Hasta La Gadget!

Japan’s latest robot arm won’t flip pancakes or do dishes, and you’ll have to control its every move via remote, but it enables a surprising range of motion that some disabled individuals just can’t manage on their own. The RAPUDA (Robotic Arm for Persons with Upper limb DisAbilities) is a modular, wheelchair mounted device that weighs just thirteen pounds, yet extends over three feet to pick up objects (up to one pound) from a nearby table or floor. Its relative sloth and noise may irritate some, but it’s all nostalgic to us — it sounds just like the Radio Shack Armatron that graced our childhood. Now, where did those D-cells go… Video after the break.

Continue reading Lightweight robot arm connects to your wheelchair, stoops in your stead (video)

Lightweight robot arm connects to your wheelchair, stoops in your stead (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 01 Aug 2010 10:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A four-legged robot nicknamed “Ranger” has set a distance record, walking 14.3 miles before it ran out of juice.

That amounts to 108.5 laps around the 1/8-mile indoor track at Cornell University’s Barton Hall — or 65,185 steps of Ranger’s spindly metal legs.

The robot’s journey took it 10 hours, 40 minutes and 48 seconds, using about a penny’s worth of electricity for each 3 miles it traversed. Although several humans accompanied it for parts of its stroll, Ranger was never touched by human hands during the journey.

Earlier versions of Ranger walked just 1 kilometer in 2006 and 9.07 kilometers (5.6 miles) in 2008.

Ranger’s steps are coordinated by 6 on-board microprocessors, but the robot’s steering is done by remote control. The “eyes” and “ears” on the robot are not sensors, but foam padding, designed to protect the robot in case of falls.

The research team that built Ranger was aiming for distance, not speed. By comparison, Boston Dynamics’ BigDog, an eerie quadrupedal robot built for carrying 300-pound loads, set the previous robot walking distance record of 12.8 miles. But BigDog is loud and frightening, while Ranger is quiet and kids love him (at least, one kid appears to).

See below for more photos and a video showing Ranger’s long walk. And for details and more photos, see the Cornell Ranger 2010 page at Cornell.edu.

Jason Cortell, Lipeng Yuan, Matthew Proudlove and Fatemeh Hasaneini accompany Ranger as it rounds the curve on an indoor track.

Humans Jason Cortell (on cart) and Lipeng Yuan may be at the limits of their endurance, but Ranger walks on.

At the end of the marathon walking session, Ranger and Jason Cortell take a much-needed break. Somebody call Beer Robot!

Top photo: Ranger completes a lap around the track, accompanied by Fatemeh Hasaneini, the 6-year-old daughter of one of the students who worked on the robot.

Photos and video courtesy Cornell University.

See Also:

• Wired 14.01: The 50 Best Robots Ever
• Why NASA Is Sending a Robot to Space That Looks Like You
• Jan. 25, 1979: Robot Kills Human
• Robot Band Backs Pat Metheny on Orchestrion Tour

Follow us for real-time tech news: Dylan Tweney and Gadget Lab on Twitter. And don’t overlook the world-dominating plans of Wired.com’s own Beer Robot.

Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week’s most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us — it’s the Week in Green.

This week Inhabitat brought you a surge of renewable energy news as groundbreaking projects supercharged every corner of the world. London officially crowned the first skyscraper with built-in wind turbines while Sicily generated solar power in the dead of night with the world’s first solar plant that stores energy using molten salt. And speaking of solar power, China is heating things up with the largest building-integrated photovoltaic plant on the planet.

In transportation news, we scored an exclusive interview with auto manufacturer Edison2, who is currently coming up aces with three ultra-efficient vehicles in the final stages of the Progressive Auto X Prize — and we watched high-tech aviation soar to new heights as Airbus unveiled its vision for a fuel-efficient aircraft of the future.

Finally, we were wowed by the world’s first biomass consuming robot, which actually eats, excretes, and can run for a whole week unsupervised. If you’re thinking “I can do that” then we encourage you to try – why not start training with this exercise-inducing treadmill desk? Don’t forget to wear your spiffy glow-in-the-dark performance wear; your co-workers will love it.

Inhabitat’s Week in Green: fuel efficiency flies high, turbines touch the sky, and salt that stores sunlight originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 25 Jul 2010 22:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Autom is a tiny robot, and he’s getting closer than ever to availability. His whole job? To coach you to lose weight… that’s right, Autom is a dieting robot. You start off by entering the details of your diet, fitness level, and exercise into Autom’s databank, and then he sits on your countertop and has daily ‘conversations’ with you — which we assume are full of a lot of reassuring aphorisms and ‘go get ’em’ talk. Developed by Cory Kidd (who built the first iteration by hand) while studying at MIT, Autom is set to go into trials in the US sometime next year with a major insurance company. Now, we’re all for healthy living, and everyone knows we love robots, but we’re inclined to take a pass on Autom… if only because we can’t stand to hear the truth 100 percent of the time. If you hit up the source link, you can see a video of the little guy in action. A video of an earlier version of Autom is after the break.

Continue reading Autom, the robot weight loss coach: we’ll just keep the friends that lie to us, thanks

Autom, the robot weight loss coach: we’ll just keep the friends that lie to us, thanks originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 21 Jul 2010 12:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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New Zealand isn’t exactly known for being a hotbed of tech innovation, but this set of bionic legs might just realign that perception a little bit. The product of seven years of development work, the Rex exoskeleton is capable of supporting the full weight of a person — making it suitable for paraplegics — and moving him or her around in a familiar bipedal fashion. It’s operated using a joystick and control pad and is simple enough for handicapped users to self-transfer in and out of. The best news, perhaps, is that it’s about to go on sale in its home country this year, with an international launch following in 2011. The worst news? Probably the $150,000 (US) initial asking price, but then we’d hardly say we’re qualified to judge the value of being able to walk again. Video and full press release after the break.

[Thanks, Kurt and Simon]

Continue reading Rex, the robotic exoskeleton, aims to make wheelchairs obsolete

Rex, the robotic exoskeleton, aims to make wheelchairs obsolete originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 15 Jul 2010 02:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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