Jan 03

Polar bears destroy robot spy cams, show no remorse (video)

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

Iceberg Cam, Snowball Cam, Blizzard Cam and Drift Cam were the arctic photographer’s best friends — high-tech spy robot cameras designed to resist cold and traverse sub-zero terrain. Then they got crushed to death by giant polar bears while attempting to make friends. Seriously, that’s the basic gist of Polar Bear: Spy on the Ice, a new BBC documentary which began airing last week, and which just so happens to be narrated by David Tennant. Hope he’s got a screwdriver handy, if you know what we mean. Watch the bears play a spirited match of robot football after the break, then see all the lovely mechanical carnage in a third video at our source link.

Continue reading Polar bears destroy robot spy cams, show no remorse (video)

Polar bears destroy robot spy cams, show no remorse (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 03 Jan 2011 10:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink io9  |  sourceBBC News  | Email this | Comments

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Jan 03

Air-Blowing Robot Makes Ping-Pong Balls Jump Through Hoops

Posted in: Robots, Today's Chili, Toys and Games

Sure, you can make a ping-pong ball float just by blowing at it through a drinking-straw, but wouldn’t a ball-levitating robot be so much more fun? Luckily for us, University of Illinois grad students Aaron Becker and Robert Sandheinrich answered “yes” to this question, and built this incredible machine:

It’s called the Robo-Air Blower, and while the principle is pretty simple, the physics behind it are complex. A gimbaled nozzle fires compressed air at 620 kPa of pressure. This jet creates a fast-moving, low pressure area around the ball, trapping it. The jet is powerful enough to lift balls of between 24mm and 194mm in diameter, and up to 188-grams of mass.

But the tricky part is control. Fluid dynamics are a chaotic thing, and the programming of the robot control multiple balls, as well as non-spherical objects, like the water-bottle in the video, is complex. The robot’s brain is fed by two stereo cameras which track the balls’ movements and adjust the jet based on an algorithm.

Despite this somewhat dry explanation, the results are spectacular. The robot can push the balls sideways and diagonally, and make them jump through hoops. It looks like some kind of iPhone or Android video-game brought to life, or an up-to-date version of the old loop-and-live-wire game we played in school.

Robo-Air Blower Makes Ping-Pong Balls, Apples Defy Gravity [Automaton / IEEE Spectrum]

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Jan 02

Cambridge professor creates creepy, emotion-sensing GPS system

Posted in: car, Cars, gps, robot, robotics, Robots, Today's Chili, video

Meet Charles: the robotic GPS system that can tell when you’ve got road rage. Yes, he’s a tad scary looking, but according to the Cambridge professor who created him, you won’t feel like throwing him out the window when you’re frustrated. The disembodied satnav robot (head and torso only), which sits in the passengers seat, is designed to respond to a driver’s emotional cues, like facial expressions, body language, and tone of voice. Charles takes this information and responds accordingly, providing sympathetic phrases when he senses frustration. Researchers say the robot is about 70 percent accurate at detecting emotion, or about as accurate as any human. We say a backseat driver that can’t hit back is 100 percent awesome.

Continue reading Cambridge professor creates creepy, emotion-sensing GPS system

Cambridge professor creates creepy, emotion-sensing GPS system originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 02 Jan 2011 03:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink TG Daily  |  sourceDaily Mail  | Email this | Comments

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Dec 29

iPhone-controlled beer cannon is the robot friend of our dreams (video)

Posted in: Apple, awesome, iPhone, remote control, RemoteControl, robot, Robots, Today's Chili, video

If your morning’s been running low on a little thing called awesomeness, hurry past the break and gorge yourself on the stuff in the embedded videos. For the more patient among you, we’ll set the scene. A young chap by the name of Ryan has repurposed an old mini-fridge from his college days into a beer-firing drone, which can accept instructions on beer brand, temperature, and destination, before launching it at the target with a force of 50psi. An embedded webcam assists the iPhone user in aiming the throws, while it’s also said to record every toss and tweet it out for posterity as well. If this thing could slice bread, we’d probably offer to marry it.

Continue reading iPhone-controlled beer cannon is the robot friend of our dreams (video)

iPhone-controlled beer cannon is the robot friend of our dreams (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 29 Dec 2010 08:48:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Wired  |  sourcepersonalbeerrobot (YouTube)  | Email this | Comments

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Dec 28

EngKey telepresence robot teaches English to Koreans by way of the Philippines

Posted in: education, korea, remote, robot, Robots, South Korea, SouthKorea, Today's Chili
You know, for all the hubbub we’ve been hearing about le robots (the robots), you’d think we’d see them put to better uses than chasing our pets and killing people. Right? Right. Well, the best use we can think of is education, and that’s exactly what they’re doing at an elementary school in Daegu, South Korea. Developed by the Korea Institute of Science of Technology (KIST), EngKey is just under three-and-a-half feet high, features a video display for a face, and seems hell bent on taking all those “teach English in Korea” jobs away from shiftless American college grads looking to postpone responsibility for one or two more desperate years. There are currently twenty-nine such devices, which — get this — are actually operated remotely by teachers in the Philippines. Is this the end result of globalism? Not quite yet: for the time being, the robots are still too cumbersome to operate and expensive to justify putting into production. But who knows? Maybe someday, kids.

EngKey telepresence robot teaches English to Koreans by way of the Philippines originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 28 Dec 2010 22:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourcePhysOrg  | Email this | Comments

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Dec 28

Robot Safety Center opens up in Japan, Crash Test Dummies still an unfortunate name for a band (video)

Posted in: Japan, robot, Robots, safety, Today's Chili, video
The fair city of Tsukuba, which (as you know) is located in Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan, has recently become home to the new Robot Safety Center. A collaboration between a number of organizations including Japan’s Automobile Research Institute (JARI), the center has areas for testing various robots and exoskeletons for things like obstacle detection, electronic jamming resistance, durability, and more. As well as developing safety standards for the devices, it is hoped that within the next five years it will provide certification services for new robots as they become commercially available. Some eighteen tests have been installed at the facility thus far, and we must say that it looks like fun! See some examples after the break.

Continue reading Robot Safety Center opens up in Japan, Crash Test Dummies still an unfortunate name for a band (video)

Robot Safety Center opens up in Japan, Crash Test Dummies still an unfortunate name for a band (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 28 Dec 2010 20:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Plastic Pals  |  sourceRobonable, Mainich Daily  | Email this | Comments

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Dec 28

Egg-Shaped Robots Teaching Kids English in South Korea

Posted in: Robots, Robots Robotics, Today's Chili

eggkey.jpeg

I’ve had a lot of strange-looking teachers, over the years, but none quite so odd as Engkey. The egg-shaped robot with a human face is teaching English to classes at 21 elementary schools in South Korea’s Daegu.

The robots stand around 3.3 feet high. The aforementioned human face–that of a Caucasian woman–is located on a small TV panel. The robots are controlled by be English teachers in the Philippines who are monitoring the kids’ reactions remotely. The teachers’ expressions, meanwhile, are detected by cameras and displayed on the robot teacher’s face.

The schools have opted for the robots due to the low cost of hiring Filipino teachers. The ‘bots have apparently been a hit, thus far. “The kids seemed to love it since the robots look, well, cute and interesting. But some adults also expressed interest, saying they may feel less nervous talking to robots than a real person,” school official Kim Mi-Young told the press. “Having robots in the classroom makes the students more active in participating, especially shy ones afraid of speaking out to human teachers.”

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Dec 22

Conan celebrates Christmas with Mr. and Mrs. SanMagnatron Claus

Posted in: Robots, Today's Chili

Little Kenny Irwin junior just made the big time. Last night, Conan O’Brien revealed his new Christmas set built by the rather unconventional microwave artist. While highlights include Mr. and Mrs. SanMagnatron Claus, Godzilla holding a candy cane, and the RoboRabbi, the true highlight is of Conan interviewing the desert-dwelling artist himself. See both videos after the break, it’s the greatest thing we’ve seen since the history of storytelling began and humanity first came upon this world – going back to the distant past and the future at the same time.

[Thanks, Dusty K.]

Continue reading Conan celebrates Christmas with Mr. and Mrs. SanMagnatron Claus

Conan celebrates Christmas with Mr. and Mrs. SanMagnatron Claus originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 22 Dec 2010 03:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Huffington Post  |  sourceTBS  | Email this | Comments

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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

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Dec 17

Top Stories of 2010: Part One

Posted in: ASUS, intel, iPhone, phone, Robots, Robots Robotics, steve jobs, tablets, Today's Chili, zune

Thumbnail image for justinbieberbike.jpg

As 2010 nears its end, it’s time to start getting all nostalgic. There were a lot of ups and downs in the world of tech this year, and as we take a look at some of our top stories for the calendar, it’s impossible not to notice just how diverse the selection is.

We start this first of a two-part retrospective with a surprisingly popular “sex robot” and cap it off with a bit of bad press for Apple in what was largely a pretty decent year for Jobs and co.

[Above, sorry, a little Bieber couldn’t be helped.]

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