Hasta La Gadget!

Robots are among our most polarizing technological innovations. Some of us love and openly embrace bots, while others live in near constant fear of an android coup. When I hear, “robot learns to run like humans,” I imagine robot races and bipedal bots bounding over hills to help save us. The fearful, however, see their worst fears realized: “Now robots can actually chase and catch us.”

Robot researchers like Ryuma Niiyama (currently working in MIT’s Robot Locomotion Group) couldn’t care less about your fears. According to a report in IEEE Spectrum, Niiyama is building a biped robot called “Athlete” that uses artificial muscles and prosthetic feet to run at speeds and in a style more akin to human locomotion. Previous humanoid robots like the Honda Asimo use a complex array of motors, sensor and actuators to walk and even, in the case of Asimo, “run.” However, anyone who has seen Asimo dash around a stage knows that the bot’s motion doesn’t look entirely natural.

Niiyama’s robot mimics some aspects of human running to achieve a more natural gait. The robot’s artificial muscles reside entirely above the “knees”. Below that it’s all prosthetic elastic blades that some double amputees use for running. As a result, the robot springs forward with each step–as humans do– and uses its muscles and sensors to maintain balance as it races forward; again, pretty much as people do when they’re running.

So far, Niiyama and his team have only been partially successful. Athlete runs a few unaided steps but then falls over. Watch the video below, which charts Athlete’s development from an early 2007 model to today’s elastic-blade-fitted Athlete.

Video after the jump.

Continue reading Neato XV-11 robot vacuum gets its very own open source LIDAR hack

Neato XV-11 robot vacuum gets its very own open source LIDAR hack originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 29 Nov 2010 18:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Philipp Robbel, a student at MIT’s Personal Robotics Group, has used a hacked Xbox Kinect camera and an iRobot Create kit to make a Roomba-esque KinectBot that can recognize human beings and respond to their gestural commands.

In an interview with SingularityHub, Robbel discussed how KinectBot grew out of his research in robots that could locate trapped or missing people in a disaster. The Kinect’s ability to map terrain in 3-D and to recognize and respond to human gestures could eventually be teamed up with aerial drones and rapid-response teams to launch rescue operations.

This video shows how KinectBot was assembled and what it can do.

Bear in mind, this is just what Robbel calls a “weekend hacking project.” Imagine what Microsoft’s Robotics team — who’ve had a lot longer to play with the tech behind Kinect than the rest of us — might be cooking up in their labs.

Still a $150 off-the-shelf sensor like Kinect opens up the option box for everybody. Add the right mix of boops and beeps, a computer-hacking interface, jet packs and the ability to serve drinks and fix starships, and we’re just a few iterations away from a full-fledged R2-D2 unit. We’re living in the future.

See Also:

• How Motion Detection Works in Xbox Kinect
• How Facial Recognition Works in Xbox Kinect
• Alt Text: The Secret Diary of Sentient Kinect
• Kinect Hacks Already Yielding Impressive Results
• Another Kinect hack that's vastly more interesting than the games …
• How Wii and Kinect Hack Into Your Emotions
• Adafruit Offers $1000 Bounty for Open-Source Kinect Drivers …
• Kinect Running on Multiple Platforms, Looking Cool

You could certainly buy a ready-made robot to sweep your hardwood floors, but doesn’t building your own out of Lego bricks sound like loads more fun? That’s what PlastiBots did with the Pulito pictured above, a Lego Mindstorms NXT sweeper with a host of sensors to navigate around furniture and a standard Swiffer pad to scrub. There’s no fancy NorthStar or Celestial navigation packages to keep the bot on track, so it meanders about much of the time, but there is an fancy infrared beacon on the robot’s charging dock to guide the creature home. When the Pulito’s running out of juice from a long, tiring session of painstakingly traversing your floors, it’s programmed to automatically seek out that invisible light and receive a loving 12 volt embrace from the station’s brass charging bars. See it in action after the break, and hit our source link for more.

[Thanks, Dave]

Continue reading Pulito, the Lego Mindstorms swiffer-bot that seeks out electricity (video)

Pulito, the Lego Mindstorms swiffer-bot that seeks out electricity (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 15 Nov 2010 09:16:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You may not be able to build an HRP-4C fembot in your average garage, but the programming would practically take care of itself — not only does the AIST humanoid sing using off-the-shelf Yamaha Vocaloid software, its dance moves are click-and-drag, too. Roboticist Dr. Kazuhito Yokoi gave IEEE Spectrum an inside look at the HRP-4C’s motion trajectory software, which works much like 3D animation tools: you position the limbs where you want them to start and when you want them to end up using keyframes, and the software takes care of the rest. The system’s intelligent enough to generate a 6.7 second sequence from just eight keyframes, and it compensates for hazardous instructions, too — if your haphazard choreography would tip her over or send limbs flying, it’ll automatically adjust her moves. See how it works in a video after the break and hit up our source link for the full interview.

Continue reading Choreographing a humanoid robot’s dance routine is as easy as click and pull

Choreographing a humanoid robot’s dance routine is as easy as click and pull originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Nov 2010 09:48:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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