Mr. Future

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.

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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…

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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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Ultimate Wall-E, a dreamy little $189 toy robot will be on the market this around-about the June launch of the robo-tactular Disney/Pixar Wall-E movie.

He’ll have 10 motors, an infra-red remote for programming movement and behaviors, and be equipped with a nice sensor compliment including sound, obstacle, and touch detection.

There will also be a number of smaller Wall-E toys, including the iDance Wall-E mp3 speaker toy. These toys and more will debut at the Bay Area Maker Fair in just a few days. Initiate lunch-money-saving-protocol 43.

Update!: A few new details via MakeZine.com:

“An innovative touch programming system lets kids direct WALL·E simply
by making patterns on the remote’s touch pad. With voice activation and
a follow-me mode, WALL·E can follow the sound of a human voice and
detect someone entering a room.”

“The Ultimate WALL·E is also MP3 compatible and features built-in speakers. USB cables and rechargeable batteries are included.”

Link (via Gearlog)

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Don’t worry, the robot is watching the kids.

“Communciation Robot” is the new Kid’s Club president at the Aeon Mall in Fukuoka, Japan, and is seeking John Connor “recruits”. Aside from promotional and mall-guide duties, “Communication Robot” uses a “QR-Code” reader and official Kid’s Club membership badges to keep track of the Kid’s Club members he talks to, remembering their names, and birthdays.

“Communciation Robot” is based on a new tmsuk platform, similar to the RIDC, and speaks, has the ability to communicate via cell phone and text message, and has a video projector mounted in his left eye. And if I were five years old and living in Fukuoka, he would be my new best friend.

Link (with some great pics)

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Perennial marathon celebrity / charity fundraiser Lloyd Scott will be running the London Marathon in a fantastic 9 ft. tall, 70 lb. robot costume (The I-Run-Giant ) to raise money for the Autism Trust charity. The Iron Giant’s eyes light up and his mouth moves so that Scott can make him ‘talk’.

“The reason I chose a robot is that people often think autistic people have a robotic existence, when in fact they are very real people inside with huge potential and the ability to flourish with the right help and support.”

Scott first became famous for running the 2002 London Marathon in a 110 lb. Deep Sea Diving suit, and went on to finish the first underwater marathon (under Loch Ness) in 2003. He’s also run the London Marathon dressed in a suit of armor, dragging a life-sized dragon, and dressed as Indiana Jones running with/from a 300 lb. boulder in tow.

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Budget-battered NASA Scientists plan to put one of the twin Mars rovers, Spirit, “into hibernation mode” for the coming Martian winter, and limit the activities of the other robot, Opportunity, to fulfill an order to cut $4 million from the program’s budget, mission team members said Monday.

The news comes amid belt-tightening at NASA headquarters, which is under pressure to juggle Mars exploration and projects to study the rest of the solar system. Both rovers were originally planned for three-month missions, but due to a number of factors including their amazingly successful designs, the robots are now in their fourth year of continuous exploration. It costs NASA about $20 million annually to keep the rovers running.

Link (via Yahoo/AP)

Update:  Spirit spared?   NASA issues conflicting signals as to the rover’s fate.

“…shortly after CNN.com published the story, NASA administrator Michael Griffin said the agency will not shut down one of the two Mars rovers, according to spokesman Bob Jacobs.

“There is a process that has to be followed for any mission to be canceled and the cancellation of the Mars Exploration Rovers is not under consideration,” Jacobs said. “There is an ongoing budget review within the agency’s Mars exploration program. However, shutting down of one of the rovers is not an option.

NASA headquarters spokesman Dwayne Brown confirmed the budget directive had been issued. The cut’s purpose is to offset cost overruns with the Mars Science Laboratory, a rover set to launch next year, he said.”

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A timeless story of a boy and his robot, it watches like a Godzilla movie crossed with the 60’s television version of Batman. Great campy fun. A man in a giant robot costume slugs it out with rubbery monsters while stomping all over a scale model of Tokyo. A 12 year old boy joins a secret organization of world defending spies, foiling alien overlord plots and villainous beatnik henchmen. What is not to love?

In this week’s episode, “Gargoyle Vine, A Space Plant” Giant Robot and the agents of unicorn face a giant alien Kudzu vine, that devours everything it touches. Biolante has nothing on this.

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A lot of net attention has been rightly paid to Boston Dynamics‘ / DARPA’s “Big Dog” robotic pack mule this week. It’s uncanny all-terrain gate makes for amazing video footage for robot-fans. When combined with the strangely sympathetic shots of an employee kicking the beast to show that it’s very hard knock it off balance, it’s an irresistible watch, and re-watch.

But there’s something a little ominous and sad about the video. Watching it, you just know that there’s a military department that has already drawn up plans to strap a weapon to the back of the camo-clad robot. Like the Soviet anti-tank dogs, it was born drafted, destined to be kicked as a show of resilience, until it’s sent into the field. It’s amazing, but for some reason, it’s hard to feel particularly good about it.

The best antidote for the sad wisdom of a robot on the road to weaponization is a robot designed to make a dog happy. Jerry the wiener dog has his own fetch-bot, and he demonstrably loves playing with it.

“..after two years of on and off work, with many safety features such as IR proximity sensors to protect Jerry and my son from the machine, I finally complete[ted it].

Far from being a replacement for me, I was always right there with him enjoying his fun. And with all the troubles that I went through to build the ball machine, I still end up throwing more balls than that the machine could count”

Though it’s comparatively a simpler robot, there’s something perfect and right about it. The next time the DOD wants to show off its newest kill-bot, I’m going to re-watch Jerry here, just to remind myself about why robots are great.

Link (via BotJunkie)

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