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3-in-1 All Terrain Robot
Have some spare time over the weekend that you want to dabble in a robotics project? Well, you can’t really go wrong with the 3-in-1 All Terrain Robot, that’s for sure. After all, it costs a mere £24.99 a pop, where it comes with half a dozen separate caterpillar tracks as well as a choice of three possible models, giving you much more bang for your hard-earned buck than any other robots out there in the market.
You name it – piles of leaves or pebbly beaches, the 3-in-1 All Terrain Robot is capable of traversing through them without missing a beat. You will be able to change between the robot’s Rover, Forklift or Gripper forms, while the basic wired controller ought to be enough to give you control over just about anything. The caterpillar tracks will make manoeuvring in tight spaces a snap. Just make sure you have a quartet of AA batteries ready to power the wired controller…
Japanese military makes a flying orb camera
What you are seeing here is not done with wire removal, but we are seeing a flying robot ball. It bears a strong resemblance to the torture ball robot from the original Star Wars movie, but this doesn’t have a needle on it, but a camera.
Yes, the purpose of the flying robot ball is to float in and take pictures. Its ball shape makes it more resistant, it case it bumps into walls.
This flying orb was designed by the Japan’s Ministry of Defense Technical Research and Development Institute. It can travel at a top speed of 40 miles per hour, and files on a single propeller with eight wings. You can see more of it on a video after the jump.
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FitBot is one smart mannequin
Robots are slowly but surely encroaching on human territory, where without them, we would still be laboring out in the fields without machines to assist us so that we can rest easy at home long before the sun sets. Cubicle droids might beg to differ, but I digress. Enter the FitBot, which is a robotic mannequin that is capable of sizing up and down according to your needs. Thanks to Estonian startup Fits.me, this innovative solution that was launched last year for the men will now come in a female equivalent.
Thanks to their custom-built robot mannequin known as the FitBot, it is capable of accurately modeling clothes so that they will be able to look good across a span of body sizes, using just a singl emannequin. This is the perfect fit, if I may say so, for online clothing retail sites since it is capable of simulating just what a particular garment will resemble on any body shape.
All you need to do is use sliders to indicate your vital statistics such as your height, bust, waist, hips as well as the measurement from your wrist to the back of your neck. The computer will then process all those information where it will show off an image of what the robot mannequin would look like upon wearing the garment of your choice in your size.
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Robomower for the modern caveman
Isn’t the modern caveman an oxymoron of sorts? That’s what we thought, but we realized that it also isn’t too far from the truth, either. After all, how many guys you know prefer to stay cooped up in their rooms, playing video games and munching on pizza and drinking beer all day long? Perhaps the married act differently, but for many teens as well as college students (and single yuppies), they have gone through such a phase in their lives before.
Mowing the lawn? That’s a chore that ought to be done by someone else, but if you don’t feel like interacting with more human beings, then there is the Robomower which will come in a variety of models, and all of them do their job well within their scope. All you need to do is press “GO”, and you can get back to your room, enjoying your newly purchased video game. We wonder whether this Robomower will be able to mow down zombies in case of an undead invasion…
Depending on the model, you will need to fork out anywhere from $1,999.99 to $2,799.99 for the Robomower, and it comes with a user controlled theft protection alarm system for added safety for your investment, especially if you don’t have a guard dog to help you out. Just to be on the safe side, the Robomower sports a tilt sensor safety feature that will stop rotating blades the moment the Robomow tilts.
This robot does windows, and runs on water
There’s nothing I like more than reporting on robots on this blog, and this one has is certainly has something unusual on two fronts.
First, it is can climb up walls, provided they are made of glass. It has suction cups, and they could take away all window washing jobs permanently. No more of those guys hanging off the sides of tall buildings.
Unfortunately, the suction cups won’t keep the robot affixed to the side of a glass building, not by themselves anyway. Here’s where it gets interesting. This robot has a vacuum suction that is generated by water. Yes, this robot can run on water. Not only that, the excess water is squirted out, which will help wash the windows.
Continue reading » This robot does windows, and runs on water
Ollie the robot comes in blimp form, with a child’s mentality
The other day, we reported on some telepresence robots that were essentially miniature blimps that fly around with someone’s head on it, and I equated the floating heads with something rather dystopian.
I now see a utopian age full of Ollie, a blimp who has been given the emotional range of a shy baby. There is a video after the jump, and you can see that Ollie is somewhat curious, and flaps its little fins when someone claps for it. It’s like a fish that has been given the ability to fly instead of swim, and breathe air, too.
It is an open source project that is designed by Parson’ grade Pritika Nilaratna, and it can be yours if you are willing to copy some code and assemble the lighter-than-air body.
Continue reading » Ollie the robot comes in blimp form, with a child’s mentality
University of Chicago to get a mechanized library
Just yesterday, I reported on the Yobot, a robot arm that will be stationed at a Yotel near Times Square New York, and its job is to take ones bag for safekeeping and file it with others.
This Joe and Rika Mansueto Library at the University of Chicago looks rather similar in operation, but it is essentially a robot librarian and not a bag check-in. It has about 35,000 metal bins in a five story chamber, which is enough for millions of books.
If a patron wants a particular book, he or she can request it, and one of the robot arms fetches it from the five story chamber located underneath the new section of the library. The books are not sorted by any sort of Dewey Decimal System or other numerical classification, but by size.
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Let the Yobot take your bag
This summer, a 669-room hotel known as the Yotel will open up at Times Square. This particular hotel has a “sleek, techno feel”.
I suppose someone wants the Yotel to be the “hotel of the future”, which is why guests have the option of giving their bags to a robot for safekeeping. Yes, this robot arm can take your bag an put it in one of 133 storage lockers.
Yes, I was hoping for a robot who would take your bags to your room, but I suppose the technology just isn’t there yet. Still, for those who want to store their bags behind the counter while they peruse the town after checkout, this is your ticket.
Continue reading » Let the Yobot take your bag
