Join The Heineken Robot serves you beer
I figured that this next gadget might appeal to the beer guzzling crowd, which I’m assuming is some percentage of our audience.
The Heineken Robot, which I am guessing is a lack of a better name, was developed by some experimenters at Middlesex University in the UK. As you can see, it is essentially a beer keg with wheels. I’m pretty certain that the Heineken robot was in an extra on the Sandcrawler from the original Star Wars movie.
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And now, R2 would like to introduce…robot astronauts!
What you see here is a robot made by both NASA and GM, in order to go into outer space. Yeah, it sounds like science fiction, but it is happening right now.
In fact, there is a video of it after the jump so you can see the robots at work. You may notice that they can do some very precise work of assembling and disassembling, albeit slowly. I guess if time is not an issue, these robots could probably be sent to the space station right away.
Yes, there are probably a lot of bugs to work out before these robots are ready to be sent in orbit. Of course, one can see the need for robot astronauts. Why send a man up there if you can have a robot do the same job? Of course, if the robots break down, then you’d better send a robot to fix the thing.
Continue reading » And now, R2 would like to introduce…robot astronauts!
Palro robot pal from Fujisoft
Sure, I love covering robots here on Coolest Gadgets, and this particular one from Fujisoft is the Palro. I can only assume that this is some sort of blend of the words “Pal” and “Robot”. However, I would rather it have been called “RoPal”, doesn’t that sound so much cuter?
Palro comes with a lot of features that include 20 joints, five microphones, voice recognition, mono speakers, 3 Megapixel camera, Wi-Fi IEE 802.11 b/g/n, gyro-sensor, three-axis acceleration sensor, eight pressure sensors on the feet, 1GB internal memory, a USB port, and an Intel Atom 1.6GHz processor. In other words, he’s your laptop with arms and legs.
The Palro is powered by a 7.4V/2,800mAH lithium ion battery for power. Palro weighs in at 1.9 kg and is 15 inches tall.
Now, what is it that Palro can do? That is for the user to decide! Palro has some open architecture which allows the user to decide what they want to use Palro for.
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Dancingdoll RZ ups the realism ante
Trust the Japanese to come up with some really stunning robots in real life and not only in animes. The Dancingdoll RZ is one of them, boasting extremely fluid and realistic movements. She is very petite at a mere 60cm tall, where she is powered by 25 servo drives alongside a digital control board from V-Stone that drives her every move and action. Japanese manufacturer RozenZebet is the brains behind the Dancingdoll RZ, and “she” is most probably the stuff of dreams for many geeks out there already. Soon we’ll start to see a protest outside our courts for folks who want equal rights for robots and to marry them as well…
Diego-san: The working robot with the freaky baby head
You want to hear what freaks me out the most? Babies. I’m not talking about real babies that crawl, coo, and you have to change every once in a while. In fact, I think these babies are cute.
I’m talking about every time someone makes a baby’s head and puts it on something like a doll, or in this case, a robot. This is Diego-san, a four-foot tall robot with the head of a baby.
Why they used a baby’s head instead of a some sort of artificial face, I will never know. I mean, Number Five, C3PO, and Wall-E looked cuter. However, Diego-san’s face is made up of 20 moving parts, and it is designed to communicate via facial expression rather than talk.
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I-FAIRY Robot at CES 2010
There were a lot of robots on parade at CES this year, and this one was the I-FAIRY from Kokoro Co.
According to my source, this robot can be “programmed with the user’s voice and accompanying body gestures that give the I-FAIRY a more natural feel when used for museum guide work”. I have an attached video after the jump that shows it doing nothing of the sort, but rather sitting in one place and occasionally moving to the beat of rock music.
I guess someone’s finally invented a robot that slacks off, eh? No, just kidding. The I-FAIRY was developed in conjunction with Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, and I have no doubt that it can do everything that it says as far as being a museum guide.
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Speaker Bot plays your MP3 player
Despite all of the conspiracy theories that robots will someday take over the world, you can’t help but love this robot. He’s completely harmless, all he does is play your favorite music all day long. He may have a permanently goofy expression on his face, but at least he has his uses. Plus he’s made out of new and old parts, which means you’d be giving new use for old discarded electronics.
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Omnitread can get to places that we can’t
I’m not certain what it is, but there is a lot of cool robot stuff happening today. First the JO-ZERO, the Remo, and now the OmniTread.
The OmniTread isn’t a humanoid robot, and it isn’t a kit that you can special order just yet. The OmniTread is the work of some developers at the University of Michigan, and it is designed for some very rugged work.
As you can see in the video (after the jump), you will note that the design of the OmniTread resembles that of a train. The serpentine robot has treads on all four sides of its segments, and pneumatic bellows that can lift itself up like a caterpillar.
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