We’ve seen it in our popular culture for decades. Heck, even Sigourney Weaver killed the Queen Alien after jumping into a Mech-suit exoskeleton. It is fast approaching reality. These suits are not just something to give you super strength so you can help the elderly, like the one we reported on in October. The bugs are being worked out by the military so we can kill and crush enemies more effectively.
Sarcos, a Utah-based startup, has just shown a prototype robot that can work like an exoskeleton…
The eventual takeover of mankind by machines comes one step closer with the creation of this giant robot hand. It was built by untrained volunteers for the Robodock festival in Amsterdam last month, and is actually capable of crushing everything from shopping carts to small vans. The hand itself is 25 feet long, weighs about 5,000 pounds and was built from scrapyard parts including I-beams for the fingers and a digging machine truss as the forearm.
The hand is controlled by sticking your own hand into a custom control armature and moving it about. Understandably, given its size, weight and low-tech design the crushing hand moves very slow, but being able to lift a van 20 feet off the ground after reducing it to scrap metal has to be fun. If you’re curious, I’ve included a video after the jump that partly features the crushing hand in action about 30 seconds in.
Unfortunately now that the festival is over the giant hand is probably destined to return to the scrap yard from once it came. While its creator would like to bring the robot hand back to the US, moving and shipping the giant creation is difficult and expensive. So if a local buyer can’t be found it will simply be destroyed, possibly by an even larger robotic hand, but don’t quote me on that.
QinetiQ, a defense contractor from the UK with poor spelling has developed an unmanned maritime reconnaissance vehicle that’s about the size of an average jet-ski. The small craft is designed for multiple military or security-based roles including harbor patrol, battlefield reconnaissance, intruder investigation and even damage assessment all without risking the lives of any sailors.
And even though it’s only about 3.5 meters in length the Sentry still has an advanced stealth design, is capable of speeds up to 50 knots and can run for about 6 hours at a time. It can also be configured to operate by remote using a simple PC-based console or it can be programmed to autonomously carry out pre-planned missions like patrolling a particular body of water.
The Sentry is yet another step in the military’s slow transition to unmanned vehicles. Not only do the remotely operated craft remove the military personnel from any danger but it also means the vehicles can be smaller and more fuel-efficient since they don’t need to accommodate a human pilot or any of the life-support and emergency systems that are required.
While I’m glad SONY chose to develop and actually sell the Aibo robot its price and limited availability meant very few people actually owned one. So I’m particularly excited to see that a University team (Technische Univeritat Darmstadt) from Germany is developing an open-source four-legged robot known as the ‘New4LR.’ While they may lack SONY’s marketing skills their robot can outperform Aibo in many ways and has the chance to become far more popular than Aibo ever was by letting hobbyists, students or researchers modify the thing as they please.
The main computer is a 500 MHz AMD-Geode-LX800 32Bit processor with 256 MB (extenable up to 1 GB) DDR-SODIMM main memory on a PC104 board from Digital-Logic which has been selected because of its good balance between computational power, low power requirements and low temperature generation…
Compared with the robot previously used in the Four-Legged League the main computer includes a numeric coprocessor and it is not based on a proprietary operating system. Instead Linux or Windows CE are at the disposal of the robot programmer.
The new four-legged robot should be available sometime in the second half of 2007 but the initial versions will come with a price tag of about $4,850. Hopefully the choice to make it open source will make it popular enough to eventually drive the price down.
While a pillow is as far from a high-tech gizmo as you can get if you happen to make them in the shape of either the Autobot or Decepticon logos you’re pretty much guaranteed that geeks will be lining up to buy one.
And while the pillows aren’t made from Cybertron-mined metals (the makers have opted for softer materials instead) they can still transform according to the ThinkGeek website. “They can turn from decorative plush device into plush throwing weapon in just about two seconds.” So there you go, not only are they comfortable but they’re also multi-function. What other justification could you need?
The Transformers Pillows are available from ThinkGeek for $19.99 each.
The team at BotJunkie are doing a great job unearthing cool bot stories. Here’s a few highlights:
- The Germans know how to live… and eat. They’ve built a robotic restaurant, with robo-waiters… of sorts. [ Robotic Restaurant ]
- Robots don’t always have to be useful. It’s cool when they’re made into art, like the awesome pieces from Laurence Northey. [ Robot Art ]
- The Roller-Walker is a hybrid bot that can walk, and roll. It manages this by doing a little transformation, which I’m sure you’ll enjoy watching on the video in that article. [ The Roller-Walker ]
It’s time for all those other novelty calculators sitting on your desk to watch their backs because this Robot Calculator is sure to take some names, kick some butt and perform some basic arithmetic functions. But that’s not all! His movable arms and clamp hands allow him to hold pens, pencils and other stabbing weapons and a magnetic disc on his back ensures an arsenal of paperclips and tacks is always within easy reach.
He’s currently available from Perpetual Kid for just $14.99 but I have to admit I’m a bit confused as to why the website refers to him as the ‘Galactic Edition’? Maybe a calculator this advanced could only come from outer space.
Everyone loves robots. Everyone loves things that clean for you. And your wife doesn’t love cleaning. The aforementioned facts are exactly why the improvements in the new Roomba 500 Series are that much more awesome. Besides interchangeable face plates, a $300 starting price, and more room for all those crushed Doritos it’s bound to clean off your floor, the 500 Series features twice as much suckage. Neat! Check out a full comparison after the jump.
Subaru, (aka Fuji Heavy Industries) and Sumitomo have teamed up and created a robo-janitor! His name is Tondon and he currently resides in the the outdoor hallways of a new 14-story Bali-themed luxury apartment complex in Tokyo. Tondon works unsupervised, sweeping and cleaning, and relies on an optical communication system to control the building’s elevators, allowing it to move from floor to floor. It has also been strengthened, to better endure the elements, and has added cameras, to prevent unwanted collisions. It also pulls double duty as a security guard. Looking at this thing’s ink I know that it has been to prison before. At least twice.
The RoboCup soccer tournament in Atlanta has drawn to a close; congrats to team NimbRo who won the “kidsize” 2v2 competition. There are of course lots of videos of RoboCup 2007 kicking around on YouTube, but here’s an especially close quarterfinal match pitting NimbRo against the Darmstadt Dribblers. If you’re a soccer fan, you’ll appreciate the dramatic saves from the goalies (well, sometimes dramatic) as well as the unbridled robot-on-robot brutality. And of course, just like real soccer players, you’ll catch these robots taking dives from time to time when nobody is anywhere near them.
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By Andrew Liszewski
- The Germans know how to live… and eat. They’ve built a robotic restaurant, with robo-waiters… of sorts. [ 
- Robots don’t always have to be useful. It’s cool when they’re made into art, like the awesome pieces from 
- The Roller-Walker is a hybrid bot that can walk, and roll. It manages this by doing a little transformation, which I’m sure you’ll enjoy watching on the video in that article. [ 
By Andrew Liszewski
By Ryan Nill
