Archive for the ‘Robots and such’ Category
iRobot Landroids Hit Phase 2
3, Sep 2010Those cute little Landroids (disposable robots that work together to form a mobile local area network for soldiers) that iRobot is developing for DARPA have been evolving, and now sport all kinds of new hardware, including:
-Cliff sensors
-Front obstacle sensors
-Yaw sensors
-Four video cameras
-Two way audio
-And an optional laser scanner
Check out the video here.
That seems like a [...]
LittleDog Learns Adaptable Behaviors
2, Sep 2010The robotics journal Autonomous Robots has its own blog, which is intended to take the hardcore robot news from the journal and make it a bit more reader friendly. They also link back to the journal articles, should you need a little of that hardcore techy info. Yeah baby. Anyway, looking back through some of [...]
- In: Robots and such
- Tags: Artificial Intelligence, LittleDog, Research
Robot Plant Somehow Lives In Uncanny Valley
1, Sep 2010Robot plants are not new to BotJunkie, but creepy ones are. Not that this robot plant is intended to be creepy, but like everything in the Uncanny Valley, it just sort of ends up that way. Or maybe it’s just me.
Each of the plant’s 169 artificial leaves is controlled by a piece of shape memory [...]
- In: Robots and such
- Tags: Art, plant
Head Controlled Paintball Robot
31, Aug 2010With just a little bitty Army contract, you can take that robot paintball turret that we saw a week or so ago, mount it on a QinetiQ SWIFT (an intermediate prototype between this and this), and rig it up to be controlled by head movements. It’s not just for the cool factor (although there’s definitely [...]
- In: Robots and such
- Tags: Military, paintball, StratBot
Trossen Robotics Puts Up Major Swag For DIY Contest
31, Aug 2010Building robots has never been a cheap hobby, but you can offset the expense a bit simply by winning this contest sponsored by Trossen Robotics. They want you to make a robot, any robot, and as long as it’s more super incredibly awesome than any other robot ever made it’s pretty much guaranteed to win [...]
- In: Robots and such
- Tags: Announcements
Stickybot III Gets Climbing
30, Aug 2010We were among the very first to see the latest generation of Stanford’s gecko-inspired climbing robot, Stickybot III, earlier this year at the Stanford National Robotics Week event. While Stickbot III could stick to surfaces, the climbing technique (one of those harder than it sounds things) was still in the works. Just recently, they’ve figured [...]
- In: Robots and such
- Tags: Biorobotics, Stanford, Stickybot
Trees Are No Protection From Snakebots
30, Aug 2010CMU just posted this new vid of their Snakebot (Modsnake) climbing a tree and looking around. It’s still tethered, but it’s a snake, so that just makes it seem more snakey. This isn’t the first video we’ve seen of CMU’s Snakebot climbing stuff, but it’s the first one we’ve seen outside of the lab, so [...]
- In: Robots and such
- Tags: Biorobotics, CMU, snake
Marc Raibert On The Future Of BigDog
30, Aug 2010The last few vids we’ve posted on Boston Dynamics’ BigDog haven’t shown much in the way of new capabilities, although DARPA has asked for some upgrades. Back in May (I think, although the video wasn’t posted until now), Marc Raibert, founder of Boston Dynamics, gave a talk at Stanford on the current progress and future [...]
- In: Robots and such
- Tags: bigdog, Biorobotics, Boston Dynamics
In an incident that’s already been blown way out of proportion by headlines like “ROBOT KILL-CHOPPER GOES ROGUE above Washington DC!“, an MQ-8 FireScout temporarily lost its communication link and entered restricted airspace around Washington DC before operators shifted to another ground control station and brought it back to base.
Obviously, this isn’t the way [...]
- In: Robots and such
- Tags: FireScout, Military
UAV Loses Tail, Wing, More Tail, Barely Notices
26, Aug 2010We already knew that in some specific cases, robots are better pilots than humans, but this footage from Rockwell Collins really drives home the fact that under extreme circumstances, there’s just no out-flying a robot. This small autonomous demonstrator suffers all kinds of damage, but not only does it not crash, it keeps on flying [...]
- In: Robots and such
- Tags: Military, Research, Rockwell Collins, uav