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Pittsburgh museum plans "largest national" robotics exhibition
Heads-up Pittsburgh residents and robot lovers across the universe: an all new exhibition is coming to the Steel City next year, and it's got high, high hopes. The $3.4 million display, which is slated to be "permanent," will be housed in the Carnegie Science Center and go by the not-at-all-puzzling title of "roboworld." The installation is expected to house an "array of mechanized devices," and given that it's being billed as the "largest and most comprehensive nationwide on robotics," we'd say it's got a lot to live up to. Of course, we'll be utterly shocked if it even compares to the now-closed Robot Museum in Nagoya, Japan, but we suppose we'll have to see for ourselves when the doors fling open in Spring 2009.
ED unveils programmable, home-serving U-ROBO bot with RFID
While domesticated robots are becoming a (frighteningly) common inclusion in techno-friendly homes, Korean 'bot manufacturer ED has a home-ready robot that sports a plethora of communication venues including ZigBee and RFID. The ED-7270 (dubbed U-ROBO), touts a sophisticated similarity to the pioneering R2-D2, and can complete a myriad of in-home chores by using the included software to program its pathways, actions, and movements. While we aren't sure if the "ubiquitous robotic companion" can manhandle a broom or cook dinner, the innards are fairly potent nonetheless; beneath the U-ROBO's cute outfit is a 1GHz Intel Pentium processor, 512MB of RAM, WiFi, Ethernet, USB 2.0, ZigBee cooridinator, RFID reader, and a RS-232 serial port. It also rocks a 6.4-inch touchscreen, programmable display beneath his "eyes," voice recognition, motion / light detectors, and an eight-axis motor that has no qualms wheeling up slopes or braving extreme temperatures. Although we don't know precisely when these intelligent robots will start mopping our floors (or taking over our domicile), we're sure the undisclosed price will keep them in the hands of the rich and famous for awhile anyway. [Via AVing]
Enter the Steamer: a new vacuum and mopping bot
iRobot meet your match: the Steamer. (No, it's not that kind of Steambot.) We know you've seen other challengers before, but this household robot newbie claims to "vacuums off dust after brushing, followed by mopping" and then busts out with a "mopping function using steam." Oooh snap, Roomba and Scooba. Did you hear that? That's the sound of a foreign robot comin' to steal your jobs. Whatcha gonna do about it, huh? HUH? Yeah, Steamer looks pretty good over there, with its "less than 65db" noise level, and "dust compartment cyclone," don't you think? If you want to catch a glimpse of your latest rival, you should scoot on over to RoboWorld 2006 in Korea right about now and then start training to get down to your fighting weight by February 2007, which is when the Steamer will hit Korean households everywhere. We're not sure how much the humans will be willing to pay a Steamer of their very own (get your mind out of the gutter), but if you find out on your recon mission, do tell us.
Ever-2 Muse robot gets stage fright
Ok, listen up folks, we have some very sad news to announce from South Korea: the legendary Ever-2 Muse robot cancelled her appearance at the RoboWorld 2006 in Seoul. All we know is that this singing humanoid suffered some version of electronic stage fright and was unable to perform as planned, leaving legions of shocked and angered Korean fanboys to start chucking kim chee at the stage (ok, we made that last part up). We have no further details at this point, but if you were there or if your Korean skills are better than ours, then please do drop us a line. Until we find out exactly happened, we're going to recommend that the Ever-2 Muse probably get some pointers from that Japanese stagebot we spied a few days ago to avoid similar disasters in the future. [Via ZZOOzoo's Blog]
