Hasta La Gadget!

Look, we’re all for accelerated learning, but somehow the idea of strapping our limbs into the Concert Hands setup is a wee bit disconcerting. Locked at the wrists onto a sliding mechanical bar, the apparatus guides our paws to the proper keys, while pulses are sent to your fingers to tell you what keys to press. Intimidating? Sure, but honestly, we’re more worried about what our idle hands might learn if this thing was hooked up to the wrong AI… okay, probably just a Chopin piece, but you never know. See for yourself and imagine the horrors after the break.

[Via Engadget German]

Continue reading Video: Concert Hands teaches you to play piano, whether you want it to or not

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Robots

Video: Concert Hands teaches you to play piano, whether you want it to or not originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 20 Aug 2009 20:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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An engaging mix of cute and bizarre, Bossa Nova Robotics’ first two products–the aggressive, break-dancing Prime-8 and the super-cute Penbo–could fit neatly on any 4- to-12-year-old child’s wish list this holiday season.

Prime-8 is a yellow-armor-wearing gorilla. Its massive arms are actually wheels that can spin in tandem or separately to steer, dance or just act crazy. Hidden inside its yellow body are two plastic feet that glide out when Prime-8 wants to stand up. This remote-controlled robot includes infrared sensors on its front and back that it uses to “see” other Prime-8s and navigate its environment and guard your home. If you attach its spring-loaded rubber dart guns, it’ll shoot at anything that moves.

The robot, which runs on eight AA batteries, can even play laser tag with other Prime-8s. While Prime-8 is programmable (up to ten remote-driven items), it won’t remember a thing once you turn it off. Prime-8 also has two modes: “Happy” (normal) and “Gone Bananas” (crazy), though in both cases, most of what the robot does seems pretty random and loony.

If you are struggling to keep up with all the twitter updates from your friends, there’s a little robot that can help you out.

The ‘Guardian Robot’ is an adorable machine that monitors your twitter feed for “happy” or “sad” updates from friends and then alerts you of the tweets by either raising its hand for a high-five or lowering its head, reports U.K. publication The Guardian. The robot that can sit on your desk will even tweet a reply on your behalf from its own twitter id @guardianrobot

The Guardian Robot is not as sophisticated as the Cybraphon, a musical band housed inside an antique wardrobe that we recently wrote about. The Cybraphon monitors its Facebook, Twitter and Flickr pages and plays music that reflects its online popularity at that moment.

But what makes the Guardian Robot interesting is how inexpensively it has been put together. It costs just over £60 ($70).  It uses two servos–one to rotate the arm and another to raise or lower its head– and two microswitches. The body of the robot has been created out of a discarded Nintendo Wii Sports Resort game box.

All of this is connected to an Arduino board that powers and controls the switches. The Arduino, an open source single board microcontroller, is connected to a desktop via a USB. The board connects to an application written in the open source programming language, Processing 1.0.

The app polls Twitter every minute for tweets that match a specified criteria. When it finds a matching tweet it classifies it as a “happy” or sad one and directs the robot to the appropriate response.

For more details on the robot works or to see its actual code, check out The Guardian. 

See Also:

• Wired 14.01: The 50 Best Robots Ever
• Robot Teaches Itself to Smile
• Robot Band Plays Music, Obsesses About its Online Followers …
• Sony Camera Robot: You’ll Always Find Him On The Table at Parties …

Photo: Guardian Robot/The Guardian

The Tokyo Fire Department faces somewhat stiffer challenges than your run-of-the-mill blown battery or imploding workstation, so we’re happy to see them enroll the use of some hi-tech machinery into their arsenal. The latest entrant is a human extraction bot, designed to do the heroic fireman thing without risking the lives of any actual, uh, men. Operated by remote control, it gets into hot, wet or earthquakey zones, finds the unconscious humanoids and devours them for later regurgitation. What’s not to love? We haven’t got a name for it yet, though we know it has a bigger brother equipped with all sorts of cameras and environmental detectors, so we suspect this is a pretty intelligent little beast as well. Just mosey on past the break already, and try to keep the Soylent Green jokes to a minimum.

[Via Ubergizmo]

Continue reading Video: Rescue drone swallows humans, carries them to safety

Filed under: Robots

Video: Rescue drone swallows humans, carries them to safety originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 12 Aug 2009 13:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Anthropomimetic robots. It’s not something that rolls off the tongue, but the ECCEROBOT is just such a robot, and it’s really a sight to behold. Developed by a consortium of European robotics labs, the motivation behind the creation is to more accurately copy human internal structure, using thermoplastic polymer for bones, screwdriver motors and shock cord for muscle, and kiteline for tendons. The results are impressive, if not a bit creepy. According to IEEE Spectrum, scientists hope in the future to use ECCEROBOT’s human-like form to “explore human-like cognitive features,” which may or may not include starring opposite Christian Bale in science fiction films. See for yourself in the video after the break.

Continue reading ECCEROBOT emulates your musculoskeletal system, looks like Beaker from the Muppets

Filed under: Robots

ECCEROBOT emulates your musculoskeletal system, looks like Beaker from the Muppets originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 11 Aug 2009 20:06:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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