Archive for the ‘robotics’ Category

Only two local projects in Time’s 50 Best Inventions of 2009

Friday, November 13th, 2009

Getting a jump on the year end-lists for 2009, Time has declared its Best Inventions of the Year. Some are impressive, some are scary, and many are things whose inclusion requires an inventive stretch of the definition of the word “invention.”

Before we get to that, only two of the inventions listed have local connections — an electric eye developed at MIT, and an electric microbe developed at UMass Amherst. Does Time know how many things get invented around here? I don’t either, but it’s a lot. I’m not sure how many would make the top 50 for a given year, but I’d imagine more than two. Have these people not seen the Happiness Hat? I was at MIT earlier this year and a robot made me ice cream in 30 seconds. That doesn’t rate?

Meanwhile, among the winners were: a paper airplane, a high-school football offense, and a method to Tweet by thought. All impressive, and they round out a 50-click editorial feature nicely, but cooler than SixthSense? One is a decision not to do something, one is a paper airplane, and one is the worst thing I’ve ever heard.

On the downside, the gas mask bra that won at the Ig Nobel awards a few months back was chosen as one of the five worst inventions of the year.

Rehab robots at Northeastern

Friday, November 13th, 2009

Tech Review takes a look at a robotic rehabilitation device developed by Northeastern’s Biomedical Mechatronics Laboratory. The NASA-inspired device — video here — is intended to help stroke victims regain muscle movement.

MIT spinout Myomo has developed similar technology, but ran into financial problems earlier this year. Earlier this year, MHT reported on similar technology being developed at MIT for people with cerebral palsy.

Colorado students make Roomba Pac-Man game

Wednesday, November 11th, 2009

Some students at the University of Colorado-Boulder have taken a bunch of iRobot Roombas and made a live-action Pac-Man game.

The game isn’t just some nutty hack, either. The students made it to demonstrate developing for unmanned aerial vehicles. The Pac-Man Roomba is controlled by a player using a joystick — the ghosts are autonomous. The Pac-Man robot eats tape “pellets” along its path, including the special huge pellet that sends the ghost robots running in the other direction; and even acts out the death spiral Pac-Man does when he gets eaten.

This could open up a whole new cottage industry of robots jazzing up old games: PackBot Minesweeper, Predator-drone Space Invaders, Artaic Pictionary, Precision Urban Hopper Q-Bert, crazy robot baseball, Petman marathons, etc. Competitive BigDog/LittleDog racing at Wonderland could bring together animal activists, racing enthuisasts, the gaming industry, the tech community and maybe even the Nascar crowd. I’d like to see that industry networking event.

MHT All-Stars @ the Park Plaza

Monday, November 2nd, 2009

Awardee Scott Kirsner posted his take on the proceedings last Thursday night, and we did, too. Above, view a gallery of confused — and maybe a little scared — party-goers awkwardly staring you right in your face courtesy of Greg Peverill-Conti. After the jump, check out a slideshow of the All-Star scene featuring more than just bewildered heads. (more…)

MIT Media Lab develops robotic back-seat driver

Thursday, October 29th, 2009


Update 10/30/2009, 9:34 a.m.: Video added

Researchers at the MIT Media Lab have developed a robot — the Affective Intelligent Driving Agent (AIDA) — to offer “the same kind of guidance as an informed and friendly companion.”

MITCarRobot

The system features an expressive robotic head, pictured above, that would protrude from the dashboard. Nothing creepy there. Media Lab researcher Cynthia Breazeal, Carlo Ratti, and Assaf Biderman are working with the Media Lab’s SENSEable City Lab and automaker Audi on the product.

The robot would analyze your driving patterns, your route, traffic, the weather and other information to guide you. It would also interact with you via expressions, like a smile or the Jesus-Mary-and-Joseph-we’re-going-to-die exclamation point.

Boston Dynamics’ Petman robot mimics human walking, wears sneakers

Tuesday, October 27th, 2009

Boston Dynamics, the Waltham-based maker of funny Internet videos starring robots the company incidentally develops, has released footage of its Petman robot. If you, like me, think it’s weird that the robot is wearing sneakers, it’s not. The robot is designed to test chemical protection uniforms for soldiers, so presumably the finished robot will be wearing a full uniform.

And this being a Boston Dynamics video, obviously the robot gets shoved, to little effect.

After the jump, watch the Big Dog take a romantic stroll on a beach in Thailand. Seriously. (more…)

Artaic’s mosaic-making robot in action

Wednesday, October 21st, 2009

A few weeks back, Mayor Menino visited Artaic’s Boston Marine Industrial Park headquarters to present a $50,000 loan from CreateBoston. The video above features a demonstration of the mosaic-by-robots company’s technology.

MHT first talked to Artaic in December 2008.

MIT robotic cheetah can run 70 mph, give you nightmares

Tuesday, October 20th, 2009
roboCheetah

MIT rendering

Wired talks to Sangbae Kim, of MIT’s Biomimetic Robotics Lab, about his biomimetic robots: The iSprawl, SpinyBot, the StickyBot, and his latest project, the terrifying robotic cheetah pictured above. By mimicking a cheetah, Kim is looking to increase the speed of robots, the fastest of which aren’t that quick on their feet/wheels/paws.

So far, the biomimetic robots pumped out by local researchers have been as fun as anti-landmine technology can be — the Ghost Swimmer, Robofish, RoboLobster, RoboLamprey, RoboClam, even Kim’s StickyBot. I’m still waiting on someone to develop a robot monkey, and we jump all the way to this?

Seriously, this isn’t funny any more, guys. I’m picturing the heavily armed MBTA cops at South Station getting these things to replace their bomb/drug/turnstyle jumper-sniffing dogs. I don’t want that malevolent-looking, 70-mph-running, lightweight carbon-fiber-foam composite piece of death following me down the street at night. Or at noon, either.

MIT helicopter robot scans surroundings as it flies

Monday, October 19th, 2009

Nick Roy and the Robust Robotics Group at MIT CSAIL has developed a helicopter robot called the RANGE (Robust, Aerial, Navigation in GPS-denied Environments) that models its surroundings as it flies, using 3-D cameras and laser scanners.

In what can only be taken as a direct challenge to its landlocked cousin, Boston Dynamics’ kick-resistant Big Dog, the video includes a scene where the robot corrects itself after being poked by a two-by-four.

Well, that’s just nasty: iRobot shows off soft robot

Wednesday, October 14th, 2009

If you thought the BigDog video was disturbing, iRobot’s “chembot” video is flat-out revolting: From the title: “Jamming Skin Enabled Locomotion” (JSEL, with the much more pleasant-sounding pronunciation, “Giselle”), to the animation of the green, shrimp-looking robot rendering, to the use of the term “jammable slurry,” — mmm … jammable slurry — to the pulsating, throbbing, ball of pasty colored I-don’t-know-what straight out of Nine Inch Nails’ “Closer” video.

My delicate sensibilities aside, it’s not hard to see how this could be useful. The throbbing ball is the first look at DARPA’s chembot soft robotics project. Robots made out of soft materials could squeeze through tight spots. A similar project based on catepillars is underway at Tufts, and Northeastern professor Joseph Ayers is involved in a project to take the idea to the next, even grosser level: robots made out of actual biological material.

Bryant University Graduate School

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