Rossiter is no stranger to biological robots, in fact he has created robots (EcoBots) that contain a microbial fuel cell that mimics actual digestion and can process things like fruit instead of running off things like fossil fuels or batteries. On top of that, the cells also mimic respiration where oxygen is provided to an electrochemical half-cell to create useful energy.

Since the bots don’t require any recharge, they are completely autonomous and will stop working once the work is completed (or if/when food supplies run out).

With $350,000 worth of funding from Leverhulme Trust, Rossiter and partner Ioannis Ieropoulos from the Bristol Robotics Laboratory plan on making these bots even more suitable for the “release and forget situations” by making them biodegradable. This element allows for these bots to be used perfectly for things like environmental cleanup as they will work until the job is completed then “die” and biodegrade into harmless material.

In addition, companies that employ these bots will, in the long run, end up saving a lot of money since there will be no need to track, reclaim, and dismantle them.

At the moment, there’s no real word on what materials these robots are made of and while there have been trial tests on the microbial fuel cell, the technology is still in its infancy. Still, with all the potential applications of these biodegradable robots, it wouldn’t be surprising to see environmentally minded scientists pursue this course of study.

At fifteen inches tall, the Voice Activated R2-D2 responds to 40 different commands!

It might cost just shy of two hundred big ones, but when your own R2-D2 gives you lip in the form of an audible swirly, and then having to say, “R2, behave yourself!” to get him to listen to you again is just priceless.

Blast the cantina music from the first Star Wars film and watch as R2 breaks out into a shaking dance that we all know and love so well.

“Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope.” This R2-D2 bot replays famous lines and sounds from the entire Star Wars franchise, making our office, homes, and schools into “a galaxy far far away” from our own mundane Milky Way.

If your co-worker just doesn’t get Star Wars, (as they sneer at your geek mentions with disdain) then be sure to send in R2 to sound alarms, or follow the less than friendly non-believer around the cubicle maze for outright hilarity. R2-D2 is very real!

This droid wheels himself around with the help of an infrared sensor that helps him follow behind you, or it can be set to detect motion, turning R2 into a room sentry that sounds an alarm when a secured area is invaded. R2′s lights, swiveling dome top, and distinctive happy and sad sounds faithfully mimic the real thing.

And folks, this R2 really is programmed to play tag, if you want him to.

iRobot brings the fully automated technological innovations of the future to us in the form of a round bot just 14.8 inches in diameter. It actually looks a bit like an Olympic curling stone, though no ice is required with this bad boy.

As long as the ability to wield dangerously strong vacuum abilities or breathe fire is not possible with the relatively artificially intelligent Scooba 390, this bot appears to be useful and actually functional, using iAdapt tech to go over each section of floor three times before completing its run.

For anyone that loves hardwood floors and the scintillating smell and shine of oak can now rejoice and put their feet up on the couch, because there is a cleaning slave robot named Scooba 390 that can wheel its way around furniture, and apply rigorous cleaner to remove up to ninety-eight percent of common household bacteria.

Cat and dog owners will find the iRobot extraordinarily easy and efficient, as it does not even need any sweeping of the fur balls and dog shed tumbleweeds (of hair, folks).

The Scooba 390 bot washes floors with a four-stage process, first prepping surfaces, then washing, scrubbing, and finally squeegeeing.

Interested? It goes on sale today for $499.99 at iRobot.

The NRL is working with researchers from Virginia Tech and the University of Pennsylvania to create the humanoid Shipboard Autonomous Firefighting Robot (SAFFiR), which is based on the CHARLI-L1 created at Virginia Tech. The robot is programmed to autonomously maneuver around the narrow passageways and ladders aboard ships, and fight fires.

It is equipped with a camera and gas sensor to effectively detect fires and an infrared camera to see through smoke in order to pinpoint the fire. The lightweight aluminum central frame and titanium springs minimize overall transport weight, and makes the SAFFiR easy to transport should the need arise.

Unlike the clunkier firefighting robots of today, the SAFFiR is able to traverse obstacles, maintain balance on the high seas and walk in all directions thanks to a six-axis force/torque sensor on its feet.

Aside from its firefighting qualities, the SAFFiR is being programmed to think and work within a group setting with human damage control personnel. The various algorithms will allow autonomous decision making within a team setting, though a multi-modal interface will allow the SAFFiR to understand gestures like pointing, track the human leader’s focus of attention and potentially even understand and respond to natural spoken language.

Currently, the SAFFiR will be able to fight fires for approximately 30 minutes thanks to its battery pack. While it has not yet been tested, the NRL hopes to put it aboard the Shadwell by September of 2013.

[via Navy]

One of the most fearsome and suspenseful characters in Ray Bradbury’s masterpiece Fahrenheit 451 is the fireman’s ultimate weapon: their artificially intelligent robotic dog. This creature is made to run down any transgressors trying to escape from a book hoarding crime scene in a future where books are outlawed and ruthlessly burned by the fire department.

That robot is armed with poisoned needles, but is animal-like in all ways as it runs deftly and extremely fast on all fours and can leap and pounce on people trying to escape its clutches. Boston Dynamic’s Cheetah bot might be the result of reading these passages, though they are not trying to hunt people…YET!

The goal is to improve on the sluggish top speed of today’s free-standing robots, so that rocky or uneven planes that restrict wheeled bots from traversing across are no longer a problem. Currently the freestanding robots can go from about five to ten miles-per-hour maximum with excellent balance but slow speed . . . that is until the Cheetah is unleashed.

Right now, the researchers, led by Dr. Alfred Rizzibeast, have a work in progress, though they have achieved a remarkably articulated spinal section of a back that makes the Cheetah adept for walking or running on rough terrain. On a treadmill it is running at eighteen miles-per-hour, but the engineers are having trouble fitting a powerful enough battery in the small space available to have it running free just yet.

The researchers estimate they will have the Cheetah free and on its own soaring near top human speeds by the end of the year. And Boston Dynamic hopes to create an ostrich that can function similarly and possibly break the thirty mph mark in the next couple of decades. The future is here!

Watch out before turning the corner at the kitchen door. A robot could be scuttling by along the floor aiming to fire ping pong balls, while his partner traverses the living room couch in hopes of shooting a foam dart at any transgressor.

With the amazing evolution of modern robotics in the twenty first century, inventor Jaimie Mantzel has magnanimously offered up an innovative new radio controlled toy robot – that’s right, toy – for kids of all ages (and that includes me, folks).

This thing does not even have a name yet, though the toy company Wow! Stuff has signed on to distribute these, once the prototypes are tweaked to perfection, and they are currently holding a contest to attribute a name to these six-legged bots.

Manztel’s radio controlled robots each have six legs, walk creepily like enlarged bug bots, and have futuristic looking color schemes in their bodies and the various attachable armor pieces and weapons accessories that they can easily be outfitted with.

This is reminiscent of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Pizza Thrower, which comes to my mind happily, as it was made for the action figures to fire discs at one another. My friends and I used to fight each other with them, but if we had had our hands on radio controls to direct the Throwers to walk on their own to find and eliminate toy enemies like Mantzer’s, then we might not have attacked each other in the flesh.

Now, the Mantzel toy robot can be fit with a small disc throwing attachment too, though the design is to hit competitor bug bots, disarming both their G.I. J.O.E.-like armor and their legs. The inventor hopes to work in a light function to indicate when a hit has been made and possibly a kill switch, so that a robot taking three hits to the body would shut down, signaling defeat.

No one knows the price, or when these will be available, but they look like they will be fun that is not worth missing.

[via Gizmag]

Sphero is a ball, about the size of a Magic 8-ball, that moves around through a (one time only) Bluetooth connection with a smartphone or tablet that serves as its remote control. The “Sphero” App is the brain of the device and can program it to adhere to the user’s voice commands that will get it to move, or even play dead.

There are many ways to drive the Sphero, and the “Sphero Golf” application allows an iPhone to act as a putter and club the ball, without actually touching it, toward any office garbage can or hole. There is also a Space Invaders-like game where the player holds and turns the Sphero ball to fight off the spaceships on the iPad screen’s starry backdrop.

The ball itself looks like an enormous eye with its white exterior (but the color is changeable in the “Sphero” App) and a pupil-like circle that serves as a camera for pictures and video through the use of the “SpheroCam” App, which is one of six Apps that are available for it for free.

Sphero might be a cat’s dream, but it also seems like a pricey way to have fun with friends, or spy on neighbors. Sphero is one hundred and twenty-nine bucks and specifically runs on just iOS Apple devices or Androids for the time being.

Robots have been around for quite some time, but it isn’t until now that many people are beginning to really invest money and time into worthwhile causes. Steve Cousins, former Xerox veteran, believes that the usage of robots will become as prolific as the use of the home computer in the near future, and has created some of his own personal robots at  his startup firm Willow Garage.

Currently the star of the show is PR2, a robot that can be programmed to pretty much do anything. Bosch has turned around and programmed the robot to do everything from simple tasks like delivering mail to more complex jobs like woodworking and of course the all-important beer-fetching.

The robot, like the many others that Willows Garage has created, can “learn” different things if it is inputted with an app that tells it what to do. Another neat robot is the TurtleBot which utilizes the Microsoft Kinect and enables the little bot the ability to drive, build 3D pictures, take panoramas and even bring you food.

One of the greatest things about all the robots made by Willow Garage is that they come with the open source robotic operating system (ROS), allowing anyone proficient in Linux to create their own programs, select some from the ROS, or buy them at the Robot App Store.

The dream of having your own personal robot do the household chores is not far off. Which probably means the day of their uprising isn’t far off either. Still, I for one welcome our new robot overlords.

This is no futuristic noir fiction; this is reality.

However, the Romotive creators have not implemented their smartphone robot to eliminate humanity, but rather they wish for us to have fun with them, the bots.

The Romo looks like a transparent toy tank, which is fun in and of itself, but the bot is so much more. And for a donation of just seventy-eight dollars consumers can revel in the revelatory possibilities of a robot made to be tinkered with.

This bot comes with the physical body and also the software to make Romo a learning, roaming entity.

Romotive uses a supercomputer that is already owned by myriad consumers – the iOS of the iPhone and iPod touch, or the Android’s OS – to act as their device’s brain. Then their “robotics platform adds everything that the smartphone is missing – movement, accessories, and [the] physical capabilities that a true robot needs.”

Romo connects to the actual smartphones, seated and strapped in place, through analog frequencies, and the idea is that Romo’s programming possibilities are infinite: anyone can create Apps to get the robot doing robotic-type things.

To get the bot users started, Romo comes with three programs:

There is the “RomoRemote” App that brings a voyeuristic spy element to the little guy, as owners can see where Romo is going via the smartphone’s camera and can even instruct Romo to speak to unsuspecting friends (for that Holy Sh*T moment).

Romotive took a page out of Nintendo’s book with the “Romo Kart” App that pits your friends in a mixed-reality version of the classic Mario Kart game where the user can send digital attacks and make a friend’s robot spin out of control, disable their power, deflect bombs, and reverse their controls as you race!

Then there is the “Drag and Drop Programming Module” application that allows for easy commands to be acted upon such as Romo’s future movements, conditional statements, loops, and more.

The inventors at Romotive even encourage the hacking of their bot! Note to hardware hackers: We encourage you to take Romo apart and find new uses for the interface between smartphone and motors! We only ask that you share your inventions with the community on http://romotive.com/forum.

Let’s get some arms on this bad boy and teach Romo to get us a sandwich!

That’s right, the NAO Next Gen bot will scan faces using two brains in order to correctly greet and interact with specific people that the NAO knows.

The future that Asimov foresaw (in the book iRobot) is starting here with a wave of revolutionary robotics. The Paris based Aldeberan engineers already boast that their NAO robots are the most widely used humanoid robot for academic purposes worldwide.

These robots learn as you teach them things, such as catching a ball or following someone (which is a little creepy, I know).

The NAO bots are made to physically feel their environment with adept prehensile hands (which means they can grip and feel with their palms and fingers like we do), arms, legs and body.

The NAO bots already appear in many classrooms and have specifically helped autistic students with interaction due to the short, 57 cm tall, and friendly demeanor accompanying a people-friendly thirst for learning.

These bad boys/girl bots can hear with extreme accuracy due to four microphones, and they can see and discern how to use their body using a spot on sensor network, including 2 cameras, 4 microphones, sonar rangefinder, 2 IR emitters and receivers, 1 inertial board, 9 tactile sensors, and 8 pressure sensors.

The NAO robots walk and talk and can even assist in the office by picking up dropped pens or encouraging disparaged writers to continue their endless work.

Does the NAO Next Gen robot have a brain? Well, it has two actually: the first is an Intel ATOM 1.6ghz CPU (located in the head) that runs a Linux kernel and supports Aldebaran’s proprietary middleware (NAOqi) and the second CPU is in the body.

And in case you were worried about power, you can teach the NAO robot to plug itself in when the battery is running low!