It’s not just the cleaning robot part that’s a surprise; it’s just what the Smarbo is packing that will show you a lot more than you were probably expecting. The Smarbo is packing a matched pair of CPUs, which is no small feat in and of itself.

The Japanese version (and no one’s quite sure how this will translate into releases elsewhere, indeed, if there will even be releases elsewhere), is set to offer up a camera and fully 38 different sensors, including gyroscope, range detection, and accelerometer systems. All these sensors and cameras together add up to about 100 square meters (roughly 1000 square feet for those of you who favor the imperial), and it can perform this cleaning job in roughly an hour and a half, putting out about 52 decibels of sound (only slightly less than your average conversation, at about 60-70 decibels). Plus, when it’s done cleaning, it can even return itself to its charging station for a well-deserved break.

Oh, and assuming you want something to do with the process for a feeling of accomplishment, the Smarbo even comes with a remote control so you can operate it from where ever you happen to be at the time, like across the room watching television or surfing the web.

The down side to having your vacuuming done for you? The price tag, plain and simple. This little guy emerges in Japanese markets (and like I said, there’s no word on wider releases) October 1, and you’ll be shelling out $1175 to get one.

So what do you guys think? Is that way too much cash to cut down on your cleaning chores? Or do you call it money well invested? Either way, we want to hear from you, so hit the comments section and tell us what you think!

The mother apparently suffered from a weak cervix which made carrying a baby to full term without miscarrying very difficult. The normal procedure in such a case would be an invasive surgery called a cervical stitch causing the patient to be stuck in the hospital for five days and then take three months to heal. With help from a robot called the da Vinci Surgical System, the process was a lot less invasive.

The robot gives the doctors such precision that it only requires a very small incision. In most cases the patient is able to be released from the hospital within 24 hours and back to their routines in a week. The da Vinci Surgical System is more widely used for localized prostate cancer surgeries but has been utilized for gynecological procedures as well.

Whether it’s sorting socks, playing pool, or just fetching you a beer, the PR2 from the folks out at Willow Garage has been providing us with loads of entertaining news for a little over a year now. Well, we haven’t heard much out of the multifunctional dynamo these days, at least until just recently, when one of the little wonders emerged as part of a project called Robots For Humanity.

The robot in question was tasked to a gent named Henry Evans, who’d suffered a brain stem stroke at the age of 40, which in turn left him with control of his head and a finger, which as it turned out, were enough to control the PR2 thanks to a Kinect motion tracker. The PR2 allowed him to, essentially, shave himself via remote, as well as scratching an itch for the first time in fully ten years.

Robots for Humanity, made up in part of Georgia Tech and the Healthcare Robotics Lab, were one of the outfits that got a PR2 way back when they first came out for sale to a very limited number of outlets.

Naturally this will likely bring about plenty of jokes about how giving a robot a razor that close to a human throat will bring about the downfall of humanity, but frankly, I welcome this. Robots helping humans who need help is one of the great dreams of science fiction since the earliest days of same. Sure, we all like the thought of having a robot fetch our meals whilst we watch an expanded array of cable channels and then send our robots off to work in the morning so we can sleep in, but it’s this kind of thing, right here, that really makes the whole concept of robotics so worth exploring.

And what do you guys think? Is this the direction we should be sending our robotics studies in? Or do you have a different, even better, idea? Either way, hit the comments section and tell us what you think!

I’ll give you a minute to wipe down your monitor, because that was a shocker, no two ways about it. The Hanako 2 robot has recently had some upgrades that actually make it well suited for the medical training markets. See, in this case, while it looks like a horror movie prop about to tear a chunk out of your throat, what’s really going on here is that Hanako 2 is in a dentist’s chair, about to have its “teeth” examined. And now, thanks to these upgrades, it can also throw in a lot of the curve balls that a dentist might expect, like blinking, sneezing, coughing, and even choking, if you happen to get that pick a little too far back. It even boasts voice recognition systems, allowing it to respond to questions that the dentist in training asks. She’s also had her skin replaced with silicone instead of the original PVC, and had several motors installed for more realistic movement.

While, admittedly, that may well be the worst possible picture to show of the Hanako 2, it’s hard to dispute the value of such a device in terms of training medical students. After all, I’d much sooner that a dentist to be get their training with a giant doll that can’t bleed or scream before they come and get hacking at my gum line with their horrible little devices.

Oh, and yes, for those of you wondering about the less savory side of this robot’s origins, it is indeed reportedly based on “love doll” technology, though its new use is considerably more beneficial to society as a whole. But I guess all new technology has to start somewhere!

So what do you guys think? Valuable new tool for training in medicine, entirely too creepy for words, or both? The comments section is waiting to take your opinion, so head on down and talk robot!

Under normal circumstances, OptoFidelity makes robots designed to test touch screens, which is a valuable service considering how many devices out there actually feature them, from tablets like the Blackberry PlayBook to cell phones like the iPhone 4. But then, something occurred to the folks at OptoFidelity: namely, that if they had a robot that could work a touch screen, why not program said robot to perform the series of functions required to play Angry Birds, and make some hay while that particular sun shines?

The end result was a robot that could not only play Angry Birds, but advance through the various stages, control its own stage select, and do so with such robotic precision that it got three stars on every level.

But this isn’t the end for OptoFidelity’s line of game-wrecking robots, no sir (or ma’am, as the case may be), this is only the beginning. OptoFidelity is looking into what other games the robots can play and destroy human players with.

I’d personally say that would be a tough call, because many games don’t have programmable solutions (unlike Angry Birds, where much of the point is to find just the right place to throw the bird), and depend instead on reactions. For instance, Cut The Rope would probably do well for robot adaptation, but a robot may not fare so well on Fruit Ninja without knowing ahead of time where the fruit is set to emerge.

Still though, the days of computers beating us at only chess and Jeopardy are long past, and the days of robots handing us our metaphorical hat in other games aren’t likely far off.

The Don-8R (pronounced “Donator”) robot is basically programmed to do two things: look cute and collect money. And as you can see in the pic above, it has definitely succeeded on at least one front. That thing is terrifyingly cute. It’s hard not to get out my wallet and just start throwing money at it, and I’m just looking at a picture.

Tim Pryde, a student at the University of Dundee out in Scotland, created the Don-8R as a way to collect cash for charity. It’s been roaming the school grounds, and offers up a little light show when it collects coins, specifically, that green light you see in the pic above changes color when people provide it some cash.

Admittedly, it’s much more comfortable to have around than your average homeless person, so it might go a good ways toward getting that extra cash that regular folks might not. Certainly the pressure’s down, though it makes me wonder if before too much longer there will be places you don’t go as the sidewalks and approaches are all crowded with tiny flashing robots each out to get cash for their controllers, where ever they happen to be.

Still, a clever idea either way, and here’s hoping Tim Pryde’s Don-8R robot manages to collect plenty of cash for charity.

I don’t think anyone could forget the earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan only weeks ago, let alone the attendant, ongoing nuclear calamity that’s hit thanks to damage at the Fukushima plant. Though if there is one good thing to come out of this event, it’s that robotics technology will now be front and center, showing off just how readily it can deal with even the most horrible of disasters.

The team that the International Rescue System Institute is sending out is comprised largely of robots like you see in the pic above, tiny, flat things designed to work at high radiation levels (20 Sieverts, for a start–which is about 2.5 times an instantly fatal dose for a human being), in very tight spaces (they measure about three feet high) and are even somewhat (they can drive through puddles) waterproof. The robots can even be remote controlled from distances of up to two kilometers (right around a mile), and their primary function will to be measure radiation and gas levels, as well as shoot some video to give human workers a better idea of what’s going on inside the wrecked plant.

Sounds like these could do a lot of good out there, and either way, they’ll get actual field testing of a use that had generally only been thrown out there as a maybe, working in the midst of hazardous environments that would kill human beings, and isn’t that pretty much what we made them for in the first place? So hopefully the little guys will be of some help, and give the world a better idea that robots aren’t just the stuff of science fiction.

What you’re looking at is the Danish version (where the DK came from) of the Japanese-developed Geminoid robot, and I personally thought I’d go a lifetime without seeing “Danish scientists make more realistic robot than Japan”, but there it is.

The Danish version is somewhat immobile, with its motion restricted to largely the head nodding and some shrugs of the shoulders, but still, the video available (and there are a few of them on YouTube right now) is the early stages of distressing.

It’s the Uncanny Valley effect–the effect that says that robots that try to look like humans often end up looking more disturbing than anything else–that has often kept robots from really trying to look human, but this time is different.  This time is so close (at least from what I’m seeing) to accurate that it’s only disturbing more for its implications. While the Japanese have been working on believable humanoid robots for quite some time–looking at an aging populace that’s going to be in need of help before too much longer, and there won’t be near enough young people to step in and handle the job, has been all the impetus the Japanese have needed.

But it’s certainly a surprise to see that the Danes have stepped in and stepped up the game the Japanese largely invented. When these will start hitting the streets is unclear–and will likely be fraught with debate–but one thing is clear: robots are starting to look and act more like people every day. And one day, we may no longer be able to tell the difference.

Basically, you hold the Elfoid much like you would a cell phone, and talk to it in the same way you would, well, a cell phone. The Elfoid then transmits the information about what you’re saying, and how you’re saying it, to another Elfoid via a combination of a motion capture system (contained in a computer, which you’ll have to use along with the Elfoid) and a microphone. What happens then is that the Elfoid on the other end then transmits what you’re saying, in your voice, but then alters its appearance according to what the motion capture data recovers, allowing the user on the other end to “feel (your) presence”, despite the fact that you are not technically in the room with said user.

It’s a pretty bulky system over all, and I can’t imagine very many people whipping out tiny plastic dolls every time they need to make a phone call. That and it’d probably be pretty creepy. Imagine calling your girlfriend on one of these things…maybe the conversation gets a little, well, amorous and the next thing you know you’ve got Baby Chucky here trying to nibble your earlobe. And then a couple seconds later you make the colossal blunder of telling her her sister’s been looking super hot lately and she goes into one of those Insane Jealous Girlfriend Rages (guys, we have all seen those, haven’t we?) and now Baby Chucky’s decided to whip out the butcher knife.

These will only be available in Japan to start with, at an as yet undisclosed price or launch schedule, but hopefully these will not be making their way to American shores. Frankly, I’ve seen horror movies that start out kind of like this, and do not at all relish talking to a doll in a roomful of strangers.

Considering that they started out by teaching a robot arm to flip pancakes by doing it over and over and over again, and then taught a larger robot to fire a bow and arrow via the same process of repetition, it likely won’t surprised anyone to discover that the HOAP 2 robot was taught to clean a dry erase board in much the same way, by repetition and that sweet kinesthetic teaching process that worked so well on earlier models.

Basically, they put a small eraser in the robot’s hand, and then pulled the robot’s arm through a series of sweeping patterns. The resulting movements were recorded by a force-torque sensor in the wrist, so that the robot could learn to repeat the patterns itself. And the robot kept its balance through all that movement by way of an ankle-hip algorithm.

If a robot can work a dry erase board, it stands to reason that it can wash a window, which is essentially the same basic process. In fact, once it masters wipe / repeat until a surface is free of dirt, it opens up a whole lot of household chores for a robot to do that people will, in turn, no longer have to.

Of course, it will also in turn likely result in the loss of a whole lot of jobs, once places like hotels start buying cleaning robots and firing their maintenance staffs, but the time to go all the way up the tech tree from “wiping a dry erase board” to “independently cleaning a floor’s worth of motel rooms” is probably best measured in decades than months, but still, the possibility exists.

It probably helps that the robot arm in question (which sounds pretty similar to famed inventor Dean Kamen’s Luke arm, pictured above) was developed by DARPA, another branch of the government, but this one is still pretty nice. It’s an upper arm prosthetic, which connects back to a microchip implanted in the brain that converts neural activity to machine language that in turn controls the prosthetic. It’s geared toward amputees or those who had strokes or spinal cord injury.

Meanwhile, the Innovation Pathway has some specific features all its own. In order to get in on the streamlined path, products have to be “truly pioneering technologies” that are, basically, game-changers. More specifically, they have to have “the potential of revolutionizing patient care or health care delivery”. Then, those products are given a case manager, and the whole process gets compressed down into a roadmap and timeline, which reportedly goes a whole lot faster than a regular system would.

It’s sort of a double-edged sword, really–while it’s great to get these game changing technologies to market faster, we’ve also got to be careful to ensure products with hidden dangers are kept out of the market. Whether you believe the government can do it better than the private sector is largely a matter of personal taste, but one thing is clear–someone’s likely going to get a new robot arm pretty soon, and I call that a good thing.

This isn’t the first time we’ve heard of telepresence robots, ambulatory two-way cameras that move via remote control and connect you to the wider world while making sure you never have to actually get out in it. But this is one of the first times I’ve heard of a telepresence robot being used to help sick kids go to school.

See, with a weakened immune system, even what we think of as minor diseases can be disasters, so Baty was forced to stay home. But when the folks out at VGO Communcations called Baty’s school, offering a robot for $5000 so Baty could attend classes about as normally as he possibly could, they thought it over and decided to give it a try. Baty, for his part, is absolutely delighted, saying:

“It’s absolutely amazing. I would have never thought when I was sick that I would ever have any interaction, much less this kind. It is just like I am there in the classroom.”

While most schools–most people–likely can’t afford the $5000 required to get robots for kids to attend school, and only so many places will have the necessary bandwidth to get live video sent to them and have the capability to send commands back to the robot besides, I look for this kind of thing to get started in earnest in the short term. It’s too good not to–deeply sick kids able to live relatively normal lives through technology? Sounds good to me!

We’ve seen them in Japan for a long time, and even China’s got into the game, but now, the Thai are also getting a foot in the door. Students at Thailand’s Bangkok University have developed a waiter robot that runs on Linux.

The robot is capable of carrying food around from the kitchen to the various tables around it, and is even ISO 14121 certified in the interest of safety.

Of course, the down sides here are pretty substantial: the Yumbo, as the robot is called, can only carry one tray at a time. It also takes  up a whole lot of room and in general moves slowly.

But these downsides are offset by relatively low startup costs to the businesses that use them, plus a certain novelty value getting people in the door to be waited on by machines.

Yumbo’s currently working at MK Restaurant, one of the biggest chain restaurants in Thailand. And it’s not alone, either–a Vietnamese service robot by the name of Topio Dio is also working out there, and the two appear fairly evenly matched in terms of capability.

It’ll remain to be seen how long it takes until you’re being seated and waited on by robots at, say, your local Olive Garden, but the idea is certainly an interesting one that will have lots of major ramifications to our entire way of life. For instance, what happens when our kids can’t find summer jobs in restaurants because all the wait staff has been replaced by robots?

This isn’t the first we’ve heard of the PALRO–the robot that can read your tweets to you and play word games and suchlike–but this is the first time we’ve heard of it being able to speak English. Before, this was only available in Japan, but with English now an option, it seems that the PALRO just might be looking at a world tour.

Of course, PALRO isn’t just a chatty little bot. PALRO’s also got plenty of other tricks up its sleeve. PALRO can also recognize multiple people at once, and even follow their movements as well as estimate their distance away from the PALRO. In fact, some video of the PALRO in action as a receptionist is making the rounds, and it’s pretty clever. Almost like putting the Geico Gecko at your desk to greet visitors, which probably isn’t too far away given the current level of the PALRO’s capabilities coupled with the fact that all PALRO needs is a bit of a costume change and it could pass for the Gecko pretty easily.

It’s also got a bit of a bump in the price tag department, weighing in at a surprisingly hefty $3600, which is up from original projections of $3300 back when it was only available to research labs and the like. But I guess making it more available makes each one a bit more valuable due to sheer scarcity, so they had to ratchet up the price tag a little bit. When it will be available in a wider range is as yet undetermined, but getting your hands on your own little robot buddy might be closer than you think.

We’re no stranger to robots performing delicate surgical procedures out here, but this one is a doozy as it involves a video game controller. Here’s the deal–robotic surgery can be incredibly precise, and everyone wants precision when it comes to things like very sharp knives around things that you need to live. And while robot surgeons can pack that precision, no problem, what they lack is a sense of touch, a feel of kinetic feedback that lets them know when they’re getting too close to something or something is unusually soft or hard (depending on whether it should be hard or soft, respectively), all those things that regular human surgeons can do without a second thought.

But instead of giving the robot a sense of touch, which some have tried to do via force feedback technology channeled to a human operator, what the Kinect approach does is it takes the Kinect’s depth camera, and uses it to, basically, give a robot depth perception, so that the camera gets an even better look at what it’s cutting into. If it can see that it’s going after the wrong organ or getting too close to a vein or something like that, it can then reverse course in time to keep something particularly nasty from happening.

And here’s the nifty part–the students say that, had they tried to build this from the ground up, without Kinect, it would have cost better than $50,000 to put something together. But because they had a Kinect, the costs dropped to a meager $150, and some time spent programming.

The next time your mother / girlfriend / parole officer / what have you says you’re spending too much time playing the video games, well, hand them this article and tell them you’re funding lifesaving medical research.

The Ed Corporation robots work like automated ticket kiosks, allowing people to purchase movie tickets direct from robots on the floor (probably with their credit cards, though there may be cash support like with a vending machine), as well as provide information about available movies and show times. And, since it can move around on its own, it also serves as an autonomous line of security, pumping a video feed back to a security office by way of its built-in camera. And that’s the part of the whole thing that’s got me thinking about eighties slasher fare.

Leaving aside the obvious human cost–why hire people to sell tickets and take them when you can simply buy these machines to do the job–other problems also emerge here with using these as security drones. Seriously…it pumps back a video feed? To a guard station? And by the time the security guard actually sees what’s going on via that robot camera feed, how long is it going to take them to get to the location of the incident? Sure, the layout of the theater can contribute to a shorter response time, but that’s still going to be a pretty tall order, getting the security guard from the guard office to where ever it is in the theater that’s having the problem the robot sees in the first place. And I can just about see gangs of kids knocking these things over, riding these things around, or just plain old riding them right out the door.

There’s video of these out at the via link, but it seems like this might be a case of too much innovation with too little point. I’m always happy to be able to put up a new robot story, but even I can tell an unnecessary advancement when I see one.

We actually talked about the Challenge HAL units way back in 2008, but they’re making an appearance at the big show this week. Basically, they’re a robotic exoskeleton that reacts to the way you move your own limbs while in the frame by measuring the actions of your nervous system, and responding to fluctuations in the nerves that correspond to certain limbs. In the case of the Challenge HAL systems being shown off out at CES, it appears to be limited only to your legs.

Reports, however, say that full size units are in the works, if not already completed but not showing at CES right now, and that they can even be worn in a sitting position so wheelchair users will also be able to put these into use.

I don’t know whether it’s hilarious or terrifying that a company that builds robotic limbs would actually name itself Cyberdyne, or that they named their product after an insane computer, but if someone breaks into my favorite pool bar and demands my clothing, I’m not sticking around to hand them over. I’m going out the window if I have to, but I’m definitely not sticking around. But one thing’s for sure, the Challenge HAL is likely to be a welcome boon to a whole lot of people, and as such, hopefully these will make it to market soon. Since they’re getting shown off out at CES, well, that definitely suggests a market plan in action.

The polar bear documentary features four main robotic spy cameras, each in various configurations…and most of which met horrific ends at the hands…or rather paws…of the various polar bears in the area.

First there was Snow Cam, a stationary affair mounted on a turret and designed to look like a hillock of snow–it met its doom when a hefty male polar bear tried to see just how much weight the thing could take without breaking. Needless to say, Snow Cam’s crush depth was less than “fully grown adult male polar bear”.

Blizzard Cam, a sprightly snowmobile camera with treads and skis, managed to get away from one particularly playful polar bear who pushed it around like a child’s toy fire engine, but not before committing the cowardly act of dropping off Snowball Cam, a small spherical camera, which was torn open by the polar bear who’d been pushing around Blizzard Cam. Give Snowball Cam credit, though, as it filmed valiantly until its very end.

And lastly, we have Iceberg Cam, a float-mounted turret camera that was mounted on what looked like an ice floe. It got stuck between two actual ice floes, and in its bid to free itself, drew the attention of a curious polar bear mother with her cub, and from there, drew its own destruction.

A moment of silence, please, for the valiant cameras of the BBC, who brought us some really awesome footage before they died. You can catch the documentary now, according to reports, out at BBC Player.

Who doesn’t dig giant robots? If you believe the song, no one, frankly, so it’s great to take a look at Docent. Docent may not qualify as a giant robot, but the kids out at the Daejon Museum sure like it, and it’ll be out there until January 14th if you want a look at it. It stands 120 centimeters tall–just a shade under four feet, so you see what I mean about the whole “doesn’t qualify as a giant robot” bit–and it provides “relevant information” as it rolls from one exhibit to the next, accompanied by a gaggle of kids at most every pass, no doubt. Anyway, it ends its tour at a giant plasma display panel and then gets ready to go take on the next one.

It’s not at all hard to believe that the kids love this, and it might well be a smart move after all. After all, what kid in his right mind–or her, we’re equal-opportunity here–would voluntarily go to an art museum? Not many, that’s for sure. But an art museum with a sweet robot doing the guided tour? Now that’s a reason for any kid to want to sit down, shut up and pay attention, that’s for sure. And it could probably get a lot of reaction in museums all over the world; kids aren’t so different the world over, and a cool robot telling them about art would probably keep their interest long enough to get them at least a good footing in the great masters to see if they want to go any farther with it.

Anyway, if you want to see this one yourself, better hurry–it’ll be out about another two weeks.

We’ve seen beer fetching robots before, but never one quite so entertaining as this. Basically, it’s a home-brew (no pun intended!) combination of a refrigerator, an ioBridge IO-204 (which is described as “a physical I/O board which connects web services”, which basically means you can in turn access the ioBridge via a mobile device), and a 50 PSI hydraulic cannon, which is built into the fridge. The device is then connected to a webcam, and both webcam and cannon are accessible via iPhone. From there, you will then be able to sight in the cannon with the webcam, press “fire” on the iPhone, and soon enough, a can of beer will launch forth, frosty cold from the refrigerator, to find its mark no doubt astonished by the fact that he or possibly she just caught a can of beer that had been shot by a refrigerator.

There’s even a menu on the iPhone display that will let you select various types of beer, depending on what you have loaded in, and will even send tweets about successful sorties, allowing you a record of just how much beer has been consumed during your evening by counting the tweets. Future improvements slated for the device include a timer so people can tell how long until launch, and a set of crosshairs on the iPhone interface to give more precise targeting of the beer launches.

Needless to say reaction to the device’s existence has been overwhelmingly positive, and for those of you dying for a conversation piece unlike any other at your New Year’s Eve party, well, the iPhone controlled beer cannon may well be the best you can do short of coating an entire unicorn in gold and turning it into a fountain in your front yard.

See, the pi4 Workerbot can do a lot of different things. It stands roughly the same height as a human, so it can go anywhere, and comes with three cameras mounted on its head so it can do most anything we can in terms of visual tracking. One of the cameras is a 3D camera for general location sense, while the other two are used for finer details like inspection work. Word is that the cameras are so high-quality that the robot can use them to determine whether chromium coatings have been applied correctly by seeing how light reacts to the chromium surfaces.

It weighs in at about a half-ton (500 kilograms), and has a multiple joint wrist so it can inspect things from multiple angles. It even has a finger tip sensitivity system so it can determine just how much pressure it needs to grip things at any given time. In fact, according to reports, this thing is so sensitive that it can even handle a raw egg without breaking it.

And it even has a face plate that will portray a number of emotional states–the robot is happy when given more work, studious when it’s examining an item, and sad when it’s out of a job.

Considering the state of the global economy, there are probably a whole lot of factories who’d be interested in something like this and a whole lot of workers who find the idea of such a system repugnant. No word on how much one of these costs, but for a worker that can go around the clock without a break and only occasional maintenance, that will never need health care or plan to retire, a lot of places would probably pay quite a bit for the long-term savings alone.

The TalkTorque 2 started life as the TalkTorque, an even creepier looking robot that communicated largely with sweeping arm gestures and, if the video on this thing is to be believed, a vague sense of menace. And now, the original TalkTorque has been largely decommissioned, now serving a tour at the Groupware Lab out at Tsukuba University in Tokyo.  TalkTorque 2, meanwhile, offers up much the same features as the TalkTorque, but with some fairly significant augmentations. It’s now got a collar that packs three cameras geared toward motion and range sensing, so it can tell where you are, and where to swing its arms in relation to you.

Being as neither version of the TalkTorque packed any kind of audio pickups or speakers, the new version also does all its talking via pointing, gesturing, and sweeping with its huge freaky arms.

I’m sure they were going for futuristic here–it’s probably not a surprise, in retrospect that Tsukuba University made this thing look vaguely like Astro Boy–but the end result just strikes me as sublimely creepy. This looks like the kind of thing that might be stalking half-naked college girls around campus, and about the only thing it needs is a couple of arm-mounted sickle blades and some slightly sped-up motion to make this thing the next big thing in sci-fi horror hybrid.

But still, for those of you who like the thought of being pointed around museums and the like by clockwork horrors that will work for electricity, you’ll get everything you want out of the TalkTorque 2.

It not only has a robot arm where it can flick and tap and do all those things that the ordinary smartphone can do, but it also packs a high-speed camera that takes pictures every time it flicks and taps so that regular humans can tell what happened whenever the Quality Commander did its flicking and tapping. And it even has a microphone attachment so that it’s possible to tell if a sound effect was triggered when the Quality Commander did its work.

The Quality Commander (the more I read that the more I think it sounds like a badly-named comic book character) has six joints from which to operate, can work round the clock and costs just $70,000 to install. But if you’ve got a cell phone company and you’d rather not shell out that kind of cash for one of those, there’s a different version of the Quality Commander that handles regular cell phones as well, and it sells for about a third less at $54,000.

Automation is pricey–just ask anyone who’s tried to do it!–and it’s often a PR nightmare, especially in a bad economy, for the press to get wind that you just threw a whole bunch of people out on their ears so that you could buy a robot to do their job for them. But still, I can definitely see these finding their way into a few cell phone manufacturers.

The folks behind the Ple0rb’s predecessor (which we only just talked about days ago) Pleo apparently went through a few design changes over the course of the robot dinosaur toy’s development, and as such, they put together an exoskeleton to help get the design secured, inside of which they put Caleb Chung, an acrobatic sort who helped get the suit moving that would eventually become Pleo.

The model itself, meanwhile, is laden with switches and potentiometers that helped track the approximate movements of the suit and then allowed them to scale those measurements down into a smaller robotic toy. Apparently, this suit was instrumental in the development of the original toy, although the original company itself went out of business (this in turn likely explains why we’re now dealing with Ple0rbs instead of Pleos, and it’s a pretty good story involving a lot of investors who wound up unhappy) and seems to be selling off some assets. Reading the commentary out at some other links about this, meanwhile, brings new meaning to “river of flame” and shows there’s a lot of acrimony out there over this, especially from some of those early investors.

But either way, a chunk of robot toy history is offered up here, and if you’ve got $2379.99 on your hands, you can get those same hands on this instead. Though be prepared to shell out plenty more than that, because the thing weighs fully 350 pounds, and shipping a crate that flirts with the quarter-ton range will be neither cheap nor easy.

Not that the Ple0rb isn’t an amazing robot dinosaur–the thing comes with motion tracking, a sense of smell (I don’t know how on earth they got a sense of smell into a robot, but it’s listed on the spec sheet), a temperature sense, an increased number of touch sensors, time of day awareness and an increased battery life based on the previous version.You’ll even get an enhanced learning kit so the Ple0rb can learn various new moves as well as a tug of war toy so that your child can engage in tug of war with a small robot dinosaur.

Yes, as it turns out, there was a previous version back in 2008, and that’s why some are projecting that this thing is called the “Ple0rb”, or “Ple0 ReBorn”. And the original, interestingly enough, cost about $119 less than the current version, though it wasn’t packing a goodish chunk of what the new version’s carrying with it.

So if your Christmas morning wouldn’t be complete without the whirring of a robot dinosaur stalking the halls and annoying the cat, well, you can put those fears to rest as they’re finally shipping out. Still though, I don’t look for sales of the robot dinosaur to be too brisk, between the economy and everything else–if the kids want to play tug of war, rope is a whole lot cheaper, and playing against other kids would probably be better exercise than dropping sufficient cash to buy (if you shop carefully) an entire Xbox 360 system and television to play it on.

See, the Romeo humanoid robot is a pretty good idea. It’s a five foot tall, 90 pound robot with 37 degrees of movement, a backbone, and a partially softened torso so that it can fetch and carry to its owner’s heart’s content. It can also communicate with natural language and gestures so that it can take orders as needed. Basically, if all goes as planned, it’ll pretty much be the robot butler we’ve all longed for since we first saw an episode of The Jetsons. It’s intended to be used as a help for the elderly, though it’d likely be helpful for most anyone else.

But they want to get it to prototype stage in right around three months?  Tall order, some would say, but considering that they’ve already had a working humanoid robot in the form of the Nao, it’s entirely possible that they learned enough from that to get the Romeo to a functioning level in rapid fashion. The Nao does bear at least a passing resemblance to the Romeo–Romeo looks like Nao’s big brother–so if it’s as easy as an upscaling and some new parts, well, that’s hardly out of line to suggest.

Though there’s another problem too, in that there’s no word that the Romeo will be open source. At this stage of the game, that could really slow down the pace of development. Many hands make light work, if I can pull out the aphorisms for a minute, so why not open the floor?

Still though, the thought of a robot fetching me my iced tea at night sounds like a fine idea to me, so the sooner the better, Aldebaran!

It’s something of a misnomer to say that the restaurant itself is run by robots–rather, only the duties involving waiting on the customer have been taken over by the machines. The Dalu Rebot Restaurant has two robotic receptionists that look like mannequins, whilst more nondescript robots (that look vaguely like the Cybermen in Doctor Who), serve as waiters who move around on tray-bearing cycles as pictured above.

The Dalu Rebot Restaurant opened only four days ago–December 5th–and can host up to 100 patrons at one time. And it’s a good thing, too, because by all reports the Dalu Rebot is a very popular location right now, thanks in large part to all the curious onlookers who want to have their meals served via robot. In fact, it’s so successful that, reportedly, Dalu Rebot plans to do some more hiring–of the mechanical variety, anyway–and pick up a few more robots.

Humans have a place in the restaurant too, mostly in the back rooms preparing the restaurant’s menu items, as well as a couple of humans to keep an eye on the front with the patrons.  This is probably a good idea just in case the wait staff goes all I, Robot on the patrons; it would be a good idea to have a Will Smith around just in case. Still though, I have to admit it’d be interesting to summon a robot to my table when I’m ready to pay a check instead of having to wait for the human waiter to figure out I still exist and would like to leave at some point.

You’ve read about it here a while back–last January a while back–and since its appearance, it really hasn’t show many signs that its popularity was looking to slow up. That’s likely a good chunk of why augmentation was done via open source in the first place: people like this thing. And although what the augmentation does sounds simple–enabling the Parrot AR.Drone to track and chase down a red rubber ball much like any puppy of reasonable intelligence–the actual process to add such an augmentation took a bit of doing.

Urbiscript figures heavily into this operation, which in turn allows you to take control of the Parrot AR.Drone via pretty much your choice of interfaces: included on the list I’ve found was a joystick, keyboard and mouse, and even a Wiimote showed up somehow–apparently the only real qualification was that it be able to connect to “a PC running Windows, Linux or a Mac”. Speaking here as a former Wii owner, I can’t remember offhand just how a Wiimote would connect to a PC or a Mac, but then, I’ve never owned a Mac so there could be something I’m missing there.

The source link also boasts a video showing off the whole thing start to finish; interestingly, the chunk of source code that lends so much extra utility to the Parrot AR.Drone is only 25 lines long, leading me to wonder why they didn’t put this in in the first place. Of course, it’s entirely possible they just didn’t think of it at the time, and so enterprising souls like Psykokwak could find it later and add their own touches to the process.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen telepresence robots out here, but it is the first time we’ve seen one weigh in for under $10,000. But first, the relevant specs.

Mantaro, who normally is spotted working on network management systems, is kind of a surprise to be putting out a telepresence robot, though I suppose if you think about it it’s not so different. It’s a robot that lets you network; conceptually it’s the same thing as a network server except it cuts out a lot of middleman.

It offers a control scheme that can be accessed from a user’s PC, and a Skype plug-in lets the user not only see where the MantaroBot is going, but also what (and who, which is where the networking part really comes into play) it’s looking at. Basically, like other telepresence robots, it lets you essentially be present at a location via remote, which is at least psychologically different from merely being on a network chat with someone.

The MantaroBot’s camera is high-definition (no word on if it’s filming in 720p, 1080p, or something else entirely), and offers 180 degree pan and 180 degree tilt to give you a wide frame of vision around the MantaroBot’s immediate surroundings.And as I made great mention of, the price on this is a comparatively affordable $3500.

One article we did on telepresence robots featured commenter Jane Jetson saying that, essentially, we really don’t need another way for people with nothing better to do than look and talk to have another way to look over your shoulder. I’ll agree on that score, though it would be a great way for people to have vacation time without leaving the house.

Created by a man who lost the use of his legs following a car accident, Amit Goffer created the ReWalk system along with the help of his newly-minted firm. Basically, what it amounts to is a set of robotic pants (a suit that happens to be half-robot, essentially) that can move a paraplegic’s legs and support the extra weight, allowing that person to, basically, walk again.

Sure, it’s the robot legs that are doing the walking as opposed to the paraplegic, who basically happens to be along for the ride, but close counts, especially when you’re dealing with something like allowing people to even look or feel like they’re walking again who formerly could not.

There’s a down side to this, though, as the ReWalk is set to cost fully $100,000 (which is exactly the same price as the eLEGS Exoskeleton we talked about not too long ago) so I guess the going rate for helping people walk again is six figures. And it’s only got sufficient battery to run for 3.5 hours before needing recharging.

On a more personal note, I’ll bet all this is really making insurance companies start to sweat. It was one thing when someone would start talking about the eLEGS as a way to help the paralyzed walk again; then they could just polish the old “experimental treatment” routine. But with two versions on the market–and probably more to come!–it’ll get harder and harder for them to find excuses to turn people away. And a few dozen angry parents with paralyzed children who’d love for their kids to be able to walk again will probably make things very uncomfortable for recalcitrant executives.

However it all comes out, you can look for the ReWalk to hit shelves in a couple of weeks, which will beat the eLEGS to market by about eight months at last projection.

If you send a tweet out to @talayrobot, something interesting will happen out at the London headquarters of Sony Music. Upon receiving your tweet, an ST robotics arm will fire up and write your sent tweet onto a whiteboard, and the entire process will be put on video. Within minutes, the video will then be sent to you of a robot writing your tweet onto a whiteboard, and the whole thing will be done to the music of Sony’s own Talay Riley, more specifically, Riley’s “Sergeant Smash” song.

Several videos have been released on this–you’ll find at least one out at the via link–and it’s a strange sort of combination here. Clearly, it’s a promotional stunt. But it’s an interesting enough idea, and certainly exciting in its way to watch a Twitter-driven robot write out your tweets on a big whiteboard to music.

Of course, it also leaves folks like those crazy kids out at 4Chan to have some fun, as one video featured a tweet comprised of nothing but the letter “F” and the letter “U” repeated about twenty odd times (watching a robot write “Fuuuuuuuu” for an extended amount of time is funny for the first few letters, then kind of sad when you realize that it can’t get the joke and stop on its own.

But watching another video express that one should never send a human to do a machine’s job, however, felt like poetic justice following the big “Fuuuuu” tweet.

Still though, combining robotics and social networking produces both funny video and an interesting idea, so kudos to Sony Music for putting it out there, even if they did likely just do it to hawk Talay Riley music.

See, we all know that bicycle theft is a real problem, especially in areas of high bicycle density, like in downtown areas or near schools. But this particular lock, a homebrew invention as yet which will hopefully be snapped up by a major bicycle manufacturer, manages to make your bike absolutely secure to anything short of a fifteen foot ladder or cherry-picker device from your local telephone company.

It’s built out of old skateboard wheels and an electric motor, and what it basically does is attach to your bike like any normal lock, and then attach to a pole, also about like normal. But the difference here is that you carry a remote control for the lock (which could probably be converted to an iPhone app in no time), and pressing one button causes the lock to use its skateboard wheels to climb the pole and then lock into position with the press of another button. Retrieving your bike later is all a matter of reversing the process.

Of course, there are problems with this idea. One, it was built for a German television channel’s advertising, so we likely won’t see it very soon. Plus, the lock is…well..substantial, not to put too fine a point on it, very heavy, difficult to carry around and its use will probably be determined to be illegal in a lot of places. Lastly, if you had friends given to practical jokes, they could use their own pole-climbing lock to put their bike directly underneath yours, making it impossible to get yours back. Or worse, if they had one and you didn’t, you might well find your bike hoisted several feet in the air following a night of drinking, and that would freak most people out like no tomorrow.

Still though, combining robotics and green tech is always worth a look–and hopefully, we’ll be able to get our hands on these at some point.

You read here previously about the Evolta Challenge, in which the tiny robot was sent forth to cross the mileage all on the strength of its batteries, but while it was expected to take until December 10th to reach its journey’s end, it actually managed to wrap it up about two and a half weeks ahead of schedule.

The robot operated under certain ground rules: it wasn’t allowed to walk at night, nor was it allowed to walk in the rain, and it was followed by human attendants to take care of things like lifting it up and over stairs, and was allowed one battery recharge a day.

It followed an infrared signal in front of it to figure out where it was going, and it even carried a dozen batteries in a little cart that it pulled behind itself the full 500 kilometer (or about 317 miles if you favor the non-metric measure) distance, follow the route from Japan’s new capital to its old by way of the Tokaido high road, which was once one of Japan’s greatest roads.

Mr. Evolta is reportedly the Japanese mascot of Evolta batteries, which it naturally used to fuel its long trek. Call this a publicity stunt if you will, or maybe just a sheer testament to the power of Panasonic’s battery line, or even call it downright inspiration if you’re up to looking for inspiration in strange quarters, but Mr. Evolta’s long, battery-driven voyage is definitely one for the books.  Or maybe just tech blogs like us.

The Land Crawler robot was actually designed by a dad whose two year old son said he wanted to ride around on a robot. And this particular dad, being a thoroughly cool dad in all the modern senses, set out to make his son that dream robot which he could ride around upon. Soon enough, he’d built the Land Crawler, and son was made quite happy and father was made quite gratified by same. But what father soon discovered was that the Land Crawler robot he’d designed as little more than a ride-on toy for his robot-crazed boy could hold fully 175 pounds of weight and still function, making it, essentially, a replacement for shoes.

It moves forward and backward with nearly equal grace (walking backward, as we all know, is significantly harder than walking forward), though the whole setup does make a great lot of noise while it moves.

Now, looking at this thing, you can see where something like this would work out well. In fact, why folks weighing over 175 pounds couldn’t simply put one under each foot and stand with their legs slightly apart is beyond me. Why a larger one capable of moving half tons couldn’t be built is likewise beyond me, especially now that we have proof of concept like this.

I hope to see these become the new Segway in a couple years, myself, because that’s just terribly entertaining to watch. Video is out at the via link, and you can see just how well this concept works.

Sure, it looks like a remote controlled car with a bizarre water pistol mounted on its topmost quarters, but the Squirt robot does pretty much what you’d think it does, namely, it rolls around and fires off bursts from its squirt gun.

Squirt has two modes–one in which it is controlled by a smartphone (an Android smartphone, specifically, though even iPhone users will be able to take control via text SMS message, but even this requires an Android phone to pass on the commands) and rolls around and fires on whatever you like, as determined by distance sensors on the robot. The second available mode, meanwhile, allows Squirt to roam free and fire on anything that happens to wander anywhere near it, which means chances are your cat will grow to hate it.

Squirt even has something of a personality, oddly enough, and will not only make acerbic comments verbally about your driving skill, but also really hates it when things sneak up on it.

And for those of you already taking notes on how to make your own, the water gun in question is a modified SIG SAUER STR70 Saturator that fires four “bullets” of water per second, and makes a lot of noise in the process.

Further information on how to do it, plus some video, can be found out at the via link in case you’re looking to make your own squirt gun capable robot for watering plants, chasing away small wildlife, or just annoying your household pets.

See that pic above? Recognize that cybernetic heartbreaker greeting the President on behalf of Japan? Yes, that’s none other than our favorite dancing fashion robot, the HRP-4C.

He also got some face time with a couple other new friends, including the baby harp seal robot Paro, and a chance to take a ride in Yamaha’s “mobility robot”, the i-Real. He briefly tried driving the i-Real, a move which no doubt freaked the Secret Service out to no end, but didn’t get very far with it before its own unusual control style left him out of balance and longing to get off the thing. He also did a nice job of at least looking interested in the HRP-4C and the Paro, though even I have to admit that the Paro’s incessant hooting / shrieking / whatever name you want to slap onto that preposterous noise it was making was getting on my nerves after just a couple minutes, so kudos to him for keeping his composure while that cuddly little devil-machine shrieked my sanity away.

There’s video of this out at the via link, and it’s actually kind of funny if you can put up with that horrible noise the Paro keeps making, but it won’t show you much I haven’t described for you, and without the harp seal screech.

When exactly the United States will get on with the job of catching up to Japan’s incredible lead in robot technology, well, that I’m not so sure of.

The Pulito robot–interesting side note here, “Pulito” is actually Italian for “clean”–and isn’t a robot vacuum unlike, say, the Roomba. Pulito is more like the name implies; it pulls a cloth behind it that pulls up dust and hair and whatnot as it moves around.

And even better, it doesn’t have any fancy Northstar or Celestial navigator or anything like that; it uses basically a suite of sensors to determine when it’s butting up against something, as well as a larger overall sensor that lets it track electric sources so it can recharge its own internal batteries and keep sweeping. Meanwhile, the dust cloth itself is a Swiffer.

If you want to check out all the various wiring requirements and other such items that went into the construction of the Pulito, then just have a look at the source link. It’s actually very extensive, and there’s a pretty good chance that you can build your own Pulito following reading it. It won’t be easy, however, but it’s within the realm of possibility. Word is that it does a great job with stuff like dust, hair and small crumbs, though bigger crumbs require separate cleanups. If you’re out to find a simple (not to mention inexpensive) way to keep your floors clean without a whole lot of work on your part, you may well want to check out the Pulito robot.

The Cody robot is partially human controlled, and includes a camera and laser attachment so it can tell precisely what body part it’s set to wash. The arm joints are made specifically to reduce unnecessarily harsh impact (they’re actually made with very low stiffness so the resulting slack can absorb some shock), plus, the robot is specifically programmed to keep its skin-contact pressure low (well below, it’s being reported, the capacity to do any damage at all), and just to top things off, Cody even comes with an override button that shuts all its movement systems down when pressed, allowing for a one-touch kill switch in case something goes wrong.

And since it can be partially controlled by humans–a human nurse holding Cody’s robotic hand can lead it around–there will likely always be someone on hand to smack that kill switch should Cody get too rambunctious.

Here’s the kicker–it’s actually already working. Initial tests had Cody wipe blue candy off “patients”, and the “patients” themselves report that, while the first few seconds had them wildly freaked out, they quickly calmed down when they discovered the process was going well. The feel of it worked out, and Cody got most of the blue candy off the “patients” too, so call this one a huge success.

When Cody will see wide use in home health care or nursing homes or hospitals remains to be seen, but considering how hard nurses work already, they’ll probably welcome a bit of help from robots.

You likely don’t think of Hungary as a major center for robotics, but when it comes to robots that don’t really do anything important or more than just entertaining, well, you’ll need to adjust your perception quite a bit.

The Bacarobo contest brings a panel of three judges, along with audience participation in the grandest “Gong Show” style to judge which robots are the most hilariously stupid. The winner gets a whopping 2000 Euro (about $2700 US), cash price, ostensibly so they can go back home and create an even bigger, even dumber robot for the next year’s show.

Just to give you an example of the kind of weirdness you’re about to hear about, one of the judges (yes, one of the judges) exhibited a singing toy robot that he used to perform a traditional Hungarian folk song. And you haven’t seen weird until you’ve seen a robot shaped like a huge musical note, slung around a guy’s neck like an electric guitar, emitting screechy tones in the fashion of Hungarian folk rock. You’ll question whether you need to be back on your medication or off it.

And indeed, the bounds of stupid will be stretched here, as a vaguely functional robot made out of a garbage can and googly eyes occasionally followed its inventor around, and a robot powered by a hand drill made an appearance as well. One, the Olebot, needed to be wheeled out on a hand truck but performed a passingly good fan dance while the audience clapped along.

There’s actually video of this event, and it’s a delicate combination of hilarious and disturbing, so check it out for yourself.

You’ve heard about the Yahama HRP-4C here before, a couple times actually, so a bit of an update is certainly in order. New information has been released detailing how the robot girl gets her recently-exhibited dance steps, and as it turns out, it’s a lot simpler than anyone might have thought.

It’s actually on par with computer animation software, which is one of those things that makes you blink in surprise before you have that crucial “why didn’t I think of that?” moment. The interface in question gives you a couple simple places to interact: the legs, the arms, the head and torso, and then clicking on them in the software program allows you to drag them to the position you want the HRP-4C to show. Once you’ve generated this set of key poses, the software does the rest, programming the limbs to move accordingly to reach the key pose you want reached.

This allows you to set up a string of key poses, which the robot then fulfills by obeying the commands issued by the software, such that the robot looks like it’s dancing when all it’s really doing is reaching the set of key poses you established in the software. Of course, if the robot can’t reach the pose in question, or the pose would render the robot too unstable to work properly, then the pose is simply thrown out in the software, and a substitute pose is built in the software itself and executed accordingly.

Sometimes the how of something happening is just as amazing as the thing itself.