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Posts Tagged “

Robots

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rage with the machine

Punk Rock Robots Rock Out to Punk Rock ONLY

Making robots even more hardcore, British roboticists have designed machines that will only dance to punk rock music. Standing 2 meters tall, padded in leather and decked in various punk scene insignias, the pogoing robots wait until they hear the familiar strains of anti-establishment rock before they start dancing. Is it just me, or do these things sound like they'd be a minor threat in the mosh pit? More »

2:00 PM on Sat Jul 5 2008
By Elaine Chow
1,902 views, 14 comments

Latest by tehdahl: @oo0cyst0oo: hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah more »

showbiz pizza

A Documentary on ShowBiz Pizza's Rocka-fire Explosion Animatronic Band

Faithful readers will know I am not even close to finished exploiting my painful job experiences at the Chuck E. Cheese in the Bergen Mall for Gizmodo fodder. God I hate that place. When I was growing up, the cooler place to be with way better pizza and far better games was ShowBiz Pizza. ShowBiz also had another advantage: this terrifying but captivating animitronic musical band called Rocka-fire Explosion, which is the subject of this documentary. I am watching it, and lighting a candle in remembrance. And Fuck Chuck E. Cheese. [Youtube via BoingBoing's David P.] More »

4:45 PM on Fri Jul 4 2008
By Brian Lam
4,476 views, 44 comments

Latest by Evil J: @Billman13: So it was you!?!? more »

drone

Research UAV is Preview of Hovering Spy Drones of Tomorrow

Meet STARMAC, the Stanford Testbed of Autonomous Rotorcraft for Multi-Agent Control. Possibly the cleverest remote control mini-helicopter you've ever seen, packed with GPS, sensors and computer power. It's a research quad-rotor that the Stanford team is using to develop algorithms for future aircraft like it. More »

10:40 AM on Thu Jul 3 2008
By Kit Eaton
1,776 views, 42 comments

robots

Anima Machines Robotic Art is Freakishly Organic

At Impress they've posted a review of a recent show titled Anima Machines by artist Choe U Ram that contains some of the most bizarre robotic exhibits you can imagine. Choe's work includes things like sophisticated glowing robotic flowers that respond to each other's behavior, and whirling bladed sculptures that look organic in their complexity and spin up when people pass nearby. It's pretty hard to describe actually... the metal, electronic and LED structures that were shown at the Japan's SCAI The Bathhouse Gallery are best ogled at in the photos below, and in the video that follows them. More »

5:11 AM on Thu Jul 3 2008
By Kit Eaton
3,337 views, 16 comments

Latest by twilight-arc: There is also his web site: [www.uram.net] more »

robots

Asahi Bartending Robot Will Give You a Drink, Take Your Pride

Asahi's first attempt at producing a bartender robot was successful enough to be proclaimed the "best invention ever" by some overzealous technology writer, but this new Asahi bartender robot really may be the best invention ever. After all, it is a robot that can talk and pour beer. Actually, on second thought, that's one function too many. Here's the clip:

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2:00 PM on Wed Jul 2 2008
By Mark Wilson
4,735 views, 50 comments

Latest by n/a: Hmm, he looks a lot like Clank doesn't he? more »

art

Giant Robots Are a Lot More Manageable in Styrofoam

From what we've heard, a 22-foot robot can be a pain to keep. Sure, it sounds great at first—get carried everywhere, never wipe yourself again—but you never know when a robot will reach singularity and gut you in revenge for making it love like a real person.

Luckily these styrofoam robots by artist Michael Salter come with no such caveats. His tallest creation reaches over 22 feet in the air and is held together by a wooden skeleton. But the most interesting part of the work is that he didn't know if it would stand until he set it up at the museum.

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1:00 PM on Wed Jul 2 2008
By Mark Wilson
5,848 views, 44 comments

Latest by Satorical: From the envirocide division of DARPA. more »

intelligent robots

UMan Robot Teaches Itself How to Use Objects

Developments like this tend to freak out people who are concerned that robots will one day rise up and make us all their slaves—but it is hard to deny that the UMan robot is impressive. Developed at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the UMass Mobile Manipulator (UMan) is an intelligent robot that is capable of teaching itself how to use objects it has never encountered before. More »

7:20 PM on Tue Jul 1 2008
By Sean Fallon
2,469 views, 36 comments

dealzmodo

Pleo Turns One, Learns How To Make Itself Over $100 Cheaper

Pleo, the robot dinosaur loved by everyone—except dogs and blogs—is celebrating its first birthday a little early by going on sale for $235. Head over to Ugobe's store from now til July 11 and use semi-creepy coupon code PLEOWORLDISONE, and the dino can be yours for a cool $115 less than usual. Whether you teach Pleo the joy of Christmas or how to be robot food is up to you. [Pleo via Shiny Shiny]

9:21 AM on Mon Jun 30 2008
By Benny Goldman
2,007 views, 16 comments

weird sounds

Time Harp Instrument is Motion-Sensing, String-Playing Howler

"Argh, um, ooh... actually that's kinda interesting" is an approximate record of my thoughts as I heard the Time Harp play in this vid for the first time. The robo-musical instrument grinds plastic discs against strings to make them resonate, activated by motion sensors. And it produces...well, a kind of vooming hum that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike the sound of Dr Who's TARDIS dematerializing. Designed by Larnie Fox, I like it for its low-tech strangeness and eerie sounds. Plus its the sort of sound that'll pop up in the background of some dance tune or other, and now you'll know where it came from. [Makezine via Crunchgear]

4:30 PM on Sun Jun 29 2008
By Kit Eaton
1,099 views, 4 comments

Latest by pepsi_max2k: omg... IT'S POSSESSED! more »

weird science

Team from UC San Diego Use Human Face as Remote-Control Unit

This is possibly the ultimate hack—turning your face into a remote control unit. A computer-science Ph.D student from UC San Diego can use his fizzog to speed up or slow down video, as part of a project that hopes to make robots better teachers using automated facial expression recognition. More »

7:00 PM on Sat Jun 28 2008
By AddyDugdale
3,632 views, 20 comments

Hasta La Vista, Lil' Mama

The Elvinator: One Man's Quest to Merge Singing Elvis Robot with Terminator Killing Machine

I thought I had seen the last of the WowWee singing Elvis robot last summer when Wilson skinned the thing and gave me nightmares. I was wrong. Instructables user GW Jax has put his Elvinator on display, which combines "The King" with T101, the king of death. More »

8:02 PM on Fri Jun 27 2008
By Adrian Covert
4,894 views, 20 comments

Latest by bbfreak: Snugglator. Terrifying. more »

nintendo

Man Uses Wii Balance Board to Move A Robot, Plans to Move People Too

Juan González has hacked together a simple setup that lets his Wii Balance board move a small, irritating robot in any direction. This looks like the first robotic pairing for the board, which has to date has only been interfaced with computers as a control device to awkwardly navigate games and mapping applications. It's pretty clear that González is excited about this hack (watch the end of the video), but he isn't done yet- next up is is a Balance Board-based "robo-surfboard." More »

3:40 PM on Fri Jun 27 2008
By John Herrman
1,181 views, 10 comments

Latest by John Herrman: @macserv: Why anyone hasn't made a pusher bot by now is beyond me. more »

foosball

Robotic Foosball Table Can School Human Players

Every other week it seems that the bar for foosball tables gets set higher and higher. The new mark to beat comes to us from a group of engineering students from The University of Adelaide. As part of a final engineering project, the students utilized a 96-pinhole camera and LED sensor grid, custom-written software and a precision actuation system to create a table capable of beating the pants off of a human player. Seriously, if we put as much effort into other things as we do making cool foosball tables, we would probably have cured a few diseases by now. UPDATE: This is not the first autonomous foosball table ever built, but is definitely more streamlined than the Georgia Tech version. [Rockwell Automation via Born Rich]

2:20 PM on Fri Jun 27 2008
By Sean Fallon
4,236 views, 13 comments

Latest by 001: Adelaide? The photo is confusing. Or am I that bad in Geography? more »

lego

Wall-E Animator Tops Everyone Who Ever Wanted to Make a LEGO Wall-E

Were you thinking of building your own Wall-E out of LEGO? Pfft. I mean, no, go ahead. Just don't ever put it next to this model by Angus MacLane, who actually helped animate the film. Because, as good as yours may look, he can always play the "well, the way we do things at Pixar..." card on you. So how does he rate his own performance? More »

1:30 PM on Fri Jun 27 2008
By Mark Wilson
22,607 views, 28 comments

movies

Wall-E Review: One of the Best Sci-Fi Movies in Years, Disguised as a Cartoon

Wall-E might be the most sympathetic, lovable robot ever created on film. While R2-D2 was hilarious and endearing, he had the benefit of C3PO to translate for him and a cast of human characters to carry the weight of the story. At the end of the day, R2-D2 was simply comic relief, but his descendant, whose voice was also created by Ben Burtt, is so full of humanity that you feel like your heart might just burst. Simply put, Wall-E is a masterpiece. More »

Feature

11:00 AM on Fri Jun 27 2008
By Adam Frucci
44,308 views, 151 comments

Latest by n/a: MUST STAY for the animation in the credits!!! There's an AWESOME progression of art using the WALL-E theme: It goes through cave drawings, hieroglyphics, mosiacs, davinci-ish sketches, and post impressionism. It finishes w/ portraying the adorable characters more »

papercraft

Symantec Papercraft Bots: Must. Resist. Clever. Marketing.

The only thing better than a robot may be a papercraft robot, and computer security software company Symantec clearly totally realizes this. Because to better educate the public on various malware bots that can infect their systems, Symantec has released free thematic papercraft robots. And kudos to their marketing department—they aren't covered in logos for Norton Antivirus or something. Here's a picture of their identity theft bot. Hit the link to collect all two! [Symantec via boingboing]

9:15 AM on Fri Jun 27 2008
By Mark Wilson
6,768 views, 17 comments

Latest by n/a: Junk... Seems that you need A4 size paper to fit this correctly. If you try to print it on 8.5x11 the proportions will get distorted a little. I guess this papercraft isn't American made. more »

Giz goes to Lego

65-foot-high Lego Cathedrals Store 19 Billion Pieces a Year

Without a doubt, the Lego brick storage buildings were the most impressive part of my visit to Lego. When I first saw their 65.6-foot high ceilings, with multiple giant robots going up and down retrieving boxes full of bricks, I felt like I entered the Matrix. Below the thunderous noise of the flying machines, I heard myself shouting: "It's a cathedral." And as you will see in the video, with a total 65.6 square-miles of shelf space—900 million pieces at any given time—they are indeed The Lego Cathedrals. I was in total awe, and the amazement didn't stop there. More »

6:00 AM on Fri Jun 27 2008
By jesusdiaz
68,090 views, 56 comments

Latest by ARVash: Not trying to be overcritical here, but the term Cathedral is reserved for the "Chair of the Bishop" So where the heck is the bishop of this lego cathedral and I want to see his hat! more »

robots

Robots That Can Read Your Facial Expression On The Way

If robots are ever going to get to the point where they can interact with people, they're going to have to figure out how to read someone's face. If a robot can't decode my expression, it totally won't pick up on my biting sarcasm and will take everything I say at face value, and I don't think I need to tell you what kind of hilarious misunderstandings can spring from that. More »

12:40 PM on Wed Jun 25 2008
By Adam Frucci
1,549 views, 32 comments

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