Robots

I'm fascinated by old animatronics, especially ones that purport to tell your fortune. Zoltar, made famous by a cameo in the Tom Hanks movie "Big," isn't some musty old machine from the back of a forgotten arcade. He's real and he can be yours for $9,000 from Hammacher Schlemmer.

The fortune-telling machine revels in the details, from Zoltar's paisley vest to the black-and-gold-painted trim on the oak and birch cabinet.

Zoltar will shake you down for a quarter before spilling his secrets. He'll move, pass his hand over an illuminated crystal ball, and speak one of 16 audio fortunes. He then dispenses one of 23 different printed fortunes on a paper card.… Read more

In 2011, more than 80 firefighters in the U.S. died while on duty, and more than 60 have lost their lives so far this year. Engineering companies have been trying to reduce the harm they face and Maine-based Howe and Howe Technologies is offering this robot firefighter as a solution.

The firm is known for building high-speed tracked vehicles that can tear through rugged terrain. Thermite, billed as the world's first production firebot, also rolls on treads so it can get over obstacles lying between it and a dangerous fire. … Read more

Sometimes real science sounds more like science fiction. Just the phrase "bionic bees" sounds like something out of an old paperback.

But that's the goal of a new project from two U.K. universities, the University of Sheffield and the University of Sussex. Engineers from the schools are planning to scan the brains of bees and upload the data into flying robots with the hope that the machines will fly and act like the real thing.

The goal of the project is to create the first robots able to act on instinct. Researchers hope to implant a honey bee's sense of smell and sight into the flying machines, allowing the robots to act as autonomously as an insect rather than relying on preprogrammed instructions.… Read more

Last weekend in Taos, N.M., I watched a young girl pulverize a police car with just her right hand.

Of course, she had a little help from the 7-ton hydraulic mechanical hand that she was controlling through a sort of glove apparatus mounted to a raised control chair. The mechanical working structure is a creation of local artist Christian Ristow, who first designed the "Hand of Man" for the Burning Man festival a few years ago.… Read more

While the Mars rover explores the Red Planet, a group of engineers submitted plans for a new out-of-this-world space mission: landing a boat on the Saturn moon Titan, which NASA, the European Space Agency, and Italian space agency ASI explored in depth over the last decade as part of the Cassini-Huygens mission.

Building on the successful 2005 landing of the Huygens probe on Titan, the new mission would aim to explore and collect data from the weird liquid methane makeup of the lakes found on the Saturn moon's surface. To explore these uncharted methane flows, engineers at the aerospace company Sener -- working in collaboration with Spain's Centro de Astrobiologia -- submitted a proposal last week to the European Planetary Science Congress for a Talise (Titan Lake In-situ Sampling Propelled Explorer) boat probe. … Read more

You've double-parked your car to pick something up when a robot rolls up and threatens to give you a ticket. You might laugh, but the thing's talking with a human voice.

Researchers at Florida International University's Discovery Lab are working with a member of the U.S. Navy Reserves to build telepresence robots that could patrol while being controlled by disabled police officers and military vets. In a sense, they would be hybrid man-machine cops, like RoboCop. … Read more

Another sign that the future is merging with our present: the winners in the annual BotPrize competition are a couple of bots whose behavior was indistinguishable from that of human players in a simulated 3D death match.

In the game, bots and humans attempt to wipe out the other over several rounds of combat and the judges of the competition guess which opponents were human. This year marked the first time that the bots displayed a "humanness rating" of over 50 percent. The rating reflects the number of times that each bot was judged by humans to actually be human. … Read more

If you're getting sick and tired of flying to another city for a few unproductive meetings, you don't have to dream of a day when telepresence robots will make that totally unnecessary.

Beam from Suitable Technologies, a spinoff of Willow Garage, is a new addition to the growing field of remote-operated robots that project your presence into a distant location. Like other telepresence bots, it's basically a Webcam on wheels, letting you roam around offices or factories to chat with colleagues.

Officially called the Beam Remote Presence System, the bot is roughly 5 feet tall, weighs 95 pounds, can roll along at walking speed (about 5 feet per second), and has a 17-inch screen. It's got two HD cameras, six microphones, speakers, Wi-Fi, and LED lamps. … Read more

A very odd flock of birds landed in Albuquerque, N.M., this past week. There wasn't a feather in sight as four winged creatures sat on bare branches, flashing their eyes and lifting their wings. These art objects are fashioned entirely from recycled phone parts.

Escape, an installation piece by U.K. artists Neil Mendoza and Anthony Goh, turns unremarkable phone scrap into curious and engaging little birds. Each bird contains an Arduino controller.

When hooked up to the cell network in Europe, the birds can take and make phone calls. Here in New Mexico, they are reprogrammed to react to the proximity of people approaching them. … Read more