A closer look at Elbot’s Turing pop quiz conversation
Earlier that week, Elbot made a fairly impressive showing (comparatively speaking, at least) when fooling three judges into thinking it was human; had it fooled one more on the dozen deep panel, it would have successful passed the renowned Turing test. Auntie Beeb now has a report on what precis…
WowWee’s patrolling Rovio gets unboxed
WowWee’s Rovio isn’t due to start shipping to the general populace for a few days still, but the mighty vital folks by at RobotsRule were somehow able to procure one a hair early. Thankfully for us, it took the moment to neatly unbox that domestic sentry and give us an up-close look at what it’s…
Popular Mechanics offers preview of Singapore’s TechX robot challenge
We haven’t heard a whole lot about Singapore’s DARPA-esque TechX robot challenge since it first kicked off early final year, but with the final round getting underway on Sunday, Popular Mechanics has now thankfully offered up a preview of what’s in store. Among those set to compete is the so-c…
New robot leg design becomes more human, more deadly
Your regular, inefficient robot legs getting you down? perhaps you should check in with researcher Jonathan Hurst and his robo-leg project under development at Oregon State University. Apparently most jointed legs driven by motors have a mighty day recycling energy due to a lack of snapback …
Wakamaru robot to help / freak out UNIQLO SoHo shoppers
Shopping robots aren’t totally unheard of from a global perspective, but we certainly haven’t seen too many out and about in NY boutiques. Reportedly, that’s about to change — UNIQLO SoHo will soon be domestic to Mitsubishi’s Wakamaru, a humanoid that can look you in the eye, communicate on a v…
iRobot’s Roomba Pet torments the dog, sweeps absent dander
iRobot just announced its new Roomba Pet robotic hoover cleaners. Boasting the core tech found in the 530 and 560 series of vacuums, the Roomba 532 ($349) and more advanced 562 ($399, includes on-board scheduling) Pet series feature higher capacity sweeper bins; counter-rotating, carpet-diggin…
iRobot CTO steps down — ironically, looks to “rehumanize” US manufacturing with robots
iRobot — the company best known to consumers as the creator of Roomba and to soldiers as the creator of Packbot bomb disposers — just lost its CTO and co-founder, Rodney Brooks. While Dr. Brooks will continue to serve on the board of iRobot and serve as chairman of a new technical advisory boa…
Stanford’s autonomous helicopters memorize new tricks by watching
While a great many scientists are attempting to create autonomous bots for uses in surgery, a team of Stanford whiz-kids are having a bit more fun with it all. The crew in question has concocted an artificial intelligence system that “enables robotic helicopters to teach themselves to fly diffic…
Video: Furby Gurdy makes “music,” trips you out
The Nervous Squirrel’s Furby Gurdy (version 2) isn’t the first music maker we’ve seen that’s better understood when viewed during an out-of-body experience, but it’s certainly one of the strangest. The circuit bent Furby sequencer, which is linked to a Korg SQ-10 in the demonstration vid aft…
Erector’s $300 Spykee gets a ship period: October 15th
We’re not even going to front — we had all but forgotten about Erector’s Spykee. Granted, it didn’t do itself any favors by showing off at CES and soon after doing nothing for the next seven months, but we digress. whether a pre-order page on Amazon is to be believed, the Spykee Spy Robot shoul…
