PLEO robo-dino

PLEO the robo-dino was designed to emulate the appearance and behavior of a week-old baby Camarasaurus. It was designed by Caleb Chung, the co-creator of the Furby, and manufactured by Ugobe. This is the closest thing to the real thing (as of the moment) its skin is smooth, seamless and stretchy, its movements are not rigid; its actions are seemingly spontaneous and unprogrammed. Inside, however, the 3.3-pound Pleo is very robotic indeed. It’s stuffed with 38 sensors to detect light, motion, touch and sound. They feed information about Pleo’s environment to one of eight processors that can handle a collective 60 million calculations per second. A complex computer program determines what the dino does next—howl over the edge of a table, sneeze, crane its neck around 180 degrees to see who’s scratching its back, or any of thousands of other possibilities. As Pleo’s manufacturer, Ugobe in Emeryville, California, develops more sophisticated personality coding, you’ll be able to upgrade the robot through its SD-card slot or from the Web through its USB port.

Indeed it's promising but can it really replace your cat/dog pet?

iRobot Roomba Model 4220

The loyal and faithful iRobot Roomba Discovery SE - Model 4220 will clean your house without ever asking for anything but a plug and maybe a little backup if it runs into the cat. Roomba senses and finds dirt. Once dirtier areas are detected, Roomba automatically increases the intensity and focus of its cleaning.

It’s generally not Woot’s policy to link to outside sites, just like it’s not the iRobot Roomba Discovery SE - Model 4220’s policy to leave any dirt behind. It has two Virtual Walls that can be programmed to keep your Roomba out of off-limit areas. Roomba has the built-in intelligence to automatically return to its self-charging home base when its battery is low or it has completed a cleaning cycle. This means your Roomba will always be charged and ready for its next cleaning mission. Not bad for a household appliance ayt?

robonews

Spirit and Opportunity haven gotten a two year funding extension to continue their incredible trek across the red planet. Together they have racked up almost 12 miles of travel! A couple of stories through Slashdot include an article detailing efficiencies of Robot-run warehouses, and an article about progress in robot learning at Fudan University. Our friends at medGadget are keeping us up to date on robots in the medical field including the NeuroArm robot that performs MRI-guided neurosurgery, and the zero-gravity surgical robot software developed by SRI. On a final note, Woot continues to appeal to robot lovers everywhere by offering Wowwee Roboquads for $50.

TRANSFORMER

HIS BUMBLEBEE With PAPER

I bumped into this in the net while searching for something. A transformer model prototype made from paper, though it don't transform into a bumble bee car, it is a small replica of bumble bee from the movies. This is his story, a document of how and why he built this awesome piece of art. There are about more than 60 movable joints, 36 cm in height. He used AO paperboard, boxes of egg-pie, bottle of Tai-zi milk, snap fastener, moon cake box, white paperboard, chopsticks, popsicle sticks, the core of ball-point pen, plastic spring to make this excellent work and it took him just a month to complete this jaw-dropping wonder, from July 15 to August 11.

People can achieve everything he wants in case of his courage.

Chairman Mao

Omnibo2007 i-sobot

The Omnibo2007 i-SOBOT made by Takara Tomy is the smallest 2-legged robot in the world, Guinness-certified “smallest humanoid robot in production . It's just 6.5-inch (96x67x165mm) and weighs only 350g. The micro-sized high-tech i-SOBOT is equipped with 17 servo motors provided throughout the body and an internal gyro-sensor gives it maximum flexibility. It is capable of making different kinds of smooth motions while automatically balancing itself. It features five operational modes: (1) remote control mode; (2) programmed mode; (3) special action mode; (4) voice control mode (for dictating simple actions); and (5) dance mode. It can also move while outputting words (speaking vocabulary of over 200 words and phrases in English), sound effects, music, etc. from a built-in speaker.

The i-SOBOT remote control has a built-in LCD display with intuitive icons for easy motion sequence entry. The controller/robot communication is done using a well known IR format similar to television remote controls.The i-SOBOT can play music, dance, and respond to applause and other user actions. The bot can also make its own punching and kicking sound effects, so we can imagine some entertaining robo-duels with a pair of these things. By the way, have you ever seen a toy robot that can do push-ups? Or get up on its feet by itself without you having to lift it up? It goes on sale in July from toymaker Takara Tomy. The English website and price are still “coming soon,” but since this dancing, push-upping wunderbot runs about $258 (31,290 yen)in Japan.

The company also announced that they will be releasing the older brother of the tiny bot, the Omnibot2007 i-SOBOT CAMVersion, in October. The CAMversion has an internal camera that sneakily snaps photos and sends images wirelessly to your PC or cellphone via WiFi, and whose head can swivel 60 degrees in each direction. The CAMVersion bot will run you 41,790 yen ($344 US) when it debuts in October.

Takara Co., Ltd. was a Japanese toy company founded in 1955. Takara merged with another prominent Japanese toy company, Tomy Co., Ltd., on March 1, 2006