Archive for May, 2008
Robert Lesser Robot Collection Auction Ends Tomorrow
Here’s your chance to own part of one of the most amazing tin toy robot collections in the US. The Lesser collection has hit the auction block, and the last of the bids are due tomorrow. Back in 2000, I got a chance to see the Lesser robots at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and it rocked my world. It was the first look I ever got at an original Mr. Atomic, Radicon Robot, Horikawa Space Station… < sigh >
Now everything must go. From a boxed Lilliput Robot, the first mass marketed robot toy, to Hook Robot and a Tremendous Mike .
Link to the auction, and collection information. (via Alphadrome) No comments
Ultimate WALL-E Prototype Caught on Film
Bot Junkie has a few minutes of the Disney / Thinkways Toys folks showing off the upcoming Ultimate WALL -E robot. It’s really kind of brilliant, having a toy robot that imitates a robot, making it a very natural match for motion and expression of the original character. The footage is a little dark, grainy, and exactly the sort of thing I could watch all day.
Cooking with Fujitsu’s HOAP
Loving The Machine points us to a great little video of Fujitsu’s HOAP-3 humanoid robot learning some mad kitchen skills.
” Researchers at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in Switzerland have used imitation learning and probabilistic models to teach HOAP to help make omelets. Through direct human guidance, it learns to whip eggs, cut ham and grate cheese, focusing on the most essential part of each task and ignoring irrelevant events. It automatically adapts when a mixing bowl is moved.”
Fantastic. Now if I could just get the I-Sobot to climb up the stove to the counter top…
Robot Playgrounds of the Future / 1960s.
Ira Gobler sent this fantastic pic and link to the Space-Age playground of our dreams this morning.
Best of the lot is Giganta, the playground automaton that converts imprisoned children into sliding arm-launched projectiles. Which is presumably what the catalog manufacturer means by “A Robot That Automatically Produces Fun.”
Wow. I want to go play in the giant mechanical brain. I’ve seen a few of the rocket-slides back in the day, but never a Giganta. Has anyone seen one of these in the wild?
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