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Lego biped robots are nothing new, but this one is something special. It’s the first walking Lego robot. And it is awesome. It walks by raising its feet. For real. It could not have been easy creating this one, but now that it exists, I wonder what other Lego mechas it will inspire. Video below.
Robosoft’s service drone has finally arrived as an R&D platform. Kompai is a personal assistance bot who understands basic instructions and requests and offers up some appropriate responses of it’s own. It functions as a note and shopping list recorder, a calendar, music player, even a video conferencing tool. All to aid the elderly and help them.
If you want to see it interacting with an actual elderly person or two, check out the video below. Read the rest of this entry »
A Japanese robot manufacturer called BL Autotec has developed a remote-controlled robot hand that can grip and turn doorknobs. Once connected to a emergency robot, it can safely open doors at disaster sites. Imagine being able to open the door of a collapsed building without putting humans in danger.
The hand has a built-in CCD camera and an LED light so it can be operated remotely in dark areas. With four shafts, the hand can move up to 1m. It’s also able to move hazardous materials and rubble.
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We’re a few days late on this one, but in case you missed it, Rihanna recently got all nasty at Germany’s ECHO Awards in Berlin. She was making out with a robot or two and even got… Well, squirted on by one of them.
We’ve been following this little guy for awhile now as he gets better and better. One thing is for sure, Hinamitetu’s bots have the heart of a champion. Hinamitetu has finally made a gymnast robot that can do a mid-air somersault and grab the horizontal bar again without taking a nosedive. What will this bot do next? We shall see.
Haibao, the Gumby-like mascot for EXPO 2010 Shanghai China has now become robotic. He’s popular over there and has appeared in artist renditions as a blue Shrek, Keroro, Ultraman, and even Hellboy. So now 37 blue Haibao robots are being deployed to assist visitors at the exposition.
The robots stand 1.55 meters tall, have touch screens in their stomachs and will assist visitors with information about the expo and local transportation in six different languages. They will even take photos of the visitors as a keepsake. You’ll be able to find them at the two Shanghai international airports and other key locations around the expo.
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The Cycler robot has been around for awhile and sometimes goes by the name Recycler. He’s been in the business of teaching kids to recycle for over 10 years. And that’s what Cycler was created for. He’s used in school presentations where he teaches your kids to not be wasteful. Cycler handles some functions on his own, but for some bigger functions he is controlled by a handler.
We’ve seen our share of robots that are controlled by phones, but usually those phones are controlled from a human’s hand. Thanks to some hackers, there are now some bots that use Android for their robot’s brain.
The TruckBot uses an HTC G1 as a brain with a chassis made from $30 in parts. The bot can use the phone’s compass to move in a particular direction, but they’re working on incorporating the bot more fully with the phone and the Android software. Some ideas they’re thinking about include face and voice recognition and location awareness.
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Sure, the weather is getting warmer now, but when it was dropping several feet of snow I bet you got quite a workout shoveling all that white stuff. If you had RoboPlow you would never have to strain your back again.
The guys at IdeaLaboratories created this winter beast of burden, which sports a 50″ blade, and six wheel drive. It’s one mission in life is to combat snow and clear streets. Once the streets are clear and safe for humans it can then devise ways to plow us down.
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 Robots are a fact of life. Soon they will kill us. We’d like to document the coming apocalypse. |
