Robot Living

Sparkfun’s competition from last year seemed like a ton of fun.  The basic idea is to create a vehicle that can go completely around SparkFun headquarters in Colorado.  Once the vehicle has started, you cannot assist it with a remote control.  You are however, allowed to retrieve planes from trees, as happened last year. The vehicle can roll, walk, fly or whatever other way of moving you can think of.

Our favorite entrant in this years competition is the cat robot.  Complete with tinfoil to control its brain, the team is not revealing how its new stealth cat controlling technology actually works.  Last year the competition was held on April 15, no word on this years date yet.

Check out all of the teams entering over at SparkFun or click through for last years video.

Link
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Tags: competition, SparkFun

Pesky pigeons making a mess of your parking lot? Seagulls being a complete nuisance? Well then you need a Robop. Robop is a robotic peregrine falcon that scares away other pesky birds like pigeons or seagulls.

Robop was invented by John Donald  in Edingurgh and can been controlled by your WAP enabled phone. A solar recharging station and a trailer are some of the other available options.

Here are some top tips on how to get rid of problem birds.

• Don’t put bird deterrents everywhere, as eventually the birds will become exhausted, land and realise there is no danger after all.

• Keep the element of surprise – if you have a deterrent move it around.

• Understand your prey: pigeons are particularly terrified of owls, as these ruthless predators will pursue their victims even while they are roosting in crannies.

• Noise, movement and mimicking the behaviour of real predators is key to the success of Robop.

I wonder if robotic birds play nice with robotic squirrels?

Download Robop PDF Brochure.

Click through for a video.

Link via (Scotsman)

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Tags: falcon, robot, Scotland

NC State has been working on a new MAV or micro-aerial vehicle  project, a robotic bat.

Using a shape-memory metal alloy for the joints and powerful muscle wires, they hope to emulate a real bat as closely as possible.

They hope to better understand flapping flight and also create a surveillance tool that would scare the neighbors.

Link via (Engadget)

Tags: bat

Is everyone’s favorite robotic dinosaur Pleo coming back?

Jetta Company Limited is the company that originally produced all of the parts for Pleo.  They recently bought all of the intellectual property rights to Pleo when Ugobe had it’s bankruptcy sale.

Below is part of the original press release.

Jetta Company Limited acquires Ugobe out of receivership

Hong Kong – Jetta Company Limited acquired the assets of Ugobe and will be re-launching “Pleo” in the near future. Established in 1977, Jetta has focused on manufacturing an extended range of toy, consumer electronics, juvenile, robotic and gift products and is one of the most recognized engineering and OEM companies within the toy industry. Headquartered in Hong Kong, Jetta currently operates five production campuses in Guangdong Province which combined has over 4.5 million square feet of production floor space. At the forefront of the fast-paced toy and robotics industries, Jetta continues to strive for “excellence” and is pleased to add “Ugobe” to its operations.

Robots Rule have spoken with Steve Ohler, who is the United States  liaison for Jetta Company and confirmed that they want to bring Pleo back.  No timeframe has yet been given.

Link via (Robots Rule)

Tags: dinosaur, pleo, robot

Like some robotic Squeezel, Boston Dynamics and the University of Pennsylvania have created version 3 of RiSE.

This robot can climb at almost the rate of one foot per second and now sports 4 legs instead of the previous 6.

The folks working on Rise recently released a paper and the abstract states:

The robot’s general-purpose legged design coupled with its specialized ability to quickly gain elevation and park at a vertical station silently with minimal energy consumption suggest potential applications including search and surveillance operations as well as ad hoc networking.

Pretty soon it will be putting telephone pole workers out of a job.

See our previous post on RiSE here.

Video after the break.

Link via (BotJunkie)

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