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watching culture on the cusp of man-made consciousness. will a robot be your friend? Created by Charlotte Shea, writer & robot enthusiast

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Unbounded Robotics Births UBR-1

photo courtesy of Unbounded Robotics

Spinoff company of the famed Willow Garage, @UnboundedRobotX, has just announced the release of their exciting new hardware platform, UBR-1. Looking to tap the market where Willow Garage left off, Unbounded Robotics offers users one less arm in exchange for a handful of improvements to Willow's hardware platform PR2. A staple in research institutions around the world, PR2 is no longer in production, and will presumably be replaced by its one-armed spawn, UBR-1. The loss in limbs shies in comparison to the numerous improvements to this new research platform, the most exciting of which being that UBR-1 is just a fraction of the cost. This team will expand the market of research and innovation that their predecessors laid before them, one-armed-robot at a time.

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why they love robots...and you should too!

This is one of my favorite dynamic duos out there. Ken Goldberg and Tiffany Shlain are committed to using their voices in a world where we too often communicated from behind a screen. Not only do they love robots, but they always find very artful ways to express it. They can inform us of the technologies that exist, without scaring us away from them. They've been achieving that ever since the telepresence garden - and we can assume before that as well.

Not only is this particular video informative, fun, and well-produced, but Shlain just released a whole web series, The Future Starts Here. She addresses the questions of our lives. How addicted am I to my iPhone? What's it like to be a parent and work full time? This series is definitely worth a quick -- and I mean quick as Ms Shlain is very concise -- look.

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the new camerman

MACHINE FOR RIDING from VANDEYK on Vimeo.

Director Chris Kippenberger uses remote controlled quadrocopter drone to make amazing films. Typically they are of the fancy car variety. Here is his first cycling masterpiece.

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Dash to "hit the shelves" soon

photo courtesy of Dash Robotics

Perhaps it's something more like "Dash to hit the kitchen table" - for assembly - "soon." Less than one month after the launch of their crowdfunding campaign, this team was on their way to production. (Their crowdfunding platform, Dragon Innovation, is actually an iRobot spinoff company.) I'd say the writing's in the sky for these guys. 

Dash has been such a hit that you can only hope to get on the waitlist. Don't' be a sucker, get your name down today! The shipment date is expected to be April 2014. Get ready for some family fun and new party tricks!

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Memories from Robot Block Parties and Film Festivals. Also, any one of these guys may as well be asking, "wanna dance?"

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Robots on the Road aka GM Goes Driverless

How will this new phase of personal transport change the way we feel about what are often prized possessions--our cars?

photo courtesy of e r j k p r u n c z k y

With a simple segway chassis, GM expects to change the face of transportation. They expect to change the brains too. The EN-V will house driverless technologies that have been unobtrusively infiltrating personal vehicles since cruise control came into the picture. Soon enough our cars will drive us around. Sounds nice, doesn't it? Let the robot deal with the prick in front of you who doesn't know how to drive. Better yet, let all the robots drive and eliminate our personalities and coordination from the road--the place where the most deaths occur.

photo courtesy of Segway Inc.

GM has struck a deal with China's ecocity, Tianjin, to implement their revolutionary self-driving vehicles into the very infrastructure of a city so smart it nearly breathes. Watch - or live - and learn.

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Robots learn to collaborate...just like people do

Perhaps a more apt metaphor is just like ants do, since these little robots created by Nikolaus Correll at CU Boulder are designed on the premise of swarming insects like ants, bees or termites. Just as one ant is not capable of providing for himself, yet collectively the colony displays one of nature's most complex social systems, one droplet has very basic computing power, but as a whole they are capable of fulfilling complex tasks. Correll and his team are just one group of people using nature's principles to advance technology. Sociobiology has reached a new level.

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Lost & Found

 One drone at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in Golden Gate Park. Let's hope it knows how to get home.

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One of the better robot compilations out there.

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Microsoft Pulls Ahead in the Showdown

Could anything be more encapsulating of these times of near robot overthrow?

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The Robot Film Festival Comes to The Bay

Bot & Dolly was the perfect venue for an event populated by both robots and people who were, at times, indistinguishable. I won't try and sum it up for you because the creative curmudgeons over at the B&D have done a better job with their crafty images than I could hope to with words. What I will say is those folks know how to throw a party. Thanks again!

3rd Annual Robot Film Festival from Bot & Dolly on Vimeo.

Produced by Marek Michalowski, Heather Knight, Chrys Wu, and Anastassia Metrikin and hosted by Bot & Dolly

The Saturday festival was follwed by the Sunday workshop where Bot & Dolly filmed a short to show off their talent, and their robots. Sorry to say I missed it. But again, here's their encapsulation.

Robot Film Festival Sunday Workshop from Bot & Dolly on Vimeo.

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Robot Portrait, courtesy of Idaho National Laboratory via Flickr.

This thing is awesome. A mix between Number 5 and iRobot's PackBot, this guy could be your friend and protector. He's not taking interviews until he gets back from Mars though.

Keep up with the current Rover's roving.

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Earth, Jupiter, and Venus seen from Mars.

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Courtesy of the Mars Rover team. Pip pip to robots in space. If they can explore mars, they can surely search and rescue here on Earth.

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Dash Robotics to get their crowdfunding on

Dash Robotics was dreamed up at a UC Berkeley Robotics Lab, and inspired by, believe it, a cockroach. While there aren't many aspects of this mite-sized robot that don't set it apart, what is a truly astounding aspect to the team's mission is affordability. They can build a market product that will cost, at most, $50. How is that possible? The little guys are made of cardboard, and the user is meant to assemble them, providing a fantastic educational opportunity.

With the majority of the team having just graduated with their PhD's, they are already set to launch a crowdfunding campaign later this summer to get their business under way. Huzzah! for a quick start out of the gates, gentlemen! 

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Bienvenue Mr. Atlas

And the DARPA winner is...

For those of you who aren't aware, this what the DARPA Robotics Challenge is all about according to their website.

Our national security is vulnerable to natural and man-made disasters and there are often limitations to what humans can accomplish to help remedy these situations or mitigate further damage. Today’s robotics are helping, but they are not yet robust enough to function in all environments and perform the basic tasks needed to mitigate a crisis situation.

The goal of the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) is to generate groundbreaking research and development so that future robotics can perform the most hazardous activities in future disaster response operations, in tandem with their human counterparts, in order to reduce casualties, avoid further destruction, and save lives.

Within the coming months, the Challenge will test the participating Teams’ robots ability to work in rough terrain and their capacity to use human aids such as vehicles and hand tools in three events.

The seven remaining teams in this national competition have received their respective Atlas robots from Boston Dynamics and begun the next phase of the challenge - programming Atlas in the flesh. The simulations displayed which teams had the best software capabilities, and after investigating their hardware concepts, the judges chose the winners. Here is some footage of the simulations, proving Atlas' capabilities. While it looks like a video game it will, in theory, look identical in real life.

Here's what it looks like in real life.