Nothing gets our motor running like a delicious delicious video of Hot CNC Action!

This from the illustrious Violet Blue, our woman down at SRL:

(Picture links to blip.tv video!)

Right before the San Jose show last August, we had planned on making a solid steel Mr. Satan head — a 3D scan of an old SRL machine prop from the 1980s, coordinates put into a CNC, and recreated in heavy, gorgeous silver metal.

It is turning out beautifully.

Have gorgeous and safe Halloweeen, the One High Holy Day in the Suicidebots Calendar.

SB, Mr. Robotics and friends will be out marauding, frightening small children, and blowing stuff up on our back porch. Except this time we’ll have an excuse.

We here at SB like to champion robots for their uses as tools of innovation; helping people like widowers and orphaned kittens lead fuller and more productive lives.

These uses of robots are fun and educational, and provide for the shiny, optimistic Star Trek future that everyone someday hopes will come to pass.

However, in honor of Halloween, we’d like to direct your attention to robots whose powers are used for evil (and not even in a funny way):

Submitted for your approval:
The SWORDS (Special Weapons Observation Reconnaissance Detection System) is a scary-ass modular insert for a TALON robot chassis that can carry anything from an M16 to a grenade launcher. It climbs stairs, has (ahem) killer battery life, can maneuver quickly through snow and surf, and allegedly was once retrieved from the bottom of a river by simply driving the thing out from under water. That’s tough building.

Hey Kids! All we need is some really great AI and all our problems will be solved (*cough*skynet*cough*)!

Luckily, AI hasn’t gotten to that point where it can be deployed sentiently or in such a compact package, but when it does, we are pretty sure Karel Capek will have had it right all along.

There have been four TALON/SWORDS units in the field since 2005, and order for 18 total as far as we can tell. The TALON/SWORDS unit joins iRobot’s Packbot, a robot that is well suited for rough terrain and reconnaissance and disarming IEDS, but so far has no real plans for mounting weaponry. Wikipedia has a nice and exhaustive entry on military robots here.

Is this a good use of robotics? Perhaps it’s inevitable. Countless arguments can be made that it saves more of our guys in the field. On the other hand it can also dehumanize the horror of war and make the battle seem like nothing more than a really rockin’ game of Quake II.

Much is made of the ease with which on of these things can be piloted by a member of the video-game generation.

Ah well, we realize we are opening ourselves up to a whole can of shrapnel, but tell us what you think.

In the meantime it’s good to know that the same people who are building the future robot army also make sure we have plenty of chewy delicious fruit-flavored treats. This thought just invites horrible visions of a possible dilemma:

[SCENE: Happy Trick or Treating Kids go up to a door, Ding-Dong!
Door is answered by a chewy-fruit-candy-basket laden TALON/SWORDS unit]

Kids: Trick Or Treat!

TALON: //DESTROY//

Kids: AIIIIEEEE!!!!!!!!

[Robot goes on bloodthirsty, flesh-singing rampage, kids scatter, REMFs in command daintily nibble on candy and congratulate themselves on a job well done, etc etc]

Some hoo-ra about the TALON/SWORDS unit here.

And to restore a little bit of your faith in humanity, a few videos from The Discovery Channel about robots used in various difficult fields, and the success thereof.

[Thanks Alexander Rose for the original tip. . . ]

—

IN OTHER NEWS:
While we are still kind of on the subject of scary situations, please note that in our Lovely Sidebar we have a brand-spanking new Suicidebots YahooIM ID.

Poke us with your gripper arms, or rack-mounted amphibious sharks-with-lasers-on-their-heads, or whatever, and give us tips!

Sorry for the dearth in posts, campers!

We here at the SB hideout were waylaid by vapor lock and paroxysms of metal fatigue (my advice: avoid the clam chowder).

We have just bunches of spiffy things about which to post in the coming days, but here’s a creepy little tidbit to drool on while you wait:

Nemo Gould is a San Francisco-based sculptor who makes the sexiest robotic kinetic art I have seen this week. Ooh. Ooh I say. Enjoy his portfolio, and buy his art.

Futaba is coming out with a new android walker that really has that whole “walking” thing down:

From Robot Magazine:

Futaba reps noted it carries 11 high-torque servos and 9 lightweight servos, and it can be operated in at least two modes. One accesses canned programs and one enables motion editing using a PC. Demonstrations were performed using a game controller that communicated wirelessly.

Sweet! We here at Suicidebots did unspeakable things to a set of Hi-Tec Robonovas involving a couple of Xbees and some Playstation controllers. We’re thrilled to hear about this elegant solution, mostly becaise it means no more late nights in the office with Mr. Robotics, swearing gently and consuming mass quantities of Redbull.

It’s not available for consumption yet, but it’s promised that it’ll roll out in the next few months. This gorgeous object will allegedly retail for $1,200, which is the best price since Hi-Tec’s Robonova-1.

[Thanks Robot Magazine, and Lem!]

In Suicidebots’ eternal quest to become the Cute Overload of robotics, we submit for your approval Tina The Tortoise:

Tina has a wee small wheel attached to her back bits to enable her to run about and play as turtles do. We hear she’s really aiming to have the shell-mounted, laser-guided Death Ray installed by the end of the year.

Way to go, Tina.

[Thank you Boing Boing and Rantburg and Neatorama and the UK Sun!]

That’s a lot of aibos.

The Onion has a great article on problems with the Mars Rover that NASA doesn’t want you to know.

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientists overseeing the ongoing Mars Exploration Rover Mission said Monday that the Spirit’s latest transmissions could indicate a growing resentment of the Red Planet.

“The orbiting Mars Odyssey has cut off transmissions from Spirit, which seems to envy the craft’s ability to fly freely around in space,” Banerdt said. “Similarly, data suggests Spirit is convinced that [sister rover] Opportunity has found water and isn’t telling anyone.”

“Hopefully these malfunctions will straighten themselves out,” Callas said. “In the meantime, we’ll simply have to try to glean what usable data we can from ‘OVERPRICED SPACE-ROOMBA AWAITING MORE BULLSHIT ORDERS.’”

Everyone speaks the International Language Of Robots!

From those wacky kids at Shifz, a link to a Livejournal community about robots, robots, and also, robots. In Cyrillic Script, so get your cute Slavic Studies grad to translate in exchange for cupcakes.

when you’re down and troubled
and you need some loving care…

The Art Of Motion Control is a spiffy site that features excellent uses of various motion control techniques for art and industry. Tons of people have done variations on this theme but Bruce Shapiro shows us the basics.

Some of his art machines make Suicidebots quiver:

[Thank you Steve Judd!]

One of the most famous robots was the Chess playing “Turk”, built by wunderkind Wolfgang von Kempelen of what is now Slovakia.

It wasn’t actually a robot, but a very elaborate prank (we hate pranks here at Suicide Bots, yes we do. Hate ‘em. That’s us…). Both front panels rolled aside to expose the elaborate gears, pulleys, and mechatronics that operated the Turk - who defeated Napoleon (yes, that one), Ben Franklin, and most of the Chess Masters of both sides of the Atlantic.

But in the end, it was just a guy behind the mirrors who operated the mechatronic Turk. True, he was a chess master, and the Turk was a mechanical marvel (the seated “Turk” was not a guy in a costume, it was a very good animatronic android who would pick up the chess pieces and move them around the board (in response to the operations of the hidden operator/chess player.))

It took several years before the hoax was exposed. The primary player was William Schlumberger. Some insist the player was a legless war veteran, but that’s not true. William Schlumberger had his legs. He just wasn’t a very good boat companion.

So there’s today’s history lesson.

Rook takes Queen. Checkmate. You have to do the dishes for the next month.

I love robots. Obviously. But ya know, there’s just not much better in life than flame throwers. I had a few at my wedding. I’ve tinkered with them. My wife builds them. They’re just cool.

I made four for demo purposes. Took a bunch of money, lots of failures, and big spendy parts (like industrial electric sparkers that cost more than your bar tab.)

But Mark Puustinen kicks my ass. He built a flamethrower. But he made his out of Lego Mindstorms.

I’m not talking about the shell, or the activator switch, I’m talking the whole effin’ flamethrower (for those who have a Mindstorms kit, you may not know that there’s a pneumatic add on set you can buy in Europe.)

Flame size is about 1.5 meters at best. The fire consumed so much oxygen that window seals begun to make a wining noise because air was coming in to the apartment from all holes at rapid speed. That was really weird! The noise is also unbelievable. You can get a faint idea from the video but to hear it in person is quite impressive and makes you kind of respect the force of fire.

[Via TechBlog]

Ella’s DeliBot

First the Robot Chef, now Robot Waiters!

This article hits on a few very key elements in the progression of how robots are perceived and used today. Mark Tilden’s comments especially strum the heartstrings over here at Suicidebots:

“The problem is that there is a gulf between the technology and people’s expectations,” Tilden said from his office at Hong Kong-based Wow Wee Toys.

So, So true. But ever forward, my friends, ever forward.

Ironically, the picture in the article is not of Wowee’s very wonderful machine the RoboSapien but rather is a photo of Hi-Tech’s very fine product, the Robonova-1. These little creatures are awesome.

Populate your Robot Army Here.

GraffitiWriter likes to kick it on the corner with his homies, yo. GraffitiWriter lays down tight beatz by day then sparks up a fatty boombatty blunt with his clique and does it good in the neighborhood, y’all. GraffitiWriter does not let the The Man keep him down.

That is what we think, anyway. Seeing as we are all law abiding citizens here at Suicidebots who would never dream of doing something so un-mannerly as egging a graffiti robot on as it scrawls witty messages on the pavement in front of that one guy’s house, you know, the guy who always tells you meddling kids to get off his lawn…

Anyway, GraffitiWriter is brought to us by the Institute for Applied Autonomy, a coalition of folks who are fighting the good fight and making sure you can be heard by the oppressors of the world (if you want to):

GraffitiWriter is a tele-operated field programable robot which employs a custom built array of spray cans to write linear text messages on the ground at a rate of 15 kilometers per hour. The printing process is similar to that of a dot matrix printer. GraffitiWriter can be deployed in any highly controlled space or public event from a remote location

All of IAA’s projects involve putting activism at your finger tips. As their mission statement states:

The Institute for Applied Autonomy (IAA) was founded in 1998 as a technological research and development organization dedicated to the cause of individual and collective self-determination. Our mission is to study the forces and structures which affect self-determination and to provide technologies which extend the autonomy of human activists.

The Institute are also the fine people who are helming the CAE Defense Fund. In May 2004, members of the Critical Art Ensemble were raided in their homes by the FBI on suspicion of bioterrorism. They are still being subject to ongoing investigation at great emotiuonal and physical cost to themsevles and their families. Click the link for more info.

[Thanks Evil Signtist!]