This may well be the king of all office supplies. No, it’s not one of those sweet executive ball-clacker deals (even though they are sweet). Nor is it a dartboard or a Blackberry or anything like that. No, the unquestioned king of all office supplies has to be Snackbot.
Snackbot is a big talking yellow and white robot that delivers snacks directly to your desk on command. There’s a downside, though…there’s only ONE SNACKBOT, and he’s currently being held at Carnegie Mellon University, where it’s basically under construction as a way to find how an autonomous robot can operate within the busy, highly complex operations of a modern office. Apparently there’s a lot of programming involved for a robot that can successfully make snack runs throughout a typical office building.
Hopefully, one day, Snackbots will be as ubiquitous as the coffee maker in most offices, but until then, you know Carnegie Mellon will be getting loads of snacks out of this.
Well, that’s it for me, folks–my science fiction lobe has officially collapsed on me, because I was just reading about a new military project that’ll probably change the way war is fought forever.
I read about cyborg beetles.
It seems that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (or DARPA, the guys who started the Internet in the first place) have been working on a kind of “cyborg beetle” that’s been surgically altered and given all sorts of awesome mechanical doodads to engage in fighting and surveillance of the enemy. They can be controlled remotely by humans in the field, and are actually part of a much larger overall project called HI-MEMS, the Hybrid Insect Micro-Electric Mechanical Systems. HI-MEMS, if I understood correctly, will yield history’s first-ever truly bionic organism.
The article went on from there about what all they could do, but my head started swimming about the time I pictured wasps jammed full of uranium so they gave poisoned radioactive stings to their targets.
They’re the perfect soldier. Absolutely expendable. Kill as many as you please, the colony will hatch a few million more. Heaven help us when they start carrying explosives.
They’re the perfect assassin. Can you lock yourself down so effectively that even a spider can’t reach you? And a cybernetic black widow could definitely take out a target, probably without ever being noticed.
I don’t know whether to be amazed or horrified, and right now, I’m trending toward horrified.
Okay, so I’m overreacting. But researchers at the University of Delaware have designed the UD1, a robot that will allow disabled babies to navigate their environment. These robots are actually like a power chair that can be operated by a joystick. You may not have thought that babies could operate joysticks, and you wouldn’t be alone. In fact, it was commonly thought that a baby couldn’t operate a joystick until age three, but as it turns out, even a six month old baby can figure out how a joystick can make a toy that is far away move closer.
There have been concerns about babies outgrowing the power chair, and thus making them prohibitively expensive for any family to get for their disabled infant, but U of D researchers are also looking at “kits” for retrofitting the device to get them to better fit the babies. They also want to drop the overall size of the chair to make it more mobile inside buildings.
It’s a pretty awesome concept, no matter how you slice it, and Baby Terminator just might make a good movie. I wonder if Sam Worthington would come back….
If you’re not whistling the Spectacular Spider-Man theme song yet, you likely will be after I finish filling you in on the new Spiderbot.
The Spiderbot, you see, is a spider like robot (as you no doubt surmised from the name itself), with one interesting difference. It shoots webs. Yes, it shoots out webbing of sufficient strength to support its own weight. Also, the Spiderbot is capable of sticking to walls. It is, essentially, a gigantic robot spider.
Now, I don’t know if this is just some new toy–the fact that it would be an awesome toy notwithstanding–or the precursor to some kind of new and awesome device, but if it gets me to the point where I can swing on webs to get around instead of taking the car, you can sign me up to be an early adopter. The Spiderbot itself is indeed awesome, but what the Spiderbot could be is even more so.
When I hear the words “Pentagon” and “corpse eating robots” together in the same sentence, the first thing I do is check my medication.
And then I realize I don’t TAKE medication, and further realize that I’m watching Fox News, so that explains everything.
Anyway, as it turns out, they’re kind of right for once–the Pentagon is actively engaged in developing a kind of “scavenger robot” that can power itself by obtaining biomass from the environment. Biomass, in case you’re not familiar, can be stuff like field gleanings, grass clippings, rotten fruit, other garbage…and yes, it can also be human corpses.
The Pentagon’s contractor in this little vision–and if you said “Cyberdyne”, NO, but it’s still funny-Robotic Technology Inc., had this to say about its Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot–or EATR–robot:
“…an autonomous robotic platform able to perform long-range, long-endurance missions without the need for manual or conventional re-fueling.”
How do you promote your robot factory? Simple, you open a noodle shop. That’s what Japanese resident and entrepreneur Mr Nagoya did and now his robots server over 80 bowels of soup a day.
The robots can produce one bowel every 40 seconds and when the shop is slow the robots entertain customer by pretending to battle one in another in a sort of sword and shield battle.
Each bow of soup costs $7, so while popular the store is far from profitable due to the costs incurred due to research and development of the robot arms.
Shock and awe hardly begin to describe my reaction to this video of Toyota’s humanoid robot running a 7kmh. Sure, that’s only a few points short of 4mph, but given its life like ability to move and to sustain balance after a slight push, I’d say all in all it’s pretty impressive.
Now, don’t confuse this with Honda’s ASIMO robot, which apparently can run at 6kmh. Toyota’s version, which seems to be nameless, stands 130cm tall and weighs 50kg. It’s running ability is limited to flat surfaces and a sudden push would probably knock it flat on its ass.
Believe it or not, the Humanoid Robot with iPhone head performs functions and commands using the handset. It can be set to dance to music, dance when the alarm goes off or be taught new moves using what I assume is some sort of custom app. To provide the robot with a bit more pizazz they’ve also included a set of facial experession screens giving it a more human like facade. Video below.
Like a dog following its master, the Shadow Caddy effortlessly carries all your golf gear from hole to hole without any instruction or remote control. It tracks you via a transmitter adorned to your belt and includes an object sensor to avoid running into people and objects. To stop the Shadow Caddy you just simply flick the ‘park me’ switch and alternatively hit the ‘follow me’ switch to move to your next hole. The Shadow Caddy has actually been around for sometime now and is available for rental only on select golf courses throughout the world.
Remember the ‘Chariot‘? Well, it’s back and this time we’ve got it in video. I must say I’m impressed with how easy it looks to operate, but I still ask the question of what happens when you hit a flight of stairs or let alone one step? Video below.
When I hear the words “Pentagon” and “corpse eating robots” together in the same sentence, the first thing I do is check my medication.
