The Navy’s Firefighting Robot

Meet The Navy’s Firefighting Robot -- Defense Tech

This is wild. We’ve been writing a ton about robots and drones lately because, well, it seems that the pace at which they’re becoming a fundamental part of warfare increases with each month.

Whenever we hear about Navy drones we tend to think of underwater robots or things like the Fire Scout chopper. The Navy Research Lab s working on a humanoid shipboard robot that would be sent in to fight fires on ships.

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Ocean-Crossing Robots Reach Hawaii

The Wave Glider from Below Liquid Robotics

Ocean-Crossing Robots Reach Hawaii, Setting a New Distance Record -- Popular Science

The four Wave Glider robots that set out from San Francisco in November on an unprecedented robotic crossing of the Pacific have arrived at the big island of Hawaii for a quick systems check-up. Their arrival marks the shattering of the world distance record for unmanned wave powered vehicles, as the PacX Wave Gliders, built by California-based Liquid Robotics, have now traveled 3,200 nautical miles (that’s more like 3,700 normal, in-your-car miles)--and that’s just a third of the total 9,000 nautical miles they will cover in their journeys.

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Meet Your New Robot Receptionist

Meet Your New Robot Receptionist, the DARPA ARM 'Bot -- Popular Science

Never worry about answering the phone or stapling documents again.

Bad news for long-term receptionists: DARPA's ARM (Autonomous Robotic Manipulation) robot can perform a whopping 18 different reception-ready tasks, from stapling to answering the phone to...turning on a lamp? Grasping things? Also it can't speak, or redirect calls, really, but it can drill a hole in a piece of wood, which I'm not entirely sure I can do, so it's an easy shoo-in for our incredibly prestigious Robot of the Week award. Congratulations! Watch the video after the jump.

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Robot Helicopters Perform James Bond Theme

Flying robot quadrotors perform the James Bond Theme by playing various instruments --
including the keyboard, drums and maracas, a cymbal, and the debut of an adapted guitar built from a couch frame.

Robot Helicopters Perform James Bond Theme Music -- Christian Science Monitor

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania's General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception Lab wowed attendees at this year's TED conference with a video of tiny robot quadroters performing the James Bond theme music.

Sometimes we just crave the simple things in life: smelling freshly baked bread, getting a baby to laugh, watching a cat fall asleep on your lap, or having someone scratch your back.

And other times, you just want to watch a bunch of robotic quadrotors performing the James Bond theme song.

If you are reading this story, now is apparently one of those times. If you haven't done so already, watch the video at the top of this page.

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Robot Fish

Real Fish Welcome Robotic Overlord Into Their School -- Wired Science

A robotic fish has sailed across an aquatic uncanny valley by tricking real fish into following it upstream.

The feat could lead to better understanding of fish behavior and perhaps some means to divert them from environmental disaster scenes.

“Although some previous works have successfully investigated the interactions between live animals and robots or animal-like replicas, none of these studies have considered robots that are designed to simulate animal locomotion,” wrote the authors of a new study about the robot.

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Hollywood's 'Avatar' Robot Created By Japanese Scientists

Telesar V transfers marbles from a cup to another cup for a demonstration at Tachi's laboratory in Yokohama Photo: AFP/Getty Images

Japanese Scientists Create Hollywood's 'Avatar' Robot -- The Telegraph

The sci-fi world of the Hollywood blockbuster Avatar has been brought one step closer to reality with the creation of a robot that mimics the movements of its human controller.

Japanese scientists have developed a robot that allows humans to direct its actions while also enabling them to see, hear and feel the same things as their android counterpart.

The TELESAR V robot can be seen as perhaps the first step towards a real-life echo of the Hollywood film Avatar, in which US soldiers were able to remotely control the genetically engineered bodies of an extra-terrestrial race they wished to subdue.

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A New Design For Robots

This photo illustration shows an agama lizard with the Tailbot robot. (Discovery Channel 4D Anatomy Model, 2008 Fame Master Ent. Ltd.). Thomas Libby, Evan Chang-Siu and Pauline Jennings. Courtesy of PolyPEDAL Lab & CiBER/UC Berkeley

Should We Design Robots To Be More Like Velociraptors? -- Christian Science Monitor

Adding a long tails to a robot to stabilize its body could lead to far more agile search-and-rescue machines, a new study reveals.

Meat-eating dinosaurs like Velociraptor may have been quite the acrobats, using their tails to land aerial maneuvers safely, say scientists studying today's leaping lizards.

Long-tailed robots built as part of this work could help inspire a new generation of maneuverable search-and-rescue droids, the researchers add.

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Tiny Robot To Attempt The Hawaii Ironman Triathlon

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Tiny Robot To Attempt Hawaii Ironman Triathlon -- MSNBC/Reuters

'Evolta', just 20 inches tall, is expected to complete course in about a week

TOKYO — After scaling the cliff walls of the Grand Canyon and driving the Le Mans racetrack for 24 hours, a tiny Japanese robot is set for a new challenge — Hawaii's grueling Ironman triathlon course.

Fitted with three different bodies, the hand-sized "Evolta" from electronics firm Panasonic will swim, bicycle and run its way through one of the world's toughest triathlon routes, the company said Thursday.

"This is very tough even for a sportsman, but I think it is worth a challenge," said Tomotaka Takahashi, who created the green-and-white toy-like robot.

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How 9/11 Inspired New Robots

The PackBot, first used in response to 9/11, helps explore an overheating nuclear plant in Japan this year.

How 9/11 Inspired A New Era Of Robotics -- CNN

When Robin Murphy saw the World Trade Center towers fall on September 11, she knew of an unexpected group that could help respond: robots.

Robots had never been tried in such real-world disasters, but they had gotten much smaller and more nimble in the years before that tragic event. So Murphy, a professor of computer science at Texas A&M University, and a small group of her fellow roboticists decided it was time. The robots were ready.

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Remote Control Toy Trucks Save Lives In Afghanistan

Afghanistan War: Hobbyists' Toy Truck Saves 6 Soldiers' Lives -- ABC News

Staff Sgt. Christopher Fessenden is on duty in Afghanistan now after tours with the Army in Iraq. He has traveled with standard-issue equipment -- weapons, helmet, uniform, boots and so forth -- plus a radio-controlled model truck his brother sent.

The truck is not a toy to him. He says it just saved six soldiers' lives.

"We cannot thank you enough," said Sgt. Fessenden in an email from the front that his brother Ernie, a software engineer in Rochester, Minn., shared with ABC News.

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More News On How Remote Vehicles Save Lives In Afghanistan

Remote-controlled toy truck saves the lives of six U.S. soldiers after it finds bomb in Afghanistan -- Daily Mail
Hobbyists' toy truck saves 6 soldiers' lives in Afghanistan -- Stars and Stripes
Remote-control truck gift saves soldiers’ lives -- Yahoo News/Lookout
Toy truck saves soldiers from bomb -- UPI
A Toy Truck Saved the Lives of Six Soldiers in Afghanistan -- Gizmodo
This Toy Remote Controlled Truck Saved The Lives Of 6 U.S. Soldiers -- Business Insider

The Robot That Learns Functions It Was Not Programmed To Do

Thinking For Itself: The Robot That Learns Functions It Was Not Programmed To Do -- Daily Mail

It is not quite Skynet, but robots that can learn have finally arrived.
Japanese researchers have developed a robot that can perform functions it was not programmed to do.

The machine uses past experience and its own knowledge to make a judgement about the best way to proceed.

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Picture 1 Million Robots

Foxconn Facility. Wikimedia Commons

Foxconn Plans To Replace Its Gadget-Building Unhappy Human Workforce With 1 Million Robots -- Popular Science

For some people, this story about robot workers taking human jobs may be good news.
Foxconn, the Taiwan-based factory firm that makes nearly half the world’s electronics, aims to replace 1 million of its workers with robots within in the next three years, the company announced over the weekend. The factory bots will reduce labor costs and improve efficiencies, the company’s founder, Terry Gou, told the Xinhua news agency. And they will be unable to take their own lives.

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American Soccer Robots Dominate World RoboCup 2011

CHARLI-L2 Contemplates the Ball RoMeLa

American Soccer Robots Dominate at the World RoboCup 2011 -- Popular Science

Soccer fans, rejoice: America has won the World Cup. Well, the robot World Cup.

In the finale of RoboCup 2011, two Virginia Tech robots took top honors in the adult-size and child-size categories. The full-size humanoid CHARLI-2, making its public debut at RoboCup, won the adult-size robot soccer match with a penalty kick, beating Robo Erectus of Singapore 1-0.

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Robot's Supersonic Air Jets Allow It To Climb Most Surfaces

Video: Robot's Supersonic Air Jets Allow It To Climb Just About Any Surface -- Popular Science

Many wall-walking robots mimic natural adhesives--like the sticky feet of geckos--to remain fixed to a surface while they scale it.

But this little bot uses nothing but a supersonic version of a well-known principle of fluid dynamics to cling to just about any surface--without the surface of its grippers ever actually touching it.

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Internet For Robots Lets Bots Share Instructions And Learn From One Another

Robot to RoboEarth to Robot RoboEarth

From Popular Science:

Well, we’ve seen this movie before (literally speaking). A group of robotics engineers at the University of Technology in Eindhoven are developing an Internet for robots; a kind of online database from which robots can download instructions and to which they can upload “experience.” According to its creators, their RoboEarth system will allow robots to share information and learn from each other, allowing the benefits of machine cognition and learning to proliferate through a network of bots. Cue the SkyNet comparisons.

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My Comment: Yup .... cue the Skynet comparisons.

Slithering Robots Learn To Stand On Their Own Four Feet

A new robot learns to slither, then crawl, before it can walk. Credit: Joshua Bongard

From Live Science:

Robots that evolved from crawling babies into upright adults could help pave the way for better bots.

Using a computer program, researchers at the University of Vermont simulated a population of naive "baby" robots. The robots had to complete various tasks in their virtual environment, such as finding objects and walking toward them. Those robots that performed poorly got deleted, while the best-performing ones remained "alive."

The robots that changed their body forms (like tadpoles growing into frogs) learned to walk more rapidly and developed the most stable gait, the researchers found.

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Japan's Murata Girl Bot Unicycles On A Curved Balance Beam (Video)

From Popular Science:

Following in the footsteps of many robots we’ve seen who perform awesome but random feats, Japanese electronics company Murata has revealed an update of their Little Seiko humanoid robot for 2010. Murata Girl, as she is known, is 50 centimeters tall, weighs six kilograms and can unicycle backwards and forwards. Whereas in her previous iteration, she could only ride across a straight balance beam, she is now capable of navigating an S-curve as thin as 2.5 centimeters (only one centimeter wider than the tire of her unicycle)

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We, Robot: What Real-Life Machines Can And Can’t Do

Photo: A lot of us teach ourselves how to reason, how to think, how to analyze new information....This has been very difficult for robots to be able to do.

From Science News:

As director of the Maryland Robotics Center, Satyandra Gupta oversees 25 faculty members working on all things robotic: snake-inspired robots, robotic swarms, minirobots for medicine and robots for exploring extreme environments on land, under the sea and in outer space. In September the Center hosted its first Robotics Day; afterward, Gupta talked robots with Science News writer Rachel Ehrenberg.

How do robots influence our lives today?

There are certain scenarios, such as manufacturing — making cars, making airplanes — where people are replacing human labor with robotic devices and the rationale is usually that it is less expensive, quality is consistent, that kind of thing. Then there are certain applications where very few humans can do the task because the skills required are so high…. Surgery would be an example. Let’s imagine that there’s a very hard-to-perform surgery that very few humans can do. Now if a robot can be trained or even teleoperated by these surgeons, then you would be able to get that performance from that robot.

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Darpa Is Looking At Young Minds For New Ideas

FIRST Robotics Competition Taking a cue from the FIRST Robotics Competition, DARPA is offering prize-based challenges to inspire high school students to design new robots. FIRST

Seeking New Defense Robots, Darpa Gives Fabrication Technology To High Schoolers -- Popular Science

Taking a page from advertising strategy, DARPA is hoping to get ‘em while they’re young. The military’s mad-science wing wants various organizations to put manufacturing equipment in 1,000 high schools around the world, part of a new program called “MENTOR” — Manufacturing Experimentation and Outreach. The partnership will include new prize-based challenges to inspire a new generation of defense manufacturers.

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Better Surgery With New Surgical Robot With Force Feedback

Surgical robot Sofie. (Credit: Bart van Overbeeke)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 28, 2010) — Robotic surgery makes it possible to perform highly complicated and precise operations. Surgical robots have limitations, too. For one, the surgeon does not 'feel' the force of his incision or of his pull on the suture, and robots are also big and clumsy to use. Therefore TU/e researcher Linda van den Bedem developed a much more compact surgical robot, which uses 'force feedback' to allow the surgeon to feel what he or she is doing.

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