Automaton

I have to admit that despite considering myself a good robot geek, and despite the fact that my first Roomba was named Optimus Grime, I had never actually seen the Transformers. Still, not knowing anything about the originals, the movie was decently entertaining...

UPDATE: For those who asked, Girl Robot has a YouTube page with more videos, and no, I don't have her email or phone, but you can try her MySpace page.

* Transformer Optimus Prime prevented a burglary in the U.K. This transformer is made of wood and stands 7 feet tall in the living room of one Michael Clarke, in Gravesend, Kent. The robot has motion sensors that activate a stereo, piercing purple eyes, and it matches the owner's couch.

* More robots from iRobot. The Roomba maker says it is mutating. The company wants to keep expanding its product line. Three years ago, it had only one domestic robot, the Roomba; by the end of this year it wants to have six domestic robots in the market. I wonder if Masseur Bot is on that list.

* Peter Crouch, the elongated (2 meters/6 feet 7 inches) British soccer player who celebrated some of his goals with an ridiculous robot dance, said the moves were because he's been "messing about" with robotics since he was a child. He also said no more robotic celebrations this season. That's a good thing.

I thought this was pretty hilarious -- and devoted readers may recognize Leonardo from an earlier post!

Click To Play

A note from Automaton correspondent Meg Sturiano:

This past June, singer/songwriter/videographer/high-school teacher/newlywed Andrew Thompson and his outfit of musicians, backup singers, dancers, puppets, and robots performed his unique brand of pop music--think Michael Jackson meets Burt Bacharach--to a raucous crowd that came from all over the globe to the Brooklyn Lyceum to see the Serge Gainsbourg-inspired sets and costumes and hear new hits like Close the Blinds and Wake Up, Mr. Cuellar, and old favorites like There Must Be Some Kind of Misunderstanding and We're in Business.

Yes, "We're in Business," a.k.a. "The Robot Song," which is why we're posting this here by the way -- check out the awesome video, above. Thanks, Meg!

How cool would it be to show up at a Halloween party wearing one of this?

Guess what? You can. The trick top hat was created by automatier Dug North and its design is available in MAKE magazine's special Halloween edition. Dug on the hat:

The project requires two costume "coachman's" hats, plywood, some small pieces of wood, two L-brackets, two springs, a brake cable and lever, a cable crimp, some washers and screws, and...brace yourself...a rubber finger puppet. Terrifying!

PS: The description above is from Dug's Automata/Automaton Blog, a great blog with, yes!, a great name (although his automata are of the mechanical figure/object variety and this blog's are of the robotic variety).

OK, so crash test dummies are not robots; they are more like human-shaped sensor-packed devices. They can sense their "environment" (that would be a car during a crash) but they can't walk around and strap themselves to a vehicle. Yet.

Dummies are getting smarter, as we report in Anatomy of a Crash Test Dummy this month in Spectrum. They're carrying more sensors (called load cells) and gathering better data.

Below a movie we captured during our visit to Denton ATD, one of the word's leading makers of crash test dummies. This side impact experiment uses an EuroSID 2 dummy. The metal thing hitting the dummy is called the "impactor probe." Ouch.

Continue reading to see more photos of Spectrum's visit to Denton.

If you've noticed the radio silence lately, my excuse is that I've been traveling a lot for work. One of the places I ended up was London, #1 on my very short "favorite international cities" list. This is not to say, however, that I was completely off Automaton duty... I took the opportunity to snap a few photos of some robot goodness.

I was amused by a sign at the ubiquitous Pret a Manger, promising its customers that no robots were involved in the making of your sandwich:

And there appears to be a "robot world" of some sort at County Hall on the south bank of the Thames; my eye was originally drawn there because of the apparently massive Star Wars exhibit in the same building, but my work schedule didn't give me enough time to check out either Star Wars or Robot World. The internet doesn't have a ton of information on Robot World, either -- I'd be interested in comments from those who have been.

The one bit of info I did find online made it sound a little like the MIT museum in Cambridge, Mass. Can anyone confirm?

Photo: U-Boat Worx

Truly a James Bondian contraption. The C-Quester 1 is a personal submersible. And like in a real sub, you don't need a diving suit to ride it. You stay dry and pilot the thing from inside an acrylic dome.

The sub's three electric motors can propel it to 2.5 to 3 nautical miles per hour, and you can descend as far as 50 meters. It has a computer that monitors carbon dioxide concentration, air pressure, and temperature. It's got air conditioner, too.

The C-Quester 1, made by U-Boat Worx of Breda, Netherlands, was part of Spectrum's annual roundup of gadgets and gizmos for the holidays.

OK, not a robot but pretty cool, uh? Not so cool is the price tag. The C-Quester 1 costs about US $130 000, plus taxes, import duties, and registration fees.

Happy belated Thanksgiving from the Automaton crew -- we hope you had a great holiday!

Thinking of holidays, I'm commissioning an artistically-inclined friend of mine to make me custom Christmas cards this year, and between the two of us we've been investigating ways to incorporate robots. There's a surprising lack of robot cards out there, so it's becoming a DIY venture. For the arts and crafts types among you -- or those hoping to indoctrinate your children with the awesomeness of robots -- you may be interested in these rubber stamps we found:

A company named "Bam Pop!" makes a number of what I can only describe as "cutesy" rubber stamps and other crafty paraphernalia, and they have a few robots on this page. In particular I thought that the "hellobot", shown to the left, could be very versatile for greeting cards.

(Image from bampop.com)

Slightly less cutesy, but still very friendly, is this one from Etsy. I think it wants a hug. I also think the technical considerations of it balancing on a single wheel warrant a discussion.

(Image from etsy.com)

And finally, the Robot Kid from A Muse could not only make a nice greeting card, it could also inspire your child's next Halloween costume.

(Image from amuseartstamps.com)

Why do they all have square heads? I can't think of any robot we've looked at on this blog to date that has a square head.

Anyway! Found any other good stuff for robot arts and crafts? Let us know!

For your viewing pleasure, here are some very strange Japanese robots doing some sort of Santa fan dance.

Christmas has come and gone, and the New Year is almost upon us. Time for a look at the past year’s new robots and to pick some winners!

Candidates include, among many others, WowWee's Dragonfly, Roboquad and Elvis robots, the iRobot Create, the Sony Rolly only available in Japan, Ijspeert's salamander robot locomoting in and out of water, Dean Kamen's prosthetic robotic arm, the SARCOS exoskeleton doubling as a remote controlled android, Honda's Asimo with its latest skill of serving tea as well as countless humanoid toys like the i-SOBOT.

The Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry has already gone ahead and named their robot of the year 2007: A handling system by FANUC Ltd with M-430iA robot arms and visual tracking (check out a video clip). Their runner-ups include a host of industrial and service robots.

I've decided to give naming a "Top 3 of 2007" a shot and held a long debate - mostly with myself as I will admit - to pick my personal favorites. My kinds of robots are not those on the factory floors, but those you and I can see and interact with out on the streets, in offices or in our homes. And after some consideration, all the new humanoids didn't make my list - they may have the greatest potential, but I think they are still very far from being useful beyond amusement and are simply way too expensive. Here are the 3 that did make my list of favorite robots in 2007:

3. BeatBot's Keepon
The toy robot Keepon developed by the BeatBots project, Keepon dances to music (make sure to check out the video). Similar to last year's hilarious Tickle Me Elmo robot, Keepon is based on a simple idea, a simple design, but is fantastically well done. Somebody please tell me why they won't sell it!

2. Ugobe's Pleo
Another toy – but hey, that’s where consumer robotics stands in 2007. But the Pleo is an exceptionally cool toy: The baby dino uses an impressive sensor suite in combination with an AI that allows it to develop distinct personalities according to user interactions. Pleo performs a large range of actions, including trembling in fear, wagging its tail and dancing with happiness, playing dead and sneezing - and you can train it! With the long awaited Pleo, the people at Ugobe have reached a new level of user interaction and - as some people claim - intelligence for a robot toy.

1. The DARPA Urban Challenge Robots
For me the title for robot of the year 2007 goes to the winners of the Urban Challenge. Winners, because three robots performed exceptionally well: Carnegie Mellon University's Tartan Racing robot Boss, Stanford racing team's Junior and Virginia Tech's Victor Tango. Although their times in the race differed, all three robots far exceeded expectations. And thinking back to the first Grand Challenge in 2004, it is truly unbelievable how far robot technology has advanced in this field.

Miss a robot in the list? Disagree with my judgment? Or ready to compile your own top 3, 4, 5, ... 10? Feel free to post your comments!

This lovely robot valentine, along with others, can be found at blissfullybitter.com.

Ney Robinson Salvi dos Reis, a Brazilian roboticist who leads a group developing an environmental robot for the Amazon jungle, writes to report important developments.

No, not a major advance in the robot's active suspension system. Not a breakthrough in its machine vision scheme either. The big news, Reis reports, is that the robot, called Hybrid Environmental Robot, was the inspiration for a vehicle used in this year's famed Rio de Janeiro carnival.

The vehicle was part of the presentation by the carnival group Grande Rio. The photo shows the vehicle parading through Sapucaí Avenue in Rio de Janeiro, and although you can't see them, Reis and his team of researchers were right there, dancing samba along with their "robot."

After our Big Dog scoop last week, we now learn that footage of a deeply flawed predecessor model, Big Dog Beta, has recently surfaced. Disturbing. :)

The video is by the same troupe (they call themselves Pantless Knights) that made the YouTube hit "Mac or PC Rap Music Video."

For a little fun on a Monday morning... if you've recently downloaded the new Firefox 3, try typing "about:robots" into the address bar and hitting Enter.

That is all.

Via Fark.

I saw "WALL-E" last night with some folks from work and it was universally agreed to be an excellent movie. The characters are fantastic, the animation is as always impressive, and the story is fun. Fans of Apple products will find a few winks to Macs and iPods, and I'm pretty sure EVE is exactly what an Apple robot would look like. For his part, WALL-E bears a striking resemblance to Johnny 5.

I can't wait till I can have my own. For now I'll have to do with the LEGO version, I guess.

Go see it. Cute WALL-E wants you to.

Image from Disney/Pixar