Human beings make tools. Animals make tools. A tool gives an advantage over adversity and guarantees survival. Will the same happen if a robot makes a tool?

Researchers at ETH Zurich are on a mission to not only have robots make tools, but they are teaching the bots how to use them. Their goal is to simplify the complexity of this type of robot, while at the same time giving it extraordinary capabilities like creating its own parts, fixing itself, and even creating other robots from printed parts and integrated motors.

So far, their robot consists of a mechanical arm with Hot Melt Adhesive (HMA) capabilities. This means that at the end of the mechanical arm is just a hot glue gun that can be used to create parts layer by layer. In their effort to avoid complexity, it has no manipulator mechanisms, instead it only uses the stickiness of the printed parts to move them and place them.

The project has only just been started. In a demonstration of their progress, ETH researchers showed that their robot is capable of creating tools and thus performing tasks that it would not be able to do otherwise. It took the robot about an hour, but it was able to create a cup with a handle to transport water, an impressive task for a robot with no hands.

Next, the team or researchers are working to give the robot perception capabilities to eventually achieve a completely autonomous robot. At the moment, the robot can only create simple shapes in about an hour’s time; a long way away from creating an entire mechanism, but even bots need to take it one HMA layer at a time.

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As I am sure your mother told you, dogs are a huge responsibility to take care of, and if you don’t have the time, chances are you do not have the energy. But, this does not deter many people from getting dogs anyways. For this reason, the company Go-Go Dog Pals has created an interactive dog toys that run on energy that is not your own.

The latest Go-Go Dog Pals creation is a remote control car designed to withstand the predatory chase of the dog. This is not your ordinary dog toy, it comes with a dual 280mm high torque motors, its 4 wheel drive, double suspension so it can be driven on many terrains. The chassis resembles a groundhog, and is made of a smooth durable plastic. The most impressive feature, it can go as fast as 21 mph.

The idea is that you sit back have fun controlling  the Go-Go Dog Pal while watching your dog go crazy in the chase. It is difficult to actually catch the toy because of its smooth chassis except for its tail. But if your dog does catch the antenna tail, it only weighs 3.9 pounds so there is no worries of pulling it out. Even if Rufus does fulfill its killer instinct, all parts are replaceable.

The remote uses a long distance 2.4 GHz digital radio control system and the Go-Go Pal comes with a rechargeable Ni-Cd battery and a cool $300 price tag. We love our dogs, so what is $300?

The complete system (via Go-Go Dog Pals)

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Building projects with microcontrollers (especially Arduinos as of late) opens minds to an unlimited amount of innovations. Whether the projects are created for fun, or to serve specific purposes, they can always motivate others to be creative. The latest Arduino powered creation comes from Ekaggrat, an inspired individual with a strong interest in science.  

Ekaggrat has created a robotic arm that writes down the time by the minute on a dry-erase board. After a minute is up it erases the digit and rewrites the new time. It is driven by four servos that control the arm and hand movements. Two 9G metal gear RC servos move the arm while two 4.5G ultralight servos control the hand movements. Using servos makes it a little loud and noisy and limits the accuracy of the robotic hand writing. However, there still can be improvements to be made such as a change to stepper motors to improve accuracy.

Nonetheless, the creation is truly inspiring and the programming that it takes to complete a project such as this is difficult. Keeping track of the timing, 4 servos, and 7-segment display writing orientation in sync with one another is impressive for a hobby project. This goes to show that the amount of creations possible with technology is limitless.

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A group of researchers from Cornell Creative Machine Labs are currently developing an autonomous robot inspired from metabolisms of biological organisms. The goal is to be able to break down larger complex structures into smaller simpler pieces that may be reassembled to create a different type of structure.

The robot clamps onto a specially designed truss using rotational robot-lockable connectors and can traverse the three dimensional structure using three basic motions. Bi-directional gears on the robot allow it move between perpendicular planes, horizontally and vertically along a truss, and 180 degrees around a truss to move from the top to the bottom. In addition, reflectivity sensors are implemented into the robot which give it a sense of location relative to the truss structure, ultimately allowing it to function autonomously.

The sensors and movements are all controlled from on board the robot. The robot carries with it a sensor I/O board, a microcontroller, servo motors, and an on board battery. These simple electronics allow it detach truss beams with 100 percent success rate and reattach them with a 70 percent success rate.

While they would like to use the robot for building deconstruction and repair, that does not stop the researchers from thinking big. One day they hope that it could help repair and construct the space station or any other dangerous tasks associated with the outside of the space station or a shuttle. Meanwhile, the researchers will be working on improving the robot so it will be cable of carrying multiple truss beams at once, and they plan on re-working the algorithms that will allow it to traverse a path of most efficiency based on the final design. 

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Many robots have been designed for the benefit of mankind taking over continuously repetitive tasks or in some cases battling other robots for entertainment purposes. However, recently experiments have been done that may allow humans to help out animal populations in times of danger.

Maurizio Porfiri and Stefano Marras from New York's Polytechnic institute have designed a biomimetic robot fish to help study collective fish behavior. The robot fish is the first of its kind engineered to simulate animal mobility. In recently conducted experiments, the robot fish was placed into a flowing stream of water with a real fish to analyze the behavior between the two. When the robot fish remained motionless in the water, the real fish seemed to ignore it and swim about in a sporadic pattern. On the other hand, when the robot fish was simulating natural fish movements and swimming in the water the real fish tended to align in a specific formation with the robot. As the robot swam in formation, the real fish's movements slowed, proving that the fish was saving energy by following along behind the robot. Additionally, this shows that groups of fish may be lead in certain directions by a robot fish. This can prove helpful when humans create ecological disasters such as oil spills that can wipe out endangered species of fish. Nevertheless, it can also help us better understand the behavior of fish.

Can the robot fish "Pied Piper" invasive species out of foreign waters?

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Berthold Bauml would be to blame for with the downtrodden servatude of robots, or the impending robot uprising. He is the lead scientist in real-time dynamic motion planning at DLR. He developed a new advanced humanoid robot named, Agile Justin. It stands with a happy face on a terrorizing body.

Agile Justin is the new and improved sister of the older version named, Rollin’ Justin. Berthold stated, “…but with improved dynamical performance: 1.5x faster arms through different gear ratios; completely new wheel electronics and bus architecture, which allows a 500Hz control loop over all four wheels and steering DOFs on the mobile platform; 1kHz control loop for the arms, torso and hand DOFs,” when it comes to the improvements in Agile Justin.

The different feature from all the other humanoid robots and Agile is that it has full-body control. The full-body controls consist of, real-time coordination of hands, arms, torso, and mobile base for dynamic tasks. Phew, looks like I can out run this robot.

The technical details should be forthcoming in academic publications later this year along with demonstrations at Automatica 2012.

Even though I want to see technology advances, I hope Agile does not get a mind of her own.

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(Right) HOVIS bot. (Via Robotshop)  (Left) A less advance HOVIS.

Beware Android’s apps are COMING ALIVE!

A South Korean company, Dasarobot, invented a HOVIS humanoid robot. The HOVIS can only be compatibility with any 3.5-inch Android-based smartphone. When the phone is connected to HOVIS, the app then become the robot’s commander. Several Android control apps are planned for the HOVIS bot, though availability outside Korea is not clear. However, when searching through your Android app market, I recommend avoiding the violent ones, unless you want a vicious robot.

The HOVIS humanoid robot added some new kicks. The leading telecommunications company in South Korea, SK Telecom, has made it possible for the robot to use Wi-Fi and Bluetooth for control. It not only can retrieve data through thin air, but it can also see, hear and even speak. In order for it to become an eye seeking robot, a camera (computer vision), microphone and speaker (speech recognition, speech synthesis), and the processing power of a fixed PC were added to it.

Wondering how much it would cost for developing a humanoid robot hobby? The phrase, bang for your buck, holds truth with these robots. You have your choice from inexpensive robots to expensive academic humanoids. The price tag attached to these remarkable robots start only at $620 for the basic. The HOVIS brand gives you many styles to pick from. When choosing the style all of them have complete-with-exoskeleton to DIY kits, and one of four levels of software for beginners to knowledgeable programmers.

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In this new digital world, young people now grow up playing video games and surfing the Internet instead of playing games outside; clearly play dates are changing. Canadian company EZ-Robot wants to lead the way this new generation of youngsters play by bringing technology out of the screen into their hands.

To do this, they have released an easy to use, do-it-yourself robotics kit. But this kit takes robot building one step further by only providing you with the guts of the robot.

For $235, the kit provides you with three standard and two rotating servomotors, five sensors including an ultrasonic distance sensor, wireless tracking camera, wireless Bluetooth controller, a battery pack, other parts and software to control your creation without the need for computer code.

Like we said, these are just the guts of the robot. The fun begins, when you chose which of your currently lifeless toys to which you will grant life. As long as the parts fit, you will be able to animate and program the robot using the included software and controller. For the advance roboticist, the EZ-Robotics kit also supports the iRobot Roomba and Arduino software platforms.

EZ-Robot kit, Wall-E themed (via EZ-Robot)

However, with the included software, you can program face recognition, object tracking and slew of other functions. You can even program your robot to be controlled by a Wii remote, joystick, or a touch tablet.

At the moment, EZ-Robot says they are sold out of kits. It might be too late to get this as a holiday present for your favorite nerd, but this kit is sure to make an excellent gift at any time in the year.  An excellent way to pull them away from the screen for a little bit and let their imagination run wild, as they turn into a mad scientist.

I hate to admit, but this is very much like LEGO Mindstorm NXT, minus the LEGOs.

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