Posted by Lem on July 31st, 2008
Boo! Originally uploaded by brainbike.rider. It's always amazing to us how much emotion and character can be communicated so simply. A few bits of plastic, posed appropriately, can convey an instantly recognizable emotion or situation.
Posted by Lem on July 30th, 2008
When we received Robert Oschler's review of the new Femisapien robot (see video below) from WowWee there was an immediate, and overwhelming sense of flashback to the 1960's, but we couldn't quite figure out why. Then, late last night, when we should have been sleeping, it suddenly hit us. Robert's passionate devotion to robots in general, and specifically to WowWee white plastic humanoids brought back memories of the late Frank...
Posted by Lem on July 30th, 2008
Building on the success of the 2007 event, the "Tsukuba Challenge 2008 - Real World Robot Challenge", scheduled for November 20th-21st, is expected to draw 50 top teams. Similar, in some respects, to the DARPA Urban Challenge, the Japanese based competition takes it to the next level by requiring the autonomous mobile robots to operate on populated sidewalks with moving human beings, bicycles, and other hazards without creating any damage,...
Posted by Lem on July 30th, 2008
The 29th annual All Japan Micromouse Contest will be held November 21st-23rd at the Tsukuba International Congress Center in Ibaraki, Japan - about 40 minutes by express train from Tokyo. This premier robot competition draws the world's top micromouse builders from all over the world including Singapore, the US, Korea, and India. Concurrent contests are held for Freshman and Expert class micromouse, microclipper, and robotrace robots. Note: there have been...
Posted by rajbot on July 30th, 2008
Ralf sent this video of moose playing in a sprinkler:
Rob sent this to a mailing list:
Ridiculous!
Posted by Lem on July 28th, 2008
Back in the 1980's we had the opportunity to host quite a few Japanese visiting Southern California on business. We happened to notice that a few of the men seemed totally fascinated by the XXX-rated movie theaters, which would be considered totally tame by today's standards. When we asked them how the movies differed, they answered very frankly that in Japan the actors were only pretending, but in the US,...
Posted by Lem on July 27th, 2008
In a totally unexpected, but definitely well deserved fashion, the popular French "Le Post" website honored I-Wei of Crabfu and Swashbot fame with the title of "Geppetto Emeritus". Their glowing review included comments (translated from the original French) like: "... the goldsmith in question is perhaps not Anakin Skywalker's future, but surely one of the new master craftsmen of the emerging robotics industry." and "... its machines, however remote seem...
Posted by Lem on July 27th, 2008
Cedric Dupont, a former Volkswagen research engineer and member of the team that built Stanly - the winner of the Darpa Grand Challenge, posted an excellent 'insider' story covering Stanly's development, as well as quite a few photos we haven't run across before.
Posted by Lem on July 27th, 2008
RoboCountry IV, the biggest humanoid robot competitions in the western half of Japan is coming up in just under two weeks. Scheduled for Saturday, August 9th in Takamatsu, RoboCountry IV always draws the top ROBO-ONE type robots from all over the country, and sometimes from overseas. It's not unusual to see champion builders piloting their creations in the ring, like King Kizer or Onimaru. Check out some of our previous...
Posted by Lem on July 22nd, 2008
Ever wish you could spend some time learning at the feet of a black belt robotics sensei? Thanks to SYSTM on Revision3, you can do just that. Following RoboGames 2008, Patrick Norton interviewed David Calkins, the event founder and well known expert on robotics, for just over 40 minutes (Video below). David covers the background of humanoid robotics, why you want to start with a kit rather than building your...
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