Okay actually the 2009 Baltic Robot Sumo Cup wasn’t illegal; in fact it was sponsored by major robotics companies like iRobot and ABB. 60 robots participated in 3 categories – Mini Sumo, 3 kg Sumo, and of course Roomba Sumo. But it was really held in Lithuania. And Roombas really do sneak off at night. They meet with other miniscule warriors and oshitaoshi the circuits out of each other. True story.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

Of course the only move that these robots have is “push”, but I’m sure ten to fifteen years from now, when Roomba v. 10.10 or something will be out, and it’ll look like a human, only with 4 arms and missiles for fingers, we’ll all look back to these pioneers, and curse iRobot for coming up with the darned things, because obviously we’ll be the ones who are cleaning the Roomba’s homes at that point. So enjoy their limited functionality and their silent yet comedic fights, because it won’t last long folks. It won’t! What was I talking about? Oh right, android tennis! Awesome stuff.

[via BotJunkie]

Here’s Bowers on his creation: “The light sensor sends data to an Arduino, which is waiting for a spike in the data. The Arduino runs the sensor data through some averaging filters, and sets a threshold for on and off.”

The robot’s fingers are servos, and its fingertips are made of copper wire embedded in foam. Everything was stuffed “into a modified Pelican case, with a lot of hot glue (non glittery)” and voila! A rockin robot that looks like an iPhone lobotomizer. Enough talk, let’s see it rock!

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

I can still hear the rhythmic squeaking.

[via Boing Boing]

As you can see from the pictures, AIDA has its own set of facial expressions, to help it “establish an affective bond” with the driver. I guess it is more pleasing to interact with something that has a face, as opposed to talking to the air like the Hoff used to do with KITT, but won’t it become a distraction?

What I like about AIDA though is its ability to familiarize itself with the needs and habits of a driver, like one’s usual destinations, or how one drives. It will then combine that information with real-time data like traffic or weather, stuff that may not be immediately available to the driver, to give hints and tips:

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

What do you think? Will AIDA be a helpful companion, or a nagger that you won’t be able to kick out of the car?

[via MIT via Popular Science]

ROPID can also be taught to respond to voice commands, and even has a “noise-canceling chip” installed to make it easier for him to hear instructions. However, as the video below shows, the noise-canceling chip either doesn’t work or is no match for a hundred clicking cameras.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

Here’s another video of ROPID showing off his moves:

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

Takahashi-san built the robot with his own hands, and he says he plans to make a short film that stars ROPID. I heard it will be called Toy Story 4. Kidding.

[via Plastic Pals via Engadget]

The HAROP can stay on air for up to 6 hours, plenty of time to select a target within its 620 mi range. So you can deploy it from another city way ahead of time, and have it wait for a target to come out or pass by, then BOOM. Haropped.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

I do not want to die that way. If you feel the same way, then you’d better not piss off India or Germany in some royal manner, because both countries recently bought a bunch of HAROPs.

[via IAI via BotJunkie]

CMU’s Snackbot is a roving wheeled ‘bot who’s primary purpose is to roam the halls of the University’s buildings, delivering tasty treast to students and faculty. Snackbot not only drives around bringing snacks, he also brings plenty of goodwill, with a pleasant-sounding voice communication system and calm demeanor unlikely to be rattled by even the most demanding snack customer. He features a sophisticated “multi-sensor fusion algorithms” which let him understand where he’s going, navigate through crowds, and can autonomously learn new objects.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

My only complaint is that all that he seems to be delivering in the video clip above is granola bars and souvenirs. What kind of snacks are those? Where are my Ding Dongs, Ring Dings, Big Wheels and King Dons? Even Snackbot’s early prototype delivered M&Ms, Twix and Oreos…

While Snackbot was designed for a nobler cause – studying human-robot interactions, bringing snacks to my office each day would be plenty reason for me to invest research dollars – as long as there are creme-filled snack cakes, that is.

[via BotJunkie]

You see, it’s relatively easy (for nerds) to build a robot that can find its way to a target outdoors, thanks to the magic of GPS. But what if you want to search inside a building? GPS won’t help you there, believe me. I researched it extensively. If you don’t have a map of the building or whatever structure you’re infiltrating, you’re screwed. But more importantly, GPS receivers need a strong signal to work, something which you’ll have difficulty obtaining inside a building.

So the aforementioned MIT students came up with a laser scanner that sweeps the helicopter’s immediate area, and that along with some algorithm magic (yeah this is where I lose track of definitions) builds a corresponding rough three-dimensional map of the autonomous vehicle’s immediate environment, as shown in the image above. Now I need you to watch the video below and then answer one tiny question for me: when the narrator uses the word “we” and “us”, does he mean that they can control the robot remotely which means they can see the map that the laser sweep generates, or is the robot fully autonomous?

Maybe the chopper is the narrator, and it’s talking using lasers. I don’t know. I’m confused.

[via MIT Tech TV]

The Sega Saturn joystick/Insecticon is actually a “Robo-Space-Bug,” at least according to its creator, James Ian Killinger. The fightstick turned fighting robot was found on his portfolio at Coroflot. It seems that Killinger managed to turn an innocent Sega Saturn joystick into a buggy menace with only its original components and three extra screws.

One time, I destroyed a Sega Saturn joystick and all of its original components, and then lost three screws.

But I digress. What do you think the odds are that we’ll see a video game controller like this transform into Kickback in Michael Bay’s third Transformers film? I mean, he did confirm that Transformers 3 is on its way. I’m not so sure that’s a good thing, though (rock on, shameless plug!).

[via Gizmodo]

He moves! He glides! He staggers in robotic fashion! And if he doesn’t talk crap about you in a series of boops and beeps, why, then I’d bet that’s the plan for the next version. If it’s not, it should be. I’ve had a lot of critters and things smart off to me in my day, but I’ve never been insulted by an itsy-bitsy robot, and that alone makes me wish I had the know-how to build myself a tiny R2.

He’s actually pretty impressive on the move. Check out the video:

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

This R2 unit is an amazing 1/18th the size of the real R2, and was made with three of Solarbotics GM15 pager gearmotor (and, probably, a lot of spare time).

[via MAKE]

The Power Loader is made of 500 lbs of aluminum alloy. It’s equipped with 18 electromagnetic motors that allows its operator to lift up to 220 lbs without breaking a sweat. The suit also has force feedback, so the operator will know how it feels to pinch chestbursters and facehuggers until they explode. You have to admit though that 220 lbs isn’t exactly a lot of weight; there are people who are much heavier than that.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

But the Power Loader is probably still in its early stages; Activelink has set a deadline of 6 years – i.e. until 2015 – by which time they hope to have a commercial version ready. Lets hope aliens don’t arrive before then.

[via Pink Tentacle & Akihabara News]

According to the article, unlike the corporate-commissioned Gundam statue the Tetsujin 28-go statue was “planned and led by a nonprofit organization made up of local shop owners, who decided to build the monument as a symbol of the area’s reconstruction.” The shop owners managed to raise a whopping ¥135 million ($1.5 million USD) to build the statue. Tetsujin 28-go’s creator, legendary manga artist Mitsuteru Yokoyama, was born in Kobe.

The Manichi Daily News further reveals that Kobe was hit by “the Great Hanshin Earthquake in 1995″, and  that “today, its population has declined to about 80 percent of pre-quake levels.” Let’s hope the statue brings in commerce and people to Kobe. And because Tetsujin 28-go was granted permanent residence at the park, giant robot statues should consider migrating to Kobe as well.

But seriously the shop owners are real heroes; their idea might not be original but their intentions are pure. I think. Go Tetsujin 28-go! May you be of service to the city and its people.

These amazing photographs were made by strapping a colored LED to the top of Roomba vacuums and then capturing extra-long exposure photos (known as “light paintings”). It’s sort of like looking at a neon Spirograph and spider web rolled into one. I’ve posted a few of my favorites in the gallery below…

You can check out the complete archive of Roomba light art over at the Roomba Art Flickr pool. My Hoover definitely can’t do this.

[via New World Geek via Make:]

Thanks to the brilliant devious minds of Japan’s RT Corporation, this new robot known as RIC (Robot Inside Character) will soon be wandering the streets and aisles at trade shows, terrorizing children and old people to the point that they really will need to buy some Robot Insurance.

RIC might look cute and cuddly on the surface, but under its skin, it’s something that Sarah Connor would want to crush under an industrial press until the lights go out in its eyeballs. The good news is that you could probably overpower the thing if it ever ran amok. Thankfully, it only stands about 4 feet tall, and weighs about 15 pounds. It’s controlled by 20 Futaba servo motors and can be upgraded to as many as 30, based on the specific use case (and how many weapons you plan to attach).

If you’ve got 2,000,000 yen (appx $20,000 USD) lying around you can get your own RIC and set it loose on unsuspecting children and grandparents.

[RIC (translated) via ROBOTS DREAMS]

Murata’s Seiko-chan (Murata Girl) self-balancing unicycle robot first came onto the scene back in 2008, but has recently been upgraded so it can tool along 3 times faster than the original. An ultrasonic sensor and camera help Seiko keep on the straight and narrow, avoiding obstacles along the way.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

Seiko-chan can now turn on a 2-centimeter radius, and can even balance itself on a narrow balance beam (I’d love to see her make her way along a tightrope someday).

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

If you happen to be attending the CEATEC show in Japan from October 6th through 10th, you’ll be able to see Seiko-chan up close and personal. Other than getting bloggers like me to write about them, I can’t think of too many practical uses for a balancing unicycle ‘bot, can you?

[via Robonable via Plastic Pals]

I’m sure there are lots of things that he knows that we common folks don’t. But to support his claims, Kurzweil, whose future self sent the picture below, also mentions recent breakthroughs in biotechnology, such as artificial pancreases for diabetics and neural implants for Parkinson’s patients.

Kurzweil – whose future future self sent the picture below, I don’t know how or why - also pulled the ol’ computer analogy: “Our phones now perform tasks we wouldn’t have dreamed possible 20 years ago. When I was a student in 1965, my university’s only computer cost £7 million and was huge.  Today your mobile phone is a million times less expensive and a thousand times more powerful. That’s a billion times more capable for the same price.”

Using the Law of Accelerating Returns – which btw is his own theory – Kurzweil estimates that “we will experience another billion-fold increase in technological capability for the same cost in the next 25 years.” Dammit. I wasn’t planning to buy a new laptop till 2030! How expensive will a Core Quadrillion MacBook be by then? Kurzweil, whose future future future self drew the picture below, also mentions a bit of NSFW stuff that I’d rather not share with you.

What do you think of Krangzweil Kurzweil’s predictions? You can read his article here if you want. Our technological progress has really been exponential, so yeah, maybe he’s right.  But let’s not forget that despite all of our fancy gadgets and Gundam statues, we’re not really progressing a lot in other aspects: lots of people are still suffering in one way or another, and we still bicker and fight over lots of things.

If Kurzweil’s 2029 ever comes true, I hope it’s not just the rich or privileged who reap the advantage of this supposedly godlike technology. I’m telling you, as a Third World gamer and techie who spends most of his time browsing the net and reading about First World developments, sometimes it feels like you folks are already in the future, because I sure as hell don’t see or experience a lot of the things that I read about. Also, I’m finding it very hard to be dramatic and serious with Krangzweil around.

[via DVICE, Kurzminators via faceinhole]