Cutting Edge

Japanese robot maker Kokoro, best known for its Actroid line of ultra-lifelike androids, will make robot clones of people in a special limited-time offer.

The New Year promotion is being offered via select department stores in Japan. People willing to pay about $225,000 can have themselves recreated in robot form, with their robot clone having exactly the same face, hair, eyes, and body.

Kokoro will also model the buyer's voice, facial expressions, and upper-body movements to create the most lifelike doppelganger possible.

The Actroid and Geminoid androids are powered by a quiet air servo system that moves their upper bodies. They cannot walk.

Both are based on real people--one version of Actroid was based on a Japanese newscaster, and Geminoid is based on Osaka University roboticist Hiroshi Ishiguro.

Kokoro is only offering to make two robot clones. If more than two orders are received, the lucky buyers will be selected by lottery.

(Via Pink Tentacle)

Osaka, Japan-based Eager Co. is developing recyclable cardboard robots to work as mannequins that show off clothing in retail display spaces.

Eager showed off the female D+ropop mannequins at the recent 2009 International Robot Exhibition (iRex) here in Tokyo. They're billed as the world's most environmentally friendly robots because they're made of corrugated cardboard.

The mannequin bots only have a few servomotors but can still move their arms and heads gracefully. Each weighs about 13 pounds and is nearly 6 feet tall. They can also be painted and printed with logos for other advertising purposes.

The dummy bots will go on sale this month in Japan, priced at $5,400 and up. They can be rented for about $1,800 per week.

Eager envisions them being used in storefronts, and at events and other venues to attract attention. The company apparently aims to capture 1 percent of the global retail mannequin market, not easy for an obscure start-up in this economy.

But who knows? If Old Navy can cause a stir with its SuperModelquin mannequins, there's hope for the D+ropop gals.

Say salam wa aleikum to an Arabic-speaking android developed at United Arab Emirates University and billed as the first of its kind in the world. It could enter mass production to help people at shopping malls.

The Ibn Sina robot, named after an 11th century philosopher, can recognize faces, converse with people by speaking in classical Arabic, connect to the Internet, and retrieve information. As seen in the video below, it can also exchange kisses with people.

Software for Ibn Sina was developed by a team led by computer science assistant professor Nikolaos Mavridis, with the mechanics by Hanson Robotics. Mavridis says some companies have approached his lab and asked about using the turban-wearing, bearded bot in shopping malls or as a receptionist.

Doubtless Ibn Sina, known as Avicenna in English, would have been pleased.

Manning security checkpoints is hazardous duty, but vehicles still must be checked. So the U.S. Army is helping develop products that will allow soldiers to do their job, preferably from a distance.

Researchers and scientists at the U.S. Army Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center (aka TARDEC) have focused on semi-autonomous robotic systems capable of remotely inspecting a vehicle's undercarriage for explosives or roam the line looking for suspicious activity.

TARDEC will showcase a couple of its favorite autonomous robotic systems this week at the Michigan Security Network Market Leadership Conference. Both units were developed for military and homeland security applications, such as airport and seaport inspections and hazardous substance detection. But nothing says you can't deploy them at your next block party.

Here's a sneak peek.

"Autonomous robotic systems like the Spector and ODIS offer military and civilian personnel a modular, mobile, low-cost, safe alternative to conventional inspection and patrol operations," said David J. Thomas, TARDEC Associate Director of Intelligent Ground Systems. "These devices can and do save lives while providing security representatives with the most advanced detection and inspection technologies available in the ground systems arena."

Advanced gamer hardware may soon allow PacBot operators to tell exactly how hard a robot's grip is, allowing soldiers to more safely pick up and handle fragile or dangerous objects, while also increasing their situational awareness.

Novint Technologies, a company that makes 3D touch controllers for video and computer games, announced last month that it has been awarded a subcontract to co-develop a remote touch kit (RTK) for the iRobot unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) PacBot.

The new RTK will allow soldiers to tactually sense the amount of force a robot is exerting from a safe operating distance--a first for military UGVs, according to Novint. It will also increase spatial sensitivity.

For example, the soldier would feel the bumps and jerks when driving the robot, thus improving performance over rugged terrain. The operator would also "feel" when the robot's arm touches a wire--a not inconsequential feature when dealing with booby-trapped IEDs. The result, the company says, will be "greatly reduced task times and operator burden, increased dexterity and situational awareness, and reduced training."

"As demand for unmanned military robots continues to grow, Novint's touch technology will play a crucial role in enhancing operator control during mission-tasks such as bomb disposal or surveillance," Novint Technologies CEO Tom Anderson said in a statement.

Novint already offers interactive, bi-directional, high-fidelity 3-D that enables doctors and technicians to interact with medical imagery such as MRIs, CT scans and 3D ultrasounds.

It does this through applied Haptics, the art and science of applying sense of touch to human interaction with computer generated environments. A Haptic device makes touching a virtual object seems real and tangible.

The project is funded by the Secretary of Defense Joint Ground Robotics Enterprise through the Robotics Technology Consortium.

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.

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"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.

Researchers in California are developing a simple robot cockroach that can be assembled in an hour, move quickly, and survive 92-foot falls.

The Dynamic Autonomous Sprawled Hexapod, or DASH, is a neat example of the insectile robotics from UC Berkeley's Biomimetic Millisystems Lab.

Robot cockroaches have been designed before, but DASH seems relatively simple to put together before it can be used to creep everyone out.

The 4-inch, 16-gram bug is put together by folding cardboard and polymer sheets. A DC motor runs the six legs while a servomotor bends the frame to induce left or right turns.

It can scoot along the ground at nearly 5 feet per second, which is equivalent to 15 body lengths, and surmount obstacles taller than itself.

Best of all, DASH's flexible frame allows it to keep on crawling even after falling from heights of up to 92 feet, according to the researchers.

Applications for the U.S. military, which is already developing miniature spy robots inspired by insects, are easy to imagine.

Meanwhile, DASH will be improved with different materials, better turning ability, and all-terrain mobility.

We're getting a first glimpse of that shape-shifting ChemBot we first told you about last year, and well, it looks like the love child of a beating heart and a wad of Silly Putty.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the U.S. Army Research Office awarded a multimillion-dollar contract to iRobot to create the flexible military bot. The maker of the Roomba and Scooba, along with University of Chicago researchers, showed off the oozy results at the Iros conference (the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems) in St. Louis this week.

DARPA envisions the palm-size ChemBot as a mobile robot that can traverse soft terrain and navigate through small openings, such as tiny wall cracks, during reconnaissance and search-and-rescue missions. It gets around by way of a process called "jamming," in which material can transition between semiliquid and solid states with only a slight change in volume.

In ChemBot's case, a flexible silicone skin encapsulates a series of pockets containing a mix of air and loosely packed particles. When air is removed from the compartments, the skin attempts to equalize the pressure differential by constricting the particles, which shift slightly to fill the void left by the evacuated air.

In that way, the weird little blob inflates and deflates parts of its body, changing size and shape--and scaring the living daylights out of us. We don't know exactly when ChemBot will join the Armed Forces, but we can only beg: please, oh please, keep it away from us.

(Via IEEE Spectrum)