This is some what appropriate for today (knee deep in snow here), the robotic snow plough AKA Yuki-taro.

Yuki-taro may look like one of Bob the Builder’s friends but he’s (or should that be it) one high tech piece of machinery. By using a GPS system and video camera eyes Yuki-taro is able to find snow, suck it up and compress it into blocks for easy storage, these are then expelled out of the back, so he craps blocks of snow so to speak.

Yuki-taro is a working concept at the moment and won an award in the recent Good Design Contest . The robotic snow plough is planned for commercial release in the next five years.

Source: Pink Tentacle

Most companies that manufacture counterfeit goods often pick up targets that are easy to replicate, take the iPod nano for example. There are tons of nano lookalikes that hail from China, and despite many of them boasting different brand names, peel off the cover and you get the same generic schematics underneath. Therefore, it is pretty rare to see a fake of what most people would deem to be an advanced electronic toy. JaiQi Toys decided to go against the grain by releasing an entire line of Wowwee rip-offs. Known as the “Bo Series”, this quartet of robots actually play their roles pretty well despite being an honest-to-goodness fake.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve never been a big fan of DJs (I prefer my music to be performed by musicians rather a guy with a bit of vinyl (or am I just getting old)). However a robot arm DJ might change my mind, it can play the records and also do a bit of scratching (though why you’d want a robot to scratch your collection I don’t know ).

Video after the jump Read the rest of this entry »

I just came across this video of an industrial robotic arm being used to perform a roller coaster like ride, looks very cool!

Robosapiens have always been one of the coolest toys to own and they’ve just got a smidgen cooler with the upcoming release (no firm date yet) of the Homersapien and Spidersapien. So instead of having a boring old robot looking robot you’ll be able to get one that looks like Homer on steroids.
Read the rest of this entry »

According to a Wired magazine article military forces around the world are starting to develop the so called MAVs (Micro Air Vehicles) to be employed on different types of military operations. “If you feel something crawling on your neck, it might be a wasp or a bee. Or it might be something much more dangerous.”

The MAVs will not be used for massive destructive endeavors but rather for specific and tactical missions, like getting inside buildings to destroy the power supply. Fred Davis from the Air Force Research Laboratory commented: “This means preventing the target from carrying out its mission, rather than destroying it (…) for example, can be put out of action by destroying its tires; a MAV can do this by squirting them with few milliliters of a catalytic de-polymerization agent, causing them to disintegrate rapidly.” Read the rest of this entry »

Sure, you’ve wanted a suit to make you so strong you could punch through the hulk while looking cooler than the Fonz. Well, it’s closer than you think (not the ‘cool as the Fonz’ thing, the other one, you’re still a geek).

Anyhew,,,

It’s the Exoskeleton Olympics!! It happens every four years, for the first time ever, and it’s,,, riveting!!! Get it,, cause rivets are used to connect parts, and,,, never mind. (second vid ‘warm ups’)
Anyway

Yet another sweet exoskeleton batch has dropped lately. If you are like me, and desire to see weaklings leg press a small house with nothing but wires, steel, their brains, and a small amount of muscle power, then you are in for a treat!

Read the rest of this entry »

WowWee’s new robot, which appeared at this year’s CES, is called Roboquad and amused people crawling around on its four legs. The robot comes with infra-red sensors and apparently it can be used as guard since it is able to scan for sounds and movements, up to 10 feet away. The manufacturer is claiming that the robot should also be able to identify objects of different sizes, move around furniture and detect the edge of doorways. Read the rest of this entry »