By Evan Ackerman

Last week on BotJunkie, we watched the activation of a life-size Gundam in Japan, found out that Arnold Schwarzenegger was actually a Russian terminator robot from World War II, wondered why anyone would ever buy the most annoying robot toy ever, watched snakebots test out different types of movement, felt doom approaching with robots controlled by zombie bug heads, met a motorcycle evaluating robot named Flossie, watched a robot that’s trying to learn how to ski, saw the Rotundus Groundbot go for a swim, found out that the spunky little battery powered Evolta robot is attempting a new endurance record, cringed at the uncanniness of Archie, cringed again at HRP-4C modeling a wedding dress, watched a humanoid robot from Toyota that can outrun Honda’s ASIMO, felt sorry for a robot with a binary tramp stamp (but bought the shirt anyway), didn’t know what to think about a bizarre killer barbie death robot, and watched a new VTOL UAV take to the air.

So far this week, we’ve written about a robot bricklayer that creates complex patterns in buildings, a quad-rotor UAV that knows how to perform “provably safe” backflips, and some industrial robots that play baseball better than humans… Almost.

Last week’s Bots with Stuff, after the jump.

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This pair of robot limbs shows just how superior they will be to us in all things once they take over. This particular setup — a robot pitcher and batter — was foreseen by Ultra in their NES game Base Wars. Man, that game was good.

The actual robots were constructed by the University of Tokyo and MIT. They plan next to increase the pitching robot’s speed up to 93MPH, and train the batter robot to hit to a particular location every time. They’re meant to show, I think, that industrial robots aren’t the big, lumbering, stupid machines everyone thinks they are, but can actually react with split-second swiftness and pinpoint precision. Good news for the robot baseball league, bad news for the human race.

[via Pink Tentacle]

Baseball is a national sports in Japan and so it was just a matter of time for this baseball- and robot-crazy country to invent (industrial) robots that are able to play baseball. The 2-robot team can’t run around and doesn’t look human, but both machines are able to throw and bat the ball in quite an impressive way.

The robo-pitcher is the result of a cooperation between the MIT and the University of Tokyo (Japan’s answer to the MIT, basically). It can open and close its three-fingered hand ten times per second and hits the strike zone (1mx0.8m) 90% of the time, with 40km/h.

The robo-batter, which is 11m away in the video below, analyzes each throw with its 1,000 fps camera and is able to hit the ball almost 100% of the time.

As a next step, the researchers involved in the development of the baseball robots want to boost the pitcher’s throwing speed to 150km/h.

Via Pink Tentacle via Mainichi [JP]

By Evan Ackerman

Last week on BotJunkie, we started out on a bit of a sour note listening to some robots figuring out how to sing, watched some industrial robots pick things up and put things down very very fast, read about a concept robot that prints on your walls, were incredibly impressed by a simple robot that climbs stairs, pondered what we’d stash away in a customized robot pouch, watched a humanoid robot transform into a car, fled in terror from an i-SOBOT riding on a steam tank, admired some awesome Japanese retro robots from the 1960s, checked out some new iBotz beginner robotics kits, felt a little better now that there’s a whiskery robot rescue rat on patrol, felt a little worse now that DARPA has a UAV that looks like a hummingbird, decided that $7000 is probably too much to ask for a little robot car, decided that $70 is not too much to ask for a little robot car, and finished out the week with a bizarre movie trailer for “RoboGeisha” and a nifty robot HTML t-shirt.

So far this week, we’ve posted about a robot that transforms into a motorcycle, an uncanny picture of a robot and a human, a robot that delivers customized ramen noodle soup, and the smallest wheeled robot with a gripper in the world.

Bot with stuff (post 4th of July edition), after the jump.

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robotics technology

The robotic arm is an extraordinary multi-functional invention used industrially and medically. The robotic system may be used to accomplish undesirable tasks in the workplace, freeing up more creative and fulfilling positions. Or the robotic arms can be used in stroke therapy, in surgery and to assist paralyzed patients. Who knows where the future of this technology will take us?

Starting in 1975, robotic arms have been used for industrial purposes. In some cases, they do the work more quickly, more accurately and more efficiently than human workers ever could. Yet in other instances, they simply perform work that is too monotonous, dangerous or undesirable for men and women. In the US auto industry, for example, there is one robotic arm for every ten workers. Industrial robots lift heavy objects, handle chemicals, and paint and assemble parts. Rather than replace jobs, the robotic system is intended to free up more creative, fulfilling work for people instead. After all, the Czech word “robota” translates to “drudgery work.”

Using a modified robotic arm, Dr. Alon Wolf and Dr. Howie Choset have developed a machine that can perform minimally-invasive surgery with great accuracy. The invention is called the “CardioARM” and has been designed for abdominal surgery, heart bypass surgery and mouth surgery, but can also be used to perform a laparoscopy, colonoscopy, and arthroscopy. The CardioARM is operated by a joystick and can navigate through the body to the problem areas. The flexible tele-operated probe is programmed to remember pathways and it can take tools into regions that surgeons would otherwise have to slice into. “Tools in operation rooms are not flexible. The CardioARM is flexible enough for remote and hard to reach anatomies,” explains Dr. Wolf. “The heart is a good example… now we don’t have to cut the person open.”

A new report found that two monkeys containing tiny electrodes attached to their brains could control a robotic arm using their thoughts. First researchers used the computer to teach the monkeys to move the arm and soon the monkeys were reaching for food and grabbing it, reaching their mouths two-thirds of the time. “In the real world, things don’t work as expected,” said Dr. Andrew Schwartz, a professor of neurobiology at the University of Pittsburgh. “The marshmallow sticks to your hand or the food slips, and you can’t program a computer to anticipate all of that. But the monkeys’ brains adjusted. They were licking the marshmallow off the prosthetic gripper, pushing food into their mouth, as if it were their own hand.” This exciting new robot research promises to help paralyzed patients.