Finding decent SciFi/Robot shows on TV these days is pretty tough, especially since Battlestar Galactica finished up. Thankfully though, we have Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles – but maybe not for long. That’s where you come in – Help Save Sarah Connor. The show just finished up its 2nd season and probably hasn’t pulled in the necessary US viewership numbers for it to stay afloat. The problem is that this is a quality, well written, gritty story about 1) robots 2) human survival and 3) killer robots and Fox has a history of canceling amazing shows before their time. So, loyal readers, why not give TSCC a try, keep up with the latest Save TSCC news, and maybe send a note to Fox. We need to convince Fox that we need more robot shows on the air.

Update: The SciFi blog  IO9 is getting in on the action and starting a Flickr pool called “Sarah Connor Made Me Do It”, where people can submit photos of themselves posing with the show’s sponsor’s products.

Here are some stories I never got around to posting from the past … long time:

• As if the forces of Junk Food weren’t powerful enough, now we can look forward to social, roving, snack selling robots in our future, thanks to the work of Carnegie Mellon University.
• Bouncing Red Ball has a great roundup post from the Robo-Japan 2008 event.
• Dorian Cox (no relation), a former indie rocker with The Long Blonds, can no longer play the guitar due to a stroke he suffered. Now, thanks go a bionic hand, he may be able to play again.
• Chris Anderson of DIY Drones posted an interesting and sad article describing a mid-air collision of two planes flying over Brazil. Both planes had been assigned the same altitude and opposite headings, and the precision of their autopilot navigation systems caused them to crash head-on.
• Curious Invetor is selling a brand new microcontroller designed for robot builders. It’s called the Roboduino.

Honda recently had a media extravaganza in which they demoed their recently announced “Stride/Bodyweight Assist Machine”, an experimental device that aids human walking by reducing stress on joins and muscles. It’s a cross between an exoskeleton and a chair – the former because it’s powered and aids your movement, and the latter because you sit on it, and it doesn’t require cumbersome straps and fixtures to stay attached to your body. The smaller “Stride Assist” weighs 6 lbs and the larger “Bodyweight Assist” weighs 14. The former, after getting used to it, seems to quite natural.

Honestly, the first few steps felt awkward and a bit otherworldly. However, the prototype is designed to learn how you walk, at the same time as you’re learning how to walk with it. Within a few moments, I was walking quickly down a hall and then even running back through it. All of my actions felt natural, but improved, compared to my normal gait and running style.

The device anticipates your walking motion and aids you. It aids muscle activity and is designed for people with limited mobility – those than can stand, but have trouble walking.

The larger cousin of the Stride Assist, the “ Bodyweight Support Assist”, wasn’t nearly as “transparent” but still would allow a great many impaired people have a greater range of mobility.

Video of the Stride and Bodyweight Assist below.

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General Atomics Aeronautical Systems has unveiled it’s latest version of the wildly popular Predator Drone – the Predator C Avenger. The Avenger, which made its first flight tests earlier this month, is expected to be a viable product within 10 – 12 months, and could be patrolling the unfriendly skys shortly thereafter.

The Avenger has landing gear from the F-5 aircraft, approximately a 66″ wingspan, and can carry up to 3,000 lbs of weapons or surveillance equipment. The new Predator also has many design modifications to achieve a higher level of stealth, including a, “vertically-oriented V-tail [that] both deflects radar and shields the 4,800-lb. thrust Pratt & Whitney Canada’s PW545B engine exhaust’s infrared signature”, and stealth techniques from planes like the B-22 and B-2.

It really doesn’t pay to be a Bad Guy these days.

Here’s a fantastic walking robot costume for a small child. Check out the “build notes” after the jump. Just add some water or nerf guns and your kid will be the ultimate ruler of the neighborhood!

L’s chicken walking robot costume

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This is one of the most refreshing and clever uses of robotic technology that I’ve come across in a while – using robots to tend a tomato garden. The garden came about from the work of postdoc Nikolaus Correll who works in the MIT Distributed Robotics Lab and was part of an undergraduate class taught in the Fall of 2008. The garden uses iRobot Create’s, equipped with 4 DOF arms to tend the plants. Each robot is equipped with a watering system and each plant monitors its soil humidity. When a plant needs water a request is sent, via a mesh network, to the robots, which water the plants. A camera on each robot also catalogs the location and ripeness of the tomatoes on the plants for harvesting. You can read more about the garden here and here (pdf). Video of the robotic garden in action after the jump.

[Via Boing Boing]

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