2015. That’s when Japanese humanoid robots arrive on the Moon. Once there, they will set up camp and explore, waiting for the humans to arrive at some point later, while they get up to God knows what when we aren’t looking. The bipedal humanoid will be called Maido-kun. It’s being developed by SOHLA—Space Oriented Higashiosaka Leading Association—a business group in Osaka.
If HR Geiger built robot versions of our collective Alien inspired nightmares, it would probably start to take shape like this. Look at that monstrosity! So what if it’s to help hearing-impaired people pronounce words better? It deserves to be rendered unto dust.
Popsci via Botropolis
This creepy looking monster, Mertz, was made by the crazy scientists at MIT… it can learn from people’s expressions and mimic them. Even creepier. C’mon folks… really?
MIT via Botropolis
This robotic skateboard was developed by the Shibaura Institute of Technology in Tokyo. The current prototoype weighs 15kg, is 30cm wide, 60cm long and 25cm tall. The speed and direction can be controlled by shifting your body weight, so that when you put your weight on either one of your feet, the skateboard will automatically accelerate. Load sensors are on all four corners of the board, motors (and wheels) on the sides and a control computer unit in the middle.
According to the research team at Shibaura, the Robo-Skateboard can travel as fast as 10kph and hold riders weighing up to 80kg. You can use it continuously for about an hour on a single charge. Not bad at all. They want to reduce it’s weight and get the price down to about $1,000 before they mass-produce it.
This cooking robot cooks more than 600 kinds of dishes of different Chinese cuisine and will replace hard working chefs. But the real question is, does it speak with an accent?
The Australian Defense Force and Marathon Robotics took a number of two-wheeled RMP 200 Segway robots, placed hoodie-clad foam dummies on top, armored the bottoms, and then programmed them to wander randomly around a small village. A sniper perched up on a hill then picks off his target and, like magic, the remaining robots all scatter automatically in a game way more fun than Modern Warfare could ever hope to be.
Santander’s Group City in Madrid has nine buildings, with 5,500 employees of one of the largest banks in the world. How do you make sure that visitors can find their way and not get lost? Robots.
So Santander turned to YDreams, who produced a fleet of little red robots called “Interactive Guest Assistants” that use swarm interactions to guide bankers and visitors. They are shiny and red and totally ready to guide wayward humans. Video below.
To promote his book Dot Robot: Atomic Swarm, children’s author Jason Bradbury built a replica of one of the robot characters, Punk. The problem is the robot trashes his kitchen. With some CGI help of course. It should serve as a cautionary tale. Never let robots fly around in your kitchen.
“And I also want to keep an eye on those robots in case they try anything.”
– President Barrack Obama, 11/23/2009
You an also read the President’s full remarks here. Let it not be said our leadership was unaware… the President knows the risk.
[via Gizmodo]
RoboteX – “Infantry replacement. Robotic force multipliers for early-entry forces.”
If one things scares you today, it’s going to be the animation on the front of robotex.us–watch it and shiver. The bot (not the one here, but a similar killing machine) in the animation will be able to navigate uneven terrain, stairs, shallow water and keep its gun fixed on the target the entire time. Joy.
I can’t wait to see these puppies patrolling the local mall looking for hooligans.
