Ten billion Euros! That’s 12.9 billion dollars! It’s also how much the European Space Agency and Innovation Minister Lord Drayson have decided to spend on a new space budget. Some of the money is going toward things like funding Galileo, the European GPS service, and a feasibility study for a returnable spacecraft. But the most intriguing plan to emerge from the Agency’s two day conference is the agreement to build a research center at the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus in Oxfordshire.
One of the center’s main objectives will be to develop space robots. ExoMars is such a bot–it will be designed to search for life on mars. Space robots and discovering aliens all in the same project? Simply out of this world.

[BBC] VIA [The Register]

The GroundBot is a robotic mobile platform with cameras and sensors and virtually silent maneuverability, with very low maintenance costs. That makes it ideal to explore other planets. It was designed by Swedish physicists.

The robot boasts some impressive off-road performance, at 6mph through mud, sand, snow and even water. The cameras and sensors are protected inside the sealed sphere and the bot can be remote controlled by hand or programmed to navigate by GPS. The built-in cameras have a 360-degree viewing angle to zoom in on the smallest details. Powered by lithium-ion batteries, the GroundBot can operate for 8-16 hours, rolling simply by shifting its weight.

Great for spying and exploring.

[Gizmowatch]

NASA will begin work next month on a four-year, $1.74 million project called the Virtual Space Station. The project will attempt to create a program that can independently counsel depressed astronauts by supplying solutions to their typed insecurities. Remember HAL 9000 anyone?

Astronauts would type their psychological problems into a console, and a pre-recorded video therapist will then lead them through a series of likely solutions. The robot “helps astronauts identify reasons for their depression. Then the program helps them make a plan to fight the depression.”

If Astronauts use the thing. After all, denial is powerful. How can you admit that you are suffering psychologically if you are in denial? Plus he’s scared shitless that HAL will kill him interpret the mission differently. So you see, it’s doomed to failure either way.

[AP]

A group of scientists from the Field Robotics Center at Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute have been developing Scarab, a robot for the moon. Carnegie’s team, the Lunar Rover Initiative, along with some help from NASA, have spent about a decade developing a space robot like this.
The 880 lb Scarab will this November mimic a lunar mission halfway up Hawaii’s Mauna Kea. During the 13 day run the bot will climb, drill, extract and analyze samples. The bot’s suspension allows it to climb up steep inclines. It also has a neato drill from Norcat and a chemical analyzer from NASA. The Norcat drill cuts one-meter chunks of rock which are then chopped up and transferred to NASA’s chamber. In the chamber samples will be heated to 900 degrees Celsius to identify individual components.
The Scarab is part of a series of space bots that are made to work in ultra-unfriendly conditions, like perpetual darkness, spotty communication, and temperatures around minus 385 degrees Fahrenheit. Hopefully Scarab will enjoy its brief time in Hawaii before it’s rocketed off to the moon, where it will mount a spacebot campaign against earth.

[cnet]

I know we at Botropolis seem to be posting a lot of robotic spider news lately. This isn’t because we’re harboring a love of robotic spiders, it isn’t even because of some robo-arachnophobia coupled with our unbridled masochism. We post robot spider stories as they’re made available simply to keep our readers informed, that they may stay alive a little longer during the robopocalypse. Hopefully this wave of robot spider news will be stemmed, and we think it will, because we’ve just learned that robot spiders are being sent to space.
That’s right, out of our lives forever in the great beyond. NASA already has prototypes for the SpiderBots (they really have 6 legs, not 8, w/e). The bots are small, about the size of a palm (not a tree) and the proposed plan is to have them work cooperatively in space. They would do things like construct, repair, explore, search and rescue, and eventually fight aliens.
Currently, the SpiderBots have demonstrated their ability to walk along mesh netting in microgravity simulated in parabolic flights. Each leg has two spring compliant joints and a gripping actuator. One foreseen improvement will be attaching sensors to the feet to provide feedback on walking success, thus limiting possible trouble—e.g. a SpiderBot floating helplessly through the vast expanse of space.
Robotic spiders have gone a long way in a relatively short amount of time. It seems like just last month they were dancing and limbo-ing, happy in their carefree lifestyle. Now they’re going into the final frontier, knowing not what they will encounter. Godspeed, SpiderBots.

[NASA Tech Briefs] VIA [Eureka]

As a collector of vintage toy robots I’m always on the lookout for cool new(Or old) stuff. Over at Darkroastedblend, they recently showcased a bunch of sweet vintage robots. These guys are all from those beautiful heady days before robots in real life started gaining the abilities needed to kill and maim. These babies are all treasured by human collectors and they are good to have around because in the future when a robot storms your house, you will be spared thanks to robo-worship.

[Darkroastedblend]

The Mars Phoenix Lander got all uppity and shut its robotic arm down over the weekend, refusing to follow NASA’s orders when it “realized” those actions would have damaged it’s wrist. NASA programmers sent new code to bring the arm back to life, and are now messing with the original code to try and get the task done. Apparently NASA is pleased with the bot thinking for itself. They described the process as “pretty neat.”

Real neat. When this thing strikes a bargain with alien life to wipe us out that will be neat too.

[PCworld]