 1 ride (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 07 Aug 2010 18:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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