Archive for October, 2008

Hallowe’en is at hand, and there’s no better way to immerse yourself in the spirit of the night then by recalling some of the most horrifying robots that Botropolis has spewn into your nightmares.
Of all the terrifying creations that have fallen from the mind of man, robots are among the most sinister, but also the most romantic. They represent an interesting dichotomy — at once they are symbolic of our genius, our desire for knowledge, our industriousness, but also of our sloth and narcissism.
Even before the computer was invented, writers conceived mechanical men. In many of these imaginative cases, the robots grew uncontrollable, and their creators were left to wonder what kind of evil they had cursed upon the world. Robot apocalypse movies of today share the same theme…that intelligent machines will bring about the fall of our species. With the rapid pace of technical advancement, it is not difficult to fathom a world where sentient clockwork men are dispersed among the living.
Presently we have nothing to fear, most robots are utilitarian factory workers…but the end is approaching. Despite our relative safety at the moment, there are undoubtedly some creepers in the mix. Let’s examine them now:

Giant Robot Spider: In early September 2009 there was a ginormous robot spider in Liverpool, England. Spiders and robots are each scary in their own right, but put together they’re like zomg.

700 Ton Autonomous Dump Truck: This disgustingly massive robot was designed by Caterpillar and Carnegie Mellon to carry 270 tons of payload. One bad line of code and this robot could bury you alive…or simply reduce your house and family to a small pulpy mass.

Big Dog: You’ve probably already seen the Big Dog robot from Boston Dynamics. If you haven’t already you better check it out, otherwise just remember how horrible it is. Oh yeah, and recently they announced plans to make Big Dog even bigger. One creepy quadruped bot.

RatBrain Robot: I was amazed and horrified when I heard that University of Reading scientists had created a robot that was controlled by a glob of mouse brain cells. They claimed to be doing it to study the effects of memory-related diseases, but there are certainly some cyborg/mousezombie implications here.

Geminoid: You remember Geminoid, don’t you? How could you forget the eerily lifelike facial expressions of this humanoid robot crafted in the likeness of its creator? One of the scariest bots you’ll ever see, even including those of the robopocalypse.

Children Snatchers: Swarm robots. Stealing children. No lie, swarm bots stealing children.

Repliee: Everyone’s favorite little girl robot, Repliee, is surely the scariest robot there is. From her eyelashes, to her silicone skin, to her niche scraping along the floor of the uncanny valley, Repliee will haunt your dreams forever.

Happy Halloween from Botropolis.

This kids mech costume rocks. It totally kicks your costume’s ass. It’s hard to put into words how awesome it is, so just watch the video.

The flute playing robot from Waseda University in Japan may not blurt “Hey, Aqualung!” at the end of its performance, but it is still a really impressive robot. The latest version of the Waseda Flutist, WF-4RIV, was recently presented the IEEE’s BioRob 2008. From the Waseda site:

The research on the anthropomorphic flutist robot, started at Waseda University since 1990, has focused on three main goals:

- Clarifying the human motor control while playing the flute from an engineering point of view
- Enabling the communication with humans at the emotional level of perception (i.e. performing a duet with a professional flutist player)
- Proposing novel applications of humanoid robots (i.e. transferring flute playing skills to unskilled persons).

The current version of this bot has robotic components that correspond to almost all of a human flutist’s playing processes. Simulated lungs, vocal cords, and a tongue — all with variable movement — are just part of the technology. It also has CCD cameras for eyes, which can watch a human player and allow the robot to more accurately follow along by adjusting its speed, like it would need to do in a duet or ensemble.
And the robot can do more than just play, it can teach. A beginner flutist can learn from the robot, who would monitor the human’s technique and offer advice. Here’s a video of the robot playing Flight of the Bumblebee.

[Technology Review]

The Biopod automated tripod is a concept at the moment, so we don’t have to worry about Robo-Tripods following us around and selling pics to tabloids just yet. But one day soon that is exactly what will happen.

This little guy crawls about 3 inches off of the ground and can’t even grip walls to get it’s shot. So given it’s size and adherence to the ground, this thing will be stalking little people and snapping upskirt pics only. Until it hovers, that’s all it has career-wise. You gotta start somewhere. I suppose it could always catalog footwear and sidewalk pot-holes.

[Yanko] VIA [Slippery Brick]

Some guy really hates to dispose of disposable razors and spent about 800 hours cutting up 2,120 disposable razors and gluing them together to make a functional 43 pound robot. You crazy, razor-man. But your psycho project is retro-cool.

Aldebaran Robotics has a new video of their humanoid robot, Nao. It’s designed to be an entertainment robot and features limbs with 25 degrees of freedom, usable hands, stereo vision, voice recognition and synthesis, and a programmable Linux OS. Pretty sweet huh? Gets better. Nao is programmable graphically or using code. Sure, you can add software and even behaviors, but you can also customize the hardware. Did Nao just lie to that other bot in the video below? wth?

By the end of next year you’ll be able to buy it from between $15,000 and $16,000. A lying robot is worth every penny.
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Build a functional AT-ST walker that looks like it came from a kid-made Star Wars movie. Then have it walk over Jar-Jar until you are satisfied. The AREXX YT-3000 aka “YETi Walker” is a pretty cool bi-pedal robot which can be programmed using your PC or remote-controlled via an IR interface. It’s powered by an ATMEGA8 microcontrolller, which can be easily programmed in C. In its basic configuration, the YETi is a simple walking machine, but you can expand it with additional sensors and modules, like an ultrasonic obstacle detector and an external LED display.

The basic YETi Walker kit is available for about $114. I would build it and then paint it up to look like a real AT-ST.

[Robotshop] VIA [Technabob]

The BigDog quadruped can carry over 300 pounds, walk for nearly 13 miles on flat ground, and keep itself balanced after getting beat up. It’s a prototype for a machine that could help carry soldiers’ gear, when on a mission. Tough as it is, Darpa decided it wasn’t enough. They now want an upgraded ‘bot that will carry 400 pounds on its back, do a 20 mile walk on any terrain, and carry enough gas for an entire day’s worth of operations. They’re calling it a generic “Legged Squad Support System,” or L3. All I can say is, that is gonna one huge-ass dog.

[Boston Dynamics]

Wanna Nerd up your Halloween party? Here’s a great tutorial for making little robot “bugs” that dance around whenever they sense light. It’s enough to spook any robot fearing human. Flash a light on it and it freaks out. You could have it guard a bowl of candy.

[Popsci]

These two “warbling” robots have been programmed by composer/computer scientist Eduardo Miranda. Miranda, from the UK’s University of Plymouth, programmed the bots to create unique songs together. The first robot produces a string of about 60 random notes, then the second bot produces its own random melody. The first robot compares the two pieces and decides if they’re similar, in which case it nods so that the second robot memorizes the sequence and can play the song again. If the noises don’t go together, the first bot will shake its head and the sequence will be abandoned.
So far they have “evolved” the ability to sing 20 songs together. Miranda developed the bots so that he could “compose music that no human would ever come up with”. Here’s a video of the singing robots in action. Miranda compares the project to the emergence of simplistic, shared culture between humans.

[NewScientist]