The mighty works of Zenta, the Norwegian hexapod mastermind covered previously in these humble pages, have been discovered by none other than one of the the shining bastions of all things awesome, Popular Science. You all can now say you knew Zenta when.
It’s nice to see that the morphing robot has come such a long way since July.
MorpHex is the brainchild of Norwegian engineer Kare Halvorsen, aka Zenta, who chronicles his robot-building experience on his blog. It started as a cut-up globe from Toys ‘R’ Us, and now it has 25 servos and a Basicmicro ARC-32 board, which is not yet programmed to roll. But Halvorsen said that’s his next step. Watch it fold up its arms into a sphere and then gently unfold them to walk.
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.
The Harvest Automation robots are knee-high, wheeled machines. Each robot has a gripper for grasping pots, a deck for carrying pots, and an array of sensors to keep track of where it is and what’s around it. Teams of robots zip around nursery fields, single-mindedly spacing and grouping plants. Think Wall-E without the doe eyes and cuddly personality, or the little forest-tending ‘bots in the 1972 sci-fi classic Silent Running.
The contraption he’s built allows anyone to create crazy cocktails depending on what you type:
The man, the mystery, the legend explains:
So, if you’re interested, let me explain this contraption and the mechanism that makes it work. At the top of the machine there is a slot into which a bottle with alcohol, water, or even milk can be screwed. The essence of the art here lies in the ability of the syrups or liqueurs to tint the neutral color of the liquid.
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Pressing the buttons on the keyboard injects the corresponding ingredients into the display, which tints different segments of the display and thus produces letters. You can try to imagine that each letter can have a taste (L-Lime, A-Apple), a color (R-Red, G-Green), or a name (K-Kahlua, J-Jagermeister).
But can anything that incorporates delicious delicious electronics and the power of the Lab Coat of Authority *really* be stupid?
Actually, yes. Yes it can. In a good way though.
Maywa Denki the Japanese robotics consortium that defies description (which is how we like it) instituted the Bacarobo competition in 2008.
The rules are simple: The robot has to have absolutely no practical function, it has to be mechanical, and it has to make people laugh. Sounds like Robot Comedy Gold to me.
Bacarobo Europe is happening in October in Budapest. If you are headed in that direction around that time, you should definitely seriously consider attending. For Science!
A new installment to the Deus Ex series has been released, and to celebrate the launch Rob Spence was commissioned to report back on the current state of bionic prosthetics.
Rob Spence lost his right eye and replaced it with a video camera, earning the self-proclaimed cyborg the nickname of Eyeborg!
The video contains a good deal of game footage of Deus Ex: Human Revolution in order to compare the cybernetics in the game to their closest real counterparts.
DISCLAIMER: Skip to 0:16 if you want to avoid footage of Rob Spence’s eye being operated on.
Evan Ackerman over at IEEE has written an interesting blog post about the Swarmanoid project.
The swarmanoid robots consist of three types, each specializing in specific tasks: hands, feet, and eyes. When their powers combine they turn into an unstoppable machine on a mission to steal your valuables.
It’s the dramatic on-pull of the sensory vest that gets me every time.
Thanks Science Seminars for the link, also for the comment “It is creepy and sounds like a toilet.”
*It should not automatically be construed that The Rotor’s mysterious, regrettable disappearance had anything to do with the aforementioned exclamation. Although if it were construed, automatically or not, it could be neither confirmed or denied. All we know is that he’s gone and WE KNOW NOTHING, OKAY?
So the Robot Film Fest was a couple of weeks ago in NYC, and because we are a sub par blogger we failed to cover it in any form while we were there (except for a few questionable photos which showed up on Twitter and probably a few embarrassing YouTube videos which have yet to surface).
Anyhow, the event was a glorious success, and Heather Knight (beloved RoboGames Academic Chair) and the fabulous team from Magic Futurebox who co-produced the event were rock stars and made everyone else feel like one too.
Here’s a few tidbits from the event (for which I was a jury member):
Paparazzi snapped in his face, but 1337 was not fazed. Wearing a scarlet bow tie slightly askew, the 2-foot-tall humanoid robot continued walking down the red carpet – guided firmly by his stooping programmer Carlos Asmat. With the air of a Hollywood film premiere, the first ever Robot Film Festival was underway this past weekend at the 3-Legged Dog Art and Technology Center in lower Manhattan.
In addition to failing at blogging the event, I actually achieved the unlikely – I was in the same room as many of my robotic twitter cohort, such as Dustyn Robots, The Chief Robot, and Erico Guizzo – and I failed to meet all of them except for Erico, with whom I had a three second convo before he lolloped off to see his young family.
I came across Zenta’s Robotic Creations blog while looking up information on my own biped, and my jealousy meter is off the charts.
Just watch this video – Words, I have none.
Working with similar robots, I can only hope that one day I can make them move that smooth and agile.
Zenta’s latest project is a morphing robot. That’s right, a MORPHING ROBOT.
I tossed this brilliant Norwegian a few questions, and he was nice enough to get back to me!
What’s your background and how did you get into robotics?
My background is engineering. I’ve always been fascinated by all kind of robots since I was about 6 or 7 years. (I’m now 38 year) .I began building robots very early, using mostly meccano. At some point I found meccano a bit limiting and started making custom parts. But I didn’t get more serious into hobby robots before 2006 when I started on my rather famous Phoenix hexapod.
You mention in your blog that Archer is your first biped, why did you decide to construct a biped rather than continue your work with hexapod (and similar) projects? What are the different problems you run into when designing a biped versus designing a robot with more than two legs?
The main reason for why I wanted to construct a biped is that I had some ideas of how to control it using Inverse Kinematics (IK) based on the current code used for controlling hexapods. The main difference is balancing/stability. Also gear-slope/backlash in the gear of the servos is a challenge on bipeds. Keeping the weight as low as possible is also more important on bipeds. When it comes to stability I tried solving that on Archer by simply moving electronics and battery from side to side.
Your new hexapod, MorpHex, looks absolutely amazing. How did you come up with its unique design, and what difficulties you encountered and how they were overcome?
Thanks, glad you liked it! I got the idea for building MorpHex for over a year ago. Mainy I got the idea watching my two eldest kids playing with Bakugan and I thought it would be cool to make a hexapod that could transform into a sphere and back to a hex again. I’m still working on MorpHex, you can see what I’ve accomplished so far on my blog. The main challenge with MorpHex was to make the variable sized body, the body needed to expand for making more space between the leg sections. There has been several difficulties during the making of MorpHex. At some point I considered to end the project, so I had to do some changes to the leg design for making the robot less heavy and also for removing some conflict between the sphere sections.
A lot of your robots seem incredibly lifelike and fluid in their movement, how did you manage to accomplish this?
The smooth movement are simply accomplished by accurate control, correct math and correct timing. Jeroen Janssen’s work on the Phoenix hexapod Basic Atom Pro code make this rather easy to accomplish. Instead of using a PS2 controller, I’m using a custom made remote controller. The remote controller play a big role for accurate control.
Of all your previous projects, which one did you enjoy working on the most?
Oh, thats very hard to say. I enjoyed them all. I think I’ve to say Phoenix was the project I enjoyed most.
What future projects are you looking forward to working on?
A full humanoid biped, a new hexapod and or a new quad…
Lastly, if someone is interested in robotics, but has relatively little hands-on experience, where would you recommend they start?
Lego mindstorm or VEX Robotic System is a very good plattfom. I’ve to say I’ve not worked with either of them. But I plan to introduce Lego Mindstorm for my kids one day. Also, a hex or biped Brat kit from Lynxmotion is a good start.
We make special note of this, because while Robot is indeed a fine, fine publication, Our Man In Japan Lem Fugitt has a really nice cover article about a neat sounding little event called RoboGames which apparently happened in the Silicon Valley this past April.
We love Lem, because not only does he have an exhaustively informative fire hose of robot information over on his blog (which blog we here would very much like to be when we grow up), but he also is a dandy fine person and we always look forward to plying him with alcohol and questionable conduct when he is here on his annual US spring sojourn.
We also welcome with open arms the possibility that more of our friends from Robot Japan and the greater Tokyo Area will come show the US competitors how it’s done for RoboGames 2012!
So go out and get a Robot right now and support printed matter.
