Artifical Intelligence and Robotics alerts us to this nifty little contest that the fun-lovin’ folks over at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2008) thought up and did.
The winner has been announced, but we hope they will do it again next year!
This is like the sixth time Worth 1000 has had this as a theme, but it’s cool each time:
There’s about 40 different fine art prints which have been photo-shopped to have it part robot…
Or rather it would be, if Chassis were not a lover, but a fighter.
Dallas Native Designs Fetching Robot
Charlie Kemp, a transplanted Dallasite and current director of Georgia Tech’s Center for Healthcare Robotics, recently unveiled a new robot he designed that retrieves an object after you’ve highlighted it with a green laser pointer.
Sound boring?
Then think of it this way: the beer fetcher.
Granted, Kemp and his team are talking about the health care applications of their automaton, dubbed El-E, but we all know this is about getting your Duff without getting off your duff (Duffman says, can’t get enough of that wonderful Duff. Oh, yeah!). . .
. . .Of course, if El-E does get into the bartender game, he’ll (she’ll? it’ll?) have to compete with the less cutting-edge but more aesthetically pleasing Chassis the beer-pouring robot.
Finally, here is a little snippet of video of Chassis being put through his beer-serving paces. Notice the Head Rotor operating in the background, and Al Honig adjusting my grip on the robot’s. . . um. . .appendage.
Congrats to Al and The Rotor, Chassis is a heck of a guy. And shiny!
In the “See “More” but after the video ends, there is lots and lots of coverage of RoboGames 2007! Lots of which was uploaded by Lem Fugitt! Thanks Robots Dreams!
We journeyed to the southland last Thursday nigt to partake in a fun little event organized by the the AAAI, or the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence.
The topic was robot racing and the guests were none other than Sebastian Thrun, of Stanford University, the winner of the DARPA desert Challenge; and Red Whittaker, of the CarNAYgie Mellon robot racing team.
They both gave lovely presentations, and made me want to cover them in gooey scientific lovin’.
Now really, who wants jocks playing footbal when yu can have animated robots playing football?
From Super deluxe.
Congrats to Kevin Pratt, our homie down in sunny Florida, for convincing the University of South Florida that he will not, in fact, use his power for evil, and filing his thesis on robotic search and rescue!
There will always be a place for you in our supervillain lair should you ever decide to come to the dark side, Kevin. We’ll let you sleep under the death ray.
The sexy pixelpushers over at Diesel Sweeties have made us twitch with amusement yet again:
[Sent from the bountiful rss reader of Laughing Squid, yay!]
So this is all over the place now, but I am spreading the joy of a Kuka-powered trebuchet to you, our extremely bored readers. See the beauty. Watch the innovation. Get all sweaty and hot about Science.
The disclaimer is the really awesome part.
If you’ll remember, that particular Kuka model also has been known to drop phat beats and scrizzatch them mad rhymes.
[via Botjunkie via Hackaday via Manapotions]
This is *so* going on my permanent record.
My Robot Friend and I will be smoking in the girl’s room if you need us.
In a slight departure from our regular format down here in the RoBunker, everybody give a big hand for the Number Of The Day, Number 107!
[Audience claps]
There are 107 pages of robot-themed handmade art on Etsy.com Some of it is toothachingly cute.
Episode #107 of MST3K was called “Robot Monster”
The online teevee show “Cute With Chris” also has Episode Number 107, entitled “Robot Cat”:
“Non-human animals should never be inhabaitants of the Uncanny Valley.” says Mr. Robotics. I would concur. This particular robot cat is just. . .creepy.
Chris Hancock of MIT published a paper for IEEE (of which both The Rotor and Mr. Robotics are members) entitled “Toward a Unified Paradigm for Constructing and Understanding Robot Processes“. It’s actually pretty good read, and guess what page of the IEEE 2002 Symposium on Human Centric Computing Languages and Environments book it’s in? Thaaat’s right, Page 107!
And the kicker:
Robot brains evolve at roughly 107 times the rate of humans. So said Hans Moravec of the the Dana Foundation, way back in 2001, a momentous date.
Since we’re going to be relegated to subservient status by the awesome intellect of the forthcoming robot technologies, we may as well occupy our time doing silly time sucking activities.
Like searching for the correlation between randomly chosen numbers and the word “Robot” on Google.
I really should get out more.
Bill and Mark Sherman are prolific bot builders who we are lucky enough to have compete at RoboGames.
They just sent me their latest project, a Wind Harp in the San Francisco Bay Area. I had never heard of a wind harp before, it’s a neat concept. They keep tweaking theirs with things like solar powered preamps and are thinking of experimenting with multiples strings and pickups.
Everything looks like it came from Home Depot or Radio Shack, which is my favorite sort of project!
Aside from being a cool project, the Wind Harp is really, really nice to listen to, especially if you need a bit of relaxation background noise.
It’s intentional/accidental cutting-edge ambient music. They should have a bin for this at Amoeba (actually, they probably do).
Listen to his shoutcast here.
Botronics is also a finalist for the 2008 Instructables and Universal Laser Cutter Contest! We wish them all sorts of luck, and also pity them for the number of calls they are going to get from friends asking to use their new laser cutter.
Warren Ellis channels all robots, everywhere, when he repackages the Three Laws:
Robots do not want to have sex with you. Are you listening, Japan?
[Thanks Matt! (via Le Boing)]
. . .is, of course, the noble squid. My personal favorite species is Vampyroteuthis Infernalis, but Laughing Squid has alerted us to Royal Deluxe’s “Le Calmar Géant à Rétropropulsion“:
It’s a steampunk-tastic inspirational ride-on piece that fits with Royal Deluxe’s mechanical interactive giant mobile street theater aesthetic. Another thing that made me feel all intelligent is the fact that we noticed that the squid moves down the track tentacles-first, which seems confusing until you remember that tentacles-first is, of course, backwards for a squid.
[This post dedicated to Dr. Jen Gittzus, Squid Goddess YC SY '98, who is not dead but also probably not reading this page either. Hi Gittzus.]
So one of the cooler non-robot websites i read regularly is TikiBarTV. For those of you who like tiki drinks, cocktail culture, or heck, just funny videos - you should check out their site.
Of course, they like robots too. In fact, they made a cocktail robot:
See how many cool robot movie references you can catch. And if you need a 2008 calendar, well… the Lala pin-up calendar isn’t a shabby way to go.
When I die, I hope the angels are half as sexy as Lala.
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