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 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]

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”

Submitted with minimal comment:

We <3 Robot Japan so flippin’ hard, we are eager for their presence at RoboGames 2012!

Thanks Robots Dreams!

This this this this this this THIS.

[Goth Robot Dance Of Your Choice Goes Here]

[Thanks Josh.0 for the best rendition of the robot I have ever seen in my life, ever.]

Everyone watch this one, because not only it is the same superlative show they always put up, BUT: It’s about Robots AND: I, Me, @missysb going to be on it. Theoretically. Unless I get accidentally set on fire or eaten by chuds on the way there.

So tune in! Wednesday July 13th, 9pm Eastern 6pm Pacific

Fighting an autocratic regime? Have a few things lying around in your machine shop? Why not create a rebel war robot to kill time while you fight vociferously for your cause? The whole world is watching!

All kidding aside, this piece from Al-Jazeera English shows rebel engineers building, among other things, armed power wheels, an ROV ammo resupply machine, and your basic shoulder mounted rocket launcher.

Notable quotes from ass-kicking Libyan engineering students:

“We want to use our weapons in a systematic way against those who take up arms against us. We hope they will not use their arms against civilians.”

“It’s strange going from being an engineering students to designing weapons, but we’ve seen many bad things in this war and I have to help the fighters and my people any way I can.”

“We don’t carry guns but we want to help save our people, budding ways which reduce loss of life, even against Gaddafi’s forces. Because we are against killing unless there is no choice, we don’t want to be like him and kill everyone.”

DIY shit just got real.

[Thanks Singularity Hub!]

Image Courtesy The Sonic Alchemists

Our pal Patrick Flanagan at Jazari Music has a nice piece up about Jazari Music over at Hack A Day about his music and how his robot band is evolving, and by “evolving” I mean “kicking ass and being awesome”:

As Patrick describes it, Jazari “fuses African rhythms,
algorithmic composition, computer music, and electro-mechanics into
beat-driven steamfunk.” The controls are quite unique as well. Originally, the controller was simply a Wiimote. This was limited, since one needs three fingers to hold on to it, so a new “springbok” device was born allowing all five fingers to be used to play music. The vocal part of the music is created using an Android program called “voloco”.

We were lucky enough to have Patrick come be a part of our excellent speaker symposium at RoboGames 2011 this year, thanks again Patrick, and thanks Heather Knight for putting our symposium together!

The excessively intelligent and infuriatingly productive Jeri Ellsworth goes over her new-to-her Heathkit Hero Jr., lovingly extracted from here in the depths of the Robunker (We have five more. Get ‘em while they’re cutely obsolete!).

In these trying times, some thought must be given to the small respites afforded by life in the 21st century. With an eye to this, we here at The Robotics Society of America (a registered 501c3 educational nonprofit, whee) are holding the Third Annual BarBot, a celebration of cocktail robotics and culture:
Full details and advance tickets HERE!

Join us April 1-2, 2011 at Parisoma, 169 11th St (at Natoma) in San Francisco. Cocktails, robots, and swingin’ music. Who could ask for more?

Like its Austrian sister event RoboExotica, Barbot 2011 will address the bigger questions in relaxation technology: Can a true man-machine interface achieve true transparency? Will technology morph to keep pace with eventual ubiquitous computing expectations? Are the margaritas actually any good?

All these questions and more will be answered during the course of two nights with robot music, swingin’ robot atmosphere, groovy entities both organic and manufactured, and some hot, hot science.

What’s more, it will serve as a delightful benefit for that most worthy of causes, The Robotics Society of America (501c3, remember?), proceeds to go to putting on RoboGames, the world’s largest open robot competition, dedicated to learnin’ kids good about Science, Math, Engineering and Technology.

In order to have a truly superlative BarBot scene, however, we need to add to our already burgeoning field of robots YOUR WONDERFUL CREATIONS.

Do you have a cocktail bot lying around collecting dust? Do you have components kicking around just *begging* to be made into human-serving, pleasure-giving automata (or semi-automata, we’re not too picky. . .)? Do you have a robot already in progress that would benefit from a deadline? Have you always wanted to build a thing from scratch and just needed a purpose for it? Are you in the greater SF Bay Area?

Cash assistance available for the neediest an most interesting cases. This means YOU.

Contact sb at suicidebots dot com
(or fill out the contact form over yonder —–> (under Information Is Sexy))
and tell us tales of your creations! Be a part of cocktail robotics history!

Kal Spelletich, Robot Artist extraordinaire, does things with machines that should be marginally illegal, and probably are. He is having a show this Saturday in San Francisco, which you should go to if you are geographically situated.

The Australian contingent of the Robot Fighting League recently had an event Down Under, and forwarded us videos to prove it.

In their words: “All our fights were broadcast live on the internet, but we forgot to let you guys know. Sorry.”

They will be dealt with summarily. Before that, here are some nice boomysmashy videos to get your mid-whatever-season-it-is-in-your-hemisphere blues all fired up and filled with robotty goodness:

See also an MP4 here with BOTCAM! Action (takes a bit to load) and another one here (also takes a bit to load that features BOTCAM! Action from an opposing angle.

In the first video there is what he Aussie call a LiPoly Fire. I would just like to say (omgomgomg I actually get to say this omg whee):

THAT’S not a LiPoly fire.

THIS is a Lipoly Fire!:

The action begins about 40 seconds in.

Thanks Aussie RFL participant Kkeerroo and Matt Maxham of Team Plumb Crazy for the ComBots Cup V video

Because this whole robot thing seems to be “in” among the young kids these days, Makerbot Industries is announcing Botacon, a DIY robotic symposium taking place this coming weekend in NYC.

The speaker’s list if formidable, and includes RoboGames‘ own Academic Chair for 2011, Heather Knight.

Heather Knight – Robotic Touch: Capacitive Sensing to Understand Human Body Language
Rob Gilson – State of the Replicators
Chris Connors – MakerBot and emerging technologies in the classroom
Dustyn Roberts – 3D without the Glasses: Making Assemblies of Parts
Laura Greig – Helping Paintbots Become More Than Printers
Kio Stark – 9 Ways to Make Your Robot Come to Life
Ben Combee – Put a Web Server on Your Bot
Erik de Bruijn – Open source innovation: On empowerment, architecture and ecosystems
Mr.Kim and John Sarik – Makerbot Printable Transistors and OLEDs
George Hart – Cool Geometric Forms
Zach Smith – Compilers of Industrial Revolution 2
Ilan Moyer – Gestural Design: Product Design in an Age of Personal Fabrication
Iem and Andy Heng and Zhang – Autonomous and Non-Autonomous Flexible Robot
Amy Hurst – Nickel for Scale – automatically customizing 3D objects to fit YOU!
Adam Mayer – Tiny Robots Everywhere
MakerBlock – How to be a robot dad
Raphael Abrams – The Nine Step Program to Make a Robot Puppet that Will Haunt Your Dreams

This is shaping up to be THE conference about DIY robotics and the bright future for automated everything. Be there!

So get your tickets, slot in your extra RAM and get yourself to NYC ASAP for robot DIY, PDQ.

We’re waking up with Electric Six a lot around our house these days. Here’s a totally non-gratuitous Robot Themed Song by those crazy awesome dance masters. Grids, romance, loose wires, gazing and blank stares, man railing against faulty technology.

Just in time to rock the weekend!

In our ongoing quest to post absolutely nothing of hard scientific value this week whatsoever, we bring you the tiny shenanigans of Mike the Robot, submitted to us eons ago via The Contact Form (remember The Contact Form?).

Jack Dow chronicles the everyday doings of his little pal Mike The Robot. This photo set is just gorgeously turned out. Also: Giggling.

The whole shebang is well worth poring over at length.