Because Robots!

The Jumping Sumo

By Owen Li | Published: January 30, 2014

It wasn’t until a few years ago that the French company Parrot decided to start building robots. They weren’t really specialized in that field: they mostly made Bluetooth stuff, speakers, and some fantastic headphones. Recently, they’ve expanded their new family of robots, with a wheeled sumo robot that jumps.

In the Jumping Sumo (I have no idea where the “sumo” comes from), an actuated, spring-loaded tail can repeatedly launch this bot up to 80 cm. in the air, with a battery life of around 20 minutes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=eqAlsLFzBs4

Jumping Sumo has a tiny camera mounted to the front, and can be controlled from a smartphone or tablet, with a range of over 150 feet. With a built in gyro and two huge wheels on the sides, Jumping Sumo can do a variety of tasks, from jumping over obstacles to turning 90 degrees on a dime.

While Jumping Sumo still has some work to do to catch up to Boston Dynamic’s Sand Flea, it’s still quite impressive how much tech is now available to the consumer market.

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Two-Legged Quad-copter can perch, walk, and stalk.

By Owen Li | Published: January 29, 2014

We’ve all seen quad-copters before, but one with two legs that can walk? That’s a first.

Built by Vishwa Robotics, the robot’s strong claws on the ends of two legs allow the drone to stay upright while not using any power. The legs, modeled after the American Kestrel can also be powered to walk short distances.

The company, who developed the leg add-ons for “small US air force drones,” is also testing its legs on fixed-wing drones.

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Robot Cowboy

By Owen Li | Published: January 28, 2014

No fancy hat. No spurred boots. The latest rendition of the iconic western cowboys is now…a robot.

Built by a team from the University of Sydney’s Australian Centre for Field Robotics, the four-wheeled remote-controlled robot, Rover has been tested in rounding up cattle. The cows have been quite accepting in allowing a robot to control them, even groups upwards of 150 cattle were calmly and efficiently herded. That’s probably because cows are stupid and don’t fear robots the way the should.

No matter the reason for its success, Rover has performed so well that future Rovers will be used to gather data at night, monitor pregnant cows, as well as to find holes in fences and problems in the soil.

Starting at $1 million, there’s just another job taken away by robots. Sorry cowboys.

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Desktop Arm

By Owen Li | Published: January 27, 2014

Need to reach that sneaky eraser just out of your reach across the table? Too lazy to get up and reach for that piece of paper for homework?

Well, here is the robot for you.

Built by a small company called UFactory, the uArm is a small version of the large industrial robot arms often seen in modern assembly lines. It’s about the size of a desk lamp and is controlled through an Arduino-compatible board. It also has a Windows program that lets you control the robot using a mouse or keyboard. The company is also working on smartphone apps as well.

uFactory plans to make its design files, hardware, and software open source at the end of its Kickstarter campaign, so we’ll be sure to see many Iron Man fans recreating this scene with their new robot arm pets.

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Drones delivering packages?

By Owen Li | Published: January 26, 2014

Tired of waiting those two excruciatingly long days for your Amazon Prime packages to arrive? Well, fear no more (in a year or so)! Amazon has recently (Dec. 2013) released a new idea, revolutionizing the way we receive our packages.

Gone will be the days of the delivery-man, for the days of the octo-copters will take over. Via these autonomous drones, Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos hopes that the company will be able to deliver packages into customers hands within 30 minutes of the time they place an order. These drones, after picking up the package, locates its destination using GPS, dropping the package at the doorstep.

But the future will take some time to arrive, and it’s not because of technology capabilities. “The hardest challenge in making this happen is demonstrating to the standards of the FAA that this is a safe thing to do. This is years of additional work at this point,” Bezos said. Amazon hopes that the FAA rules will be made in 2015 so they can get the drones up in the sky.

While this does seem like something out of the Jetsons, Bezos is confident in Amazon Prime Air’s success. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

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Robot carries your goodies for you.

By Owen Li | Published: January 25, 2014

Love to shop ’till you drop, but hate carrying your spoils of war from store to store? Hate shopping, and hate carrying all of your friend/significant others’ stuff? Former or latter, anyone related to a shop-a-holic will love this new robot.

Scheduled to come out this July, the Budgee robot is a lightweight, three-wheeled bot, capable of carrying up to 50 pounds of goodies, and can operate for 8 hours on one battery charge. Using a small transmitter you carry on you, the robot is able to track and follow behind you from a preset distance. Through its smartphone app, the Budgee is able to warn you if you get away from it, and can also be controlled from the app.

Currently on kickstarter, this bot is sure to swarm to success at its debut.

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Schaft

By Owen Li | Published: January 18, 2014

Recently DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, hosted a day-long robotics competition where robots competed in different disaster-relief events such as clearing debris, opening doors, driving cars…etc.

Made by Team Schaft, a team based out of Tokyo, Schaft a 5-foot-tall, 209-pound robot was able to bring stable walking and significant torque power to these DARPA trials. However, this robot still isn’t perfect, losing points when a gust of wind blew a door out of its hands, and when the robot was unable to exit a vehicle after successfully driving a predetermined course.

So after watching this prestigious Pentagon-sponsored event, we’re now just counting down the days until Schaft can morph into Arnold Schwarzenegger and save us from the Skynet apocalypse, right? Hasta la vista, baby.

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