Crave

(Credit: Michigan State University)

Michigan State University researchers are spawning robot fish to monitor the quality of lake water and the effect of harmful algae.

The prototype fish resemble other robot fish, such as those being developed at MIT to check for pollutants in water.

An electric charge in the 9-inch MSU prototype causes its polymer fins to bend so the robotic perch can maneuver. Designs call for onboard sensors to record temperature, oxygen, pollutant, and algae data, which would be relayed to a docking station when the fish surfaces. GPS systems and infrared sensors could be developed to aid navigation.

The fish are designed to be low-cost for applications such as monitoring aquafarms and water reservoirs. Compared with water sampling by humans, the robo-fish would provide a more regular data feed by communicating with each other and their docking station.

The MSU researchers hope to make the robot more robust so it can swim through currents. Currently it can only move through calm water.

Creeper2 has an all-aluminum custom chassis and uses dual processors to ensure smooth movements.

(Credit: Trossen Robotics)

If I wasn't so worried about traumatizing the kids in my neighborhood, dispensing trick or treat candy in this creepy spider bot pumpkin would be awesome.

It runs C on an Axon microcontroller. It uses all digital servos and can lift over twice its body weight. The software (soon to be given out open source) allows for six synchronous degrees of motion. Future additions will include foot sensors and a remote control option.

Based on that info, and other nuggets gleaned from the Trossen Robotics forums, you might be able to have a Creeper2 bot of your own ready for next year.

Or, better yet, put a Santa head on top of that thing and march it out in the living room on Christmas morning. Your kids are sure to have suppressed memories of it that will bubble up to the surface years and years from now causing a dramatic and crippling meltdown. Priceless.

This story originally appeared on Gizmodo.

(Credit: Robo-Garage)

Japanese robot wunderkind Tomotaka Takahashi has created a new humanoid robot that can jump 3 inches off the floor, an impressive feat for a small bipedal machine.

Known for his anime-inspired robotic creations used for product promotion, Takahashi's latest bipedal walker is called Ropid (from "robot" and "rapid").

The cute carbon fiber and plastic droid weighs 3.5 pounds and has 30 degrees of mechanical freedom.

Seen in the video below, Ropid can get up, walk, run, and even jump 3 inches into the air.

It does all that while maintaining its balance thanks to its four onboard gyro sensors and four accelerometers.

Takahashi's stylish robots, such as Chroino, are often featured in magazines and on TV in Japan.

It took Takahashi two and a half years to develop Ropid at his Kyoto University-based start-up Robo-Garage. The robot is based on patented technology developed in 2007.

(Via Robot Watch)

MIT's concept robot head mounts on the dashboard to assist with navigation.

(Credit: MIT)

MIT intends to revolutionize GPS navigation by making it friendly and predictive, using a friendly robot helper to anticipate your needs. The Affective Intelligent Driving Agent (AIDA) is a robot head on an articulated neck, reminiscent of movie robots from the 1980s, that mounts in the center of the dashboard.

It incorporates an expressive "face" that can smile, look sad, show warning signs, and even wink at you. AIDA was developed as a collaboration between the Personal Robots Group at the MIT Media Lab, MIT's SENSEable City Lab, and Volkswagen Group of America's Electronics Research Lab.

AIDA's expressive behaviors are designed to endear the device to you as it helps in your daily navigation. The robot learns your daily commute and which areas you frequent for which purposes.

For example, if you always head to a particular district in your city around dinner time, it will assume you like to eat dinner there. After it memorizes your commute, it will automatically plug in your route to work when you get into the car on a weekday morning. If you go to a hotel for a dalliance every Thursday at noon, it will probably give you a wink and a knowing grin as it maps the route for you.

I'm sure you are all well-acquainted with the crazy quadrupled BigDog robot, but if it had a master to walk with, it would probably look something like the Petman.

Actually, the similarity is not surprising considering that the walking robot was designed by Boston Dynamics, the same company behind BigDog. Petman has been in development for some time now, but this is the first chance we have had to view his human-like stride.

The military plans to use it to test out clothing for soldiers that needs to be completely protective and not strain or open up under any sort of human articulated movement. It's capable of crawling, as well as walking at 3.2 mph. And like the Big Dog, it can keep its balance when you shove it.

This story originally appeared on Gizmodo.

Joebot is voice-activated, with a list of 40 commands that move him around or put him into different modes. Click on the photo for more WowWee robot action.

(Credit: Crave UK)

When the folks from WowWee visited CNET UK the other day, we were amused to hear them refer to their robotic wares Rovio, Joebot, and RoboRover as "he" and "him." But dang it if we weren't doing the same within five minutes of seeing the little fellas trundling about, flashing their lights, and generally charming their servos off.

Read more of "WowWee Rovio, Joebot, Cinemin and RoboRover: Red-hot robot action" at Crave UK.

Researchers from Slovenia are developing a skiing robot that can not only carve up the snow; it can slalom around racing gates.

Bojan Nemec of the Jozef Stefan Institute recently told an audience at the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems that the robot is designed to ski downhill autonomously using ordinary skis. It can avoid obstacles and identify the gates to plan its path.

Shown in the 2008 video below, the robot can slowly maneuver its way around the gates without toppling over, though a separate blooper reel depicts it wiping out.

The machine only has three degrees of freedom. It relies on GPS, cameras, gyros, and force sensors to remain stable and gauge speed and trajectory. The data is processed by computers in the upper and lower parts of the robot.

Why build a robot skier? Nemec said it could be used to test skiing equipment or modeling virtual-reality skiing applications.

The machine won't be giving human skiers a run for their money anytime soon, he added.

(Via IEEE Spectrum)

The Rex is designed to take a huge load off of foot soldiers' shoulders.

(Credit: Israel Aerospace Industries)

"Fetch" and "heel" may be the latest commands to join the military lexicon, with the arrival of Rex, a small, six-wheel-drive load-bearing robotic vehicle designed to follow squad-size units in response to voice commands.

Envisioned as a robotic "beast of burden" for the modern soldier, Rex can carry more than 400 pounds, a typical load for groups of 3 to 10 ground soldiers, for 72 hours at a time without refueling, according to developer Israel Aerospace Industries.

"The robotic vehicle follows the lead soldier from a given distance, utilizing technology developed and patented by IAI. Using simple commands (one might give his pet dog), including 'stop,' 'fetch,' and 'heel,' the lead soldier controls the robot without being distracted from the mission at hand," IAI's Ofer Glazer said. "Controlling the robot in this way allows for intuitive interaction and rapid integration of the product on the field within a short time frame."

IAI says it developed the platform in response to "an urgent operational need," estimating that military and civil demand could amount to tens of thousands of orders, worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

"The Rex platform is unique in its state-of-the-art operational capabilities and its user-friendly interface, both of which are central to the platform's superior performance," Glazer boasted.

Rex is but one of the robocaddies appearing on the military market. Aimed at infantryman, it's unclear whether these present-day pack mules may take a load off the grunt or just end up as more junk to haul--and ultimately leave behind.

(Credit: Caltech)

Researchers at Caltech have developed a mobile, four-wheeled robot that could help refine artificial retinas and other prostheses used by the visually impaired.

At first glance, Cyclops resembles a bot you might find on the battlefield, and it's hard to imagine what connection it could have to restoring sight. But dig a little deeper and it starts to make sense that a remote-controlled robot with an onboard camera could deliver some very useful data.

The digital camera can emulate left-to-right and up-and-down head movements. The idea is that as artificial vision prostheses increasingly become a reality, scientists could use the mobile robotic platform to mimic those devices--and more importantly, to get a better sense of how well they work for people who wear them.

The researchers might do that by asking the robot outfitted with an artificial vision aid to navigate obstacles in a corridor or follow a black line down a white-tiled hallway to see if it can find--and enter--a darkened doorway. All the while, they could try out different pixel arrays (say 50 pixels vs. 16 pixels), as well as image filters (for factors such as contrast, brightness enhancement, and grayscale equalization) to venture an educated guess as to what settings maximize a subject's sight.

Wolfgang Fink

(Credit: Caltech)

But "we're not quite at that stage yet," researcher Wolfgang Fink says of such independent maneuvering. Fink is a visiting associate in physics at Caltech in Pasadena, Calif., and founder of the school's Visual and Autonomous Exploration Systems Research Laboratory, where where he and Caltech visiting scientist Mark Tarbell are collaborating on Cyclops with the support of a grant from the National Science Foundation.

The pair designed and built the body of the battery-operated rover using off-the-shelf parts, then furnished it with an onboard computing platform that allows for processing and manipulating images in real time using software they created called "Artificial Vision Support System."

Cyclops, so named because it's monocular, is about 12 inches wide by 12 inches long and 10 inches tall (the camera can be mounted on a mast to make Cyclops the height of an average person). It weighs about 15 pounds, Fink estimates, and can move at an "expedited walking speed" of about 2 to 3 feet per second.

For now, the platform itself is controlled remotely, via a joystick, and can be operated through a wireless Internet connection. "We have the image-processing algorithms running locally on the robot's platform," Fink says, "but we have to get it to the point where it has complete control of its own responses."

Once that's done, he adds, "we can run many, many tests without bothering the blind prosthesis carriers." ... Read more