Masaaki Kumagai and Takaya Ochiai at the Robot Development Engineering Laboratory, Department of Mechanical Engineering and Intelligent Systems, Tohoku Gakuin University, Japan have developed a robot that can balance on a ball – even while carrying heavy loads. While this might at first just seem like a cool trick, it also shows how a robot could be designed to be omni-directional by traveling using a ball, rather than simple wheels.

This is pretty awesome – imagine it as a waiter like R2D2 in Return of the Jedi. Except better – R2 had to work to avoid walls and other obstacles, while this robot would be able to quickly dodge any that come at it.

There are, of course, tons of other uses besides waiter – I work at a place where we unload a lot of stock and then move it around in our warehouse. Being able to just set a flat of product on a robots head and have it move the stock to where it needs to go would be awesome.
Anyhow, check out the video below of it in action!

Thanks to Stacy at She Dreams in Digital for the Video and tip-off!!

At a competition, the robot had to fly through a maze and locate a specific panel. It had to do this all on its own. For the first in the 19-year history of this competition, the fifth stage challenge was completed – and it was by this MIT flyer.

Check out the video below – it is really quite incredible to witness in action.

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This robot can shrink and expand according to what is needed for it to get around. If it needs to fit through a small hole, it can just shrink down, get through the hole and then expand again so that it has faster and better range of motion. Looking at this video, it appears that they are not quite to the stage where it moves freely while shrunk, but it can shrink and expand and then move. This is very, very impressive. This is also intended for military application. Though perhaps in the future, a robot like this could be used to get into hard-to-reach places to do repairs around our homes. Check it out in the video below – the action starts at about the 1:50 mark.

(via IEEE Spectrum)

Nixon from Futurama

Hanson and his mutton chops wants to create robots that can sense your mood and act accordingly. As you will see from the video at the end of this post, his robot that looks a lot like Einstein reacts to his smiles or frowns. You will also notice that the robot’s head is the only part of it that looks human. The rest looks like a robot. So basically it reminds me a lot of Nixon’s head from Futurama.

Additionally Hanson is working to bring to mass-market Zeno, a robot that is meant for children that will learn from its environment and from the children. As time passes, it will learn more and more about the habits of the people around it, and will react accordingly. Pretty incredible stuff. The 6 inch model will sell for $299, while a 18″ model will sell for $1500.

So check out the videos below – the first is a presentation Hanson gave at TED. He shows off one of his robots there. The second video is one that shows off Zeno and what it can do. Pretty awesome stuff.

First up we have a pop-singing robot from Yamaha:

This robot can certainly sing – though as with most robots that have the artificial skin-look, they also look a little freaky. We are certainly not to a point yet where the robots are indistinguishable from people – and this is a good thing.

Also being shown off was an improved model of the muRata Girl. This unicycle riding robot can successfully ride across balance beams – which is a nice talent. It is intended to show kids how cool robots can be and get them interested in the topic.

Toyota and Honda are not the only Japanese car companies making cool robots. Nissan created these robots to not only show off what they can do in that space, but to show off an avoidance technology that could make its way into cars in the next 30 years. This technology would allow vehicles to avoid any obstacles in their way so that the passengers are safe. Other upcoming improvements are getting the robots to move in specific patterns, keeping a set distance away from other robots while traveling at the same speed.

Finally, we have this robot that will work with your cell phone. I am really unclear on what use this robot could possibly have, but it does look cool. I guess.

Photo by Christian Fischer

The scientists are calling these biological robots “plasmabots”. These organic robots can be “programmed” to carry small objects from one location to another. The plasmabots can even determine the shortest paths to take on their own. According to Science Daily the researchers are looking into future applications of the plasmabots that would include delivering medicine to a particular point in the human body.

This is certainly a contrast in styles to the method being developed by the Israeli Institute of Technology which is developing very tiny metal robots that can swim through a person’s bloodstream to deliver medicine or perform other tasks. You can read what we wrote about this project here.

In the future it will certainly be interesting to see which method is the one that is adopted or if both are used depending on the medical task that needs to be accomplished.

I suppose it also depends on the patient – would they rather have a metal robot swimming in their bloodstream, or a biological one?

The tests are being held at the Black Point Lava Flow in Arizona because the terrain is similar enough to the Lunar surface that NASA can get a decent idea of how their equipment will operate. Of course, they can’t simulate the lesser gravity levels of the moon, but still, these tests at least give them an idea of how their robots and other new devices will operate.

Besides NASA there are also teams from other locations participating. The University of Colorado at Denver, Brown University, University of Texas at El Paso, US Geological Survey, The Smithsonian Institute, Arizona State University and the Mars Institute in Moffett Field, California.

You can check out video of last year’s RATS below.

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This is intended for military application. It will explore areas that either troops cannot enter or are too dangerous to enter. Check out a video of it in action below.