Developages - Development and Technology Blog

In Rodney Brooks’ recommended book Flesh and Machines, he talks about his disappointment over robot lawnmowers. That was five years ago, and little has changed in the field since then. It’s pretty much still the same robomowers with the same less-than-killer-app technologies. Brooks’ iRobot obviously is hoping to change that with their “Mowba” (let’s hope that’s a working title) patent filing. Robot Stock News has a bunch of patent illos showing the different possible configurations, moving technologies, sensor types, and mowing schemes. The full patent can be seen here.

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Original post by Gareth Branwyn

This video shows a Wii Fit Balance Board controlling a “SkyBot” toy robot to move around a platform. Check out the link below to the downloadable Python source code for this hack and lots of good details on how it was built.

Wii Board

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Original post by Jonah Brucker-Cohen

Apparently the Japanese man who developed this robotic arm that uses a mouse and keyboard to anonymously send stories to Digg 24 hours a day was arrested by police in Nagasaki. As you can see by the video, there’s a lot of tech involved to do this, while doing it in software couldn’t possibly be as complex.

via Pink Tentacle

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Original post by Jonah Brucker-Cohen

Climbing stairs. Not as easy as it looks. I know this from personal experience. I like how the winning approach is to favor one leg. That’s how I did it, before my hip replacement. I did NOT however slide down stairs sideways!

RoboGames 2008: Stair Climbing Challenge

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Original post by Gareth Branwyn

This enterprising builder is constructing a humanoid robot from little more than Shapelock plastic, card, curtain rods, rings, and finials, and bargain basement electric screwdrivers for the motors. I’ll be interested to see how this progresses.

Android 10 [via Hacked Gadgets]

Related:

• Crabfu’s SwashBot 3, now crabbier

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Original post by Gareth Branwyn

“PIO: meet / greet” by the artist group / collective, Finishing School, is a semi-autonomous drone that moves through public spaces to send salutations to people in the six official languages of the United Nations. Built from what looks like the innards of an RC car, portable megaphone, distance sensors to detect pedestrians in order to know when to spout out its on board greetings, the device would probably be confiscated quickly in most public spaces in the US. Still, it’s good to see that more than just English is represented here.

Finishing School

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Original post by Jonah Brucker-Cohen

This site has detailed instructions on how to turn a Mini XM-177 Airsoft rifle into a computer-controlled, servo-actuated gun.

Robot Airsoft [via]

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Original post by Gareth Branwyn

There’s an old jargon term I love: “technical butt sniffing,” which is when two geeks size up each others technical mojo. This vid brings a whole new meaning to the term, as two bio-mechanical critters, one dog and one crab, try to determine who has more DOF.

[via]

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Original post by Gareth Branwyn

Type “about: robots” in Firefox 3.0 to see this little Klaatu barada nikto from our benevolent metallic brethren. [Thanks, Jay!]

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Original post by Gareth Branwyn

Here’s the amazing Crabfu’s latest creation. In other fu news, I-Wei’s Swashbot3 won Gold Medal for Best of Show at RoboGames last weekend! Congrats, mate!

Related:

• Swashbot build videos
• Crabfu’s SwashBot 3, now crabbier
• Say hello to the Swashbot

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Original post by Gareth Branwyn

This incredible video shows an example of “tele-surgery” techniques with the example of a surgeon remotely controlling robotic arms to fold a penny-size origami crane. Although the precision is pretty amazing, we wonder how much the average citizen will want a robot (even though it is remotely attached to a doctor) poking around inside their intestines.

[via]

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Original post by Jonah Brucker-Cohen

Here’s an industrial robot controlled by a Wimote. The builder writes:

This is a small presentation of a university project I have worked on for the last 6 months.

Using a real-time system the orientation of the Wii Remote is polled and sent to the Stäubli TX 60 industrial robot.

The concept is stolen from a game named Kororinpa but the graphics are little more realistic

This was done at the chair Robotics and Embedded Systems Knoll of the Technical University of Munich.

[via]

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Original post by Gareth Branwyn

Robert Oschler, of RobotsRule, sent us news of these new videos WowWee has just released, showing their “Femisapien” (ugh) robot, which features poseable scripting. In the first video, WowWee (and BEAM) robotics guru Mark Tilden shows how the scripting works. The second, rather goofy, video shows two bots fencing as they play back their scripts.

More about the Femisapien at RobotsRule.

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Original post by Gareth Branwyn

My pal Jesse Hurdus, who helped me out on my robot book, was also part of Virginia Tech’s VictorTango Urban Challenge Team. He writes to Robots.net:

“Thought I’d send some interesting news your way. Team VictorTango’s base vehicle platform for the Urban Challenge (which placed third, just behind Stanford), is now being sold as a product by TORC Technologies. Of course, this is just the fully Drive-By-Wire Ford Hybrid Escape (minus sensors and A.I.), but its very cool none-the-less!” Team VictorTango was Virginia Tech’s entry in the Urban Grand Challenge. You can find out more about on the Team VictorTango website. Their robotic vehicle, known as Odin, was loaded with sensors that included SICK laser scanners, IBEO Alasca laser scanners, NovAtel GPS/INS, and multiple video cameras. TORC Technologies worked with the VT team as a subcontractor on the vehicle, developing technologies that included motion planning algorithms for use with Ackerman steering, driving behaviors, situation classifiers, and a JAUS-based software architecture.

Go VT!

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Original post by Gareth Branwyn

Here’s an episode of EngineeringTV featuring a gecko-inspired wall-walker being developed at Carnegie Mellon University.

Waalbot Wall Climbing Robot

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Original post by Gareth Branwyn