Creepiness is a hard feeling to objectively evaluate, but we dare you to not get creeped out by these realistic robots listed by Cracked.com. It’s the uncanny valley of robots that are almost, but not completely lifelike, and which repulse most humans. It begs the question: how could you resolve the uncanny valley problem? Would you build a robot to look exactly like you, as [Hiroshi Ishiguro] did, or would you build one to look like a famous figure, like the Albert Hubo?
[via BotJunkie]
Whether you loved, hated, or didn’t see Wall-E, it’s hard not to fall in love with the iDance Wall-E toy. Connect him to an audio source and Wall-E will dance around like an epileptic Billy Bass.
[Gian Pablo Villamil] at NYC Resistor wondered whether it would work with his custom made Rhythmic Synth, and to his and our delight, it does! The Rhythmic Synth is an older project of his; it is a simple rhythm generator with 4 pitch knobs, 4 modulation knobs, and 4 phase switches. The case was taken from an old external Iomega CD-ROM drive.
Getting the Wall-E to dance isn’t much of a feat, but something about the dancing combined with a synth with embedded lights just screams robot dance party, and that can never be wrong. We’d love to see the Wall-E dancing to a cleaner, more complete synth: maybe this one. Check out Wall-E busting a move after the break.
Remember Gigantor, the anime about the original “Iron Man”? Fans of the show will want to take note: Vstone, maker of robots and other products, is now accepting orders for the Black Ox, Gigantor’s nemesis. It’s a real robot with 22 joints, and can be controlled via a wireless remote. The product can only be ordered online, and it’ll cost you a pretty penny. We hope you have $7,450 laying around. it’s $930 for the down payment. It’s as if the company were pretty much daring hobbyists to make their own cheaper versions. Street knowledge media has even more pictures.
[via CrunchGear]
We love beer and we love robots, so guessing how we feel about this robotic bartender should be a no-brainer. Known as Mr. Asahi, the robot opens bottles and pours beer while taking your orders with aplomb and a jovial British accent. It also has a customized lazy susan with slots for bottles and notches for the robot’s hand to grasp.
Amazingly, this is not Asahi’s first beer pouring robot. That one requires you to do most of the leg work, though, so this one is a marked improvement. Best of all, it won’t ignore you when a person more attractive than you comes into the bar, and it won’t snub you for leaving a lousy tip. We now fear alcohol fueled robot rampages… they get more human every day. Video after the break.
Time Magazine recently posted a photo essay of some of their favorite robots. The article was composed in response to the recent release of the Pixar film Wall-E, and features some of the cutest, most cuddly automatons in the world. We were more interested in the most functional ones, huggability notwithstanding. See some of these Hack a Day veterans after the break.
We love hardware modding, robots, and generally all things in the DIY category, but cartoons are pretty awesome too. The hilarious yet sadly short lived Nickelodeon cartoon Invader Zim was a favorite ours, due in no small part to a character called GIR, a little borderline insane robot. Not content with just a cartoon, a group of Montana State Univesity, Bozeman graduates have decided to build a real, functional GIR robot.
For those unfamiliar with the cartoon, GIR is a quirky, malfunctioning robot designed to help an alien named Zim take over Earth. Loaded with cameras, lights, and all manner of Inspector Gadget style devices in the cartoon, the team have their work cut out for them: if their version is even half as advanced as the cartoon version, it would be several generations more advanced than anything we’ve ever seen. So far, the team has only begun working on the head and neck, installing servos to control its motion, cameras, decorative LEDs in the eyes, and the software to control it all. According to [Arthur Krebsbach], one of the project contributors, this is a long term, open-ended project that will employ new technology as it becomes available. The project is a bit silly, but legitimately ambitious; [Krebsbach] notes, “I don’t think we will ever be satisfied with the Gir until he can fly but runs out of fuel quickly because he replaced it all with Tuna.”
[via JhnenVEE]
More Wii Fit Balance Board hacks keep rolling in from Europe. We’re not sure we agree with [Juan Gonzales]’s assertion that the Wii Fit Balance board is the best way to control robots, but we can’t deny how fun it looks. [Gonzales] managed to control a robot of his own design with the balance board, making it turn when he leans to the sides and moving forward and back when he leans in those directions.
The robot, which he calls SkyBot, is fairly impressive in its own right, built from a PIC microcontroller and featuring various infrared sensors and 6 contact sensors. The robot’s OS can be controlled from Windows, OS X, or Linux, but for this project, they used Debian. The balance board interfaces with a laptop connected to SkyBot; custom software (tar.gz file) to make this work was written in python, and is available on [Gonzales]’s robot wiki, as well as instructions on how to build a SkyBot. It is in Spanish, however, so fire up Google Translate and get to work.
[via Balance Board Blog]
