It looks like the robots are taking over the food preparation industry too!
Made by a group of students from LASA (Learning Algorithms and Systems Laboratory), the Chief Cook Robot can learn how to prepare and cook food after being taught just one time. By moving the robot’s limbs around manually the first time, the robot records the motion and learns to do it, and eventually prepares an entire omelet by itself!
Or for those of you who want to see all the bells and whistles…
00You may have seen my previous posts about the cool things that universities are doing with the quad-rotor flying platform, but this has to be the coolest things I’ve ever seen a swarm of flying robots pull off.
+70People have always thought of drawing and art as a creative subject, one requiring a person there to draw. But that’s all about to change.
Developed by Fraunhofer IOSB, AutoPortrait is a robot that can draw people in caricature. Utilizing a sensor that detects the reflection of light, the robot puts the pen to the paper and draws realistic drawings of its targets. This robot was presented at the CeBIT (Centrum für Büroautomation, Informationstechnologie und Telekommunikation) 2012, a popular trade fair for the electronics industries.
So far, this massive robot is probably too expensive for most people, costing about $53,000 dollars. But the art industry isn’t safe yet.
Recently, the Diatom design studio, run by Tiago Rorke and Greg Saul, collaborated with Cheng Xu and Huaishu Peng of the CMU CoDe Lab to make an amazing new robot called “Piccolo.” Requiring only about $70 dollars of resources, Piccolo has the ability to move through all three axis to make the picture it desires. Users can also upload picture libraries with things for Piccolo to draw, which opens up all kinds of possibilities. What’s also notable is that it can use many drawing tools — pen, pencil, brush, or even knife — to draw almost any picture.
+20By autonomously navigating the water’s surface, Seaswarm proposes a new system for ocean-skimming and oil removal. Seaswarm uses a photovoltaic powered conveyor belt made of a thin nanowire mesh to propel itself and collect oil. The nanomaterial, patented at MIT, can absorb up to 20 times its weight in oil. The flexible conveyor belt softly rolls over the ocean’s surface, absorbing oil while deflecting water because of its hydrophobic properties.
+50Scientists from the University of Cambridge are using robotics from the LEGO MINDSTORMS robot set to help produce samples of synthetic bone tissue. The team uses hydroxyapatite-gelatin composites to create the synthetic bone, which has low energy costs and improved similarity to the tissues they are intended to replace. Synthetic bone can provide a vast array of innovative applications; from medical implants to building construction, but producing samples of bone can be an intensive and repetitive process.
As one of the researchers realizes “The great thing about the robots is once you tell them what to do they can do it very precisely over and over again – so a day later I can come back and see a fully made sample.”
+10Imagine a cardboard version of Pixar’s Wall-e character, but with added über-cute human voice, and you’ve got a fair picture of Boxie, Alexander Reben’s documentary-video-making robot.
“The idea was to create a robot that was interesting enough for people to engage with it and offer to help it, carrying it around and up and down stairs to show it things,” says Reben, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab.
To win cooperation from the person in the street, cuteness is Boxie’s stock-in-trade. In addition to being a squat, doe-eyed creature, it is also made of cardboard, a material Reben says people perceive as non-threatening, even friendly.
Chris Melhuish, director of the Bristol Robotics Laboratory in the UK, says MIT was right to focus on perfecting Boxie’s social acceptability. “As robots become everyday objects in our environment, the way they behave will become increasingly important. Future smart machines will need such social intelligence to interact naturally — utilising appropriate gestures, body pose and non-verbal communication, for instance.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzOv3B7z_TM&feature=youtu.be
+50The use of ground robots in military explosive-ordinance-disposal missions already saves many lives and prevents thousands of other casualties. If the current limitations on mobility and manipulation capabilities of robots can be overcome, robots could potentially assist warfighters across a greater range of missions. DARPA’s Maximum Mobility and Manipulation (M3) program seeks to create and demonstrate significant scientific and engineering advances in robot mobility and manipulation capabilities.
This video shows a modified iRobot 510 PackBot equipped with an advanced suspension system maneuvering on a test course. The compliant suspension improves the robot’s mobility over rough and uneven terrain. The technological enhancement enables faster transit speeds, climbing of very steep slopes, improved heading control, greater accommodation of debris entering the suspension and reduced impact forces on carried payloads.
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