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Robots

R2D2 - Your personal entertainment droid

Posted By: Nic Fillingham | Jan 29th @ 9:20 PM
Love Star Wars? Yep! Interested in a scale replica R2-D2 to follow you around the house playing your favourite music/movies/Xbox 360 games? Hells yeah!!! Got a spare 3000 Euros? ....err.... what was the first question?

Along with the R2-D2 entertainment droid (who you control with a model Millennium Falcon remote no less) Nikko are also about to release a motorised R2-D2 web cam and light sabre VOIP phone... but you'll need a few Imperial Credits.

More info: http://www.nikkoamerica.com/nhe/index.html 

Edit: So Laura tells me she covered this story at last years CES... hmm... "that was not the Nikko R2-D2 story you were looking for...?"
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My robot life comes full circle

Posted By: Paul Foster | Dec 14th, 2007 @ 3:24 PM

HE-RObot27 years ago (or there abouts) as a young lad, I desperately saved to buy a Heathkit Hero Jr. Hero Jr was the little brother of the Hero 1 (which featured in an American TV serious and got me hooked on robotics). By the time I had enough money to phone Maplin and order a Hero Jr they had discontinued them :-(. This was a major blow to my robotic dreams. I managed a few lowly robots after this, religiously purchased the various early robot magazines but never managed to build a robot with all the features of the Hero range.

27 years later, I saw the White Box Robotics 914 PC Bot. It was still in proto-type and they were looking for 'pioneers' to order the first batch. A risk but also an opportunity. I immediately placed my order.

During the following 12 + months I kept the faith and waited patiently, lapping up any little nugget of information on the device. During this time, the EU passed the RoHS directive, the 914 was assembled in Canada  - North American doesn't have similar laws. So even while my 914 was ready for delivery I had to engage the government to find out the detail - could I import my 914 without RoHS certification. After a short delay the response was positive - a personal import was fine.

And now to yesterdays announcement (13th). Heathkit producers of the original Hero 1 and White Box Robotics are in a multi-year strategic agreement under which 'Heathkit will produce, manufacture and distribute an educational version of the robot to be known as the HE-RObot'!!

So full circle, I missed my Hero Jr, got my 914 PC Bot, and now so have Heathkit :-) Wow, the children of our time are going to have some fun.

Read more at Heathkit and White box robotics.
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A Robot Suitcase?

Posted By: Sarah Perez | Nov 16th, 2007 @ 2:06 PM
I saw this on The Raw Feed, and, I have to say: I want one! This Robot Suitcase will follow you around without bumping into things. A card you carry in your pocket tells the suitcase where you are and then a combination of its software, a gyroscope, light detectors, and sound and infrared sensors help it to follow you around without running into anything else. If someone steals your card, an alarm sounds (how does it know?). Of course, although you can buy it now, it won't be released until 2009 according the the Russian catalog where it was found. Well, maybe it's just a scam, but the people over at iRobot should definitely take notice. This is the robot the world needs next! Well, that, and the one that does the dishes, the laundry, and walks the dog.

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Beatbots: An experiment in social development and interaction

Posted By: Laura Foy | Oct 11th, 2007 @ 1:49 PM
Not only are these dancing robots adorable and fun to play with, but they are also a research tool. The BeatBots team joined forces with Hideki Kozima to study how children, specifically children with autism, interact and communicate. In a world with so much stimuli coming at us non-stop, the beatbots are non-threatening, simpler and easier for kids to relate to.
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A public invitation to Bill Gates

Posted By: Laura Foy | Oct 9th, 2007 @ 1:30 PM
Yesterday we introduced you to Xian Chaoren , a company from China who make incredibly lifelike humanoid robots. I was fortunate enough to run into this Father / Daughter duo at Wired Magazine's NextFest. After finishing the interview about her fathers twin robot she REALLY wanted to make this request of Bill Gates. So, here it is- and Bill, if you're watching, I think we all would agree that we could use another you :)
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A Robotic Twin?

Posted By: Laura Foy | Oct 8th, 2007 @ 4:08 PM
Admit it, we've all secretly wanted a robot clone of ourselves. Or, maybe a little robot sibling like on that show Small Wonder. Well, the reality is that we are not too far from all that happening. This father / daughter team, whose company is named Xian Chaoren,  has created the most lifelike robot I've seen to date. They actually won Time Magazines Robot of the Year in 2006. They have taken on Bill Gates prediction and hope  to have a robot in every home in the near future. In fact, check back tomorrow for a personal invitation from the Robot creators to Bill Gates himself...
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Microsoft's Robotics Studio Improved

Posted By: Sarah Perez | Jul 18th, 2007 @ 11:03 AM
Introduced in December 2006, Microsoft Robotics Studio is a Windows-based environment for academic, hobbyist and commercial developers to easily create robotics applications across a wide variety of hardware. On July 9th, a new version of this developer toolkit was introduced. The new Microsoft Robotics Studio version 1.5 adds support for Windows Embedded CE 6.0 and Windows Mobile 6, which allows developers to more easily deploy advanced scenarios and software applications on a wider variety of embedded platforms and at a lower cost. Additional improvements include improvements in its visual programming language and 3-D real-world-physics-based visual simulation environment, new services that offer support for vision and speech recognition, expanded documentation, and a new editor. Don't forget to hit up the downloads page for the Sumo Competition and Soccer Simulation packages! Then head over to the Microsoft Robotics Studio blog and see what they've done with the iRobot Create robots.
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Maker Faire: Sherman Robots & Robot BUGS

Posted By: Laura Foy | Jun 6th, 2007 @ 1:19 PM
Mark and Bill Sherman have taken their love and passion for robotics and turned it into an artform. And by "artform", I mean ArtBots. I swung by their booth this year at Maker Faire and found out where their inspiration comes from and just what it takes to create your own plantbots. What's a plantbot you say? Well...go ahead and click play and find out :)
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Maker Faire: Electric Giraffe

Posted By: Laura Foy | Jun 5th, 2007 @ 6:01 PM
The electric giraffe (aka 'Rave Raffe') is a shy, nocturnal creature of the Playa. It can sometimes be found roaming the streets of suburbia where it elicits awe amongst the spectators. Native of Southern California, the 'Raffe can sometimes be coaxed further afield for special occasions.

Enter now the world of the Electric Giraffe, and behold the beauty of its design, marvel at its engineering and revel in the presence of the World's first robotic giraffe.

Plus, you can ride on him!

 
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This is the droid you're looking for

Posted By: Laura Foy | Jan 31st, 2007 @ 3:21 PM
As you all know I'm a huge for of the Star Wars Trilogy.  :)  As I was wandering the halls of CES my eyes were drawn to the Nikko booth that was showing an R2-D2 Droid Projector and Chewbacca.  So if you want to see Star Wars like you've never seen before watch this piece. 
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International Robotics Part II

Posted By: Laura Foy | Jan 29th, 2007 @ 1:41 PM
If you liked the last installment of our coverage of International Robotics then you're going to love this one. If you didn't like teh last one well then you better just sit back and watch this one cuz it's better! More toys, more robots, more funny and one REALLY badass human face shaped LED monitor. Go ahead...click play.
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8th International Robotics Olympiad

Posted By: Nic Fillingham | Dec 14th, 2006 @ 12:25 PM
Hello world. Welcome to my inaugural video post for on10!

I was in Australia last week and decided to take a trip up to The Gold Coast (Queensland, Australia) for some sun, sand, surf and of course, the 8th International Robotics Olympiad (IRO).

Expecting to see Johnny 5 compete in the pentathlon or Alex J. Murphy in the syncronised swimming I was pleasantly surprised to find that humans were not yet slaves to the cyborg overlords although I was just a little disappointed in the notable absence of Optimus Prime, Megatron and Soundwave. 

I was however absolutely amazed that primary school children (that's children under 12 years of age) were building robots that could autonomously navigate through hazardous obstacle courses, climb stairs, clean rubbish from the beach and break dance. Yes ladies and gentlemen. Break dance.

Over 600 students from 15 countries around the globe attended this years conference competing in 19 different categories ranging from exhibition and creativity to the fiercely competitive maze solving challenge.

I had wanted to interview some students competing in the maze challenge but was informed that this was not possible (at the time) as I might inadvertently provide some kind of assistance to a student which would result in their disqualification. Eek! I thought of explaining that at the age of 12 I couldn't even tie my own shoelaces and so was probably not in a position to give tips on how to code in assembly however I decided against.

A big thank you to the team from Mexico who generously spent the best part of an hour explaining and demonstrating their amazing robot (Mexexanthe) that searches the forest for fires and relays data back to a central command station. Showing great ingenuity the team built what they couldn't buy/find including controller boards and light weight construction materials which you can see in the video.

Thanks to Dr Jun Jo from Griffith University for his time and the IROC volunteer crew who ran the entire four day event (and became very well acquainted with light gates and their idiosyncrasies as a result).

Thanks also to David L (who covered IRO on his blog here and actually builds robots) and James M for being my 'ring-in' camera men. The whole "Blair Witch Project" cinematography style doesn't really work in these situations.

If you're a student and interested in the competitive and fascinating world of robotics make sure you check out the IROC web site for more information on the next competition which is due to be held in Singapore in 2007.

Cheers -Nic
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Dinosaurs! Animatronics at the Natural History Museum in London

Posted By: Laura Foy | Sep 30th, 2006 @ 4:02 PM
I went overseas...to go back in time. The London Natural History Museum has an amazing exhibit up right now featuring the latest technology in animatronics. Of course, its no fun to show off life-like skin, movements, breathing patterns and feeding trends in little creatures....so they did it to Dinosaurs. They created huge dinosaur replications and gave them the personalities that they would have had back when they ruled the earth, quite frightening I must say.
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