Cubestormer II – a puzzle solving bot powered by a Samsung Galaxy SII linked by Bluetooth to four Lego NXT ‘bricks’, recently beat the human record for solving the Rubik’s Cube, with a time of just 5.35 secs.
A custom app on the phone takes a picture of the cube, solves the puzzle virtually, and then relays the solution to the Lego robot.
Engineers at Raytheon-Sarcos in Salt Lake City have attached a set of tele-operated robotic arms to a modified mini-digger. Operators apparently require no training – intuitively ‘meshing’ with the machine as it mirrors the movements of their arms, wrists and shoulders.”
Robohash is a site where you can type in any name, web address, anything at all really, and generate one of ‘hundreds of millions’ of unique robot signature doodles. Here’s what we got for ‘broadsheet.ie’:
Aw. And then, because we’re like that, we did one for ‘Big Hairy Arse’, which yielded this disapproving robo-so-and-so:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQECrcZs6Wc
Factory equipment manufacturer Furkukawa Kikou’s impressive robotic hand-tool – seemingly defying the laws of nature by picking up gel, sauce and semi-liquid spills without smearing or even altering their shape.
Clearly the work of the Devil’s pastry chef.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZlLNVmaPbM
Modelled after Danish professor Henrik Scharfe from Aalborg University, Hiroshi Ishiguro‘s android, Geminoid DK is perhaps one of the creepiest and realistic looking humanoid robots ever made.
Geminoid DK has an older sister, Actroid-F – we’re familiar with her work.
Geminoid Clone Bot Hipper than Human Original (Crave)
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcIlTKoDPGI
His name’s Robbie, and if you like the cut of his cyber-jib you can go and be his friend on Facebook.
Which will be nice for both of you.
Niklas Roy, inventor of useless things, created a small motion-tracking robotic curtain to protect his privacy from nosey passers-by.
Damn thing attracted as much attention as it deflected.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKhbUjVyKIc&feature=player_embedded
Incapacitated? Ill in hospital? Recently crapped yourself? Worry not, here comes robo-nursie. Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have invented Cody: a robot that can administer a sponge bath.
Cody is hacked together from a “Segway omnidirectional mobile base, two anthropomorphic arms with seven degrees of freedom and wrists equipped with 6-axis force/torque sensors. The end of the robot’s right arm is fitted with a specialized ‘bath mitt’ and the robot gathers laser range data and images from a laser range-finder and camera mounted above the robot’s torso.”
It’s obvious from the video below that there’s some fine-tuning to be done before Cody is let loose in St. Vincents, but we can almost certainly look forward to its decendents spongeing our winky-zones sometime in the future.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ac2qwStrdo&feature=player_embedded
Previously:
Creepy Hospital Observer: Actroid F
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcZJqiUrbnI&feature=player_embedded#!
Female dancing robot HRP-4C unveiled at the Digital Context Expo in Japan at the weekend.
Also known as a (*shudder*) ‘gynoid’.
We’re never doing the robot again.
