Connect Your Stuff to the Internet Easily

Want to hook up things to the Web? Maybe you want to get a tweet when your laundry's done, or get an email when the basement floods while you're on vacation. Even if you're good with electronics and programming, these are involved projects. Instead of worrying about wiring or networking code, you can focus on your idea.

A new Kickstarter project (about to close for funding heavily oversubscribed) has a great little device that makes it simple to hook up monitors and receive tweets whenever one of the attached probes send a signal. Moisture, vibration, doors or windows opening and heat can all be detected. The rules are simple to enter, and the price at $99 seems pretty reasonable.

Taking Robotics to the Front of House

Japanese Firms Start Testing Robot-infrastructure Communication -- Tech-On!

Shimizu Corp and Yasukawa Electric Corp opened the "Smart Showroom" demonstration space as the first step of the "Smart Robotics Building" project, which involves the use of robot technologies in intelligent buildings.

The project is aimed at providing various services and comfortable living environment through combination of building infrastructure technologies and robot technologies. Robots will play the roles of receptionist, guide, delivery personnel, cleaners, guards, etc in place of humans. For example, they will approach visitors, attend to and take them to their destinations in the building.

Time to buy an Exoskeleton

At last, Robot fans can have their own exoskeleton. Now I can move those rocks in the garden. Great for heavy loads in places where access is difficult. I'll leave moving the piano to the experts though.

New Scientist Technology Blog: Exoskeletons for sale, finally!

Exoskeletons for sale, finally!
A few weeks ago, we suggested that Iron Man, the latest Marvel character to make it to the big screen, is as much science as science fiction.

As if to prove the point, Berkeley Bionics this week began accepting orders for its prototype exoskeleton the Human Universal Load Carrier - the HULC. There's no word of the cost on their website, but it still must be encouraging news for Iron Man wannabes.

Using Wii controller on Roomba

great video on controlling a Roomba with Wii controller. First step is Bluetooth, to transmit accelerometer input.



The code used to do this has been posted here. What a great project, and the first of a flood of Wii controller uses. I hadn't realised Nintendo used a standard bluetooth signal. This will be big!.

Home Automation part of new Surge

Home Automation Battle is Brewing - News and Analysis by PC Magazine

At CES 2007 this week, wireless home networking products abounded. There's just one problem: There are two competing network standards.

The first to market is the Z-Wave standard, created and promulgated by Zensys, which makes the chips and wireless radios that enable Z-Wave-based communications. More than 150 companies have joined the Z-Wave Alliance, an industry group that promotes the standard.

Competing with Z-Wave is ZigBee, a standard created by the ZigBee Alliance, an industry group with more than 150 member companies. ZigBee is based on the IEEE 802.15.4 standard, but products are only starting to hit the market now.

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Meccano Robot

Spyke the erector set robot is coming. Insufficient details but looks good on surface.

http://www.spykeworld.com/

PCMag saw him at CES and said: "Spyke the WiFi Spy Robot from Erector features video surveillance, a microphone, loudspeaker, 2 motors, digital music player, and a docking station for charging. He can move, take pictures, and hear everything around him and can also be used as a VoIP phone--compatible with MSN, Skype and Google Talk. To control Spyke, use your home computer or any other computer through a WiFi connection to control him anywhere anytime. Look for this robotic espionage for around $250 at the end of summer."

Meccano Robot

Spyke the erector set robot is coming. Insufficient details but looks good on surface.

http://www.spykeworld.com/

PCMag saw him at CES and said: "Spyke the WiFi Spy Robot from Erector features video surveillance, a microphone, loudspeaker, 2 motors, digital music player, and a docking station for charging. He can move, take pictures, and hear everything around him and can also be used as a VoIP phone--compatible with MSN, Skype and Google Talk. To control Spyke, use your home computer or any other computer through a WiFi connection to control him anywhere anytime. Look for this robotic espionage for around $250 at the end of summer."

iRobot release new development kit

iRobot to Release New Development Software

Robot maker iRobot will release a new open development environment at the company's annual Payload Developers Conference in Arlington, Va., Dec. 5-6.

The new development environment consists of iRobot Aware 2.0 and a new Robot Developer's Kit. Both are aimed at developers who want to create add-on capabilities for the company's versatile PackBot robot. The PackBot is designed to accept a wide variety of sensors, control units and manipulators so that it can handle an equally wide variety of missions. Most PackBots are in use by the U.S. military, but some are entering commercial and municipal service.

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News from PC Magazine: Hands On with a Ugobe Pleo Prototype Robot

News from PC Magazine: Hands On with a Ugobe Pleo Prototype Robot: "The eagerly anticipated Pleo robotic dinosaur from Ugobe is getting closer to reality. Company President Bob Christopher took the wraps off one of the first functioning prototypes during a recent meeting in PC Magazine's offices. During the meeting, Pleo walked, made sounds, pretended to be scared, faked a limp, responded to its name, and batted its baby blue eyes."

iRobot gets dirty

News from PC Magazine: iRobot's Dirt Dog Does the Work (Room)

First living rooms (Roomba), then kitchens (Scooba) and now garages; it seems iRobot is destined to attempt to conquer every room in and around the house. The consumer robotics company (which also has a healthy military robotics business), is rolling out a new garage/workroom sweeper elegantly called the "Dirt Dog."
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Roughly the same size, shape, and weight as iRobot's popular Roomba robotic vacuum, Dirt Dog sheds not hair, but numerous Roomba features that would not work so well in the workroom environment. This single-button workhorse has no vacuum and instead uses two powerful brushes, spinning at a reported 1,000 rpms, to pick up dirt that includes traditional workshop debris like nuts, bots, screws and woodchips. It also has a 20% larger dust bin to hold all that junk. iRobot officials said that it should have about an hour of cleaning life per charge.

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Robots and Microsoft - will $ make success?

Microsoft knows where the action is - they don't always seem the best of playmates though.

Microsoft Robotics Studio Provides Common Ground for Robotics Innovation: Community technology preview of Windows-based robotics development platform garners broad industry support.

Microsoft’s support for advanced robotics was also in evidence at RoboBusiness when Carnegie Mellon University announced plans for a Center for Robotics Innovation. Established with funding and support from the Microsoft Robotics Group, the center will operate a Web site, http://www.cir.ri.cmu.edu, for hobbyists, academics and commercial companies to share robotics ideas, technology and software. The new center will open by late 2006.

Microsoft wants to drive Robot standard

Rivals Skeptical of Microsoft's New Robot Software

The third annual Robo Business event opened Tuesday morning in Pittsburgh's Station Square with a whiff of controversy, as one established robotics expert dismissed Microsoft's recent foray into the field. 
Just hours after Microsoft announced the beta rollout of its DirectX, Aegia-based Microsoft Robotics Studio (MRS), Evolution Robotics president and chief technical officer Paolo Pirjanian called the concept of building a software robotics standard, without heeding demands and costs of hardware, "a nice academic exercise." Although Pirjanian did not mention Microsoft by name, the implication was clear to the 750 or so attendees.

Asimov Who?

Despite the boring nature of the extract below, this is quite an interesting review of robot safety issues - industrial safety and social safety.

Trust me, I'm a robot | Economist.com

With robots now poised to emerge from their industrial cages and to move into homes and workplaces, roboticists are concerned about the safety implications beyond the factory floor. To address these concerns, leading robot experts have come together to try to find ways to prevent robots from harming people. Inspired by the Pugwash Conferences—an international group of scientists, academics and activists founded in 1957 to campaign for the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons—the new group of robo-ethicists met earlier this year in Genoa, Italy, and announced their initial findings in March at the European Robotics Symposium in Palermo, Sicily.

Concept of the robot turns 85 - happy birthday robots

The robot turns 85 - 29-05-2006 - Radio Prague

From R2D2 to the Terminator, robots are a common theme in modern fiction, but not many people realize that the robot was born in Prague exactly 85 years ago. To celebrate its birthday a project last week at the University of Cambridge in England examined the life of robots and their Czech creator.

Technorati Tags: robots

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History of ASIMO

Honda Worldwide | ASIMO | History

Testimonial site to the Honda ASIMO robot.

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Technorati Tags: robots, ASIMO, history

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New teaching and experimental robot

Research group develops mini humanoid robot than can sit up, stand on one leg - MSN-Mainichi Daily News

A miniature humanoid robot that can stand up from a lying-down position and smoothly stand on one leg has been developed by an independent administrative organization in Japan and four venture companies.

The "HRP-2m Choromet," as the robot is called, is 35 centimeters tall and weighs 1.5 kilograms. It was developed jointly by the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) and four venture firms. The robots will go on sale for the purpose of robotic engineering education and research as early as this autumn.

"They are perfect as teaching material to study humanoid robot control methods, and I want them to be used in places such as university laboratories," said Hirohisa Hirukawa, scientific leader of the Humanoid Research Group in AIST's Intelligent Systems Research Institute.

Technorati Tags: robots, teaching, experimental

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Developments in Android Face Technology

The continuing development in face technology is exciting. This Einstein model uses a lighter material and its claimed that this can be driven by two AA batteries'.

Clip from youtube.

NEC's Companion Robot Gets A Virtual Interface

PCMag provides this link. So why this upgrade for 2001 technology? Perhaps it's the need for a standard robot platform for researchers - a gap left by the Sony AIBO...

PaPeRo R100, a one-foot-tall personal companion robot developed by NEC's Personal Robot Research Center, looks pretty much the same as he did when he made his debut at the RoboFesta Kanagawa in 2001.

The pint-sized, 5 kilogram robot recognizes and can speak hundreds of words, can remember faces (up to 10 people), responds to hand gestures and can move about and even dance on its two roller feet. PaPeRo comes with different personalities and capabilities. There's a comedian PaPeRo, a lazy PaPeRo and even a silver, child-care model.

Now there's a virtual PaPeRo, as well.

Users can now interact with the PaPeRo avatar—dubbed "PaPeRo CG"—on their PC and PDA. The computer-generated PaPeRo will interact in the exact same way as the real world version. In fact, anything a user does with the avatar robot on the PC can then be downloaded to the real robot. Then, if the user extends its "conversation" with the real PaPeRo, the conversation can be uploaded to the virtual version, as well.

Experimenting with Robotic Mules

Fascinating set of responses on Youtube for this video of a robotic mule going through testing on different surfaces. Some viewers are finding this very frightening. The ability to recover from a sideways push is something new.

What do Toy Robots Mean?

The comments on Youtube where we found this video of a real transforming robot reflect the wider reaction. Some just cannot see the point, others just want a new toy. However, it is this continuing interest that drives societies to build the skill set necessary for dominance in the real marketplace 10 or 20 years from now. Where are we in the race, and what incentives, competitions etc. are we really funding? This is more than a matter of toys - this is about developing capability for the next generation of robotics.