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Tag Archive: Robot

iRobot to Build Soft Military Robots

iRobot to Build Soft Military Robots

The next generation of military robot won’t be gun-toting, armored, or equipped with explosives. Instead, it will be soft. So says iRobot about the next custom robot it will be engineering for the U.S. military.

The company announced Tuesday that it had received a multi-year, $3.3 million contract for the mobile robots from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the U.S. Army Research Office. Their mission: build a so-called ChemBot that can worm its way through the most cluttered and complex environments, and through openings that are smaller than it is.

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Gibson Announces Self-Tuning Robot Guitar

Gibson Announces Self-Tuning Robot Guitar

If playing Guitar Hero has got you jonesing for the real thing but you don’t think you can quite stand th drudgery of having to tune a guitar for yourself—or if you’re a seasoned pro who’d like to reliably switch between different tunings on the fly, maybe even mid-song—then Gibson’s new Robot Guitar has got something for you. The guitar integrates servo motors in its tuners derived from robotics technology to enable the guitar to automatically adjust its tuning on the fly, so players no longer have to worry about whether that B or G string is gonna be super-flat after that mind-blowing monster bend. What’s more, a new top-mounted control enables players to switch between up to six alternate tunings on the fly.

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iRobot Scores Injunction in Lawsuit

iRobot Scores Injunction in Lawsuit

It may not be quite as exciting as the robot wars that play out in movies and television, but a battle between two robot manufacturers is raging now –  in courtrooms. Massachusetts-based iRobot filed suit against Robotic FX back in August for allegedly infringing on trade secrets from iRobot’s PackBot robot, and on Monday, iRobot announced it had secured an injunction in the case that will prevent the Robot FX from using “critical features” in its competing robot’s design.

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Zeno Life-Like Robot Debuts at NextFest

Zeno Life-Like Robot Debuts at NextFest

Honda’s Asimo humanoid robot may be in for some competition. Hanson Robotics used WIRED magazine’s NextFest expo to introduce a new robot named Zeno on Thursday, a 17-inch tall tike who can navigate, make facial expressions, recognize speech and more.

Zeno uses artificial intelligence developed by Massive Software, the company that developed simulated AI-driven characters for the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, Happy Feet and Ratatouille. The robot develops a 3D “mental image” of his surroundings and uses Massive’s code to determine how to control physical action. A body with 28 individual servos allows Zeno to lie down, stand up, gesture, open and close his mouth and eyes, and more.

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Build A Robot, Win $5,000

Build A Robot, Win $5,000

If building a BattleBot is a little too violent for your tastes, a new robot-building challenge may just give you a more civil outlet for your constructive impulses. The company that produces the Roomba floor-cleaning robot, iRobot, has teamed up with Tom’s Hardware Guide and Instructables to sponsor a contest, beginning Wednesday, which challenges builders to build their own open-ended creations for a $5,000 prize.

Contestants must use the iRobot Create kit to build their entries, but they can perform absolutely any function. Robots will be judged on task complexity, aesthetics, intelligence, usefulness, entertainment value, and other criteria. Between May 16 and August 31, builders can submit photos and descriptions of their robots through the Instructables Web site. After judging, a winner will be announced on or before October 1.

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Digitizing the Actor

Avid is previewing their new Softimage Face Robot at SIGGRAPH.  The new facial animation technology is meant to allow 3-D artist to achieve the same realistic facial responses found in real life for high-end film, post, and game projects.

The Face Robot is built on computer modeling of the soft tissues in a human face.  On display are CG characters built to show the precision over facial details such as wrinkles, frowns, flaring nostrils, and bulging neck muscles.

The Face Robot supports both keyframe animation and motion capture, and examples may be downloaded from the Softimage website for those who cannot attend the convention.

Roomba Vacuum Gets Some Competition

The new vacuum cleaner robot by Vorwerk uses a “wireless carpet” to help navigate and move the robot vacuum cleaner to cover every area of your room.

According to the Discovery Channel, the robot system uses RFID technology that is physically embedded into your carpet to send information to the vacuum cleaner. The robot then uses that data to record which sections of the room it has visited and where it needs to go to next.  Read more...

Sony launches 3rd-gen ERS-7 AIBO robot

Available in pearlescent white, the newly designed, futuristic ERS-7 AIBO model provides the greatest degree of autonomous behavior and functionality to date. It features a faster CPU, a higher resolution camera and twice as much memory as its predecessors.

With an accompanying software application entitled AIBO MIND (on 32 MB Memory Stick® media bundled with the ERS-7), the ERS-7 will allow owners to interact with the robot in numerous ways. For example, AIBO enthusiasts will be able to enjoy interacting with a more fluid autonomous robot via voice and tactile touch sensors, along with the ability to remotely access the robot and retrieve digital images on their PC via e-mail commands or an Internet browser (PC Wi-Fi connection required).  Read more...

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