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Tag Archives: Robots

Autom Personal Weight Loss Coach

By Andrew Liszewski on 09/23/11 • 3 Comments

Autom Personal Weight Loss Coach (Image courtesy Intuitive Automata)
By Andrew Liszewski

Sticking to a diet or weight loss plan is a lot easier when you have a little positive reinforcement. And that seems to be what inspired MIT alum Cory Kidd to create Autom. She’s billed as a robotic weight loss coach, but that’s maybe being a little generous with the term ‘robot’. Her head and eyes do move, but otherwise she’s mostly just a stationary touchscreen tablet that lets you keep track of your nutritional and exercise habits. It’s her software, though, that makes Autom really effective. Every day multiple users can have conversations with her where they input their meals, or how much physical activity they got in throughout the day. Autom will then provide praise, or encouragement, depending on how close they are to achieving their weight loss goals.

I actually think it’s a great way to help a diet be successful, I just wish Autom wasn’t so expensive. She’s available for pre-order for just $195, but when she ships the remaining balance is an additional $670. For a total of $865, plus a monthly subscription plan of $79.95! I’m not sure how that compares to other weight loss plans, but it seems all of Autom’s functionality could also be provided via a considerably cheaper iPad app.

[ Autom Personal Weight Loss Coach ] VIA [ Automaton ]

Kid-Friendly Robotic Teddy Bear With Soft Animated Limbs

By Andrew Liszewski on 09/13/11 • Leave a comment!

Robotic Teddy Bear With Soft Animated Limbs (Images courtesy DigInfo)
By Andrew Liszewski

Remember Teddy Ruxpin? For his time he was pretty advanced as far as animated toys go. But as a stuffed animal he was the last thing you wanted to take to bed with you. He had enough ’80s technology inside him to stop a car if left in the middle of the street, so I don’t think he ever became any kid’s best friend. A group of researchers at the Tokyo Institute of Technology are hoping to right history’s wrongs though, and are working on an animated stuffed animal that’s still soft to the touch.

Strings running through the bear’s arms and legs are connected to motors hidden inside its padded torso. By pulling on the strings with varying amounts of force, the limbs are able to move in different directions, creating a fairly convincing life-like effect. Furthermore, because the strings are under tension, the electronics in the torso are also able to detect and register when the limbs have been touched or moved externally, allowing the bear to react and move in response. Most importantly, it’s these kinds of advancements that will give mankind the upper hand and advantage when robots eventually become self aware and rise up. Arms and legs made of steel make punches and kicks very dangerous. But arms and legs made of fabric and stuffing? They make being attacked feel like getting an overzealous hug!

[ DigInfo - Teddy Bear Robot With Soft Arms and Legs ]

LG’s Roboking Vacuum Tries To One-Up Roomba With 3 Built-In Video Cameras

By Andrew Liszewski on 08/31/11 • Leave a comment!

LG Roboking Vacuum (Image courtesy LG)
By Andrew Liszewski

It’s hard to debate the superiority of an autonomous vacuum called the Roboking, but that’s not the only ‘trick’ LG has up its sleeve when it comes to challenging the incumbent king of robovacs, the Roomba. To ensure their latest model does the most efficient job of cleaning your floors on a given charge, the Roboking comes equipped with 51 sensors and 3 video cameras allowing it to create a detailed map of its surroundings, and keep track of areas it’s already cleaned.

It’s also wifi equipped, which seems rather pointless for a vacuum until you realize it provides remote access to the Roboking’s cameras allowing it to serve as a roving home security system when you access the video feed from an app on your smartphone. And a limited number of voice commands, like telling it to stop, recharge or requesting weather forecasts will make you feel like you live in a futuristic Jetsons-like world. On paper it certainly outperforms the Roomba in terms of features, but the one area where LG doesn’t seem too concerned about competing is price. As the Roboking will set you back a fairly hefty $830+. (899,000 WON)

[ PR - LG Roboking Vacuum ] VIA [ Newlaunches ]

Want! Bender Bending Rodríguez Toque

By Andrew Liszewski on 03/16/11 • 2 Comments

Bender Bending Rodríguez Toque (Image courtesy wa2wider)
By Andrew Liszewski

Yesterday I may have been lamenting that Winter seems to be dragging its feet on the way out the door, but after discovering this amazing Bender Bending Rodríguez toque, I’m now content to have the cold weather stick around for a few more weeks. It was crocheted by Flickr user ‘cheewawamomma‘ and after perusing their photo gallery it’s safe to say they have near Jedi-like skills when it comes to using a crochet hook. Color my shiny metal ass thoroughly impressed, and jealous of Flickr user ‘wa2wider‘ who snapped the above photo.

[ Flickr - wa2wider - Bite My Shiney Metal Ass! ] VIA [ Illuminations and Other Stuff ]

Mega Hurtz Paintball Robot Is Only Fun For The Person Behind The Controls

By Andrew Liszewski on 02/24/11 • Leave a comment!

Mega Hurtz Paintball Robot (Image courtesy Chris Rogers)
By Andrew Liszewski

I don’t really see the appeal of running around the woods with a paintball marker in fear of being hit with a small ball of paint that’s going to leave a nasty bruise, and the prospect of having a robot capable of firing 20 paintballs a second on my tail certainly doesn’t change my opinion. Designed and engineered by Chris Rogers, the Mega Hurtz looks like a re-purposed battle bot but instead of targeting fellow robots, it allows the person behind the controls to hunt down people playing a game of paintball. And since it’s equipped with video cameras and an LCD display on the remote, the driver doesn’t even have to put themselves in harm’s way.

At 280lbs it’s not exactly something you can just toss on your back and deploy in ‘battle’ when the outcome is grim, but rest assured when you do decide to break out the Mega Hurtz you’re probably not going to have too much trouble dominating a paintball match. It’s got everything from red laser sights, night vision, a range of 500 feet and is strong enough to tow a Hummer. Pretty unstoppable it seems, though ironically it would probably only take a single paintball hitting the camera lens, essentially blinding the driver, to render it harmless. At the moment Chris has started a Kickstarter project with varying levels of support options to fund his work on the Mega Hurtz, and hopes that the refinements he makes to its design will one day make the platform a usable tool for military and law enforcement applications.

[ The Mega Hurtz ] VIA [ Mobile Magazine ]

Cubelets – Modular Robotic Building Blocks

By Andrew Liszewski on 02/21/11 • Leave a comment!

Cubelets - Modular Robotic Building Blocks (Image courtesy Modular Robotics)
By Andrew Liszewski

LEGO and its MINDSTORMS and TECHNICS counterparts allow you to build an infinite number of robotic contraptions, but they do require some level of engineering and programming know-how to bring your creations to life. Something most kids don’t have. So to make it easier for kids to hit the ground running/building, the Cubelets robotic building blocks already have all of that intelligence and functionality built-in. In fact each block is a simple robot in and of itself, but they can be combined to create something more complex and interactive than just a building block castle.

The standard Cubelets kit comes with 20 blocks that each have unique capabilities. Like action blocks (drive, rotate, speaker, flashlight & graph), sense blocks (knob, brightness, distance & temperature) and think/utility blocks (inverse, minimum, maximum, battery, passive & blocker) which sit in-between and affect how the action and sense blocks interact. So instead of having to specifically program your creation to behave a certain way, you just assemble the Cubelets you think it will need, and then watch how it behaves on its own. Now obviously you’re not going to be able to build something like a complex Rubik’s Cube solver with the Cubelets, but as a way to introduce kids to robotic concepts it seems like a fantastic learning tool.

Modular Robotics, the company behind the Cubelets, created 100 beta test kits as an initial introduction to the building toy, and even at $300 a set they’re already sold out. But more are in production, and they’re hoping to have them available in the very near future.

[ Cubelets - Modular Robotic Building Blocks ] VIA [ Core77 ]

Roomba Vacuum Controlled By Kinect

By Chris Scott Barr on 02/18/11 • Leave a comment!

By Chris Scott Barr

The whole point of a Roomba is to vacuum for you so that you don’t have to put in any physical labor. Well, someone in Japan with a little too much time figured out a way to put the vacuuming labor back into the Roomba. Why? I don’t think anyone really knows. There are always kudos for new ideas and thinking outside the box, but this really just leads to us being able to pantomime all of the chores we don’t like. Though we could completely avoid the chores altogether.

This thing is still pretty neat considering it’s self-defeating design. It has many different options other than normal back and forth. A plus side is that there may come a real life Chibi-Robo type game out of this. If you have no idea what that is, it’s about a robot who cleans things.

[ Ros-Robot ] VIA [ Technabob ]

Tama-Robo Ball Bot Looks Like A Poor Man’s Sphero

By Andrew Liszewski on 01/24/11 • Leave a comment!

Tama-Robo Ball Robot (Images courtesy the Japan Trend Shop)
By Andrew Liszewski

We’ve already expressed our excitement for Sphero, the smartphone controlled robotic ball, but at this point no one knows when we’ll actually be able to get our hands on one. And if you’re like us, and aren’t so great with the concept of waiting patiently, the Tama-Robo could be a half-decent alternative, if only because it’s available now.

It comes in a kit meaning there’s a bit of assembly required, but your $70 from the Japan Trend Shop, and a bit of hands-on labor, gets you a robot toy in a plastic sphere that’s able to autonomously follow a light source thanks to four sensors you’re probably not going to want to forget while putting it together. Tama-Robo doesn’t seem to be as refined as Sphero though. As you can see in the video included below it spends a lot of time just wobbling around while trying to follow the light, but like I already said it has the distinct advantage of being available right now, so we’re going to cut it a little slack.

[ Tama-Robo Ball Robot ]

Roombas Playing Pac-Man

By Andrew Liszewski on 01/11/11 • 2 Comments

Roomba Pac-Man (Image courtesy Jack Elston)
By Andrew Liszewski

How do you showcase the Unmanned Aerial System software you’ve developed to support your personal research while making it understandable to the layperson? And have fun while doing it? Well you lay down some red tape on the floor (which is just for demonstrative purposes in the video) dress up 5 Roombas like Pac-Man and the ghosts, and let someone have at it. While the Pac-Man bot is controlled by a player, the ghosts all run autonomously, giving chase once they’ve spotted him. And of course since he is a Roomba, those white paper dots in the maze are all gobbled up as Pac-Man passes over them.

[ Roomba Pac-Man ] VIA [ FAZED ]

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