First it was Jesse Sullivan, the first man to receive two bionic arms that are controlled via his own brain impulses, now it's Claudia Mitchell, the first woman to receive such an arm. Mitchell is the 4th such person to receive such an arm, which is controlled via nerves which originally went to the actual arm. The nerve endings left in the shoulder are then surgically moved to the chest-area, where they can then be used to send data from the brain to the arm.


The scientists in charge of this project are now working towards having an artifical hand send data back to the brain under the guise of a real hand.


You can check out some videos of the arms in action, here, here and here.



(more…)

A group of scientists at MIT are working on a gas engine about the size of a quarter. Better yet, it’s made out of sillicon. The device, who’s individual pieces are all working, still needs to be fully assembled and tested. The engines components, like a combustion chamber, compressor, and turbine, are created out of sillicon wafers. To overcome the precision and high pressures needed in such a design, the engine is created out of 6 sillicon wafters which are sandwiched together to form an extremely strong frame. Each wafer has the outline of the different components cut out of it, so when assembed, 3D shapes form in the wafer-sandwich (think of using a book to create a hidden chamber, by cutting out the center of pages). The turbine spins at 20,000 revolutions/sec and produces 10 Watts of power. By comparison, a standard hobby servo might take about 2 Watts to run.

The scientists hope to have the whole engine finished by the end of this year.



(more…)

Robot hobbiests (with a hefty wallet) rejoice! The long awaited 9-Series PC Robots from White Box Robotics are officially soon-to-be-shipping. The robots, manufactured by Frontline Robotics, which merged with Tom Burick’s brainchild, White Box Robotics, are first being released in a low quantity, initial run. These first robots, dubbed the 914 PC-BOT will be sold to early-adopters for a hefty price tag of $5,000. Lest that price completely turn you off from the thought of having your own handy PC-bot, the good folks at White Box have STRONGLY reminded us that they’re aiming for a sub-$2,000 price range once the ‘bots have ramped up to production.

The robots come standard with a propulsion system, 8 IR rangefinders, a USB motor controller system, batteries, webcam, a functional VIA EPIA SP13000 motherboard, 1GB of ram, 40GB harddrive, DVD/CD-RW drive, WiFi card, and Windows XP Home. It’s up to you to supply ideas for what to do with it. However, right out of the box you can wireless command it to navigate around your house, and you can also put it in an autonomous learning/navigating mode.

For more information and pictures you can check out the community site, 914PCBots.com along with their image gallery, and the purchase page for a complete list of features.

(more…)

Here’s a quick link dump to catch up on my lack of posts.

Jim, over at The NXT Step, pointed out that the New Yorker is doing a cartoon caption contest with a robot theme. Go and submit your idea, let me know what you think up.

Here’s a story I picked up about a suicidal man being subdued by a SWAT team robot. Not sure what type of robot it is.

Gizmag has a nice article on the new RoboSapien RS Media. He can be yours for a mere $600 USD in October. Who’s saving up?

Check out this video of a robot being controlled via WiFi and a PSP game system. It even sends the camera information back to be displayed on the PSPs screen. Nifty!



(more…)

 A new South Korean startup, D2E Robotics, plans on releasing a two-legged hobbiest robot in October. In what appears to be a move to compete with other companies, such as Kyosho, Kondo, and Hitec, the robot, dubbed D2V-ZN, will have simple voice recognition and a vision system.

Though, strangely enough, the company like to compare their robot to the vinerable RoboSapien from WowWee, saying:


The 12" tall robot will initially have a retail price of about $700 USD, but the company expects the price to drop to about $300 if the robot becomes popular.


"Arguably" is right. I wonder if they’ve talked to Ugobe yet?



(more…)