Cool stuff down at CES a few weeks ago. SB pal Michael over there at Ideal Mechanism was there (along with our own Mr. Robotics), and has a good rundown of the robot action there. To remind people that the Rotor does not have a furry thing going on, we won’t mention the hamster-ball-controlled Roomba.
Stay tuned for news from Mike. We have it on good authority he’s thinking about robot swarms. We’ll keep you updated.
The Illustrious Stephen Nelson, he of the videos of his racers from The Power Tool Drag Races, has sent me this little eye-gouging ditty that is horrible yet at the same time makes us glad that we get to play with these things as often as we do.
UPDATE: The creator of this video, Tacoman, has come forth and identified himself! We salute you, Tacoman. You are prescient and astute, as well as tasty.
Steven Nelson is also the unmitigated genius behind Trailer Trash Films, which you might have seen all over Youtube. Here he is, running (yet another) test with EVA, his highly advanced remote control precision beer-grabbing robot.
I believe he ran about 37 tests that day before he couldn’t operate the remote control any more.
That’s our man.
Our spies over there at Pixar blog Luxo hint that the latest film WALL•E from Jobs and Co. will feature at weast one cute widdle wobot. Is this perhaps the eponymous bot?
We here at SB anxiously await the release of WALL•E toys so we can take them apart!
So, I was trolling the net looking for naked baby pictures of The Head Rotor um, porn and found this neat homemade video of The University of Essex’s Robofish.
The news is over a year old but it’s still cool enough to qualify for Cool Robot Of The Week! Anntennae bowed to Robofish!
Click for Jokeroo.com video
This fish was in the London Aquarium for a time in 2005, but does not seem to be there any longer, sad to say. The Essex kids seems to have also started a robofish blog, but that also hasn’t been kept up much.
There is a nifty article on Robots.net with lots of links to more robofish. It’s sad to see stuff that is so interesting lying dormant. Sigh.
I’m off to drink more coffee and mumble softly about this sad state of the world.
Mister Robotics being the gallivanty sort that he is, he’s been working like a mofo in the shop to get ready for Techfest, “Asia’s Largest Technology Festival” for which he departs at Stupid O’Clock tomorrow morning.
I was in the shop a few days ago fussing with his projects, and I had my crappy little camera phone with me.
Here is a tiny photo blog, Violet Blue style*, of the stuff Mr. Robotics is working on. If you are in Mumbai and have a hankering to see 60-lb robots smack into each other at high speed, drop him a line!
*No I am not naked. Sorry.
London is fabulous for cramming strange and unusual things into glorious murky alcoves.
My favorite such hideout was that one cybercafe in Camden market, the one under the viaduct where all the antiques stalls are. It smelled musty and moldy and the tea was poisonously strong. The LAN Quake players clearly had no idea what time it was or if it was light outside or what, and their beady, bleary eyes said volumes about how much they didn’t care.
It was a great spot to eat a crepe and check your shell account, and it was only a couple of pounds an hour.
It was a great use of urban waste space, but now the ubiquitous They have come up with even better reason to go down a dark, dank tunnel (like you needed one).
According to the website, ‘Siren’, by theremin player and artist Ray Lee, is “‘a whirling, spinning spectacle of mechanical movement, electronic sound and light.” The machines are tripods of varying sizes which spin, blink and generate a trancey droning soundscape. During each 40-minute perfromance the operator/ performers duck and weave between machines, tweaking the sound and genrally trying not to get hit.
There’s a decent interview with Ray Lee the artist in the Telegraph, here.
As an installation, ‘Siren’ will be available for viewing at the newish Kinetica Museum for kinetic art.
As a performance, ‘Siren’ runs through tomorrow, in a remarkable place called The Shunt Vaults. The lounge in the shunt vaults sounds like my internet cafe of yore, but hey! There’s alcohol! And art! The Shunt Lounge is a theater/art space and bar which will have a membership but now is free to enter.
The website expresses the happenings thusly:
Each week will be curated by a different Shunt artist. Some will fill the sapce with nonstop entertainment, some will do next to nothing. Fortunately the bar staff are more reliable.
Sounds like you couldn’t have a better time down a dark deep hole unless you were Alice.
Robots are truly amazing entities. They encompass so many disciplines, they create well-rounded designers and engineers and artists, and they cause people who otherwise might not ever meet otherwise to work together to create something cool just for the hell of it.
The components on their own are often not much (a solenoid, some vinyl tubing, some aluminum) but the magic of these things is how they all function together when controlled by a Basic stamp or other microcontroller.
They inspire so much in so many, and so many people have been, in turn, inspired to write about them and report about them in every way imaginable.
Perhaps, though, it is not simply the components that give spark to such literary inspiration, but the nature of the actual robots themselves once they come together in working order that cause people to write about them with such prolificacy.
For example, right now I am being held hostage by the combined natures of a soda siphon, a surgical pump and some tupperware.
They are inspiring me to write about them using duct tape and a little box thing which looks like a USB powered switchblade.
Cunning, and also, pointed at my head.
You wouldn’t think they would have any particular dexterity or forethought to use duct tape in the manner in which it is presently deployed, but I assure you, they do.
They have kindly allowed me three fingers on my left hand free to type.
Until Mr. Robotics comes home (The Head Rotor rarely exits his lab-glass infested Fortress Of Solitude, damn you, Rotor) I will sit here and extol the virtues of some other very fine and entertaining robot blogs.
I will also extol to an even greater degree the wonderfulness that is The Robot, that bringer of civility, that ascendant master of the worldly dominion, that technological marvel that puts the previous efforts of we puny humans to shame. Please don’t poke me..
First we have your favorite paranoid robot lover and mine, Stuart “Not A Robot” Bird. Suuuuure Stuart, suuuure you’re not a robot.
Stuart is holding down the fort over in Blighty, taking stock of the robots around him and how they tend to mangle his daily existence. Not that he’s complaining. JUST TO BE CLEAR, NONE OF US ARE COMPLAINING ABOUT ROBOTS. REALLY. This tape is getting pretty tight.
Next, grab a gander at the artistic mind of Mike Martinet’s Botaday Blog. Gorgeous whimsical line drawings, making more and more robots come into at least conceptual existence every day! Because we like robots! We want more! Yes we do! Someone please order this book for me, I haven’t got 1-click ordering turned on.
Aside from our perennial favorites Robot Gossip and Robots-Dreams ([springbreak]Robogames 2007! Whooooo! See you there Lem! Rawk! [/springbreak]) we would also like to direct your attention to some fun things for all robots to watch while I struggle to get my hands free and find a taser.
Incidentally, the last link was to my new favorite television show ever, Gay Robot. Gay robot is based on the comedy of Adam Sandler, and is filthy filthy filthy filthy.
In other words, awesome.
So you all just go toodle around the web and look at the pretty words and pictures, I’ll just be here, sitting, waiting. %#@& robots.
[Thank you Scott Beale for the Gay Robot Link!]
SB Promises *PROMISES!* that she will have a set of real entries here soon but in the meantime
SWEET MERCY! STICKERS!
They arrived at the Robunker last night, my friends, and shall be sent out today.
They are the highest quality vinyl, good for sticking to your car, other people’s cars, other people’s things that are not cars, laptops, palmtops, hiptops, Web 2.0 fetish items, the backs of ironic t-shirts, your drunken, sleeping friend’s forehead, and your messenger bag. They slices, they dices, they show the meat puppets how to show some damn respect for the robots.
You’ll thank us later when the revolution comes.
I am sure we can all think of a million more uses for these fine, fine Robot Warning Stickers, so order today!
Yeah, yeah, the labcoats at JPL call it “docking,” but we all know what’s going on. I guess if you are government-funded you have to be a little discreet about that kinda thing.
No, not a designer clock, it’s a mountain-climbing robot. Well, climbing-wall-climbing robot, anyway, and it’s the Cool Robot of the Week here at SB.
More pictures and videos at Tim Bretl’s page at Stanford. Cat must be a climber!
The Spartanburg Herald-Journal of the fine city of Spartanburg, North Carolina, reports on an incident in which a robotic member of the police force delicately convinced a troubled young man to put down his gun, potentially saving the lives of his grandparents and girlfriend, who had been held hostage overnight.
The brave electronic public servant reported that his mere presence had a calming effect on the man, and that gaining his trust, persuading him to spare his hostages and embrace a life turnaround was one of the proudest moments in its term of service.
The Spartanburg Police Department spokesman reported a slightly different account of events:
Sheriff Chuck Wright said the standoff ended when the SWAT team sent a robot into the house after Black didn’t answer the phone. Upon seeing the robot — which carries a video camera and microphone — Black put down his 9 mm pistol and surrendered, Wright said.
Thus continues the integration of the Silicon-American into the rich melting pot of society.
As the rotor predicted, ’twas only a matter of time before some clever dork hooked up a Roomba to the Wii. You go! Back! And forward!
Tip o’ the hubcap to spazout.
In other Roomba news, makers iRobot released their “Open Interface” specifications for the combined vacuum/cat terrorizer, thus completely removing the fun from reverse-engineering the little sucker. Still, open interfaces are the way to go. Let the Hacking Commence!
Oh God.
I love this place.
Ever needed a radio-controlled spider? Where can you find glow-in-the-dark maggots? Why do you need GITD maggots? The catalog knows exactly why:
Our each is a bag of [48] sickly-pale, squishy-soft rubber maggots - enough to infest your sister’s bedroom from floor to ceiling to under the pillow with plenty left over to stick in her yogurt.
How about a spring-loaded popping eyeball toy for LESS THAN A BUCK?
What is this cornucopia of crap? It’s American Science and Surplus, and if you are a craphound it will r0×0r your s0×0rs. It’s a happy (though unpredictable) day when the AS&S catalog arrives in the Rotor’s mailbox, complete with low-budget illustrations and frequently hilarious product blurbs.
Oh yeah. Robots. They got robots. Mostly toys, and mostly REALLY cheap, for example this dancing robot, or this micro-bug, or this hexapod monster kit, or this line-tracking mouse. And the priciest of those was what, forty bucks? Did I mention the cheap thing yet?
And they even have a special section of robot parts, including motors, lead-acid batteries (new, not surplus), and solar cells as cheap as you are likely to find ‘em.
What else? Laboratory glassware (at this point, the Rotor’s glassware fetish likely has the Feds convinced he is running a meth lab [I'M NOT GUYS, OK!?!] He also recommends the 50-ml beakers as an elegant vehicle for serving those fine postprandial liqueurs and single malts, or in the absence of those, Jägermeister.)
For those with a scientific-industrial fetish, there’s all sorts of lab coats and rubbery goodness. Have you ever seen anything quite as sexy as these gloves? Thought so. Other protective couture, includes chemical boots and Tyvek shorts. Hang on a minute. Tyvek shorts?? WOULD SOMEBODY PLEASE TELL ME EXACTLY WHAT YOU ARE DOING OUT THERE THAT REQUIRES TYVEK SHORTS? Hold on — they are only a dollar a pair? Plonk in the shopping cart — I’m sure they will come in handy for something.
What else? Tools. Yes, all sorts of tools, including dental tools for you DIY dentists. (Also handy for scraping solder blobs or mis-applied epoxy).
If you swing the other way and like to play doctor, don’t feel left out. They have cheap latex gloves and — get this — a working stethoscope for six clams. “I’m ready for my examination now, doctor!”
There’s even a stethoscope for cars. Or bots. Kinky, eh? Six clams. How can you go wrong for six clams?
AS&S, I salute you, you restore my faith in the universe as a sublime fountain of abundance.
So, we got some Suicide Bot Fan Mail here in the Robunker, and because we are personable people and enjoy helping out The Community(tm) we agreed to put this up and see if anyone was in the mood to salute:
I’m looking for people to interview near NYC and the Hudson Valley for my senior film project about robots. Specifically, I’d love to find some robotic pet owners and some people who build their own or do serious hacks. I know that a lot of this stuff is on the West coast, so I’m also looking for people to tape an interview of themselves and their robots and send it to me (reimbursement for the format medium and shipping of course!) if they are too far to tape in-person.
No trolls people, be nice, and good luck Susannah!
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