AeroVironment, maker of several important military UAVs like the Wasp, Raven, and Dragon Eye , has received a Phase II SBIR grant from DARPA to continue work on it’s hummingbird-like nano UAV (NAV), which propels itself with flapping wings. In the video shown above, the vehicles stability control is shown, including take-offs from a standstill.

“The goals of the NAV program — namely to develop an approximately 10 gram aircraft that can hover for extended periods, can fly at forward speeds up to 10 meters per second, can withstand 2.5 meter per second wind gusts, can operate inside buildings, and have up to a kilometer command and control range — will stretch our understanding of flight at these small sizes and require novel technology development.”

The Phase II contract is worth $2.1 million USD and will continue through the summer of 2010.

[Via Slashdot]

Retro Robo Sculpture by Mike Rivamonte

Here’s a great gallery of retro robot art creations. There quite an array of intricate robot sculptures from a variety of artists. The robot pictured above was created by artist Mike Rivamonte. There’s a few more of my favorites after the jump.

What’s your favorite?

Retro Robot by Rich Muller

Robo-woman by Greg Brotherton

In case you missed the news, Ugobe, maker of the amazing robotic pet Pleo, has filed Chapter 7 bankruptcy and has auctioned off all of its goods as of May 29th. It’s still unclear what will happen to all of the IP, and there’s potential that some buyer may resurrect our little robot pal, but that remains to be seen as news of the auction goes live.

As a nice recap to Ugboe’s rise and fall, John Sosoka, the Chief Technical Officer (CTO) made a presentation to the Standford University EE380 lecture series class, entitled “The Rise and Fall of a Companion Robot: Lessons Learned from Pleo“.  You can watch a full video of the lecture here. It’s a fascinating talk for anyone that’s interested in bringing a robotic product to the mass market. John talks for about 40 minutes and answers questions afterward.  He talks about “what went wrong” with Ugobe, instead of the usual technical discussion, and considering that the lecture was given on the eve of the asset auction for Ugobe, the talk is twinged with sadness.

Ugobe was formed in 2004, released its first product in 2007, sold over 100k units worldwide, and was seeking an additional $20 million USD round of funding in the late Summer of 2008. Due to the economic collapse, this didn’t happen, and their chances of survival were pretty much eliminated. By April 2009 the company had filed bankruptcy. So, the most obvious reason for Ugobe’s failure was a money issue, but John points out that the bigger and more serious problem was that Ugobe never figured out what Pleo really was. Was it a toy? A robotic gadget? A research tool? They never honed in on a marketing message, and consequently weren’t able to make the jump from selling 100k units to early adopters to selling 1 million units to the general public. Pleo was more than a toy, and different from a pet and they couldn’t come up with a way of describing that. So, even if the $20 million dollar funding had come through, the company still may very well have collapsed. Additionally, rapid growth of the company and a lot of venture funding confused the core goals and caused them to lose focus.

Mixed in with John’s talk were some fun facts about Pleo. He said the wholesale cost of Pleo was $195, and the cost to manufacture each one was $140 - a pretty good price considering the complexity, processing power, etc. Sosoka estimated that the company spent about $7 million dollars before shipping the first unit. Another interesting tidbit was that 15k of the 100k Pleos were bought in the (relatively small) Itallian market, thanks to the distributor there. Sosoka lamented using the US distributor (which I hear might have been Senario LLC, can anyone confirm?), saying that they regretted this relationship.

Again, I recommend watching John’s talk if you’re interested in the business of robotics.

Pleo’s can still be purchased from Amazon.com for a steep discount.

Carebot comes fully equipped to take care of your every need - hot meals, fluffying your pillow …  oh, and fully trained in proctology.

See more of Ben’s art here.

Artist Carl Pisaturo creates some amazing kinetic sculptures. His robotic creation, Slave Zero (video above), is an amazing half-human scale robotic creation with life-like motions which are controlled via an intricate web of cables. Slave Zero uses 21 servos to drive 41 joints and achieves incredibly fluid motion.

[Via Robot Snob]

“Hey, since the news and historical accounts are so great when they’re crowsourced, how about robots! That’d be a GREAT idea.”

Check out more of Ben’s art here.

Mars Rover Stuck

After over five years of tireless service, the Mars rover Spirit is one again in trouble.  Our long-lived martian friend now appears to be stuck in the sand. Spirit, which has been dragging an immobile wheel for nearly three years, has been circling a, “low plateau called ‘Home Plate’ for two months”, where it stumbled into some very soft martian sand. After proceeding about 1 meter, it now appears that the wheels are almost half-way deep into the sand (which you can see in the picture), and NASA engineers have suspended movement until they can further analyze the situation.

“We are proceeding methodically and cautiously. It may be weeks before we try moving Spirit again. Meanwhile, we are using Spirit’s scientific instruments to learn more about the physical properties of the soil that is giving us trouble.”

Even if Spirit never recovers, it will have been operation for more than 5 years past its original mission - a pretty hefty return-on-investment. But, here’s hoping for some more martian exploration time from dear Spirit.

Husbands and kids, at least you have something to look forward to in the future - Hauler MAT and his trash grabbing prowess. See more of Ben’s art here.

A few weeks ago, the most excellent company, SparkFun hosted an autonomous vehicle competition at their building in Builder Colorado. The competition was open to all forms of autonomous vehicles and was race around the peremeter of the buildings. Chris Anderson from DIY Drones entered a flying vehicle and won first place.

Below is a most excellent video recap of the event.

Move over R2D2, EM-6 is where it’s at. See more of Ben’s art here.

Festo, a German engineering company which brought us the stunning AirJelly, has now unveiled their latest project - life-like robo-penginus. Even better, there ’s a swimming and a flying version. The penguins, which were designed to showcase a new mechanical linkage/control design for robotic arms, are amazingly life-like. Aside from the creepy glowing eyes, the underwater variety could well be mistaken for the real thing. The swimming penguins can move their heads and tails, just like real penguins, and navigate using a 3D sonar developed by EvoLogics. The flying variety use ultrasonic receivers to map out their flying space, with the help of stragegically placed ultrasonic transmitter. Both penguins use fiberglass rods through the length length of their body to provide structure, and when the rods are pushed/pulled, to move their heads and tails.

You can see another video of the Penguins after the jump.

Robots are cool. Pictures of robots are cool too. But, custom artwork of people as robots … now that’s very cool. If you agree, then Ben Rollman can help you out by creating a custom piece of fine art depecting you (or your favorite photo) as a robot. Case in point, the photo above depecting my sheer joy at marrying the best woman in the world. For a mere $15 Ben will take any photo you send him and robotify it, and send you the finished 5″x7″ copy and a sweet timelapse video of him drawing it. You can see the video of him drawing my picture after the jump. If 5″x7″ isn’t your style, Ben will do a 8″ x 10″ for only $30 USD. He’s very courteous to work with, finishes the portrait quickly, and ships in a nice protective envelope. For $15/$30 I think it’s a steal.

You can also check out Ben’s Flickr gallery of some of his other robot drawings. I’ve been so impressed, we’ll be posting some of his new artwork here on the site each week.

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.

Bodyweight Assist

Stride Assist