ROBOTS DREAMS - Robot news and robot hacks from a true robot geek

New Improved Forkknife Robot Now With Lasers!

The original Forkknife robot was intended as a demonstration of remotely control using a Google Android based G1 cellphone.

The robot mobility and local computing platform was the SRV-1 developed by our friends at Surveyor Corporation. The SRV-1 is extremely popular with colleges, universities, and research labs doing advanced work in mobile robotics, artificial intelligence, swarms, and remote surveillance.

Now the Forkknife robot developers have taken it to the next level, and have even equipped the robot with lasers!

Forkknife2- with lasers

[Posted from my iPhone]

Speecys To Announce New Human/Robot Communication Project (Video)

Assuming that everything goes according to plan, Speecys Corporation will be unveiling an impressive new human/robot communication project at TieCon2009 in Santa Clara, California later today. We had the opportunity to discuss the project with Tomoaki Kasuga at the Speecys headquarters here last week, and to discuss his exciting vision for the future.

Robot Blimp Takes to the Air (Video)

Want to let your dreams, and your robot, soar? Based on popular demand, Howard at Surveyor Robotics has released a YARB RTF (Yet Another Robot Blimp Ready To Fly) version of their robotic blimp. The new RTF version, based on the SRV-1 Blackfin camera, includes everything except the helium, and can be controlled by wide variety of remote consoles including the Android G1 phone (Video below).

Nao Robot Gets Easier to Program

In a move to make programming the well-known NAO humanoid robot easier to program and expand its appeal to a broader potential user base, Aldebaran Robotics and Gostai announced yesterday that future NAO shipments will include Gostai's innovative and intuitive URBI robot software platform (press release below).

The advanced NAO humanoid robot was picked by the RoboCup committee as the official robot platform for the Standard League competitions. Aldebaran reports that the first one hundred NAO robots have already shipped to customers and a strong user base is rapidly developing.

Gostai's universal URBI software platform is already available for a number of commercial robots including AIBO, CREATE (iRobot), and LEGO Mindstorms NXT, as well as major robotics research projects.

Lego Builder Creates a Great WALL-E Clone (Video)

Bazmarc, on Youtube, posted a series of videos(see below) showing his totally cool implementation of the WALL-E robot constructed completely from stock Lego NXT Mindstorms robot system parts. Not only is the robot realistic, it also features some very emotional, and touching, eye movements.

Bazmarc's robot creation does use some third party components, like Mindsensors and HiTechnic - both Lego certified. According to comments on his build videos, the robot uses "1 NXT with rechargable pack, 3 Servo Motors, 4 PF motors, 2 IR receiver, 1 UltraSonic sensor, 1 sound sensor, 1 IRlink, 1 NXTservo module and 1 mini RC servo, 10 AA batteries and Lego from the Bulldozer #8275 and other parts from various technic sets."

New Robot Controller Jam-Packed With Features

John Palmisano, the founder and CRG (Chief Robotics Guru) over at Society of Robots, developed a new, feature packed, robot controller board, named the 'AXON". Unlike many of the off-the-shelf, multipurpose controller boards, the AXON was "... designed by and for a robotics hobbyist." In other words, John incorporated all the features he felt were lacking, or falling short, in existing commercial controllers.

Based on his experience as a robot designer, John included a wealth of I/O (55) including 16 ports for analog sensors and as many as 18 for interrupts. Lots of UART capability, including one that can be used for a USB connection to a PC.

At the same time, John recognized that the hardware is only the beginning. He's included many other features to make the robot experimenter's life with AXON easier. For example, the controller includes a built-in programmer (bootloader) so you don't need an additional external programmer. And there is lots of source code and tutorials provided.

John feels that the AXON will see lots of use with bipeds, robot spiders, and robot arms. It will be interesting to see how users take the AXON way above and beyond that.

French Company Ready to Seek and Destroy the Leghorn Robot (Video)

The French robot guru's over at POB Technologies think they might have exactly the right robotics technology to track down, and defeat Leghorn, the ROBO-ONE champion rooster robot.

POB has developed some really interesting kits and peripherals that facilitate adding vision, object recognition, and other features to robot platforms. Their real claim-to-fame is the simplicity and ease of use provided by their products. At the same time, they've managed to keep the prices low enough to be affordable by a lot of robot experimenters and workshop wizards. And, they always love a good challenge....

A Little Different View of the Speecys Internet Robot (Video)

One of the big problems we consistently face as technologists is in recognizing and understanding new advances. We, like most human beings on the planet, automatically seem to classify new objects and experiences into our existing categories. We look at something new, and quickly decide that it is 'just like x...', then we put that label on it, and we quit trying to really understand it for what it really is, or might become.

A recent example of this is the SPC-101C 'internet robot' introduction held just a couple weeks ago here in Tokyo. Many reporters saw the SPC-101C as just another humanoid robot - not much different from dozens they are already familiar with. Other reporters were impressed by the vision/face recognition abilities of the robot, and quickly, within just a few hours, popular technology sites were trumpeting the news that Speecys had just introduced a "face-recognizing" robot.

Of course both of those views of the robot are true, but in many ways they are like peeking into a room via the keyhole. They only tell a small part of the total story. We'd like to expand those limited views to include much more of what the robot is capable of, and the promise for the future that it represents.

Zeno Website Goes Live - Sort Of...

Zenos' World, the official website for the new Zeno hybrid robot from Hanson Robotics has gone live. At this point (22:00 JST on Sep 8th)  the home page is up and running, though most of the links and special content is non-functional. Many of the images and columns overlap, which is unfortunate since it hides some important information - like the 'News Flash' that's hidden by Zeno himself-

"Zeno is going to Los Angeles for Wired Magazine’s NextFest and he’s sure to be the hit of the show! Come see him in action September 13 through 16 at the Los Angeles Convention Center. He’ll be looking for you!"

We're sure they'll work out the website bugs fairly quickly. Hopefully they can sort out Zenos bugs as well when the time comes. At the moment he looks more like a robot assembled out of Hanson and Takahashi's spare parts bins. The doll like head must be much more impressive when you see it in person, but the body, especially the hands and legs, are not what we have come to expect from Takahashi's studio. Here's hoping it improves a lot with age.

They are currently predicting that Zeno will hit store shelves sometime in 2009. That might be pretty aggressive given the fact that Takahashi's original MANOI design, now renamed the PF01, took close to two years to come to market even after its 18 month design cycle was finished, and UGOBE's PLEO robotic dinosaur is following the same path.

Engineering TV Features Design Engineering Videos

I-Wei at Crabfu Steamworks (soon to be adding 'Crabfu Robotics'?) pointed us at the Engineering TV website, and boy are we happy. The site features "Cutting edge technology, developments & people at the forefront of design engineering", and, as its name implies, serves up video episodes that cover a wide range of engineering disciplines and challenges.

A good example, is Episode 68 - Humanizing Robotics that features some of the advanced work being done by Hanson Robotics to create robot/androids capable of interacting realistically with their human counterparts.

Heads-up: The video episodes are commercially sponsored and ads do appear, sometimes right in the middle of the video, which threw us at first. We thought the video was over when the commercial started playing and almost clicked the window to close it....