Robot Living

iRobot is suing Robot FX over patent infringement. Supposedly, Robot FX’s robot Negotiator(shown here) is too similar to iRobot’s Packbot and iRobot has filed not one, but two suits.

One suit is a permanent injunction against Robot FX making the Negotiator and one against it’s president Jameel Ahed, a former iRobot employee. We think the ensuing battle royale should be fought in the robot arena, not in court. Let the robot wars begin!

Check out our previous post and our reader’s comment on the Negotiator here.

Link via (Engadget)

Folks at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands have been busy working on biped robots. Shown here is the robot Denise. The Biorobotics Laboratory at Delft has been designing biped robots since 1995. Denise stands 1.5 m tall and is pneumatically powered and walks at a rate of .4 m/s.

Denise only has one contact switch under each foot for sensors. When the right foot lands, the left knee is released and the hip muscles pull the leg forward. When the left foot touches the ground, the same process is repeated in the right leg.

The goal for building Denise was to create a natural looking gate using passive dynamic walking.
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Introducing the webcam robot. It has a built in microphone and night vision. It connects via USB to your computer. As long as the robots stay chained to your computer they can’t take over the world (yet). Now word yet on the price.

link via (akihabaranews)

This dancing robot is connected by usb to your computer. It dances to your favorite tunes and has 3 flashing LED lights. It works with Windows 2000 or XP and is yours for only $25.

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Belrobotics from Belgium is introducing Bigmow, it’s entrance into the robotic lawnmower category. See our previous post about Robomow here.

Traveling at 3.6 km per hour, the Bigmow works for up to two hours on a single charge and automatically recharges itself as needed. This electric mower uses an amount of electricity equivalent to that of a household refrigerator.

The robot also uses sonar to detect objects 40 cm or higher. When an object is detected it slows down and uses it touch sensitive bumper to maneuver around the object.

The robot also uses the standard practice of a boundary wire to determine the mowing area.

Belrobotics also offers Bigmow Petrol, Parcmow and Ballpicker. Ballpicker is used for retreiving golf balls from driving ranges. There goes the fun of trying to hit the guy in the cage on the tractor. Be sure to check out the funny video on their homepage here.

Thirty six teams have been selected to compete in the DARPA Challenge. The challenge will be held at the former George Air Force Base in Victorville California on November third 2007.

The purpose of this challenge is to create a car that can automatically navigate an urban setting. Previous challenges were held in the desert. This challenge will be trickier by making the participants merge into traffic, avoid obstacles and navigate traffic circles or rotaries.

I wonder how Kitt from Knightrider would do in this challenge?

The Stanford team will be racing again this year with their modified Volkswagen Passat called Junior. This car utilizes GPS sensors and cutting edge custom software to navigate. The team will also use Lidar (light detection and ranging) from a company called SICK. SICK Lidar tee-shirts anyone? Stanford won the last challenge in 2005.

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Stanford Team