Elmo Live 2008 Available – Pre-order
One of the hottest toys that kids will want this holiday season has to be Elmo Live. The new toy from Fisher-Price will be ready for shipping on October 14, if you want to get your hands on this hot new toy, then you really do need to pre-order one.
Most stores will be offering Elmo Live for pre-order for the price of $59.98 upwards.
In this truly life-like creation, for the first time ever, Elmo seems to actually be speaking as his mouth opens and closes just like the real Muppet, Elmo, from Sesame Street. His mannerisms are right on target as his head bobbles back and forth as he speaks. He waves his arms, sits and stands, even crosses his legs, all the while telling stories and jokes, singing songs and playing games. Children can activate the magic with a tickle or a squeeze of Elmos foot, tummy, back or nose.
Some of the stores who are offering Elmo Live for pre-order are Elmo Live are Wal-mart $59.88, Amazon.com for $65.99, ToysRUs for $59.99 and Fisher-Price Online for $60.
The 10 Grams UAV
AreoVironment just got their Nano Air Vehicle project approved by DARPA, which will be the world’s smallest UAV. Instead of an engine or propeller, this new prototype will have moving wings. The company obtained $636,000 and a six months deadline to complete their project, which will be only 3 inches long and will weigh under 10 grams. Read more
The Most Advanced Walking Robot
The Dutch robot Flame is the robot that imitates best human walking. You might believe this is easy, but if you look carefully at someone walking, you will surely see all the gestures walking implies. TU Delft PhD student Daan Hobbelen is its creator, and this is his PhD work thesis.
Wall-E Robot Follows You Anywhere
Disney has made available the Wall-E toy at the Maker Faire and I can’t be more excited about it. I guess the kids will probably like more than me because the robot includes tank treads, 10 motors, audio and vision sensors. The Wall-E toy is controlled with the help of a joystick, but I prefer the touchpad and I should mention the thing that made me love the toy – the “follow me” mode which makes the Wall-E to follow you or your kid. The retail price of the toy is about $190. It’s up to you to decide if this is worth.
Blaser Tournament – A Laser Fitted Robots Battle
A tournament has been held this week in Fukoka City, Japan, called the Blaser where Kondo’s KHR-1HV were featuring lasers and sensors. People watched a battle of the robots in a mock-up city and it really is interesting, but a bit dangerous. Watch the video after the jump.
The Firefighting Bug
The Off-road Loescheinheit (OLE) is a product of the University of Magdeburg-Stendal, located west of Berlin. OLE is a robot which has the shape of a pill bug (Armadillidium vulgare) and is supposed to prevent fires in the Black Forest from Germany.
It is equipped with powdered fire-extinguishing agents and water tanks, and it also has guiding and detection features such as GPS, heat and infrared sensors. Its shape was inspired from the interlinking armor of the bug, and from that concept resulted the fireproof suit. OLE has six feet, which are perfect for movement and keeping its balance on almost any type of terrain. Its shell will be made from fire-resistant ceramic-fiber compounds that can support temperatures of 1,850°F.
The robot could be used in two ways, its manufacturers suggest: to patrol the forests actively seeking for fires and dangers, or to be left in several hot spots to guard those places. One of these firefighters could weigh 150 to 200 pounds and have a price between $125,000 and $200,000.
Robot That Flies By Following Your Hand
The Z-Flyer Hand Command Robot is a new device that floats in the air and that can be controlled with your bare hand. Turned on, it will stand in the air just above the ground, but if you place your palm under it, it will begin to follow your hand. That’s right, no remote control, just your hand.
Hand Command isn’t relying only on your hands, you can put him above your head or feet too and it will still follow your lead. It can even be ‘thrown’ between people on short distances, before it will return to level flight.
Hand Command is designed for flying indoors and it is the first Flying Toy that uses a 100% intuitive control method. It can fly seven minutes with ten minutes of charge and it costs just £24.95 (around $50).
The World’s Fastest Industrial Robot
The ABB IRB 340 FlexPicker is a robot used for picking and sorting items like sausages or croissants on a production line. Its leg reminds of the scary machinery from The Matrix, the one that pulled people out of their ’sleeping’ boxes filled with nutritional fluids. The image of this robot in action is surely more peaceful, with sausages instead of humans.
Its ‘leg’ can go from 0 to 280mph in one second, it is optimized for fast pick-and-place cycles, and is able to manage payloads of up to 2kg. The FlexPicker includes a camera that can scan any object for conforming to a set of predefined standards, which enables it to leave the damaged products on the band and select only the perfect ones.
Toshiba Develops ApriPoko – The Remote Control MiniRobot
Toshiba introduced to the world a robot that is without any doubt the most interesting so far. What makes it so interesting is the fact that he can talk, learn to work the remote control and it looks very cool. The researchers of the Japanese company called it ApriPoko and it will be operated by voice-command. The robot will measure 11-inch tall and it will weigh 5 pounds.
ApriPoko uses an infrared device which senses infrared signal and asks “What did you just do?” and after you will answer something like “I turned on the TV” he will memorize and will operate it whenever you give him the voice-command. Although this is only a concept, we expect to see ApriPoko into production very soon and until then check out the gallery below.
Mule Robot That Always Keeps Its Balance
BigDog is one of the world’s most ambitious legged robots, as a YouTube video shows. The key feature is the ability to maintain course and carry on with the task no matter what kind of terrain it faces. The robot is shown climbing a forest hill, climbing the same hill with snow on it, making its way through a pile of bricks, keeping its balance after slipping on ice or after being kicked from one side. It can even jump without stepping on a colored area of the road. All these while carrying several hundred pounds of cargo on top of it.
Boston Dynamics are the developers of BigDog, with funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. As it demonstrates amazing stability for a robot, its purpose will be to carry supplies for the troops or to evacuate the wounded.
Climbing Robot, Perfect For Martian Cliffs
A team of researchers from the Stanford University, California, have designed a robot which could climb vertical walls and is destined to climb Martian hills and cliffs in order to find rocks that will help the humanity to learn more about Mars’s geology. The four-limbed robot is called Capuchin, it weighs about 7 kg and is faster and more agile than a previous robot, Lemur, also built by the Stanford University.
Capuchin is so much better than Lemur, it can climb 40 times faster than its predecessor thanks to an technological improved computer program which guides Capuchin’s movement step by step. You can see the robot in action in the video after the jump.
AI Could Pass Avatar Turing Test
The Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute representatives announced they have finished developing an AI able to pass an avatar version of the Turing test (to convince a person that it is human by communicating in a virtual environment like Second Life). They named the bot “Rascals”, which stands for Rensselaer Advanced Synthetic Architecture for Living Systems. As you would have expected, this achievement will require a great deal of technical resources, and the team will be using Blue Gene, the world`s fastest supercomputer from IBM, to run the AI in real time. The AI can even formulate thoughts about what others think and about their beliefs of the beliefs of others. Rascals bot will be tested in October.
The Perfect Climber Called C-Bot
Here is a robot concept designed to climb walls and to diagnose the integrity of a building’s structure. The robot is called C-Bot and it climbs walls in a clever way using its footpads which are covered in nano-hair. Another feature that helps it when climbing is a sensor which emits ultrasonic rays.
The C-Bot is big enough to carry around a human, althouh it doesn’t need an extra-package on-board. This robot could be very useful because the architects are designing taller and taller buildings which might encounter some very dangerous construction problems that require immediate fixing. More pictures in the gallery below.
Race Hots Up For The Lunar X Prize
Do you remember Google’s contest? Yeah, you do – it’s the Lunar X Prize which could bring $20 million for the winning team. In order to win this competition, the team will have to send a craft into space and land it on the moon, then the rover will transmit specific data to Earth, move 500 meters and then it would have to transmit the same data to Earth.
This quest has to be completed by the end of 2012, after that the award decrease to $15 million and to nothing if another couple of years pass by. If they manage to do this, there a prize of $5 million for the second place and another $5 million for the teams that discover lunar ice and reach historic lunar sites.
Until now 10 teams have registered for the contest and I expect it will be very hard for them to send the rovers to the moon for less than $20 million, but you never know. Some teams already released some informations about their purposes – Team Italia announced its spider-rover (pictured above), a cellphone-size rover was announced by other team and Carnegie Mellon plans to reach the landing site of Apollo 11.
Birds Scared From Airports By Falco Robot GBRS
Researchers have finally found a way to keep birds away from airports. After ten years of researches they managed to develop the Falco Robot GBRS, meaning Gregarious Bird Removal System. The robots are remote-controlled and can scare the birds from Genoa airport. This really is an ingenious way to improve air traffic in airports.