Sure, we’ve seen robot bands before. But even when insecure and egotistical, they never quite capture the youthful disaffection we want from our mechanical pop stars. Until now. End of Life is a robot band consisting of a cello, and electric guitar, drums, and, for some reason, a flat-bed scanner — maybe he’s the cute one? The group recently covered Marilyn Manson’s three-string anthem “The Beautiful People,” and it sounds almost exactly like you’d expect: we’ll call it “raw, visceral, and uncensored.” We can’t wait to see them sneer at Rock Band-playing robots too lazy to learn a real instrument. Catch them in the video after the break, and you can tell all your less-cool friends you knew them back before they sold out.
Man, we hope Gumby’s collecting some royalty checks for this one. One part incredible-stretching toy, and one part DIY robotics kit, the Plick project takes the traditional hobbyist approach to brick-building your own bot and slaps a little rubber all around it. The industrial design prototype from Brazilian engineer Gabriel Paciornik combines programmable robotic parts with an elastic wired connection suitable for strapping your mad scientist creations to everyday objects. So, what can you make? The kit packs a variety of sensor-based circles that react to distance and sound, giving your mod-jobs the power of movement and light. It’s safe to say this not-for-market toy veers far from LEGO Mindstorms NXT territory — and that’s exactly the point. Far out video demo and its 60s beach music soundtrack after the break.
Alright, let’s all be upfront here. When you saw this Pixar masterpiece you caught yourself thinking, “Destruction of the Earth? Not so bad… if that means I get my own Wall-E.” It’s ok, other more robotically-adept Quebecers had the same idea. Except they managed to mix it up with a LEGO Mindstorms NXT kit and create a waste-collecting romantic of their own — sans the devastation of our world. The brainchild of Montreal-based creator Marc-André Bazergui, project w.5 incorporates six NXT bricks, 17 motors and over a thousand parts that let the lovelorn bot reanimate his motorized chassis back into our hearts. It’s an impressive feat you can watch below, but note the video has been sped up — you didn’t expect building bricks to move that fast, did you?
So we won’t be zipping around with wife and kids in a flying car anytime soon, but NASA brought us ever closer to a Jetsonian future, yesterday, with the installation of its Robotic Refueling Mission (RRM) experiment. Fifteen minutes into their spacewalk, Mike Fossum and Ron Garan successfully installed the appropriate hardware on the International Space Station for pumping fuel to satellites in space. Using the Canadian-born Dextre (aka Special Purpose Dextrous Manipulator) as a gas station attendant, the RRM will eventually be used to refuel and perform minor repairs to satellites in orbit, potentially extending the time they can stay aloft. Now that that’s underway, how ’bout y’all get to work on making Rosie a reality?
Amongst the array of robots on display at Robotech today out at Tokyo Big Sight, Kagawa University’s artificial voice system robot was possibly one of the most interesting and bizarre looking. The silicone mouth complete with moving lips and tongue aims at replicating human speech without using speakers or digital waves in order to come as close to a real life sound as possible.
The silicone mouth robot uses airflow and control valves to replicate a human trachea and vocal chords, and a resonance tube, or a silicone throat further manipulates the air into distinct sounds. The lips and tongue are then used to shape the sounds just as we do when talking in every day life. A microphone records the noises coming out of the silicone lips and is automatically processed through a computer, analyzing the pitch and frequency to match it against the pitch and frequency of a human’s voice. The computer then adjusts the sound automatically as the computer learns the correct valve adjustments and compression in the silicone throat to match a human voice, similar to tuning an instrument.
The robot currently can utter a number of Japanese alphabet sounds as well as sing a basic song, although not quite pop star level yet!
The silicone throat-like area is usually controlled by machine valve but was on display today for visitors to see the actual working parts of how the sounds are made. Although only rudimentary in its vocabulary at present (and a certain similarity with a cow!), the fact that this is generating and learning how to shape sound without any speakers certainly makes for a more natural sound than the current digital reincarnations.
We have a gut feeling this is the video that’ll be playing when ‘the hive’ takes over — a sentimental, ‘look how far we’ve come’ victory reel for the Quadrotor nation. But for now, let’s just keep the focus on the softer side of our future nemesis’ training-room foibles. Playing like an über-geek version of America’s Funniest Home Videos, we admit we cracked a smile watching these insect-like bots from the University of Pennsylvania’s GRASP Lab take a few hard knocks in the humility ring. Fear of the swarm aside, it’s a humorous twist on an otherwise droning research project. The take away? Schadenfreude — it’s not just for humans.
Cybernics — it’s not a typo, it’s a completely new field that mixes cybernetics, mechatronics, and informatics with an all-human core. Pioneered by Tsukuba Univeristy designer Yoshiyuki Sankai, the Hybrid Assistive Limb (HAL) exosuit originally created to aid Japan’s eldery has now found an even nobler mission — assisting disabled tourists. Through detection of weak muscular bioelectrical impulses in the legs, this RoboCop-like lower body suit boosts its wearer’s load-bearing abilities by a whopping 176 pounds. The exoskeleton tech first helped paralyzed Seiji Uchida nearly tackle Switzerland’s Breithorn peak in 2006 and is now getting another go at the disabled traveler’s bucket list. This time ’round, Uchida hopes his ride atop a HAL-outfitted human will successfully carry him to the top of Normandy’s rugged Mont Saint-Michel, paving the way for other similarly handicapped travelers to do the same. Although the robotics in question here is more mech suit than say, dental training real doll, it’s still a huge leg up for the nascent research industry that got its kick-start making a wish come true.
This little girl loves Kiro. Why? Because he’s probably the raddest robot teacher she’s ever seen. Developed by Korea’s Robot Research Institute, the bot recently wrapped up a three week trial period in a kindergarten classroom, where he apparently spent most of his time screening educational videos on his abdomen, playing interactive games, and keeping his students in rapt attention. When he wasn’t busy dishing out Ritalin to his underlings, Kiro also served as a guide at the Dong-A University Museum, in Busan. After programming the droid with enough knowledge to make him sound smart, engineers set him loose within the art gallery, where he would provide visitors with background information in hushed, docent-dulcet tones. He loves kids. He loves art. He’s always smiling. He’s the kinda bot you could bring home to Dad. Scope him out for yourself in the video, after the break.
Microsoft opened up the Kinect Software Developement Kit to coders everywhere Thursday. (Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com)
Microsoft on Thursday released a software development kit for its Kinect gaming system, and hackers are already testing the limits of what the device can do.
After the release of the SDK, Microsoft invited a group of developers to its headquarters in Redmond, Washington to see what kinds of applications they could come up with for the device. Dubbed “Code Camp,” the developers were given 24 hours to create programs that would interact with the Xbox-based motion-sensing device.
Initially released in November of 2010, the Kinect replaces the traditional Xbox controller with the movements of your actual hands, using a camera that translates motion into controlling the videogame you’re playing. The device was a hit for the company; Kinect sales surpassed10 million units in March.
But the Kinect’s release proved to be bigger than just a hands-free videogame controller. The device’s motion controller opens doors to application across all sorts of fields, from major advances in robotics to medical research. Until now, sensors and cameras used for capturing the motion of 3-D objects were either cumbersome and expensive, or cheap and unreliable. At $150, the lightweight, compact Kinect is capable of capturing real-time 3-D motion at the perfect price.
Initial Kinect application ideas ranged from the bland — such as a human-controlled version of Atari’s Pong — to the nerdy — like the augmented-reality program that drops a lightsaber in your left hand.
The coolest by far, however, was the “Quadracopter” hack, which lets you move a four-propeller-powered helicopter through the air with a mere flick of your wrists, seen below:
Coders can access the Kinect’s video, microphone and depth sensors to build on the low-level data streams taken in by the hardware. They can also access some of the more high-level capabilities like noise and echo cancellation, and skeletal tracking makes gesture-navigation in applications possible.
For major platforms, launching a software development kit is a big deal. When launching a new piece of hardware like the Kinect, building a robust ecosystem of applications is important to attract potential buyers. In order for that to happen, hardware companies need to court the developer community, enticing coders to build different programs for the new device. Recently, Apple has seen the most success in this realm, as its iOS platform contains over 500,000 applications available for download in its App Store. Similarly, Android is catching up with over 200,000 in the Android Market.
What’s difficult to imagine, however, is how Microsoft can build its developer base of Kinect coders when there seems to be little financial incentive for them to join. As Make points out, Microsoft’s developer agreement terms essentially state “you can’t start a business, make money, sell services or consulting” using the SDK.
“Under the terms of the license for this SDK Beta, you cannot deploy applications created with the SDK Beta for use in your business operations,” according to the noncommercial-use terms Microsoft makes developers agree to. “Even if no fee is charged or received in connection with such use, such use in a business is still a commercial use and is not permitted under the SDK Beta license.”
This is arguably one of the biggest stumbling blocks for Android, which is being beaten out by iOS in terms of making developers more money.
Still, the impetus for Microsoft’s SDK release began with amateur coders creating homebrewed hacks with the Kinect for the fun of it. If opening up the SDK leads to more of this, Kinect’s platform could grow much larger.
Of course, Microsoft’s SDK release is initially available to Windows 7 developers only.
Breakfast is the most important meal of the day for a growing robot — it’s also an easy and relatively quick way to lull a group of scientists into a false sense of security. Now, we’re not saying that James and Rosie here had an ulterior motive when they put together a breakfast of Bavarian sausage and baguettes for a group of researchers at Munich’s CoTeSys lab — as far as robotic couples go, they seem very nice. James, a US-designed PR2 robot, sliced the bread, while German-designed Rosie boiled up some sausages, as some hungry roboticists looked on patiently. Oddly, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen a robot prepare a morning meal — it’s nice to know, however, that after the robot apocalypse, at least we’ll all still be well fed. Super sped up video of cooking robots after the break.
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