The rumor mills are hard at work churning out speculation that Sony is going to kill it’s robotics division. The fuel for this fire is an excerpt from Sony’s Q305 fiscal reports that Akihabara News found. The text reads:


You can view the page yourself on Sony’s website. This seems like a rediculous move on Sony’s part. What are they thinking?

Phillip Torrone at Make Magazine has made a tribute post to AIBO and QRIO with lots of great pictures. AIBO and QRIO, you aren’t forgotten!
 

PeopleStaff, an employment agency in Japanese, is adding robots to its usual roster of people. PeopleStaff is recommending companies recruit Hello Kitty Robo and Ifbot. The positions are receptionists and hospital care, respectively. One wonders if the company is also considering a name change.

There’s something extremely unnerving about the thought of a tiny robot (rc controlled) driving around the inside of my abdomen. It seems very akin to the robot that too up residence inside of Neo on The Matrix. Regardless, Dr. Dmitry Oleynikov and colleagues at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha have created a small robot to do just that. It’s shaped like a long tube and is 15mm in diameter. Two "wheels" on either end of the tube propel the robot and the shaft connecting them houses a camera and a retractable needle.


Possible uses for this robot would be to insert several into a person and view a surgery site from multiple angles. Each robot is controlled from a console with a joystick. The tires are specially designed to not damage tissue and provide good traction inside the body.


(more…)

The Autonomous Light Air Vehicles (ALAVs), built by Jed Berk and Nihil Mitter, are three helium inflated balloons that roam about their invironment and interact with each other and humans in a very life-like way. The blimps use a new technology from Sun Microsystems called SunSPOTS. The devices simplify the wireless communications issues with the blimps.


The ALAVs also exhibit "hunger" behavior in which they seek out food sources which the humans can provide. The ALAVs will feed and then eventually become full and disregard the food.

The ALAVs move around by using 5 motors, and are powered off of a 3v lithium battery. Control was provided by the SunSPOT computer.

There are plenty of videos of the ALAVs in action on the website and they are quite engaging to watch. Very ethereal.



(more…)

If you are near the Museum of Science in Cambridge tonight around 7 PM, stop in for a unique concert. ‘Invasion of Technology‘ is a show featuring a mixture of music and musicians. Playing a blend Western and Balinese, Evan Ziporyn and Christine Southworth will be jamming with machines Bot(i)Cello and BlowBot.

You can view these robots at the Ensemble website.

(more…)