Sex bots, legos, star wars and H4wt robot guy, SB pal@grantImahara! Whee!

I know what you’re thinking. I know you’ll see this and say “Okay great, he’s *really* good at using the playstation controller or whatever. So what, big deal.” Oh no, my friends, make no rash assumptions, this leetle droid is doing all by himself:

The bioloid robots climbs a freely configurable wall, this is NOT a predefinded motion sequence. It is part of an autonomous system that first looks for possible ways up (according to the abilities of the robot and to physical constraints) and after placing the robot at the start position of the chosen path the robots climbs up just by knowing the x/y-positions of the grips.
The final scenario will be a bioloid looking at the wall using an onboard vision system, detecting marked grips, calculating the best way up, walking to the start position and climbing up the wall, totally autonomously.

This is the project of student, robosoccer referee and RoboGames contestant Marko Wickrath, in association with the Technical University of Dortmund, Germany & University of Manitoba, Canada.

Here’s a demo of the inverse kinematics used to help the robot with arm and leg placement:

This demonstration has 4 different target positions only and it shows the system’s accuracy even at a very high speed. This is part of an autonomous system that first looks for possible ways up a climbing wall (according to the abilities of the robot and to physical constraints) and after placing the robot at the start position of the chosen path the robots climbs up just by knowing the x/y-positions of the grips.

In other words, it does this by being awesome. Stay in school, kiddies.

RoboGames 2010 is coming up quickish, and with it we will be featuring in this space some recaps, explanations, and OMGWTFSPARKLEPONIES!!!1!1! moments for your edutainment. First up: Mech Warfare!

Here’s a video, courtesy those prolific bastards over at Botjunkie:

Ah Mech Warfare, developed in part by the kindly loons at our very favorite Trossen Robotics, it consists of several little robots going head-to-head with several other little robots, all on their cute and merry way to totally obliterating each other with airsoft guns. Good Times!

You can find a whole world of options and excitement for mechwarfare and a bunches of other stuff at the Trossen Robotics Community. As for parts, you can pick em up here! And here! And here and here!

To register your masterpiece for RoboGames 2010, go here! Questions and abuse, please direct to knickers at suicidebots.com. Thanks for playing!

Getcher Tickets HERE!

Hang on to your grinders, your hydraulic lifting arms, your CO2 fire extinguishers and sand buckets, and brace yourselves for the most fun you can have with esoteric hardware and fatty snacks! That’s right, bitches, it’s COMBOTS CUP TIME!

Image courtesy Quinn Norton for Robot Magazine

Join the best fighting robots in the country doing what they do best – thrashing, crashing, smashing and obliterating each other inside our specially built bulletproof robot arena. Yeah, this is what they used to have on TV, but it’s way better live – the sights, the sounds, the smells, the NOISE. Mm, noise.

Image courtesy Quinn Norton for Robot Magazine

See everything from 1 pound antweights to 340 pound super behemoths duke it out in the ring, the loser carried out in pieces! $5000 prize purse for the best of the heavyweight division robot gladiators!

See Sewer Snake go up against Original Sin in a match that is sure to be Biblical! See Last Rites offer twisted metal condolences to its unfortunate weaker opponents! Cheer as the 120,000 lb bulletproof robot fighting arena shakes with the most twisted forces physics can manufacture!

We’re proud to be in our new location this year at the delightfully centrally located San Mateo County Expo Center! Lots of parking, easy access to Caltrain and tons of space to spread out and cheer on your favorite robot team!

Fun for the whole family, a massive circus of science and engineering complete with popocorn and cotton candy! Collect trading cards of your favorite robots, browse our robot midway and see all your favorites up close and personal. Hobnob with teams, find out how you can get involved and enjoy a grand day out at the 2009 Combots Cup!

BUY YOUR TICKETS FOR THE BEST EVENT YOU WILL EVER GO TO, EVER, (except for Robogames) RIGHT HERE!

While we think the technological prowess demonstrated by these giant strip-mining machines heralds a new era in the industrialization of the American landscape, others choose to comment via culturally prescient collaborations that invite thoughtful commentary and astute criticism.

This video featuring the Bagger 288 large-scale industrial mining bucket-wheel excavator, is one such work.

[via @iidocracy on Twitter]

I really like this senselessly sweet and adorably interactive robot project, so much so that I am contemplating digging around in the the garage and building one, because we don’t have enough projects around here.

From the Guardian UK:

Meet the Guardian Robot: This friendly little fellow stands on your desk and monitors your Twitter feed for “happy” and “sad” posts by your friends on your Twitter feed. But unlike conventional alert systems, this robot encourages you to interact with the posts it finds.

• You can follow the Guardian Robot on its own Twitter account at http://twitter.com/guardianrobot. Send him a message with a “#highfive” hashtag to get a high five, or send him a “#ineedahug” hashtag if you are feeling low.

You can also see the Guardianbot live over the magical interwebs (when he is broadcasting) here!

(via Makezine!)

I promise you this is not another mere-smear BS YouTube embed just to say we’ve posted when we actually are only posting a BS Youtube embed.

Okay so maybe it could kind of lok that way but it’s cool because tis is abkut US! As in, it’s about RoboGames, the li’l shindig we throw in June or thereabouts in San Francisco.

Bill Sherman, robot builder extraordinaire, always sets up a nifty time lapse camera at RoboGames to capture the arena build and all sorts of other silliness. He has included footage he took of some of the art bot mezzanine as well. Tel him how neat he is and thank him for putting this up.

[BTW, hello to all those coming from Neatorama through the Rotor's last post, we weren't expecting guests to please forgive us if we're scrambling around to tidy things up.]

More from the irrefutable Magnus Würzer:

This is Mr. Robotics’ progress on his Mechwarrior, which so far he has spent exactly a day and a half on, using parts we had lying around at home, deep down, as a procrastination tool. He will still kick ass and/or take names.

Magnus Würzer of RoboExotica and Shifz fame has taken this video in my very own kitchen. It is of our Intern’s marshammlow roasting robot, a fine tetrix-based contraption that results in burned sugar par excellance:

See more awesome like this at this year’s RoboGames, oh boy that’s a lot of robots.

So, for a little background: Stephen Nelson is one of our favorite people that most of the six of you who check this site regularly have never heard of. He builds things like power tool racers and, more importantly, robots.

His stable include Evelyn, a Modified Dawg (watch out, 16mg video download); Eva, the beer retriever, and his latest and gnarliest creation, Ethel, (named for the Zappa song). As Mr. Nelson says, “The goal of building Ethel is a learning experience with software and vision system on a off road robot.” At least this was the goal when he started, she has since sprouted a flamethrower and a portable DJ rig, amongst other things. But I digress.

I will now turn over the tale of the latest adventures with Ethel to Mr. Nelson himself posting from his garage while nursing his road rash:

(more…)

Dude.

I mean, wow.

Seriously, how has no one thought of this earlier? Aside,of course, from the whole “oh my god I just lost my finger” thing:

Geek Replaces Lost Finger With 2GB USB Finger

A Finnish programmer who lost his finger in a motorcycle accident has now replaced it with a prosthetic finger that has a USB drive built in. Jerry Jalava can now peel back his “nail” and reveal a 2GB “finger drive” for storing photos, movies and software.

Jalava had his left ring finger amputated last summer after crashing into a deer with his motorbike near the Finnish capital Helsinki. Given his profession as a computer programmer, the doctors treating him joked that he should have a USB “finger drive” and Jalava went for the idea.

[Thanks Vexed Magazine! (we found this through their twitter feed, which we have had for a while now.]

The advent of this robot clearly means Rosie the Robot is imminent, so people can stop asking, already.

From Bre Pettis and Adam Cechetti, here are the fruits of a long, punchy night at NYC Resistor:

Bre has established that Skynet will enable itself via tasty cheese-filled snacks:

This is one of those robots that I swear is alive. The noises it made were like an animal and it seemed that everytime we looked the other way, it was coming to life and changing things with the setup.

It shows that the revolution will come via Arduino and reprap controllers, and will be commented on by XKCD.

So back a couple days ago I mentioned I-Wei Huang, who is still cooler than you and sheds mechanical ninja-fu like some people shed viruses. Well, he’s shown up again, saving me from actually having to look for something good to post:

Embrace the Crab-Fu, people.

Don’t let this happen to you (seen today on the gorgeous Simulated Comic Product)

[Thanks Lee!]

(The Rotor is in Vienna, Mister Robotics is in buried in Systm and I am wrangling art stars and tentacles, so apologies for the lack of posting, I shall take my beating with my tea.)