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Robots
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irobot
Robosnail
MIT Professor Studies Snail Slime to Create Go-Anywhere, Anytime Robots of the Future
Forget legs or treads or wheels, everyone, because tomorrow's robots will traverse the earth on a thin film of slime, just like the humble snail. At least, that's MIT associate professor Anette Hosoi's vision of our robot future, and she has the "Robosnail" prototype to prove it. Since 2003, Hosoi and a revolving cadre of students have studied her terrarium full of more than 200 snails in an attempt to recreate their slimy way of locomotion in a robot. They've since got a working model together that can climb tree bark, walls, and—coming soon—perform invasive surgery procedures near you! More »
robots
NASA Envisions Robot Future That's More Wall-E Than Phoenix Lander
When the Mars Phoenix Lander touched down on the Martian soil, discovered water ice and microbe-friendly
rage with the machine
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?
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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?
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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 »
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 »
robots
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.
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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.
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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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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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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 »
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]
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]
weird science
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.
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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.
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Hasta La Vista, Lil' Mama
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.
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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 »
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 »
foosball
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]
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]
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 »
movies
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.
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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.
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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 »
