Boing Boing » robots

Prosthetic tentacle

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 23 May 2013 21:37:23 +0000

Taiwanese design student Kaylene Kau created this motorized prosthetic tentacle for a class project: "For this project we were pushed by our Professor to push the boundaries of current upper-limb prosthetic design. Through extensive research I found that the prosthetic functioned as an assistant to the dominant functioning hand. The prosthetic needed to be both flexible and adjustable in order to accommodate a variety of different grips."

PROSTHETIC ARM (via Kadrey)

How ants always land on their feet

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Tue, 21 May 2013 13:40:02 +0000

As they move through tunnels dug in a wide variety of soils, ants do sometimes slip and fall down their own shafts. But they catch themselves, with their limbs and even with their antenna. Scientists are studying the ways ants brace against a fall to help design better robotos for search-and-rescue missions.

Will robots take all the jobs?

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 17 May 2013 15:46:26 +0000

In a fascinating installment of the IEEE Techwise podcast [MP3], Rice University Computational Engineering prof Moshe Vardi discusses the possibility that robots will obviate human labor faster than new jobs are created, leaving us with no jobs. This needn't be a bad thing -- it might mean finally realizing the age of leisure we've been promised since the first glimmers of the industrial revolution -- but if market economies can't figure out how to equitably distribute the fruits of automation, it might end up with an even bigger, even more hopeless underclass.

I think the issue of machine intelligence and jobs deserves some serious discussion. I don’t know that we will reach a definite conclusion, and it’s not clear how easy it will be to agree on desired actions, but I think the topic is important enough that it deserves discussion. And right now I would say it’s mostly being discussed by economists, by labor economists. It has to also be discussed by the people that produce the technology, because one of the questions we could ask is, you know, there is a concept that, for example, that people have started talking about, which is that we are using, we are creating technology that has no friction, okay? Creating many things that are just too easy to do.

Many of these ideas came up in this Boing Boing post from January, which also touches on Race Against the Machine: How the Digital Revolution is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy, a book that Vardi mentions in his interview.

The Job Market of 2045 (via /.)

Robot made from recycled scrap

Rob Beschizza — Thu, 16 May 2013 12:17:23 +0000

Chinese inventor Tao Xiangli tinkers with a hand-made robot at his house in Beijing, May 15, 2013. Tao, 37, spent ¥150,000 ($24,400) to build it out of recycled scrap metal and electric wires found at second-hand markets. The robot, which took a year to complete, is 7ft tall and weighs about a quarter of a ton. [Photo: REUTERS/Suzie Wong]

Self-assembling foldable inchworm robots

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 14 May 2013 00:55:02 +0000

Here's a quick and fascinating look at "Robot Self-Assembly by Folding: A Printed Inchworm Robot," presented at the 2013 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation. The authors demonstrated a foldable inchworm robot that actually folds itself into shape. The goal is to have all the components placed on the robot's shrinky-dink surface using a robotic pick-and-place machine, so that the inchworm robots can be produced, assembled, and set a-inching on their way without human intervention.

The tricky part of the process is the folding of the robot itself: installing the battery and motor is trivial enough for a human to do, which means that a relatively simple pick and place robot should have no problems doing the same thing. This means that these robots have the potential to scale massively: they can be printed out of cheap materials, they fold themselves together, and another robot can plonk some hardware on them and they’re good to go.

This Crawling Inchworm Robot Can Be Printed Out and Folds Itself [Evan Ackerman/IEEE Spectrum]

(via Beyond the Beyond)

Kickstarting solder-it-yourself junkbot kits

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 13 May 2013 13:45:24 +0000

A group of engineering students (with no stated manufacturing experience -- caveat emptor) are kickstarting a series of cute assemble-it-yourself junkbots called "D.Bug"s. You get a kit full of electronic components, instructions for soldering them into cute robots, and a display box for your complete project. They're on the pricey side ($35 for the cheapest), especially since they don't come with the tools you need to assemble them, but they're a cute and potentially fun entree to soldering and working with electronic components.

To assemble the kit, you solder together electronic components to form the body parts of the D.Bug. Easy to assemble!Easy to assemble!
The manual includes step-by-step photo instructions, the background story for each D.Bug, a guide to identifying electronic parts, a tutorial for soldering, a harvesting guide for where to find the best parts, and insider tips on how to make your D.Bug look awesome.

D.Bug Model Kits - Art hacked from electronics (Thanks, Sophie!)

MC Frontalot's "I'll Form the Head" - crowdfunded voltronoid nerdcore

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 13 May 2013 11:23:26 +0000

MC Frontalot sez, "At long last, here's the third of three videos from my album Solved that were funded by fans via Kickstarter. It was directed by Carly Monardo and features my nerdcore rap compatriots ZeaLouS1 and Dr. Awkward. Lyrics and credits are on the youtube page. The single is out today, too, and it's free at frontalot.com.

Bright-colored robotic space rhinoceri
that we pilot — why? 'Cause they're in supply.
Plus, we heed the cry of our planet's population
to defend them. We report to battle stations!
Split screen — ready! — and our rhinos are rocket ships
with fully articulated tusk, jaws, and hips.
They come equipped with individual special attacks,
none with a lack (but a couple a little bit slack).
I'm not naming any pilot specifically,
but we're all color coded so you notice that typically
I (in the gold) lead the charge, do the most damage
to whatever very giant space invader managed
to threaten the globe in yet another of our episodes.
This week? Malevolent galactic nematode!
Already beat up the squad when we faced him.
I'm calling it: let's form a giant robot and waste him.

MC Frontalot - I'll Form The Head [OFFICIAL VIDEO] (Thanks, Frontalot!)

Pedals: music video about musical effects pedals

David Pescovitz — Wed, 08 May 2013 16:45:04 +0000

BB pal Scott Matthews points us to Jack Conte's "Pedals," a terrific celebration of music gear (and robots). The lyrics:

Hog Pog Vox Wah Ocatave Multiplexer Big Muff Memory Man Boss Chromatic Tuner Polyphase MicroSynth Frequency Analyzer Voice Box Electric Mistress Freeze Tube Zipper

Check out the behind-the-scenes video below!

Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong: YA graphic novel about robots, romance and school elections

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 07 May 2013 12:45:52 +0000

Back in September 2012, I posted about Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong, a fantastic YA graphic novel about robotics, cheerleaders, and school council elections adapted by Faith Erin Hicks (a favorite of mine, thanks to great comics like Zombies Calling, Friends With Boys) from a YA novel by Prudence Shen. Hicks and her publisher, the ever-excellent FirstSecond, serialized the comic on the Web through much of 2012/13, and now they've published the book between covers.

Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong is a beautifully told story about a pair of unlikely friends: Charlie, a jock who is nevertheless rather uncompetitive, and Nate, a high-strung roboticist and head of the school robots team. The story kicks off with a conflict: the cheerleaders and the robots kids are squaring off to convince the student council to allocate crucial budget to each of them, and there's only enough for one. Nate decides he's going to solve the problem directly by getting himself elected council president. The cheerleaders retaliate by running Charlie against him, bulldozing him into the job with their military discipline and formidable organization. After the elections shenanigans get out of hand, they make an uneasy peace, predicated on the idea that if the robotics kids use some of the cheerleaders' money to militarize their prized robot, they can win enough at the robot games to pay for both teams' necessaries.

What follows is the most epic robot battle in comics history. Seriously. Screw the Transformers. Hicks's illustrated robot war makes use of every one of the comics creator's tricks to accomplish something genuinely pulse-pounding. It's like a killer mecha ate a copy of Understanding Comics.

Woven into all this is a series of relationship stories that are well-told, and provide richness and texture and depth to the story, reaffirming Hicks's position as an awesomesauce dispenser of great skill and reliability.

Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong

What Google's self-driving car sees

Rob Beschizza — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 14:10:53 +0000

Charlie Warzel: "THIS is what google's self driving car can see. So basically this thing is going to destroy us all." [via Matt Buchanan]…

A cat-meme I can get behind

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 16:46:27 +0000

My feelings about cat memes are on record. But then there's this: a cat in a shark-suit riding a Roomba chasing a baby duck.

Controlling a robot arm with an Android phone

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 20:33:33 +0000

Paul sez, "This past semester, three engineering grad students at the University of Toronto (myself and two others) created an Android app for a course project that allows for wireless and intuitive control of a robotic arm from an Android-powered smartphone. We're pretty proud of the results (the link is to a demo we put together) and have released the code open source."

Android Robotic Manipulator Demo (Thanks, Paul!)

Welcome to your Awesome Robot: instructional robot-making comic now out in the US

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 12:50:49 +0000

Last month, I blogged a review of the kids' instructional comic book Welcome to Your Awesome Robot:

Welcome to Your Awesome Robot is a fantastic book for maker-kids and their grownups. It consists of a charming series of instructional comics showing a little girl and her mom converting a cardboard box into an awesome robot -- basically a robot suit that the kid can wear. It builds in complexity, adding dials, gears, internal chutes and storage, brightly colored warning labels and instructional sheets for attachment to the robot's chassis.
More than that, it encourages you to "think outside the box" (ahem), by adding everything from typewriter keys to vacuum hoses to shoulder-straps to your robot, giving the kinds of cues that will set your imagination reeling. For master robot builders, it includes a tear-out set of workshop rules for respectfully sharing robot-building space with other young makers, and certificates of robot achievement. I read this one to Poesy last night at bedtime, and today we're on the lookout for cardboard boxes to robotify. It's a fantastic, inspiring read! You can get a great preview of the book at NoBrow.

As of today, it's available in the US!

Welcome to your Awesome Robot by Viviane Schwarz [NoBrow]

Welcome to your Awesome Robot [Amazon]

Nano Quadcopter open source tiny drone kit

David Pescovitz — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 18:24:35 +0000

Designed by Bitcraze, the Crazyflie Nano Quadcopter is an open source development kit to make your own tiny drones. It's $173 from Seeed Studio Depot and looks like great fun to make and fly! "Crazyflie Nano Quadcopter Kit 10-DOF with Crazyradio"

C3PO junkbot

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 15:34:22 +0000

This spectacular C3PO junkbot assemblage was made by junk artist Gabriel Dishaw, and sells for $800. Worth every penny, too. Mr Dishaw's got plenty of other wonderful pieces for sale, too.

C3PO "Woody" (via Neatorama) …

Apollo F-1 engines recovered from Atlantic ocean floor by Bezos Expeditions

Xeni Jardin — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 16:03:34 +0000

Gas Generator and Manifold. Photo: Bezos Expeditions

A space history project led by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos has exciting news out today: Apollo mission F-1 engines have been recovered from deep beneath the surface of the Atlantic ocean, as the "F-1 Recovery Project" years in the making reaches a successful conclusion.

Here's video of the Remote Operated Vehicles recovering the engines from the ocean floor.

The F-1 rocket engine is still a modern wonder — one and a half million pounds of thrust, 32 million horsepower, and burning 6,000 pounds of rocket grade kerosene and liquid oxygen every second. On July 16, 1969, the world watched as five particular F-1 engines fired in concert, beginning the historic Apollo 11 mission. Those five F-1s burned for just a few minutes, and then plunged back to Earth into the Atlantic Ocean, just as NASA planned. A few days later, Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon.

"We're excited to be bringing a couple of your F-1s home," Bezos said to NASA.

And Boing Boing has a statement from NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden:

Nearly one year ago, Jeff Bezos shared with us his plans to recover F-1 engines that helped power Apollo astronauts to the moon in the late 1960s and early 1970s. We share the excitement expressed by Jeff and his team in announcing the recovery of two of the powerful Saturn V first-stage engines from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.
This is a historic find and I congratulate the team for its determination and perseverance in the recovery of these important artifacts of our first efforts to send humans beyond Earth orbit.
We look forward to the restoration of these engines by the Bezos team and applaud Jeff's desire to make these historic artifacts available for public display.
Jeff and his colleagues at Blue Origin are helping to usher in a new commercial era of space exploration and we are confident that our continued collaboration will soon result in private human access to space, creating jobs and driving America's leadership in innovation and exploration.

And here is a snip from the blog post by Bezos, just published moments ago:

What an incredible adventure. We are right now onboard the Seabed Worker headed back to Cape Canaveral after finishing three weeks at sea, working almost 3 miles below the surface. We found so much. We’ve seen an underwater wonderland – an incredible sculpture garden of twisted F-1 engines that tells the story of a fiery and violent end, one that serves testament to the Apollo program. We photographed many beautiful objects in situ and have now recovered many prime pieces. Each piece we bring on deck conjures for me the thousands of engineers who worked together back then to do what for all time had been thought surely impossible.
Many of the original serial numbers are missing or partially missing, which is going to make mission identification difficult. We might see more during restoration. The objects themselves are gorgeous. The technology used for the recovery is in its own way as otherworldly as the Apollo technology itself. The Remotely Operated Vehicles worked at a depth of more than 14,000 feet, tethered to our ship with fiber optics for data and electric cables transmitting power at more than 4,000 volts. We on the team were often struck by poetic echoes of the lunar missions. The buoyancy of the ROVs looks every bit like microgravity. The blackness of the horizon. The gray and colorless ocean floor. Only the occasional deep sea fish broke the illusion.

Thrust Chamber and Fuel Manifold. Photo: Bezos Expeditions

F-1 Thrust Chamber. Photo: Bezos Expeditions

F-1 Thrust Chamber on ocean floor. Photo: Bezos Expeditions

Saturn V Stage Structure. Photo: Bezos Expeditions

Nozzle. Photo: Bezos Expeditions

Los Angeles is not full of self-driving pod cars (and other disappointments from a 1988 view of 2013)

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 12:30:01 +0000

In April 1988, the LA Times Magazine published a cover article predicting what the spring of 2013 would look like for the typical Angeleno family. In a story that is bound to give you disconcerting flashbacks to Ray Bradbury's "There Will Come Soft Rains", a family of four (and their automated house full of whirring robots) goes about a full day — from mandatory staggered work times beginning at 5:15 am, to 11:00 pm, when the lady of the house sits down with her laser disc of The Collected Works of Jackie Collins. (Creepily, the story ends with the house catching fire. I'm not kidding about the Bradbury shout-outs.) Not all the predictions were totally off base, but, as a whole, it's definitely a neat example of how hard it is to look at current technology trends and correctly extrapolate them out to the future.

Brainless bots exhibit swarming

David Pescovitz — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 18:12:54 +0000

Harvard University researchers show how simple, brainless "bristle-bots" (like those you can make yourself or purchase for $6 as a "Hexbug Nano") exhibit swarming behavior when contained in a small area. According to the scientists, when this kind of behavior is seen in the natural world, among termites for example, it's "linked with insect cognition and social interactions. Our study shows how the behavioral repertoire of these physically interacting automatons controlled by one parameter translates into the mechanical intelligence of swarms." "Swarming, swirling and stasis in sequestered bristle-bots" (PDF)

Poplocks and Paper Pose-Ables: papercraft joints for pose-able robots

Cory Doctorow — Sun, 17 Mar 2013 01:30:02 +0000

Poplocks are a very clever system for making movable papercraft fastenings with die-cutting and folding. The Paper Pose-Ables site has a bunch of downloadable papercraft toys you can print out and make, as well as pre-cut/scored kits you can buy, for making fabulous poseable robots and other cool figures.

The Pose-Ables people came out to one of my signings last month and gave me a couple of GUPP-E robots, which I've put together this week, with help from my five-year-old daughter Poesy. The robots were fun to put together -- just intricate enough to be challenging without being frustrating -- and the Poplocks system really makes for a great, semi-rigid joint for the toys.

The Poplocks themselves are CC licensed for use in your own models.

The Poplock pushes the two pieces of paper tightly together, creating lots of friction! It can also stay put, and won't pop out on it's own, unless a good amount of force is used to bend it out of place.
Combine the Poplock Wedge with the special Locking Flaps hole, and you will create a nigh-invincible connection. Seriously, you won't be able to get the connection apart with torsion or pulling forces unless you rip or crumple the parts. Even then, the Poplock will probably stay put... holding two mangled pieces of paper together!

Poplocks

How to get ahead in robotics

Rob Beschizza — Sat, 09 Mar 2013 17:44:56 +0000

Swiss social psychologist Bertolt Mayer views 'Rex', a two metre tall artificial human, at the Science Museum in central London February 5, 2013. Mayer, a who uses a prosthetic hand himself, was used as the model for the 'bionic man', whom the British roboticist designers claim is the world's first complete bionic man, featuring artificial organs as well as fully functioning limbs. It will be on public display until March 11. Photo: REUTERS / Toby Melville

Welcome to your Awesome Robot: instructional comic turns kids & cardboard boxes into AWESOME ROBOTS!

Cory Doctorow — Sat, 09 Mar 2013 07:47:59 +0000

Welcome to Your Awesome Robot is a fantastic book for maker-kids and their grownups. It consists of a charming series of instructional comics showing a little girl and her mom converting a cardboard box into an awesome robot -- basically a robot suit that the kid can wear. It builds in complexity, adding dials, gears, internal chutes and storage, brightly colored warning labels and instructional sheets for attachment to the robot's chassis.

More than that, it encourages you to "think outside the box" (ahem), by adding everything from typewriter keys to vacuum hoses to shoulder-straps to your robot, giving the kinds of cues that will set your imagination reeling. For master robot builders, it includes a tear-out set of workshop rules for respectfully sharing robot-building space with other young makers, and certificates of robot achievement. I read this one to Poesy last night at bedtime, and today we're on the lookout for cardboard boxes to robotify. It's a fantastic, inspiring read!

You can get a great preview of the book at NoBrow. It's out in the UK now, and it comes out in the US next month.

Welcome to your Awesome Robot by Viviane Schwarz [NoBrow]

Welcome to your Awesome Robot [Amazon UK]

Welcome to your Awesome Robot [Amazon US - pre-order]

Another look at Fukushima's legacy

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 14:59:24 +0000

Recently, I linked you to a report on the World Health Organization's estimates of the long-term risk of cancer and cancer-related deaths among people who lived nearest to the Fukushima nuclear plant when it went into meltdown and the people who worked to get the plant under control and into a cold shutdown. The good news was that those risks seem to be lower than the general public might have guessed, partly because the Japanese government did a good job of quickly getting people away from the area and not allowing potentially contaminated milk and meat to be consumed. The bad news: That one aspect isn't the whole story on Fukushima's legacy or the government's competency. Although the plant is in cold shutdown today, it still needs to be fully decommissioned and the site and surrounding countryside are in desperate need of cleanup and decontamination. That task, unfortunately, is likely to be far more difficult than anybody thought, with initial estimates of a 40-year cleanup now described as "a pipe dream". One key problem: The government cut funding to research that could have produced the kind of robots needed for this work, because it assumed that nobody would ever need them.

C3PO dress

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 20:05:13 +0000

The "Gold Metal Man Dress" by Etsy seller GeekyU1 is a pretty good stab at a C3PO frock. Made to order for $200.

Gold Metal Man Dress (via Neatorama) …

A gravity map of the Moon

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 17:42:18 +0000

Gravity isn't uniform. Denser planets and objects in space — that is, things with more mass to them — experience a stronger pull of gravity. But even if you zoom in to the level of a single planet (or, in this case, our Moon), gravity isn't uniform all the way around. That's because the mass of the Moon isn't uniform, either. It varies, along with the topography. In some places, the Moon's crust is thicker. Those places have more mass, and thus, more gravitational pull.

This map, showing changes in density and gravity across the surface of the Moon, was made from data collected by Ebb and Flow — a matched set of NASA probes that mapped the Moon's gravitational field before being intentionally crashed on its surface last December. By measuring the gravitational field, these probes told us a lot about how the density of the Moon varies which, in turn, tells us a lot about topography.

You can read more about the probes (and see some videos they took of the lunar surface) at the NASA Visualization Explorer.

Electronic salvage junkbots

Cory Doctorow — Sun, 17 Feb 2013 01:53:55 +0000

Marco Fernandes's R³bots are absolutely sweet little light-up junkbots made from electronics salvage. They're even poseable! They run about €350 each.

R³bot series (via Colossal) …

Building a "bionic man"

David Pescovitz — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 18:57:19 +0000

This is Rex, a $1 million "bionic man" built in the UK by roboticists Richard Walker and Matthew Godden. Rex was the star of a new Channel 4 documentary titled "How to Build A Bionic Man." Rex is outfitted with a variety of synthetic systems and appendages, from prosthetic limbs to a cochlear implant, artificial pancreas to retinal implant. He's now on display at the London Science Museum but will visit America in October to promote the Smithsonian Channel's US premier of the documentary, retitled "Cyborg/Frankenstein."

Possibly the greatest ad for books, ever

Cory Doctorow — Sat, 02 Feb 2013 23:23:59 +0000

I, Robot …

Meet Curiosity rover's earthbound sibling

Rob Beschizza — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 22:55:36 +0000

Photo: Glenn Fleishman

Go and check out Glenn Fleishman's fantastic set of photos from the Jet Propulsion Lab's sandbox, where the scientists get to hang out and play with one of Curiosity rover's siblings.…

Manchurian robots (ok, they're "non-lethal") rising from the ocean floor

David Pescovitz — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 16:05:32 +0000

The US Department of Defense is launching a research effort to develop underwater robots/sensor platforms that would hibernate on the ocean floor until they "wake up when commanded, and deploy to surface providing operational support and situational awareness." DARPA has dubbed the research effort the Upward Falling Payloads program. (The image below, from the DARPA press release, seems to be illustrating, um, a robot's-eye-view as it's surfacing.) From their announcement:

Depending on the specific payload, systems would provide a range of non-lethal but useful capabilities such as situational awareness, disruption, deception, networking, rescue, or any other mission that benefits from being pre-distributed and hidden. An example class of systems might be small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that launch to the surface in capsules, take off and provide aerial situational awareness, networking or decoy functions. Waterborne applications are sought as well.

"FALLING UP: DARPA TO LAUNCH JUST-IN-TIME PAYLOADS FROM BOTTOM OF SEA"

A video featuring "Vomiting Larry"

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 15:53:12 +0000

By popular demand (and the help of intrepid readers Broan and theophrastvs), I present you a video clip of the humanoid robot known as Vomiting Larry.

Larry is used to study the way particles of puke become aerosolized, and how those particles spread and help infect other people. That's important, because it explains one of the ways that viruses spread by vomiting manage to end up in everyday things like, say, frozen raspberries. Aerosolized vomit isn't something you can spot. It doesn't clean up easily. And even just a drop of it can pass on plenty of viruses.

Carl Zimmer had a great piece up yesterday on norovirus, the virus that researchers are studying with the help of Vomiting Larry. His story has more info on how that virus spreads and will give you a better idea of why Vomiting Larry is so important.