Photo of Tailbot and Velociraptors courtesy Livescience.com

Also, lizards are awesome:

The investigators found the lizards swung their tails to correct for errors made at launch. For instance, slippery surfaces made their feet skid, but the reptiles corrected for such anomalies with appropriate tail movements in mid-air.

To help confirm their findings, the scientists produced a lizard-size wheeled robot named “Tailbot” that had an aluminum tail and could leap like a ski jumper from a ramp. During each jump, the robot’s front wheels, which left the ramp first, started falling while the rear ones were still on the ramp, causing the machine to tilt downward. To avoid a nosedive into the landing pad, Tailbot corrected the angle of its body before landing by using tail movements controlled by feedback from an onboard gyroscope.

Here’s more on Tailbot and other work from Bob Full’s PolyPedal biomimetic robot lab at UC Berkeley.

Bio-inspired robots are always inspiring, especially when we can put into quantitative data why an animal is designed that way.

[Via KQEDScience from The Christian Science Monitor]

The mighty works of Zenta, the Norwegian hexapod mastermind covered previously in these humble pages, have been discovered by none other than one of the the shining bastions of all things awesome, Popular Science. You all can now say you knew Zenta when.

It’s nice to see that the morphing robot has come such a long way since July.

We have a spiffy little interview with Zenta, The Man Himself, which you may peruse if you care to do so.

Everybody congratulate Bentern on scooping Pop Sci, then tell him to GET BACK TO WORK.

The Dutch artist Erik Hobijn created something years ago that is so elegant and thought provoking, so shockingly glorious and well-executed, that it still causes a stir when its exhibited:

Delusions of Self-Immolation coats the skin of the willing volunteer in flame-resistant gel, then sets them on fire. Sets. Them. On. Fire.

This is the secret wet dream of the misanthropic deeply morbid machine-art loving soul of this author. It is goddamn beautiful.

From an interview with the artist:

There are three states on the machine which I call “rare”, “medium”, and “well done”. “Rare” means you survive without any wounds. “Medium” is more for, say, the SM session or for people who like pain to understand parts of life, or to have this experience of pain. The third possibility is death. It is possible to die in this machine; I just have to change the liquid, and I have to change the timing.

There is nothing that will make you feel more alive than art that can kill you.

[via the always superlative We Make Money Not Art and the lovely @evacide]

One of the many events at RoboGames that are sometimes overshadowed by the mighty combat robots is the Micromouse event, featuring autonomous robots navigating a maze, attempting to do so in the shortest time.

The winner of the 1/2 Size Micromouse event at this year’s All Japan Micromouse Competition, Ng Beng Kiat, has constructed a robot that completed the maze in an impressive 3.921 seconds!

The current champion is one Ng Bent Kiat, who works at the Ngee Ann Polytechnic focusing on embedded systems and robotics. His skill and knowledge in the field of robotics shows in his winning mouse robot called the Min7.

Min7 is the first 4-wheeled robot Ng has created. It weighs just 90 grams and measures 10 x 7.5 x 2.5cm. It has a straight line speed of 3.5m/s and uses a 20MHz Hitachi 2633R processor for a brain.

The way the Micromouse Robot Competition works is a two-stage process. The robots first enter the maze and have a chance to map it out. They then get a second timed run where the object is to solve the maze as quickly as possible.

Thanks to Matthew Humphries over at Geek.com for the interesting article!

You have our gratitude.

One step closer to the robots taking over!

Wired’s Eric Smalley has an awesomely titled article about a Massachusetts based startup, Harvest Automation, is testing a small farming robot to work in nurseries in the horticulture industry.

The Harvest Automation robots are knee-high, wheeled machines. Each robot has a gripper for grasping pots, a deck for carrying pots, and an array of sensors to keep track of where it is and what’s around it. Teams of robots zip around nursery fields, single-mindedly spacing and grouping plants. Think Wall-E without the doe eyes and cuddly personality, or the little forest-tending ‘bots in the 1972 sci-fi classic Silent Running.

Thank you Wired!

A projectile promotion device for canine amusement purposes.

Via The MSNBC Future of Tech site

So, after we did our little robot shindig on television a while back, we caught the attention of all kinds of people – rabid robot loving kids, Concerned Mothers, our insurance company (“Ma’am, this is *not* a competitive table setting competition.”) – and among the hordes emerged this article.

This is a written, blow by blow accounting and evisceration of the Killer Robots show. It’s brutal. It’s bitchy. It’s sarcastic and it probably could have used one or two things like “fact checking” and “research” and “getting off the couch once in a while”.

This of course means that it’s one of the funniest things we have ever read, hands down, whether it’s about us or not.

Perhaps the biggest letdown of this whole event is the fact that the difference between this arena and a Wal-Mart parking lot is the placement of the lines painted on the floor (and the lack of dirty diapers in the arena). What happened to the Pulverizers? What happened to the Spike Strip? Hell, there’s not even the famed Kill Saws! And really “Kill Saw” probably has a trademark on it but I mean the RoboGames people couldn’t come up with a second-best knock-off like “Discs of Inconvenience” or something?

We’re actually going ‘Disc Of Inconvenience” shopping right now.

I will say that my shiftless largely humor-free reprobate misanthrope of a partner, Mister Robotics, spent last night laughing out loud for well over an hour. This has not happened in about two years.

From the start of the show, after the weird opening montage of people screaming at robots and cowering in fear and shock, Grant Imahara introduces us all to the sport in an incredibly brief run-down that demonstrates that virtually nothing has changed in the sport since the days of BattleBots. Well, except for the addition of flamethrowers. And Grant’s teeth. Okay, maybe that was rude of me but seriously if you Google “grant imahara” one of the suggested searches is “grant imahara’s teeth”. Don’t blame me for being a racist douchebag, blame Google.

So Go here and Read This, laugh your ass off, and then tell him to call us. Seriously.

*An Addendum: I’ll have you know we do *not* play bingo in the arena, sir. It’s Keno the old folks are into. Sheesh.

Sometimes you are in the mood for something moody, something fantastically stylish and ALSO something confusing and intriguing.

Behold: mannequins, automata, style for days and also …

people behaving … as … such???

(click through to the ‘tube for embiggening)
and thank you, the ever amazing Coilhouse!

It won’t help you save money on car insurance, or speak with a nifty accent, but it will scale walls!

Researchers at the Mechanisms ‘N Robotics for Viable Applications have developed a robot with tank treads that mimic a gecko’s ability to climb on almost any surface.

Why mimic a gecko, you might ask:

For a climbing robot to be practical, it needs to adhere to surfaces without leaving a gooey trail. That’s why scientists are interested in dry adhesive methods, as opposed to wet adhesion, which may leave behind tacky or glue-like substances. The robot also needs to be able to traverse a wide range of surfaces. Some robots use suction, but that requires a lot of power pumping air. Other robots use claws, but those need something to grab onto. Some robots use magnets, but those only work with metal.

The robot’s treads mimic the surface of a gecko’s foot and allow it to use Van der Waals forces to hold itself up!

Also, ComBots Cup VI was awesome.

Thank you to all the teams that came by, and congrats to Original Sin for taking the Combots Cup three years in a row!

So! We decided to pool all our nickels and throw together a little robot shindig next weekend. We’re bringing in all our good friends and dedicated crew folks, and we will make a concerted effort to

[metal voice]
MAKE SURE THE FINEST ROBOT COMBAT ENGINEERING MARVELS IN THE COUNTRY SHRED EACH OTHER INSIDE THE ARENA FOR TWO. SOLID. DAYS.
[/metalvoice]

You knew it was coming, we’re gluttons for punishment, it’s

The Sixth Annual ComBots Cup
October 29-30th 2011
At the lovely San Mateo County Expo Center
in Beautiful San Mateo, California
2pm-7pm
Adults: $25 at the door or $20 in advance.
Children 7-17: $20 at the door or $15 in advance.
Children 0-6: free. (Warning: it’s very loud.)
BUY TICKETS HERE!

Dozens of robots makers from all over the globe have cast common sense to the wind and scattered the contents of their bank accounts in sacrifice to The Robot Gods in order to bring you one amazing weekend of total mechanical ridiculousness in the form of ear-searing, heart-stopping, insurance-adjuster-apoplexy-causing Robot Combat!

See the champions from Brazil, Team RioBotz, make their maiden Combots Cup voyage against the likes of Last Rights, Sewer Snake, Original Sin, Vlad the Impaler II and The Ragin’ Scotsman!

Here’s a complete list of all the heavyweight contenders, their stats, their photos, and bios! Get your learn on, kids, there’s going to be a quiz later!

Smell the all-too familiar and strikingly addictive Robot Combat Smell – a touch of burnt metal, the fizz of exploded battery packs, and the wrenching feotor of broken dreams!

Get your tickets in advance, the stands are always crowded!

Super special guest: Jason Dante Bardis, putting his scary R/C moves on Vlad The Impaler II! You saw him on TV, you marveled at his skill with Dr. Inferno Junior, now see him go All. The. Way with 220lbs of shrieking steel, built by a madman and hewn from the very depths of Robot Hell itself!

Seriously. Robot Hell. We’ve seen it.

So! Come on down, grab a beer, and settle in to watch five hours of hot robot on robot action EACH DAY, Saturday and Sunday October 29-30th. It will be Epic.

Stanford University, that cute little green-belted school down Palo Alto way, has decided to make an AI class accessible to the mere mortal for free, online (link is nice article about the class from SF Gate, including a neat interview with Peter Norvig).

Here’s a picture of what kick-ass AI looks like

This in an of itself is swell, but what makes this full-blown bull goose awesome in our minds that people are actually lining up in rabid frothing online numbers to take it.

The class is going on now, so if you are keen you can soak up what they’ve already covered, and revel in the pure intellectual bliss of learning something just because it’s magnificent. You can pretend you are a gentleperson-scholar back in the day, when it was possible for a dedicated person of relative leisure to learn everything there was to know that was worth knowing.

Personally, I’m glad we found more stuff to noodle with.

Take Stanford’s Online AI Course, “Introduction to AI”

“Now I can literally taste the flavor of my words!”

Well said, Morskoiboy.

The contraption he’s built allows anyone to create crazy cocktails depending on what you type:

The man, the mystery, the legend explains:

So, if you’re interested, let me explain this contraption and the mechanism that makes it work. At the top of the machine there is a slot into which a bottle with alcohol, water, or even milk can be screwed. The essence of the art here lies in the ability of the syrups or liqueurs to tint the neutral color of the liquid.

…

Pressing the buttons on the keyboard injects the corresponding ingredients into the display, which tints different segments of the display and thus produces letters. You can try to imagine that each letter can have a taste (L-Lime, A-Apple), a color (R-Red, G-Green), or a name (K-Kahlua, J-Jagermeister).

Props to http://www.morskoiboy.com/

From Neatorama, of course:

It’s really hard to say anything snarky about that, it’s just beautiful,and still works. Boggles the mind, really.

The Dutch artist Marco Kruyt is making beautiful things that move on their own, something we here always like to see here wherever possible.

Marco’s work is an exploration of the machine versus the living creature. A long time model maker, he delved into mechanical and kinetic arts, using his works in 2d and performance art settings.

From Baileybots, Marco’s website

Today, his work stands for a distinctive connection with our surrounding nature and all it’s organisms. Baileybots organisms are a link of numerical produced parts and handicraft. This process of linking is a key factor in his artistic practice.

The want to create life out of dead matter reminisces of the alchemists and inventors of past times. It’s this quality combined with current production techniques which makes it exciting and innovative.

It reflects the view of the maker, his attitude towards the global ecological situation, and life. The use of scrap metal is a telling example. The are clear undercurrents in his work, commenting on the current relation between man and animal.

If we get lucky, we’ll see some of Marco’s art at RoboGames 2012!

No longer will teams have to stare at a giant analog clock above the referee, we’ve gone digital!

The Sixth Annual Combots Cup is approaching, and with it some new time keeping widgets for the spectators as well as the drivers.

Here’s a peak at what I’ve been working on:

Those are three 7-Segment Display Big Digit Driver kits from Evil Mad Science!

The plan is to remove the decimal points and use them as the colon in the digital clock, e.g. “3:00″.

My experience with the big 7-segment displays has been overwhelmingly positive. They were easy to assemble, all the soldering instructions were clear, and they were easily daisy-chained together. Also, they’re built to plug right into an Arduino (the grey ribbon cable in the picture above)! It’s still to be seen if they are bright enough to be seen inside the combat arena, especially given all the bright lights that are already inside.

Ideally, the giant displays will be put inside the arena for the crowd to be able to see how much time is left in each fight. How we’ll prevent them from getting trashed by some robot is yet to be determined. At the moment they are protected by wishful thinking, hopes, dreams, and rainbows. Unfortunately robots like Last Rites scoff at such things.

I’m also trying to build clocks for each team, so that the robot driver can do a quick glance and see how much time is remaining. I’m attempting to get these 2.3″ 7-segment displays to work, but they are being stubborn and refuse to light up. My problem is probably just a limitation in how much current can be drawn from the microcontroller board.

Speaking of which, the good folks at Farnell let us try out Digilent’s ChipKIT Uno32. Their  website has a ton of excellent electronic products available in the US and beyond.

The above picture is a test to see if my shift register was working as intended, which will be daisy-chained to two more shift registers (and their associated 7-segment displays).

You may notice that the ChipKIT Uno32 (seen in red above) looks strikingly similar to your standard Arduino, well that’s with good reason as it’s built with Arduino compatibility in mind! The Uno32 is powered by a 32-bit MIPS processor, has a large number of I/O ports, 5 external interrupts (versus 2 on an Arduino), is compatible with Arduino shields, and can be programmed using an environment based off the Arduino IDE. My only complaint about the board is that it’s advertised as being fully compatible with Arduino code, and I found that to be only mostly true. When attempting to get the push-buttons to work, I was using the AttachInterrupt() function when using an Arduino, however the AttachInterrupt()  function was not yet supported by their IDE. On the plus side, that was my only gripe with the board, and their team is continually updating their IDE to be fully Arduino compatible.

Additionally (not shown in the pictures), there will be some relays tossed in there so when the timer hits zero, something glorious will happen.

Airhorns, glitter, leprechauns and unicorns. However, due to budget constraints, airhorns are the most likely out of the bunch.

Thanks again to Evil Mad Science, as well as Farnell and their US team!