Nothing like starting work, on a Monday morning, pondering just how awesome life would be if you got to get around on a tank chair. Like this one.
Of course, this particular chair is designed for people that actually need it, not just people who’d enjoy terrorising old ladies on the sidewalk. It appears to be the brainchild of a dad, who one day, while camping, realized his wheelchair-bound wife was unable to enjoy nature as much as she would have liked to, due to her current chair’s limitations. 2 years and lots of sweat later, the Tank Chair was born. With it, you can conquer snow, mud, sand, gravel or whatever else nature throws at you. Though, it seems you need to actually be disabled to own one.
And, well, no idea what the sticker on that thing could be.
While I enjoy your usual run-of-the-mill robot war TV show, I find the use of the word “robot” somewhat amusing. I mean, hey, yeah, those things are RC cars outfitted with armour, chainsaws and enough arsenal to maim an angry Tazmanian Devil… but, they’re hardly robots. At least, not in my interpretation of that word.
These guys, on the other hand, are just too cool for words. As part of the Robo-One 9 event held in Tokyo on March 18 and 19, a bunch of fully articulated mecha-ninjas got on the rink and beat the crap out of each other… in style. You have to see the winner, OmniZero 2, body slam, reverse body slam and pull crouching jabs at his opponents. Or even, well, do some fancy footwork that would make Muhammed Ali jealous.
Hell, why don’t you see for yourselves, and come inside for some jaw-dropping video action?
Well here’s some quality geekfluff, my friends. If you never watched Transformers, perhaps you need to reconsider the reason you’re reading this site in the first place and maybe even your entire identity as a self-proclaimed geek. If, perhaps this is due to you being too young… well, hell, my boy, you need to get crackin’ and find out about Optimus Prime in a hurry.
For the rest of us, you may simply drool in admiration of the work of a forum user named “3dblasphemy”. Yeah, it’s Optimus Prime allright, rendered in masterful CG glory. Hell, there’s even a sweet video inside.
Perhaps to call this contraption a robot would be stretching the meaning of that word a little. So, think of it more like a mannequin with a creepy, yet innovative feature. It’s called “Chatty”, and is on display at the Tokyo International Anime Fair 2006. Developed by the Ishikawa Optics & Art Corporation, its point is to give the mannequin/robot a more realistic, human-like face.
A video image of an actual human face (or the face of a computer-generated character, if you prefer) is projected onto the inner surface of the mannequin?s face, which serves as a three-dimensional video screen. Audio synced with Chatty?s video lip movements gives the face an astonishingly realistic look.
Of course, like all good such stories, there’s a nice video for you to watch, after the jump.
I like robots. Especially freaky amphibious snake-bots from hell. Like the ACM-R5, a radio controlled robot whose entire purpose is to frighten young children by submersing itself in water and swimming about like a real snake. Its internal lithium-ion battery allows it to slither around (or swim underwater) for up to 30 minutes per charge.
Sadly though, instead of dead rabbits and old baseballs, its innards contain such mundane things as an intricate sensor system (attitude/torque), a small-sized camera and a 32bit micro controller.
Not sure if it’s commercially available, since the page is (you guessed it) Japanese. Maybe we can be enlightened?
It’s beginning to look like the company Boston Dynamics (makers of the lovely BigDog) are producing some wicked (albeit marginally useful, for now) bots. For proof, just take a look at the RHex.
It looks a little like a mechanical pooch, with floppy weedwhacker legs. While admittedly cute, in a “How-Fugly” kind of sense, the point of the machine is its extraordinary rough terrain mobility.
RHex climbs over rock fields, mud, sand, vegetation, railroad tracks, telephone poles and up steep slopes and stairways. RHex has a sealed body, making it fully operational in wet weather, in muddy and swampy conditions, and it can swim on the surface or dive underwater.
RHex is controlled remotely from an operator control unit at distances up to 600 meters. A video uplink provides front and rear views from RHex?s onboard cameras. RHex also uplinks navigational data from onboard compass and GPS and from payload sensors. A downlink allows the operator to control mobility and to operate mission payloads.
There’s no price anywhere, and you’re meant to email them to get your own. I sense a heavy sales pitch at the end of that request, so proceed with care. If you ask me, it’s probably a case of “If you have to ask, you can’t afford it”.
Again, this is one of those posts that’s low by way of details. Nevetheless, I thought y’all could get a kick out of watching this lovely robot crawl up and down a wall. It’s called RiSE, and is allegedly the child of some DARPA funded research. Thinking heads at Pennsylvania, Carnegie Mellon, Berkeley and Stanford Universities soaked up the delicious DARPA money, and produced what looks like a giant robotic cockroach on crack.
I’m not exactly sure what its intended use is, though it’s my belief no one should go without a wall-crawling bot.
WowWee‘s SCOTY (for Smart Companion Operating Technology), is designed as an intelligent media hub that will greet you, read your e-mail aloud, watch your home, and even play your music. SCOTY stands roughly two feet tall and consists of an ABS plastic metal frame with a series of illuminated rectangular panels affixed to it.
SCOTY is wired- and wireless-network ready, but has little intelligence inside its metal body. Instead, it relies largely on software installed on a connected PC. WowWee (maker of the very popular Robosapien) is still tweaking the design and is estimating the price at around $399, with a projected delivery date of late 2006.
All the cool kids these days are quickly realizing that carrying their own backpacks to school is so very last week. That’s why you’re bound to start seeing this robotic mule popping up in a neighborhood near you anytime now.
Named “BigDog”, and developed by American company Boston Dynamics for military purposes, this bot is billed as “the most advanced quadruped robot on Earth”. Not only is it able to carry up to 88lbs, it can do so in perfect stability. Advanced internal force sensors give it the ability to stay up, even when kicked. Company president and project manager Marc Raibert says
the latest version of BigDog can handle slopes of 35? ? a steeper gradient than one in two. The hydraulics are driven by a two-stroke single-cylinder petrol engine, and it can carry over 40 kg, about 30% of its bodyweight. The robot can follow a simple path on its own, or can be remotely controlled.
Cool as this story sounds, you won’t get the full idea unless you come inside, and check out the groovy video.
By David Ponce
Related Tags: Robots, Technology, Unusual
Permalink
By David Ponce
