Robot Gadgets

When I was a kid, I had to do a self-portrait in the third grade. It wasn’t a pretty good likeness of me. If I wanted to do a self-portrait now, I’m certain it would be as good.

Perhaps this is why Jen Hui Liao invented a self-portrait machine. This device is designed to take a snapshot of the user, and then it will draw a picture of you.

You might wonder how this works. I’m not certain either, but if you thought that this device comes with some robot arm to draw for you, you’re half right. There is a robot arm, but the user actually handcuffs his or her wrist to it. You might want to check out the YouTube video after the jump to see it in action.

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Take a look at the photo to the left. These are not twin brothers, or some sort of photo trickery. As it so happens, one of these men is a robot.

Yeah, I don’t know which one is fake either. However, I think you should know that this technology is available. Just so you can be free of your Stepford Wives nightmares, this robot cannot walk and talk, or be some evil version of you who will go about doing bad while you take the blame.

No, what you are looking at is one of those animatronics like you would see at Disneyland’s Pirates of the Caribbean ride, but a bit more realistic. The best you could hope for is a figure that would sit there and move its head and eyes in a realistic fashion. The might be enough to fool a boring college professor.

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As a parent of a toddler, I am always looking for the latest and greatest baby products. The Bomo Robot Baby Carriage might be one that I probably wouldn’t buy, even if I could afford it.

The point of this product is to put the little baby in, and then program it to automatically follow the parental figure around the house. It can apparently “see” obstacles and navigate around them, provided they don’t move independently, like pets or older siblings.

Of course, if you want to give the baby the wheel, that is an option. Manual mode allows the tyke to hit the accelerator and use a fully functioning steering wheel. You might want to make certain the safety gate is on the stairs first.

After the baby has taken his or her joyride, its unique horizontal swing motion will help put him or her down for a nap.

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This Dustbot robot is the type of concept technology that I live to report on. European scientists have come up with a new way of removing trash in narrow streets with these wheeled guys. Clearly, Disney-Pixar was the inspiration as the Dustbot is essentially a WALL-E without the ecological apocalypse.

This new garbage collection process would start when a consumer with a bag full of trash gives the Dustbot sanitation organization a call or sends a text message. The automated system then sends the nearest Dustbot right to the user’s door, navigated via GPS.

From there, the consumer selects the type of trash he or she is disposing on the touchscreen, and put it in the drawer/compressor that comes from the Dustbot itself. I can only presume that the Dustbot goes somewhere and dumps the trash in an eco-friendly spot after that.

You may notice that the Dustbot is precariously balanced, like a Segway. So what happens when you call up a Dustbot, drop in your garbage, and then it tips over? Talk about awkward.

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I have just seen Terminator Salvation, and I was somewhat impressed by what I saw. It certainly wasn’t the same quality as T3: The Rise of the Machines, but that is a very, very good thing.

I am not revealing any spoilers by saying that there is a scene where a gigantic robot scoops up humans, and then puts them in one of those flying ships that are seen in previous Terminator films. Of course, it isn’t explained why the heck these humans are being rounded up, nor why they are being stored at their main headquarters.

It cannot be denied that this new ROBOTOPS from Japanese company Tadano Ltd. bears a strong resemblance to the aforementioned people-snatching robots from the well-known Warner Brothers science fiction franchise, but this robot is designed for construction, to pick up very heavy objects such as girders and the like.

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Since I am male, I have this thing about not wanting to ask for directions. It would appear that a German research group known as the Institute of Automatic Control Engineering has created a robot that asks directions for them.

In fact, the Autonomous City Explorer, or ACE, is completely dependent on directions to get to where it needed to go. This robot was recently let loose off campus from a University in Munich, and it was programmed to get to a landmark 1.5 kilometers away. Check out the video after this jump.

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Most artists will say that that hardest part of drawing a human being is the hands. I would imagine that making the hands of a robot are an equally daunting task, but some new developments by the Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory (RoMeLa) at the College of Engineering at Virginia Tech could make it easier.

Their project, called the Raphael (Robotic Air-Powered Hand with Elastic Ligaments) is a hand made of transparent plastic fingers, equipped with rubber knuckles. These knuckles are like accordions, and compressed air causes them to “flex”.

Microcomputers in this robotic hand allow each finger to figure out how strong to flex. If you want a demonstration of Raphael’s selective strength, watch this YouTube video after the jump. You can see that Raphael can hold a light bulb and an egg as easy as delicately as a human can.

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I’m sure we have all heard stereotypical comment by those viewing modern art paintings: “My kid can paint that”. Well, we might be entering a new age where people will be saying: “my robot can paint that”.

In fact, graduate student Oscar G. Torres is trying to figure out a way to make a robot paint with Jackoon. Jackoon is a robot that is connected to a camera that allows it to “see” what it is painting.

In other words, the Jackoon isn’t just randomly splattering paint, it “knows” what it is doing, in theory. Now, does this make paint better than abstract expressionist artists like Jackson Pollack and Willem de Kooning (who serve as namesake of the Jackoon)? Well, take a look at the picture here and judge for yourself. While you are at it, you might want to see the robo-artist at work in this video after the jump.

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