bots

Bar owner Rufus Terrill has enlisted a rather odd-looking security guard to chase away prostitutes and drug dealers milling about his Atlanta tavern: an R2-D2-like robot called "Bum Bot 2000."

The patchwork device is controlled via remote control and targets law-breakers, reports The Los Angeles Times. But homeless advocates aren't too fond of Terrill's water-squirting Bum Bot.

Read the full Los Angeles Times story: "Robot reports for security duty in Atlanta"

How do you come up with a vacuuming bot that can compete with the Roomba, which has become a household word? (A least in Michael Kanellos' house anyway.) Answer: Make it smarter.

That, at least is apparently the strategy of Samsung, which has created its own OCD bot called the "Hauzen VC-RE70V" for the Korean market, according to I4U News. This self-motivated sanitation engineer surveys its premises with a built-in camera, then automatically draws a map that shows where it needs to clean and, just as important, where it's already been so it doesn't waste energy. … Read more

FaveBot is a service that keeps an eye on whatever keywords you give it to pull up related items from the Web. If you're familiar with Google Alerts, the idea is similar. In Favebot's case, you can take any keyword or set of keywords and apply it to the types of content you're looking to keep an eye on, be it photos, videos, blog posts, or podcasts. There are nine categories in all, and the system is designed to serve it up like a river of news with the most recent items appearing on the top.

What'… Read more

It's fine with us for the Japanese to continue pursuing a human-free society, but some of their robotic advances are hitting a little too close to home. We began getting uncomfortable upon learning of various blogging functions being taken over by bots, for example, and now there's another one of the little creeps that's reading e-mail and performing other desktop tasks.

Bandai's "Tachikoma" connects to the computer's USB port, helping to "create and process applications" and play games as well as handle the mail, according to GeekAlerts. Judging by the photos … Read more

The military sees a need for a flying robot that can swoop into an enemy position, transition to wheel or track mode, and then get busy icing bad guys--something along the lines of the Griffon UGV/UAV Air Mobility System.

While unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can wing in quickly to reconnoiter or attack enemy positions, they can't follow a target into a cave or a building. Unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs), on the other hand, can enter structures, search for targets, and examine them at close range, but they're slower than UAVs, have less range, and are limited by … Read more

While the government spends millions on nonlethal crowd control and redirect programs for urban based winos, an Atlanta tavern owner has fielded a high-pressure water gun equipped, remote-controlled chicken smoker that takes care of both jobs at once.

The Bum Bot was developed by Rufus Terrill to clear drug dealers, vagrants and prostitutes away from around the neighborhood day care center.

"What happens at night is they have prostitution," Terrill of O'Terrill's Pub & Restaurant said in an interview with Information Week. "They've been throwing condoms on the playground, crack pipes, needles... there's … Read more

Don't get me wrong: I'm all for domestic robots. I own a Roomba. I professed my admiration for the Robot Chef. But the humanoid dish-washing robot we saw last year creeps me out. (Blame it on watching too much Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.)

Fortunately, that doesn't mean I have to give up hope of ever having robotic help in the kitchen. Readybot, a proof-of-concept kitchen-cleaning robot built by a club of Silicon Valley engineers, looks totally non-threatening, like a boxy R2-D2. Because it's put together by a group of enthusiasts, the robot uses common, mass-produced … Read more

With free DVDs handed out at the door, numerous camera crews shooting interviews, and--oh yes--"special guest" celebrity blogger Perez Hilton, last night's Twiistup party seemed proof that the Los Angeles tech community is pulling out of the shadow of Silicon Valley and putting its own spin on geek culture.

Like its predecessor, Twiistup 3 packed a sold-out crowd of Web folks and other geeks (including Doug Campbell from Tuxedo Travels and CNET alumnus Rich DeMuro) into the Air Conditioned Supper Club in Venice, where attendees talked tech, networked, and vetted business plans over drinks. And while … Read more

We won't venture to guess why spy bots are so popular on the consumer market, but there's just one question that continues to nag us: Is anybody really fooled by their appearance? It's one thing if they're pawned off as some sort of RC robot or toy, but the design of this latest entry pretty much broadcasts its intent.

The "Spy Snooper Robot Vehicle" from iiRobotics has what looks like a mini-satellite dish and antenna mounted atop a six-wheeled tank, ready to capture every word from the subject under surveillance. It does have a … Read more