Yes. It is finished. We can shut down NASA, DARPA, all the arts and sciences, and stop trying now. The pinnacle of human achievement has been reached. Robot vacuums have been hacked to play the parts in a real-life game of Pac-Man.

The ghosts are actually moving autonomously along computer-defined lines (they can’t “see” the actual maze) and the Man of Pac himself is guided by an RC controller. I was a little disappointed to see that he doesn’t eat the dots, though.

I won’t waste your time by summarizing all the hacks and modifications that went into this project; they’re well-documented here, and good reading too if you’re into that sort of thing.

[via Giz and En]

There’s not much for me to add here. In addition to walking normally, robots can now play pool, baseball, volleyball, and make ramen. Anybody else feeling a bit like an endangered species?

If that BigDog robot from Boston Dynamics didn’t amaze and/or horrify you, maybe its human-like big brother “PETMAN” will catch your attention.

I, for one, like that the torso section of PETMAN looks like a sweet boom box and I hope that someday Boston Dynamics sees fit to let the robot loose in the business district of a small town, just walking around and taking in the scenery while pumping out some old-school rap.

And I mean really old-school, like the kind they used to use for break dancing. All the townspeople would be like, “Hey, check out that walking boom box! It has red shoes! Try to push it over! You can’t! Why is it walking towards me?! Nice boom box! Niiice boom box!”

According to the company, PETMAN will be used to test chemical protection clothing for the U.S. Army – not for scaring various townspeople:

“PETMAN is an anthropomorphic robot for testing chemical protection clothing used by the US Army. Unlike previous suit testers, which had to be supported mechanically and had a limited repertoire of motion, PETMAN will balance itself and move freely; walking, crawling and doing a variety of suit-stressing calisthenics during exposure to chemical warfare agents. PETMAN will also simulate human physiology within the protective suit by controlling temperature, humidity and sweating when necessary, all to provide realistic test conditions.”

Let’s be honest, though. There’s no reason you couldn’t test chemical protection clothing AND walk around the town square blasting some Grandmaster Flash. Oh, except for the whole “exposure to chemical warfare agents” part. You know what? Forget the boom box thing.

PETMAN – BigDog gets a Big Brother [Boston Dynamics via Geekologie]

For those unfamiliar with Pleo, it is a animatronic baby dinosaur, designed to evolve based on its environment and interactions. Basically he’ll grow as a real baby dinosaur would.  The Life OS software takes Pleo through three separate stages. Being born, hatching, and juvenile. His full range of movements and behaviors won’t show themselves until Pleo continues to “grow”. Not physically mind you.

The original Pleo had a short life-span of only three years, from 2006 to April 2009 when its creation company Ugobe, filed bankruptcy. But two short months later, Jetta, the original manufacturers of Pleo, announced the relaunch of our green, lizard-related friend here under the Innvo Labs brand.

The Pleo World site is back online, fully functional, and awaiting orders. You can get yours for 349.00 USD.

[via Robots Rule!]

The two-millimeter dash: self-explanatory.

Microassembly: Inserting micro-pegs into micro-holes (this can be a team excercise).

Freestyle: let your robot show off its abilities by performing any task you like. Robo-gong show.

Sounds kind of awesome to me. It’s actually a slightly different version of the RoboCup and its fun little Nanosoccer setup. I’m looking forward to the results, although this is all just another step on the path toward a robot-dominated planet. That’s cool, I’m resigned to it.

[via PhysOrg]

These feats are child’s play for a robot designed for precision maneuvers. Just picture this, now: instead of a six-pack, it’s navigating the smoking rubble of one of humanity’s underground hiding places — you know, after the Robocalypse. A fraction of a second after it bursts into the room, it inputs the locations of all the faces, programs a path for its rapid-fire laser cannon, and…. boom, headshots.

[via BotJunkie and Gizmodo]

Will this be the voice with which our robot antagonists will soothe future generations of cowed humans?

[via Reddit]

Nissan announced Thursday [press release in English] that it has developed robots that are able to move in a group without colliding into each other. Much like a school of fish, the so-called Eporo can also avoid obstacles standing in their way safely. Nissan claims this is the first time the world sees robots that are able to show group behavior.

The company doesn’t necessarily plan to commercialize the cute little robots themselves but aims at employing the underlying technology in their future vehicles. Obviously, the experience gained in the process of designing the Eporo could be used for vehicles that could communicate with each other to avoid collisions. Another potential side effect, according to Nissan, would be that the technology could reduce the number of traffic congestions in the future.

Nissan presented the BR23C robot car, Eporo’s first version, back in September 2008. The general public will be able to see a group of six Eporos next week during the CEATEC 2009 that will take place just outside Tokyo.

Let’s see… a robot that responds to the thoughts of its master (is “master” the right word here?). Pretty sure that we (humans) will bring about our own downfall, either by blowing each other up, or by inventing a robot that says, “You guys are idiots, so I’m going to kill you.”

This particular robot comes to us by way of the University of Electro-Communications in (where else?) Tokyo. It was actually designed to help its designer (creator?) compete on Robo-One, some sort of robot battle tournament in Japan. Looks to be a lot like that old show Battlebots, just with more “roboty” looking robots, and not something that looks like a toaster with a pike attached to the front.

Of course, you can extrapolate the concept—robots that obey mere thoughts—to things like surgery and other, useful medical applications.

Only a fool would pay for pornography on the Internet. It’s like, you don’t pay for air (or, more accurately, oxygen), do you? So why pay for porn? But if porn is free all over the place, what’s going to happen to our nation’s adult entertainment industry? It employs more than a few people (that’s good), and helps maintain our image abroad (that’s also good). Two good thing! So what’s the industry going to do in a world where every kid can load up uTorrent or visit YouTube-like site? One word: robots.

David Levy is something of an artificial intelligence expert, and he believes that the adult entertainment industry may well turn to robots to save itself. He told The Guardian:

I’ll be surprised if it’s more than another three years or so before we see more advanced sex dolls with more electronics and electromechanics. There will be a huge amount of publicity when products like this hit the market. As soon as the media starts writing about ‘My fantastic weekend with a sex doll,’ it will be like the iPhone all over again, but the queues will be longer.

Which begs the question (yes, I know that’s grammatically incorrect, but when has that ever stopped us?): would you, you know, have sex with a robot like you just don’t care? (All the married men reading this just said to themselves, “I already do—it’s called my wife!) I say, why the hell not? Don’t we already have similar robots? Let’s take it up a notch, then. It’ll be like Ancient Rome, only with pleasure bots.

Instead of giving the bot LOGO-like step-by-step instructions (go 20cm forward, grab cloth, move 10cm forward), the robot is programmed to interpret graphical explanations like this one:

There’s more info in this PDF, which summarizes their work. Now they just have to release a big one so my building manager will buy it for the laundry room.

[via Robots.net]

BoingBoing points us to these creepy animatronics in Singapore’s Fort Canning Part where the British generals discussed surrender to the Japanese.

While many of us expect animatronics to be fun and whimsical, this dark journey into the heart of a failed colonial state certainly destroys those expectations. I mean at what point did Singapore decide that robots would be the best way to tell the story of a stodgy board meeting?

Who doesn’t want their very own a robotic rickshaw driver? Are they called drivers? Pullers?

Doesn’t matter. I just hope they’re working on a version of this thing that can pull a 200+ pound man. I’ll call him Gary and we’ll go everywhere together. Everywhere!

[via Gizmodo]

Drew, it’s now your responsibility to rock me to sleep tonight. A little scotch in my milk will help.

[via Gearfuse and Forever Geek]

Next is a more practical (though equally frightening) affair. This web-shooting ceiling-lurker gets around (extremely slowly, but still) by firing its little grippers and then ratcheting up the “web.” Nice to know someone could slip one of these in the window and it could be waiting above the door in your foyer by the time you get home.

It moves more like an extremely nervous robo-sloth than anything, but the webs clearly mark it as a spider-based design. It’s built and maintained by the Ben Gurion University Mechatronics Department.

[via Dvice and Robots.net]

This cute little bugger is actually an extremely advanced standard unit for working on autonomous navigation systems. At $7500 it’s not something people will pick up on a whim, but a research budget can afford a few if it means a chance a fat grant from Toyota or something.

Robocar Z runs Linux and has its own API, and is outfitted with two tiny cameras to provide stereoscopic vision. It looks like there are some more sensors on the front there as well (SONAR and whatnot), but I’m not 100% sure of that. It’s totally self-contained, CPU and all.

With a couple of these you can run experiments with multiple vehicles and not worry about wrecking real cars. Plus, they’re so cute you just want to pick them up and hug them.

[via Gearfuse]

It’s got a couple freaky-looking arms capable of either carrying a wounded soldier or daintily plucking a grenade out of a purse. It cruises around on a cool sort of double-tread that can change angle to help it get over rubble (or human rubble). It’s pretty cool, but I think their next design goal should be making it less frightening. Human-looking or not human-looking, you gotta make a choice here, guys.

[via CNET]

“Robotics will become important, because you’re going to have labour shortages in the future,” he said…Even robot “prostitutes” that would not pass on diseases such as HIV could make an appearance.”

Obviously Mr. Yeoman knows less about than even we do – which means he probably hasn’t given a Roomba a hot beef injection – but with enough trial and error I’m sure we can create a female robot that would sleep with us given enough booze and pleading.

Oh. My. God. Maybe they could run off of booze.

via Giz

Looks like the Robocalypse is going to have to wait on battery technology. The Hummingbot/Hunter-seeker we saw last month has improved somewhat, and is now capable of more than falling while flapping its wings. It can, in fact, hover in a controlled fashion for up to 20 seconds. If you’re quick, that’s enough time to get it through the ducts and assassinate the Kwisatz Haderach, but I’d wait until they can get it up to a full minute.

The bot is part of ongoing research by DARPA to create a sort of suite of robots for deployment in combat. This one would be for checking out potential hiding spots, bomb locations, or sniper perches. They call it a Nano Air Vehicle. And remember, it’s cute now, but when it’s loaded with a neurotoxin and trying to sneak up behind the barricades…

[via Dvice and BoingBoing]

New Scientist brings us word of Robot OS.

Roboticists have begun to think about what robots have in common and what aspects of their construction can be standardised, hopefully resulting in a basic operating system everyone can use. This would let roboticists focus their attention on taking the technology forward.

My plans for world domination will be greatly enhanced by the commoditization of robots. Hurry up, guys!!