As you know, when iRobot isn’t hard at work developing some adorable automated vacuum cleaners, it has a quite lucrative sideline in DARPA-funded research projects. On that front, it looks like we finally have some results to report back on that ChemBot project that first appeared on our radar early last year. Unveiled at the International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) yesterday, this palm-sized troublemaker is being billed as “the first demonstration of a completely soft, mobile robot using jamming as an enabling technology.” The “jamming” in question is something called “jamming skin enabled locomotion,” which traps air and a collection of loosely packed particles in a package made of silicon rubber. When air is removed from the pocket, the silicon restricts and seems to solidify. The robot consists of several of these pockets, which can be inflated or deflated separately, giving the device the ability to perform simple actions. This is all pretty rudimentary at the moment, but who knows? We may see Flubber in our time, after all. Video after the break.
When we heard that the National Science Foundation awarded $10 million to Harvard to make a swarm of robot bees, our first thought was: “We could do it for half the price.” Then we remembered that the university has been down this path before, including its robot fly program (whatever happened to that thing?) and might be the better choice after all. What does the NSF and Harvard hope to get for all that time and money? Aside from insight into such areas as distributed intelligence, robotic flight, and energy storage, a swarm of these bad boys could be tasked to do anything from battlefield spying to pollination (which might be necessary, with the way that real bees are vanishing at such an alarming rate). The RoboBee project is slated to run for the next five years. Video after the break.
Gladiatorial matches between bipedal humanoid robots is just one of the reasons to get excited about Robo-One, an event last weekend in Toyama City, Japan.
This year’s event showed some interesting new robots such as a thought-controlled robot, a robot that can flip its head back so you can ride it, and a mini-Gundam robot.
Check out these videos of these robots that kicked up a storm at Robo-One. Got any other great videos or photos from Robo-One? Let us know in the comments.
The Omni Zero 9
Takeshi Maeda is known to robot lovers as the man who designed the red, bi-pedal Omni Zero robots. Maeda showed the latest version, the Omni Zero 9, at Robot-One. It’s an eerily humanoid robot that can autonomously walk a few steps. Among the stunning features of this robot is it ability to lie flat on the ground and roll up a ramp using the two wheels that make up its shoulders, kind of like a slow, mechanical Jean-Yves Blondeau. It’s a sight worth watching!
The Omni Zero 9 also competed at the Robo-One Championship, as shown in the following video:
The robot’s head also flips back so if you are small enough and brave enough to sit in the gap, you can actually ride the robot. If you are wondering how big the robot is, then here are the stats: The Omni Zero 9 is just about 3.4 feet tall and weighs 55 lbs. The robot won one of the three prizes at the championship.
Thought-controlled robot
Brain interfaces are becoming popular among videogamers who use electrodes hooked up to their skulls to control the movement of characters on the screen.
Taku Ichikawa, a fourth-year student at the University of Electro-Communications in Tokyo, is trying to do something similar with a robot. Ichikawa uses 12 electrodes to measure his neural activity, which in turn issues commands via a wireless connection to a robot that is about 20 inches tall and weighs 4.4 lbs.
Ichikawa’s robot can perform three types of movement: walking forward, rotating right and using its single arm for stabbing attacks, says Japanese newspaper Mainichi Daily News. The thought-to-action process is not instantaneous though. It takes a total of about 1.5 seconds for the robot to begin doing what Ichikawa is thinking.
Remember the cartoon Turbo Teen where a kid could turn himself into that most desirable of ’80s cars, a red Firebird? That was pretty terrible, but we promise the video below of a robot turning itself into a red car is rather more compelling. It’s OmniZero.9, the latest creation from Takeshi Maeda who earlier brought us the OmniZero.4. The ninth iteration is a humanoid looking bot with wheeled shoulders and knees that allows it to motor along the ground. Its head also flips back to create a seat just big enough for its creator, who jumps on for a short ride around the demonstration stage. The bot competed at ROBO-ONE in a few different categories and was captured on video doing its stuff solo and also shamelessly knocking an under-sized competitor out of the ring. Go ahead, click on through. You won’t want to miss this.
Miruko is the creepiest gaming device we’ve seen in a while — but it’s also downright awesome. A robotic interface boasting WiFi and a built-in camera, it’s designed to be worn and used in augmented reality, real life gaming situations, able to detect things — like monsters — that are invisible to the human eye. Once the robot detects the presence of said monster (or zombie), it fixes its gaze on the object, allowing the gamer to follow its line of sight and then.. you know, destroy it — using an iPhone camera. It’s also capable of locating and locking in on specific objects and faces, making it really useful in hunting down whatever imaginary creatures that have been following you lately. Check the coolness in the video after the break, but keep in mind — we’ve been able to see the invisible monsters all along.
It was almost exactly a year ago that our hearts were stolen by Murata Seiko (Japanese for Murata Girl), the balance-blessed, unicycling robot. Murata Seiko didn’t perform surgery or serve cocktails at parties — she was no service bot… unless you consider pure, unadulterated, awe-inspiring entertainment a service. And we must admit, we do. Well, Murata’s going to be performing at CEATEC 2009, showing off her three-times increased speed, improved balance, and turning ratio. All of this culminates in her new-found ability to navigate a very thin balance beam. Check out the videos of her in action after the break.
When Nikola Tesla invented his coil in 1891, he probably never imagined the ominous structures taking the place of the violin or French horn. But with time, anything’s possible. Music trio ArcAttack adds its own spin to Tesla’s dream machine.
We gather around the group in a circle, about 8 or 10 feet away from the Tesla coils as the band performs. This is not some “don’t want to dance in front of the stage” kind of teenage awkwardness—if you stand too close when the band plays, you might actually get electrocuted.
When the lights go down, a loud buzz generates, followed by streaks of lighting into the air. Then the music begins, followed by the sound of drums that are precise as can be. What follows is an overload of light and sound that is pure amazing, a melange of familiar melodies from our favorite video games (Mario and Zelda themes), TV shows (Airwolf) and pop songs (“Sexyback”).
Once the band stops playing, we still can’t roam freely. First, they must discharge the coils, ridding them of any stray lightning bolts that might be trapped inside.
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Consisting of a pair of Tesla coils—plus a pair of LED-equipped robotic drums and an Open Labs sound console—the ArcAttack experience is largely automated, suggestive of a future era when a musical performance isn’t about the people playing the instruments, but rather the technology involved.
ArcAttack hails from Austin, Texas and certainly don’t fit the mold of what most consider a band should be. But that’s a good thing.
John Di Prima is the man behind the boards, responsible for the execution of the live show. He controls the coils and drums, plus mixing in a few new sounds during the set. He’s also responsible for most of the songwriting and drum programming.
Patrick Brown, aka Parsec, is the master of ceremonies, decked out in steampunk-esque attire consisting of a Faraday Suit with a string of lights that react with the Tesla coils, plus the requisite lightning-proof goggles. He’s the link between the crowd and the show. He found the Di Prima brothers at an Austin Burning Man event and jokes that he’s managed to not get kicked out yet.
Joe Di Prima designs, builds and maintains everything for the group, serving as the technician when the show is on the road. When they’re composing and recording, he plays guitar. With a background in electronics repair, Joe eventually linked up with the engineering department at the University of Texas, where he first learned about the magic of Tesla coils.
I took a few minutes to interview ArcAttack—what makes them who they are—besides the Tesla coils, of course…
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Gizmodo: What does your setup consist of?
Joe: It would be two DRSSTC (Dual Resident Solid State Tesla Coil) units which are MIDI controlled. There’s a fiber optic cable running to some digital logic boards that are in the Tesla coils.
John: The Open Labs MiKO MIDI console hosts the PC Software (Fruity Loops) that we use to actually sequence the music.
The MiKO is just a Windows machine with a bunch of nice MIDI interfaces, cased in metal—which is nice because we have a lot of EMF emitted from the coils. I actually used to run it off my laptop, but it would crash all the time.
Patrick: The drum machine has a solenoid for every drum, and they’re MIDI controlled also…from the MiKO.
Gizmodo: How did you get the idea to create a musical show using Tesla coils? Had it been done before this?
Joe: When we did it originally, it was the first time it had been done in this manner. There are a few ways that you can audio modulate a Tesla coil—this way is known as PRM modulation. Now there are a few dozen people that picked up on it, but nobody does it to the scale that we do. It’s still fairly new, and surprisingly still fairly unknown.
When I first saw a solid state Tesla coil in operation, I understood how it worked. After a few minutes of playing with it, I got the idea that, many years later, I put into practice.
Gizmodo: Who are some of your musical and tech influences?
John: Well obviously Nikola Tesla. For music, we all have pretty different tastes. But the cool thing with our project is that we can do anything from Pantera to the Chicken Dance and people would dig it. I listen to electronic rock, Kraftwerk, Daft Punk…if I could do a show with Daft Punk, you could shoot me afterward.
Joe: I didn’t know what music was until three years ago. For tech influences, hard to say, but Faraday, all my mentors at all the repair shops, my dad (who was a biomedical engineer) and Steve Ward, the father of the DRSSTC, who I met at the University of Texas.
Gizmodo: What are some of the weirdest/favorite/disastrous shows you’ve played?
John: Joe had to tackle a cop once.
Joe: Yeah the cops had come shut down this rave we were playing at, and the Tesla coils were still running. He was coming over to shut our stuff off, not knowing exactly what it was, and he was walking straight into the Tesla coils. So I grabbed him and pushed him back. Amazingly he did not Tase me. He was actually kinda grateful. Funniest part is, after they kicked everyone out, they walked around and asked if we could turn the stuff back on.
Patrick: My favorite show so far was when we played DragonCon in Atlanta a few weeks ago. We did the Mad Scientist Ball. We had our big Tesla coils and a Faraday cage, and revealed our new stage show, which assisted people in transforming themselves into true joy…by being bathed in the Tesla coil rays.
During our stage performance, there were about 15 people that we put into the cage, and this one guy named Dr. Satan had big metal wings that he put onto his back. We get him up there, but the cage is kinda small, and he has metal sticking out all over his body. So we tell him “don’t move.” Soon the entire crowd started chanting along. That was pretty cool. [And obviously Dr. Satan lived through it.]
John: We were in the Netherlands for two weeks, and we played a heavy metal fest where they put us in front of this church that was lit all demonic looking. On our stage, there were these big glass viewing areas where you could see the deceased founders of the town. I think that’s pretty much the most epic thing ever. Heavy metal music through lightning over visible graves.
Q: What is the one gadget you can’t live without?
Joe: My iPhone.
Patrick: My Dell laptop.
John: The Open Labs MiKO console. If it was human, I’d marry it.
9/22 Tuesday Media Day by appointment only. For info please contact gallery@gizmodo.com.
9/23 Wednesday 12-8
9/24 Thursday 12-8
9/25 Friday 12-8
9/26 Saturday 11-8 9-? – Live Musical Performance
9/27 Sunday 11-6
Read more about our Giz Gallery 09 here, follow @gizgallery on Twitter and see what else we’ll be playing with at the event.And special thanks to Toyota’s Prius — without their sponsorship, there would be no Gizmodo Gallery.
The fine folks at the Beijing Institute of Technology just unveiled a pair of new bots, dubbed JingJing and PuiPui. Back in 2003 BIT was showing off its BHR-1 and BHR-2 bots, life-sized humanoids that can do tai chi, and these new bots keep their predecessor’s martial arts capabilities but add in some conversational skills. During what sounds to have been a charming unveiling, the bots answered questions from the audience, self-identifying themselves as humanoid robots to an enraptured crowd. Their creator claims we’re entering a personal computer revolution-style era with robots, and while we’ve heard that claim before, boy do we want to believe it! Check out a video of the original BHR series performing their moves to an epic soundtrack after the break.
Set aside your fears of world-dominating cyborgs and say hello to Hajime 33, an athletic robot who’s about as tall as Kobe Bryant. Granted, this bot plays soccer, not basketball (yet).
Created by Hajime Sakamoto, Hajime 33 is the latest addition to Sakamoto’s fleet of humanoid robots. Powered by batteries, the robot is controlled with a PS3 controller, and it can walk and kick a ball. Hajime 33 weighs in at just 44 pounds while overlooking his creator at more than 6 feet 5 inches tall.
At first glance, Hajime 33 isn’t exactly graceful when it comes to our standards of, well, being a human. And his soccer skills are a far cry from Beckham’s — he can barely kick the ball, let alone bend it. However, the aesthetics and intelligence of Sakamoto’s robots are advancing him closer to his dream of “building Gundam.” It’ll be at least 10 years before Sakamato creates a giant, Gundam-like robot, but soccer is a start. One can only imagine what Hajime 33 can do to groins. Ouch.
We’ve seen our fair share of scary robots in these parts, and we’re not going to mince words here: there is no way we are going anywhere near one that’s armed with a hypodermic needle — and we sure as hell aren’t going to sit still and let it draw blood! Currently being developed by a team at Imperial College in London, the Bloodbot is designed to probe your arm for the presence of a vein, stick you with the needle, puncture the vein, and then stop short of rupture. The system, which has thus far only been tested on one patient (sounds like we’re not the only ones with reservations regarding the device) has been accurate about 78 percent of the time, meaning it only resulted in screaming fits 22 percent of the time — unlike your friendly neighborhood nurse or medical technician, who is accurate nearly 100 percent of the time (and still inspires the occasional fit, but that’s another story).
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