“Intelligent” quad-rotor robots are quite capable and never cease to amaze. We saw them doing aggressive aerial manoeuvres in the past, but this time it seems the quad-rotors are through showing-off their reckless flying and are moving on to more constructive endeavours.
ETH Zurich roboticist Raffaello D’Andrea and architects Fabio Gramazio and Matthias Kohler teamed up to have the quad-rotors build a 1:100 scale model of a tower envisioned by the architects. This resulted in the first art installation to be built by flying robots: a 6 m tall tower made out of Styrofoam blocks. The quad-rotor team was coordinated by “The Foreman”, a computer which oversaw the entire operation from a motion capture rig using 19 IR cameras placed on the ceiling. Since this task was quite long and took several hours, the robots took turns so some of them could charge their batteries while the others worked.
The Foreman Cameras
For those wondering how do the robots grip the blocks, know that they use a specially designed gripper that punctured and held the brick as shown in the picture below.
Tim Heath is a robot maker and hacker. We wrote about his work in the past with cellphone robots. Now he is into a new project that requires a completely new set of skills: marriage.
Cellphone-based Quadcopter, one of Tim's Projects
Much like hacking together robots out of cell phones and vacuum cleaners, Tim applies open source and hacker philosophy to marriage as he puts together unexpected pieces in order to build his new life.
Great for him, but why are we reporting this? Simply because he needs your help. He is putting together a documentary (geeks love do document their projects!) and he invites everybody to help him fund some of the filmmaking expenses trough KickStarter.
See the documentary trailer below and hurry up since there is only one week left for contributing to the project.
We love Festo‘s creations. The most recent addition to their family of soft, flexible, nature-inspired robots is the SmartBird. As shown in the video below, at first sight, the robot looks like a regular sea gull (albeit a silver one).
This autonomous ornithopter emulates the shape and flying technique of a sea gull. Its silent natural-looking flight could make it a very good spy UAV. See the video below in order to know more about the robot’s mechanics.
Some time ago, we announced the nomination for the Top Ten Coolest Robots of 2010. You voted and now the results are in. Let’s have a closer look at the ten lucky robots and find out which one is the big winner.
#10 Google Car and Bae Systems Taranis Tied
These two robots are tied in the number ten ranking with the same number of votes.
Google Autonomous Car
The Google car is definitely cool and very promising in the future. It is now possible to envision a near future where all cars will be autonomous and will provide humans with an optimized transportation service that will fit our needs while remaining efficient, fast and not prone to accidents, traffic jams, and law infringements. Imagine if a car could come pick you up in the morning whenever you are ready to leave, bring you to work while you catch-up on the latest news, read emails or simply take a nap, and then be available to transport any other human in the nearby area.
BAE Taranis UCAV
The Taranis Drone by BAE Systems leads to a less Utopian future. Being an autonomous combat aircraft, it (along with a few robofriends) would be able to potentially destroy entire cities in a perfectly autonomous and efficient way.
#9 The DFRobotShop Rover
DFRobotShop Rover
The DFRobotShop Rover is not autonomous and has no destructive capabilities, but it certainly is cool. At 89.99$, it is currently the most affordable programmable mobile robot, and it is Arduino-based too! It can use Arduino Shields in order to gain new capabilities such as wireless communication, GPS, solar power, etc. This robot allows children and adults to learn about robotics and to ultimately create their own customized robot.
#8 Raytheon XOS 2
Raytheon XOS 2 helping soldier do push-ups
The XOS 2 from Raytheon is the real life response to the Iron Man suit from the comics and movies. By using this exoskeleton, human soldiers can gain super-human strength and endurance. This suit might be our only hope to defeat the robots when the Robopocalypse arrives.
#7 Boston Dynamics Little Dog
Boston Dynamics Little Dog
The Little Dog is one of the best creations by Boston Dynamics. As its larger predecessor, it is able to navigate rough terrain by quickly adapting its legs motion and learning how to overcome new obstacles. This shows the dog’s artificial intelligence is remarkably adaptive and fast. This type of locomotion will be excellent in extreme conditions (such as exploring Mars).
#6 Kawada HRP-4
HRP-4 Serving Refreshments
The latest addition to the Kawada HRP family is certainly one of the coolest robots. The HRP-4 is slim, fast, strong, and looks definitely slick. Its smaller proportions allow it to perform more delicate task and to move more elegantly without hitting objects. It is likely that this kind of robots will be helping humans in the future with their everyday tasks.
#5 University of Pennsylvania Aggressive Quadrotors
University of Pennsylvania Agressive Quadrotors UAVs
These robots are definitely mean. The (quad/hexa/octo)copters are the most aggressive UAVs out there, especially since researchers from the university of Pennsylvania programmed them to perform crazy aggressive manoeuvres. These robots clearly show how much more accurate and fast machines can be when compared to humans. Besides being super impressive and scary, they could have more useful applications such as aerial photography, surveying, and taking pictures of bikini models.
#4 Willow Garage PR2
Willow Garage PR2
The people at Willow Garage put together one of the most advanced, useful, and developer-friendly robots. The PR 2 is runs the popular and open source ROS (Robot Operating System) and has been seen perform many everyday tasks successfully. Even the proverbial fetching a beer from the fridge is not out of reach for this robot. Although this robot would be immediately useful in a normal household, we may have to wait until the price comes down from the current 400 000$ level before we can see it in mainstream use.
All robots so far are extremely cool, useful and quite simply awesome. But which robots can beat them all? Find out more after the break.
For quite some time now, Festo, a leading pneumatics company, has been innovating in the robotics field by creating impressive and very unique robots inspired by nature.
The video below, is a good summary of their innovative work.
Make sure you also have a look at their Youtube channel recently populated with lost of videos.
Everybody knows that robots take jobs that are simply too dangerous or that human do not want to do, filming and taking pictures of bikini models is definitely not one of them. Nevertheless, a very lucky hexacopter UAV got this highly coveted job.
UAV Photographing Bikini Model
If you want to reproduce the experiment you will need a UAV (available at RobotShop) and various bikini model (not yet available at RobotShop). In the video below, (if you can) pay close attention to the good image stability, the flexibility and speed of the camera movement, and the very hard to reach shooting angles.
RobotShop is putting together a list of the most noteworthy and outright coolest robots for 2010 and we need your help. You can participate by voting in a poll on the RobotShop Forum that will decide which are The Ten Coolest Robots of 2010.
We have selected twenty of the coolest robots from a cross section of the robotic market. Robots are presented in alphabetical order to remove bias. Keep reading for a brief description of each of the robotic contestants for the 2010 RobotShop Top Ten Coolest Robots.
Aldebaran Nao
Aldebaran Nao
The Nao form Aldebaran Robotics has been very present this year performing all sort of dances and rather cute actions. It is the only fully autonomous humanoid in the market today with such great capabilities at a (sort of) reasonable price.
Anybots QB
Anybots QB
The QB form Anybots is a new and upcoming telepresence robot that is intended to be user friendly and allow you to be present at a remote location in an instant.
AR Drone Parrot
AR Drone Parrot
The Parrot form AR Drone is the first affordable UAV that can be intuitively and easily controlled though a web enabled device such as an iPhone or laptop.
BAE Systems Taranis
BAE Taranis UCAV
The Taranis by BAE Systems is an Unmanned Combat Aircraft System (UCAS) developed for the UK military. This stealth “swept delta” aircraft is intended to be fully autonomous.
Boston Dynamics Little Dog
Boston Dynamics Little Dog
As a derivative of Big Dog, Boston dynamics‘ Little Dog is a smaller version of the popular quadruped robot. This robot is intended to navigate very challenging terrain and cross large obstacles. The dog can learn and quickly adapt to a wide variety of terrain and recover form unexpected situations such as slipping or sudden terrain modifications.
Dr Robot created a very nice tracked professional robotic platform intended for extreme terrains. The Jaguar can climb stairs, and navigate autonomously indoors and outdoors. Lately, the Jaguar got redesigned ad received a significant price cut thanks to improved manufacturing techniques.
Evolution Robotics Mint
Evolution Robotics Mint
The Mint from Evolution Robotic is a new floor cleaning robot that can operate very quietly. It can systematically and thoroughly mop and wipe hard floors thanks to it indoors navigation technology and proven wiping pads such as Swiffers.
Google Autonomous car
Google Autonomous car
The desire of having self-driving cars is very present in science fiction. Now, thank to Google and and the engineering behind the DARPA Challenges, the autonomous car is a reality. This type of technology can truly revolutionize humans’ everyday lives.
Humboldt University Myon
Humboldt University Myon
The Myon (or Muon) from Humboldt University is a child sized a modular humanoid. It is made of interchangeable parts that can operate independently of the rest of the body. This means that if a critical leg part breaks, it could be replaced by a less critical arm par for instance.
Kawada HRP-4
Kawada HRP-4
The HRP-4 by Kawada ifs the latest of a long series of very impressive humanoid robots. This last iteration is particularly thin, fast and gracious.
Neato Robotics XV-11
Neato Robotics XV-11
The XV-11 by Neato Robotics is cleverer than its predecessors and is becoming very popular quite rapidly. Thanks to its mapping capabilities, the robot vacuum is capable of systematically and efficiently cleaning a room very rapidly.
Raytheon XOS 2
Raytheon XOS 2
The XOS 2, a military Exoskeleton by Raytheon is able to greatly augment the force and thus the endurance of a human soldier. The XOS 2 is basically the closest technology to the Iron Man suite (form Marvel comics) currently in existence.
RobotCub iCub
RoboCub iCub
The iCub from RobotCub is a humanoid robot intended to emulate a toddler in size, motor skills and learning capabilities. The video below demonstrates its motor and learning skills.
RobotShop DFRobotShop Rover
DFRobotShop Rover
The DFRobotshop Rover is the result of the collaboration of RobotShop and DFRobot. It is the cheapest Arduino-based programmable robotic platform currently available on the market. The clever use of the PCB as a structural part is partly what makes it so affordable.
Smartpool Nitro
Smartpool Nitro Wall Scrubber
The new Nitro pool cleaner robot family form Smartpool is faster and more accurate than its predecessors. It is very technologically advanced and cleans pools thoroughly.
University of Penn Aggressive Quadrotors
University of Pennsylvania Aggressive Quad-rotor UAVs
The BEAR by Vecna Robotics is a military rescue robot with a friendly Teddy-Bear face. Despite its friendly face, it is extremely strong and can easy carry a soldier on its extended arms.
Wild Planet Trakr
Wild Planet Trakr
The Trakr form Wild Planet is a interesting spy robot toy. It has a camera and microphone and can record video. Another noteworthy aspect of the robot is that it is easily hackable and can become a very interesting robotic development platform.
Willow Garage PR2
Willow Garage PR2
The PR2 from Willow Garage is a service robot that runs the Open Source Robotic Operating System ROS. Since its creation, the PR2 has been making significant progress at tackling everyday tasks. This rapid advancement is mainly due to its simple programming interface that provides useful abstractions for its components.
Now that you had a quick look at all the robotic candidates, feel free to chose your favourite in the following poll: 2010 RobotShop Top Ten Coolest Robots.
University of Pennsylvania Aggressive Quad-rotors UAVs
These robots can do pretty impressive manoeuvres that humans would have a very hard time to imitate. They fly trough free-falling hoops and small windows, they cooperate at grasping and transporting objects, they perch, and much more. Have a look at the videos below in order to witness the quad-rotors in all their aggressiveness.
Wiwo.de and The Register, and Fortune report that google has acquired a md4-1000 from the German company Microdrones GmbH. That type of UAV can fly for roughly one hours on a single charge and could photograph pretty much everything on tits way. Maybe Google is seeking a cheaper alternative to traditional aerial photography for Google Earth, maybe they are launching a “Google Spy” service, only the future will tell…
The Little Bird, a full-sized autonomous helicopter made its first flight last June. For the first time, a full sized autonomous robot performed an entire flight (including take-off, obstacle avoidance, and landing) by itself. The helicopter is a modified MD 530F and features all the high-tech sensors you would expect in a UAV, but in harder, better, faster and stronger.
The robot was made by an Army-funded research team from Carnegie Mellon and the Piasecki Aircraft Corporation. The video below illustrates the type of maneuvers the unmanned helicopter can do but features one of its smaller cousins.
We cannot wait to see the full-sized chopper robot try some aggressive manoeuvres like other UAVs do.
