For those who were interested in the lyrics to the previous German song “Kaputt”. Full lyrics after the jump
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A little tidbit for all of you in the greater Bay Area - Ken Goldberg, robot god of UC Berkeley, will be speaking at Science Cafe on August 18th at the Atlas Cafein San Francisco.

Photo Courtesy Berkeley Engineering Forefront
Ken Goldberg: Not just a robot guy, but the frontman for his very own telerobotic emo band*

Is there decision-making strength in numbers? Professor Goldberg and his students are looking into questions raised by robots and social networks — and working on a new class of interfaces and games based on networked robots and cameras that quantify a measure of “leadership” to bring about group discovery and decision-making based on the power of crowds.

Ken will report on experiments and questions raised by robots and social networks, ranging from Ouija boards to human “tele-actors,”and tell a true story about how invasions of privacy led him and his students to study how robots can assist in monitoring the natural environment. Ken will describe a robotic system they’ve deployed to assist the search for the Ivory Billed Woodpecker, a bird of extreme interest to birdwatchers, ornithologists, and conservationists whose last confirmed sighting was in 1944. Ken will also describe the Berkeley Center for New Media, a highly cross-disciplinary center with over 110 affiliated faculty from 30 Cal Departments.

*not really

A couple of our favorite robot guys from back in the day, Inertia Labs, are just pleased as punch and pink with enthusiasm to show of their spiffy new robot platform design, which they have been noodling with for over a year now and have just gotten up to their exacting, stainless-steel loving, onerously precise, picky-pants standards:

They have teamed up with Surveyor Corp produce these kits, and all snark aside, Inertia Labs makes some truly quality product (Zander’s not even my boss anymore so I am no longer even contractually obligated to say that).

Get your very own Inertia Labs/Surveyor robot kits, mobility base, parts, and etc Right Here.

A few technical specs and details from Alexander Rose:

“This new design merges two of the electronics boards, uses 4 motors (one per wheel,) a low profile LiPoly 2000Mah 7.2v battery to make the whole unit more compact, faster, and stronger.

Like our other kits these chassis are designed around the Sanyo NA-series gearmotors, that have been specially made with long shafts for direct drive of the wheels and treads.

You can purchase the complete unit, just the base to update your older SRV, or components. The standard base is ready to run with the electronics from Surveyor. Only six wires need to be soldered.

You can also use this mobility base with a speed controller and Rx to make a treaded RC robot as with our other kits.

Also, it comes fully assembled RTR with charger. It’s super spiffy - wifi-enabled, drive-by-internet capable, treaded, open source, fast processor, video, lipoly powered, blah blah blah.

These men truly bleed science.

In case you weren’t already completely convinced that this is the simply the most superlative platform kit that has ever been invented, ever, check out this awesome application of the platform. By awesome, I of course mean totally sweet.

Tain’t nothing sadder, truly:

The song, appropriately enough, is called “Kaput”.

And remember, meat puppets, be nice to your robots, they might not be completely broken and have a chance of coming for you while you sleep.

Lyrics here.

[Via BotJunkie]

Here’s a wee small infotaining video from New Scientist that talks about prototypes for what could eventually be nano swarmbots. The video is tantalizing and does not go nearly into enough depth on what people at places like CarNAYgie Mellon are working on, but it’s something nice for your brain to chew on (assuming your brain has teeth).

Ah, the joy that robots bring into your life.

Four years ago today (August 1st), I married the best girl in the world. She’s the best present that I have ever got, but the best present that we got that day, was our ring-bearer - Mechadon, courtesy of Mark Setrakian and Peter Abrahamson.

To keep this topical:


(When I grow up, I wanna be Mark Setrakian and make robots like he does - ones that you’d think would be CGI but are real… Mind you, that would mean that someone would have to cure my ADHD first… )

Anyway, apparently, our happy day was a news-worthy event. Although there are lots of pix from that great day…

Simone is still a stinky girl, but she’s OK for someone with cooties.

Hold on while I go punch her in the arm and run away.

I dunno who all reads this but seeing as I tend to swear, if not like a sailor, at least like a visiting cabin boy, y’all are probably okay with images of avant-garde Spanish performance artists projecting their manly bits onto large buildings in Spain:

He technically could be called a cyborg, more so if he needed mechanical assistance for his “power”.

Or cold, actually, given average temperatures in the stratosphere on a given day.

The High Altitude Lego Extravaganza kicked off on July 29th (or yesterday, depending on your relative temporal position and various values of “yesterday”). The project, a joint effort between Lego Mindstorms and the University of Nevada at Reno, sent Lego NXT Mindstorm payloads up into the heavens via weather balloon, to conduct experiments which engaging in free-fall.

Is it safe to send LEGO MINDSTORMS into the stratosphere?

Perfectly safe… but I’m having trouble convincing the minifigs that will ride along of that :). Seriously, the NXT can function under the near vacuum conditions, and will function at low temperature (although the payloads do have insulation and heaters to try to keep them warmer than the -60° C temperatures outside). So for the NXT, conditions aren’t a major problem.

NevadaSat, the student satellite program of UNR, has been doing weather balloon research for years, but this is the first time Lego have come out to play with them. More info about the project and its payloads can be found here, at the NevadaSat HALE site.

Everyone present cried and took lots of pictures:

Yes, that is a diagram of a wee small orb’s first shaky foray into autonomous movement. We are beyond proud over here in the RoBunker, because hell that must have been approximately a ton and a half of hell to make it all go. From Michael Prados, One Of The Lead Swarmies and Possessor of The Will To Orb:

Jon, Niladri, and I coded all day, and then went to the soccer field to sit in the dark and code and debug some more. The culmination of this massive brain exertion is the stumbling attempt at a straight line in the linked jpg [above]. It may not look like much, but for the first time, all the major pieces of orb navigation are working together to autonomously guide the orb along a specified path. We are giving it a way point 20m in front of its initial position, and asking it to go there.

Le Roteur Superieur commemorates this historic moment with un petit pastiche de Seuss:

Congratulations!
Today is your day.
You’re off to Great Places!
You’re off and away!

You have brains in your Orbs.
You have code in your SPU
You can steer yourself
any direction you choose.
You’re on your own. And you know what you know.
And YOU are the SWARM who’ll decide where to roll.

You’ll look up and down streets. Look ‘em over with care.
About some you will say, “I don’t choose to go there.”
With your nice IMU and your SPU full of code,
you’re too smart to go down any not-so-good road.

And you may not find any
you’ll want to go down.
In that case, of course,
you’ll head straight out of town.

It’s opener there
in the wide open air.

Out there things can happen
and frequently do
to Orbs who are brainy
and swarmy as you.

And when things start to happen,
don’t worry. Don’t stew.
Just roll right along.
You’ll start happening too.

OH!
THE PLACES YOU’LL ROLL!

So, last Friday we went to our trusty place where we keep things, Nimby Space, in beautiful West Oakland, California.

We took all the bits and pieces we had left of the old arena, and sent them to the Happy Scrap Yard in the Sky (actually, the scrap yard is down the street but you get it). Here’s a pic of the old arena in action:

The bits and pieces we didn’t send to the knacker’s went to fine causes, I assure you. The Flaming Lotus Girls got some wall modules to make racks for their latest piece, Mutopia. The Neverwas Haul Krewe got lucky with some truly lovely aluminum trusses and other pieces of steel that they will eventually use for some completely astounding functional art piece or something.

So, Good Arena, ye served us well, thanks for everything, take care and don’t do anything we wouldn’t do. Here’s one last picture for waving good by:

“I’ll tell ya what we’re going to do with her; we’re gonna put her in the clapper, we’re gonna crunch her up ‘til she’s one solid piece of metal, then we’re gonna put her in the fiery furnace and we’re gonna melt her down ‘til she’s liquid iron. That’s what we’re gonna do with her.”

Here’s a cheery little tune that appeared in my inbox the other day. The song is by We’ll Write, “the only post-apocalyptic, quasi-acoustic indie-folk duo you’ll ever need”.

Think Flight Of The Conchords, only, you know, about killer death robot bent on human destruction:

When you’re more concerned with shambling zombie hordes and near-certain robot-death than you are about getting dumped by your girlfriend, you’ll need a band whose songs you can really relate to.” Pete says. We’ll Write sing those songs, and when the glass and ash settles, We’ll Write will still be standing, to guide everyone through the doom-times.

As they can’t be sure exactly when the bombs will fall, they’re releasing their album one song at a time, as quickly as they can record it. That way you’ll already know the songs come judgement day!

I have to love it when a band comes to us so prepared.

[Thanks Tom!]

More dangerous than BBs, funnier than live ammo, it’s a sentry paintball gun!

Adding to our obsession with everything related to Aliens, this automatic dealer of death is the sixth version of this particular project chronicled by David down in Jacksonville, Florida.

David has videos of various trials he has done, which is freaking awesome, but he will not let me embed video here so you all have to go see it on his site or on youtube.

It just goes to show that sometimes having to much free time is completely awesome.

Lem over at Robots-Dreams was musing about this pic he came across on the interwebs, and wanted to know more about it.

Well, my friends, this robot is the work of a robot freak from Oakland, California named Justin Grey, whom we have had the pleasure and privilege of working with on many occasions. Justin builds gorgeous fire-based instruments of irresistible destruction.

I have asked him for more info about his newest creature, but in the meantime here is a video of a robot he made last year, named Robot Libby after his dog:

See more of his work at his blog.

(FYI: We will be fumigating for corny headlines during routine maintenance, thanks for your patience)

There has been quite a bit of talk about making exoskeletons to enhance human abilities or help disabled people walk, but the thing that made me actually comment on this is this slick new thing from ReWalk that is not only useful, it’s actually aesthetically pleasing and not clunky.

They Shall Walk has a squishy place in our collective heart for being a medical non-profit and participating in RoboGames year after year. The LifeSuite is cool because it came from a real need. Mpnty Reed of They Shall Walk embarked on is course of study after he recoverd from, in his words, “Jumping out of a perfectly good airplane.”

The guys below have a multi-million dollar defense contract that ensures American soldiers can work themselves to the ground with a minimum of effort, which is of course the goal in the vast majority of government agencies:

We just like exoskeletons because we here in the RoBunker have an unhealthy obsession with Sigourney Weaver in Alien, especially that one scene.

[via Engadget, Medgadget, and ArgoMedTec]

And how!

The limeys seem to be stepping up their use of technology in the British shouting-and-killing-people trade. That’s giving Jerry one in the eye!

From Engadget:

The country’s border guards have now recruited some robots normally used in warzones to help root out folks trying to smuggle themselves into the country. Developed by BAE Systems, the so-called “Hero” bots are equipped with searchlights and high-resolution video cameras that let it search the inside and undersides of vehicles, and they could potentially be outfitted with heartbeat detectors as well, or even sensors to detect chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear materials being smuggled into the country.

Here’s another article in the Telegraph, and one from Danger Room.

The good part is, robots can’t be bribed, and can get into tighter places that humans or dogs. The bad news is that robots can’t be bribed, and they can get into tighter places than humans or dogs.