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Lego-built robotic arm will pour you a drink, collapse under pressure (video)
We've seen countless robotics projects made either partly or entirely out of Lego, but this pneumatic arm built by Max Sheppard has to rank among the most impressive. As you can see in the video above, while it may be a bit on the slow side, the arm's range of motion is remarkably life-like (even by non-Lego standards). It's also able to grip objects of different sizes, and with enough precision to pour water out of a cup, although Sheppard says it can't lift anything more than a couple of pounds. No word if he has any plans to attach the arm to something.
George Devol, creator of the first industrial robot arm dies at 99
He may not be a household name like Henry Ford, but it's arguable that George Devol's (above, right) work was even more influential in shaping the modern manufacturing landscape. In 1961, roughly seven years after first applying for the patent, his Unimate was put into service in a GE automobile plant. The world's first programmable, robotic arm was used to lift hot cast metal components out of a mold and stack them -- the assembly line has never been the same. Other companies soon followed suit, replacing expensive and fragile humans with mechanical labor. Devol died Thursday night in his home at the age of 99. If you're interested in getting a peek at his game-changing invention, you can find one at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. [Image credit: The Estate of George C. Devol]
x-Ar exoskeleton arm keeps repetitive tasks from doing you harm (video)
The spring-loaded technology behind the Steadicam has just found another use -- the x-Ar exoskeleton arm, which attaches to your wrists to reduce or eliminate the feeling of weight. Just unveiled at the Applied Ergonomics Conference in Florida this week, the mechanism mounts to a chair or other stable object and loosely cuffs your arms, allowing for a fairly extraordinary range of motion while bearing "the weight of your arm and small objects." (Sledgehammer-wielding workers will probably be better served by one of these.) While manufacturer Equipois suggests that the arm will likely see use in factories, assembly lines and the like where workers are subject to repetitive stress, we can also think of a few bloggers who wouldn't mind taking a little strain off their wrists. PR after the break.
Kinect hack turns Arduino-controlled delta robot into aggressive claw crane (video)
Candy crane, teddy picker, claw machine, whatever you call it, this arcade mainstay was robbing children of their golden tokens long before we slid into our first pair of Hammer pants, but despite the changing face of the plush offerings within, the crane game's remained mostly the same. Now a team of students at the Bartlett School of Architecture have produced a Kinect hack that could change the way you drop that claw. The rather temperamental delta robot enlists the ever-hackable peripheral in combination with Processing and Arduino to mimic the movements of a user's arm. As you can tell by the video below, the delta hasn't quite figured out the subtleties of human gestures, but the robot's creators say they intend to implement "several autonomous behaviors" once all the kinks are worked out. Frankly, we'd pay our weight in tokens to see the crane game bite back at an unsuspecting whippersnapper. Video after the break.
Ball-throwing robot seal has a talent for basketball, embarrassing humans (video)
You pick up your first tan leather roundball at the age of 9, you practice religiously for a decade before you can even feel worthy of calling yourself a basketball player, and then you find a video online of a robotic seal that can shoot better than you after just a few weeks in the lab. Yep, some Taiwanese know-it-alls have put together a robo-seal that converts 99 percent of shots (admittedly with a toy ball launched at a toy hoop) within a three-meter range. It's basically just an articulating arm with stereo vision for some good old depth perception, but it's sophisticated enough to maintain its killer accuracy even if the target is moved from its spot. That's more lethal that Shaq or Karl Malone's elbows ever were. Video's after the break, skip to the 1:05 mark if you don't care about the details of how it's done.
Brain-controlled robot arm kicks off new FDA program to speed up approval of medical devices
As we've seen, the FDA approval process for medical devices and other gadgets can be a long one, but it looks like things could soon be speeding up considerably. The agency has just announced a new "Innovation Pathway" program that promises to allow for priority reviews of "truly pioneering technologies," which could potentially cut the approval process time in half. Somewhat ironically, however, that program itself will first need some further review before it's broadly deployed, but the FDA has already kicked things off on a limited basis with its first submission: a brain-controlled robotic arm from DARPA. It's not clear which arm that is, but it sounds a lot like the now-famous "Luke" arm developed by Dean Kamen's Deka organization, which just so happens to be funded by DARPA. Head on past the break for the official press release, and a video of the FDA's webcast announcing the program. Update: A tipster has pointed out that the robotic arm in question, and seen briefly in the video after the break, is actually the Modular Prosthetic Limb developed by Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory (now pictured above), not Deka's Luke arm.
Gesture-controlled robot arm enables civilization's most meta high five
This video, criminally, doesn't actually show any high fives, but we're sure the students at the University of Tsukuba have sustained endless LOLs over the past few months, pushing their gesture-driven robot arm system to the limits of human-robot high five interaction. The system itself is relatively simple: it uses two cameras to track a hand's movements, including specific finger gestures, which are then processed and translated into robotic movement in real time. The end result is basically the world's most elaborate claw machine game, as demonstrated above.
Talay Robot will document your tweet, give it a soundtrack, Twitvid the results (video)
Tweet a message @talayrobot and something magical happens. An ST Robotics arm whirs to life inside Sony Music's London HQ and starts transcribing your words of wisdom unto a glamorously lit whiteboard -- in the finest handwriting font its designers could find! Best part is that the whole thing gets filmed and the video is sent back to you within a matter of minutes, equipped with an audio clip from Sony's Talay Riley. Yes, it's a promotional stunt, but it's also undeniably one of the coolest intersections of robotics and social networking we've yet seen. Skip past the break for some video examples or get tweeting and create your own.
Former World Champion Vladimir Kramnik faces off against a robotic arm in a game of blitz chess
Robots and artificial intelligence are no stranger to chess, but it's not every day you get to witness an actual, fiery game of blitz chess between a World Champion and a robotic arm. Vladimir Kramnik, who was World Chess Champion from 2006 to 2007, seems to take the game pretty casually, but the robo-arm's quick, decisive moves feel just a little threatening to us. We get it, you're a robot, you don't have to go shouting it from the rooftops!
Audi robot arms take over London, write messages with LEDs day and night (video)
Here's yet another fine preview of the inevitable robot apocalypse -- car-assembling arms in the city center overlooking us feeble humans. For now, though, these machines are merely part of an Kram/Weisshaar art installation dubbed Outrace. Throughout the week-long London Design Festival, you can go to Outrace.org to submit a short text message that you wish to be displayed in Trafalgar Square, and with a bit of luck, the monitoring staff will pick up your greeting. What happens next is that the eight LED-equipped robot arms (KUKA KR 180; loaned by Audi) will start scribing your message in the air, which is then captured by the 36 long-exposure cameras surrounding the stage (even during the day, courtesy of welding glass filter), and it'll end up on the LED board as pictured. Stuck outside London? Fret not, as you can see the beasts in action via the website's live video stream, or you can watch bullet-time videos of each text submission on Outrace's YouTube channel -- you can see our message in both clips after the break. Enjoy! Update: Turns out the robots picked up our second message as well, and better yet, it was displayed during the day! Check out the new video after the break.%Gallery-102595%
Robot arm takes engineers for a virtual reality Formula 1 ride (video)
As it turns out, industrial-strength robot arms are good for more than amusing hijinks and the occasional assembly line -- a team of researchers at Germany's Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics have turned a KUKA KR 500 into the ultimate Formula 1 simulator ride. Outfitting the six-axis, half-ton lifter with a force-feedback steering wheel, pedals, video projector and curved screen, the newly-christened CyberMotion Simulator lets scientists throw a virtual Ferrari F2007 race car into the turns, while the cockpit whips around with up to 2 Gs of equal-and-opposite Newtonian force. There's actually no loftier goal for this particular science project, as the entire point was to create a racing video game that feels just like the real thing -- though to be fair, a second paper tested to see whether projectors or head-mounted displays made for better drivers. (Projectors won.) See how close they came to reality in a video after the break, while we go perform a little experiment of our own. [Thanks, Eric]
Lightweight robot arm connects to your wheelchair, stoops in your stead (video)
Japan's latest robot arm won't flip pancakes or do dishes, and you'll have to control its every move via remote, but it enables a surprising range of motion that some disabled individuals just can't manage on their own. The RAPUDA (Robotic Arm for Persons with Upper limb DisAbilities) is a modular, wheelchair mounted device that weighs just thirteen pounds, yet extends over three feet to pick up objects (up to one pound) from a nearby table or floor. Its relative sloth and noise may irritate some, but it's all nostalgic to us -- it sounds just like the Radio Shack Armatron that graced our childhood. Now, where did those D-cells go... Video after the break.
Robot arm learns to flip pancakes, can never know the joys of tasting one
We'd like to pretend to be all serious about the science behind teaching a robot arm to teach itself a complicated motion like pancake flipping. We'd drone on and on about how the combination of demonstrated motion, trial-and-error, and object motion tracking come together for some "Expectation-Maximization based Reinforcement Learning," but really we just can't stop giggling at all the pancake misses perpetrated by the robot on video, which can be found after the break.
Industrial robot arm pretends to do chores in Dyson's London pop-up shop
As Mariah Carey's song goes: "all I want for Christmas is a loyal house-cleaning robot." Okay, not quite, but we did become hopeful when we saw this photo taken inside Dyson's first London pop-up shop. Sadly, it turns out that the sole purpose of this prototype-testing robot arm is to constantly twist a DC24 vacuum cleaner -- presumably to show off just how great a dance partner your rug cleaner can be. If you've just had your wildest dreams shattered (trust us, we're right there with ya), feel free to pass on a petition to the Dyson engineers staffing that temporary shop -- you'll get to play with nine of their vacs and the Air Multiplier bladeless fan while you're there. You have until January 25th. Chop-chop! [Image courtesy of Mark Hattersley]
KAR robot arm does the dishes, sort of
Ok, so it may not be quite as ambitious as some all-purpose cleaning robots, but this so-called KAR robot arm developed by a group of researchers from Panasonic and the University of Tokyo does appear to at least do the sole task it was designed for relatively well. While it can't exactly "wash" the dishes, per se, it can apparently pick up even delicate dishes without damaging them, dip them in the water, load them into a dishwasher, and even turn on said dishwasher. The researchers apparently aren't satisfied with things just yet, however, and they say they eventually hope that robot will be able to clean up after a family of four in just five minutes. Head on past the break for a video, and hit up the link below for another silent (and, hence, more unnerving) one.[Via Japan Probe]
Robot arms do battle... Medieval Times-style
Sure, it's not uncommon to see one robot arm take a break from productivity to engage in some shenanigans potentially fraught with peril, but two robot arms slacking off and wielding weapons? Well, that's cause for some sort of celebration. As you can see in the video after the break, however, whomever was responsible for this madness didn't completely let the arms loose on each other, which we can only hope means they're saving the arms for the inevitable Wiimote-controlled version.[Via Boing Boing Gadgets]
New robotic arm promises to mind Newton's third law
Don't you hate it how simply moving a robotic arm in a microgravity environment can produce enough negative reaction forces to alter a spacecraft's orientation? Well, a group of researchers from Cornell University have now devised a new type of robot arm that they say could make that pesky problem a thing of the past. To do that, they've employed a device known as a control-moment gyroscope (or CMG) instead of a motor to control the arm's joints, which not only reduces the amount energy required to move the arm, but lets it move faster as well. As you can see above, they've already tested the arm on board NASA's famous Vomit Comet, but there's no indication just yet as to when or if the arm will actually see action in space.
Robotic Copycat Arm promises to taunt you with ease
While mind-control interfaces are all well and good, sometimes a simpler solution makes a bit more sense, and that's where this so-called Copycat Arm comes in. Developed by a group of researchers at the University of Tsukub, it makes use of a high-speed camera to monitor a person's movements, which are apparently instantly (and creepily) mimicked by the robot arm.Eventually, the researchers say the same system could be used as a computer interface, which they say could eliminate the need for a mouse and keyboard. Unfortunately, there doesn't appear to be a video of the arm in action, but those heading to SIGGRAPH 2008 will apparently be able to check it out first hand.
Nuvation shows off air hockey-playing robot
While robots are still quite a ways away from being able to challenge humans in sports like soccer, it looks like at least one company has managed to create a robot that's able to prevail in one somewhat athletic activity: air hockey. According to Nuvation, its otherwise unassuming robot arm here can not only hold its own against its human opponents, but beat them about 90 percent of the time. That, as you might have guessed, is done with the aid of an optical sensor that's programmed to follow the conveniently shiny puck and react like an old air hockey pro. Still skeptical? Check it out in action in the video after the break.
Wiimote used to control robotic arm, effectively this time
Sure, it's been done before, but that doesn't make the idea of a robotic arm controlled by a Wiimote any less exciting, especially when the arm is actually responsive. That feat is aided considerably by the fact that this latest setup was developed by an engineer from National Instruments, who made use of some of the company's LabVIEW hardware and a specially-designed Bluetooth adapter to control the arm at the flick of a wrist (or using the Wiimote's buttons). Check it out in action in the video after the break -- don't worry, no one gets hurt.
