Robots.net

Red Ring of Death victim Jasper Stevens decided to take an interesting tactic with his dead Xbox 360. He dissected the system harvesting the wires, RF shields, heat sinks, connectors and such to construct an inspiring bipedal robot sculpture that would make any hardcore gamer drool over.

The ABE (Autonomous Benthic Explorer) has used its on-board acoustic transponders and five thrusters to scan the seafloor for over 15 years - locating, mapping, and photographing hydrothermal vents, volcanoes, and other features of the great deep. Marked with "NCC1701" due to its resemblance to Captain Kirk's ship, ABE has performed more than 200 missions collecting valuable data for researchers worldwide. But something went wrong last Friday on an expedition off the coast of Chile and ABE just stopped - nothing was ever heard again. No word yet on whether ABE can be located or recovered.

Steven Hawking chimes in on the debate about whether to spend valuable resources sending humans on planetary exploration missions, or to use robots. After all, it's a lot cheaper to send a machine that doesn't need oxygen, isn't sensitive to radiation, and doesn't need to be returned to their family at the end of the mission. But there are some legitimate scientific reasons to send humans including real-time tweaking of the chemistry experiments looking for life, and to initiate unplanned tests based on unexpected observation. Also, the tax-paying public gets more emotionally invested in human missions and would possibly be more willing to continue funding. The ultimate answer is likely a mixture of the two, but exactly what that mixture will be is still being hotly debated.

Popular Science and Google have partnered to scan and published 137 years of magazines full of inventions, interviews, and science news from around the globe. Oh, and don't forget those cool ads!. I'm not sure the search feature is 100% yet but I did find a few older articles that might be of interest to robotics enthusiast:

Sept 85 - Robot Sentries Patrol Prisons and Factories
Sept 62 - Teachable Robot Can Remember 200 Commands
June 83 - Computerized Personal Robots

The latest episode of the Robots podcast interviews Dr. Alvar Saenz-Otero from MIT on the SPHERES project. SPHERES (Synchronized Position Hold Engage and Reorient Experimental Satellites) are basketball-sized satellites able to fly in and maintain formation at nanometer precision. In the second part of this episode we continue our quest for a good definition of a robot by looking at a well-known definition dating back to 1979. Read on or tune in!

The Black Eyed Peas have released a new mash-up video for their songs, "Imma be" and "Rock that Body" featuring an assortment of robots; friendly robots, evil robots, big robots, small robots. You also get to see a robot junk yard, teleporting band members, a hover car, futuristic dance guns, Taboo missing the bottom half of his body and Fergie sporting futuristic silver Louboutin heels and some sort of sexy cyborg leotard. For more on the story behind the video, see the Imma Be Wikipedia article.

Robots.net is the oldest robot blog on the planet, right? Sorry. Believe it or not, when robots.net started in early 2001, there were other robot blogs and websites already around. The oldest surviving robot news blog that I'm aware of (and I'm sure someone will correct me here if I'm wrong) is GoRobotics.net. GoRobotics is celebrating their 10th anniversary this year. What's even cooler is that they're celebrating by giving away great robot prizes to their readers every month this year. It's not too late to get in on February's prizes - just check out the GoRobotics Feb prize giveaway posting for all the details on how you can enter and win. Meanwhile, the editors at Robots.net would like to pass along our best wishes to William Cox for a job well done. Trust us, we know how hard it is to keep the robot news rolling for years on end!

Aaron Saenz over at Singularity Hub put together a short list of videos showing robots doing their stuff on the factory floor. These machines work tirelessly doing highly repetitive, and sometimes highly dangerous jobs, hour after hour, day after day. Included are a few clips from automotive assembly lines where robots have reduced human labor requirements to around 24 hours. Clips showing sorting, pick-and-place, and even a pancake stacker application are also shown.

The Dallas Personal Robotics Group (DPRG), one of the oldest robot hobbyist groups in the world, is forming a hackerspace in Dallas, Texas. For the last seven years, the DPRG was based in the Garland, Texas warehouse pictured above but, in 2009, the building changed hands and the DPRG found itself out of a home. Based on the success of hackerspaces in other parts of the world, the DPRG decided the time is right to start one Dallas. For those not familiar with the idea, a hackerspace is a shared community workshop supported by a membership fee that helps cover rent, tools, and other expenses. The DPRG is a 501(c)(3) as well and will be soliciting grants and donations to help cover startup costs. Membership is open to all types of makers, hackers, and creators in the community and there is already a wide range of interests that include robots (of course!), CNC, welding, photography, hydroponics, vacuforming, and ham radio, to name just a few. The DPRG hopes to find someone willing to donate land and a suitable building but will lease temporary space if needed to have things up and running sometime in March. So, if you're in Dallas, join up and help out. Even if you're not local, they're accepting donations from like-minded folks, so throw a few dollars their way if you can.

The latest episode of the Robots podcast reports on two Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) projects. In a first interview Oscar Schofield from Rutgers University in the US explains how underwater gliders can spend months at a time at sea and describes the first AUV mission to successfully cross the Atlantic (for a Hollywood account of the mission have a look at the above video). Our second guest Mark Moline is Professor at the Biological Sciences Department and member of the Center for Coastal Marine Sciences at Cal Poly State in California. Moline reports on a month-long mission using AUVs for underwater exploration in the Arctic Winter resulting in some surprising findings. Read on or tune in!

A couple of weeks ago the Robots podcast had a chat with Joshua Portlock from Cyber Technology in Perth, Australia. Cyber Technology is one of a rapidly increasing number of companies that offer electric quad-rotor UAVs. Unlike other similar platforms, their CyberQuad uses ducted fans to shroud the rotor blades for added safety and efficiency and has some advanced autonomous abilities. In the interview Portlock talks about a variety of fixed and rotating wing platforms and shares some of his insights into quad-rotor technology. In the second part of this episode Robots launches a quest to find a good definition for all the robots covered in the show, from molecular robots to smart houses, humanoids or flying crawling and jumping robots. Read on or directly tune in!

A microprocessor-controlled artificial foot can capture part of the energy normally dissipated during walking motion and recycle it to aid walking according to researchers at Delft University and University of Michigan. A conventional prosthesis can increase energy expenditure by 23% over healthy walking, but this new device can reduce that cost to 14% resulting in a much more natural walking style with much less effort. Energy is captured passively using a spring, then a pair of micromotors controlled by a microprocessor releases the energy at the optimum time, then resets the device for the next step. A small battery powers the active components.

We've covered Rubix Cube solvers before (#1, #2, #3), but CubeStormer is pure fixed-automation bliss. It can solve any combination of 3^3 cube in less that 12 seconds flat. CubeStormer is built using LEGO Mindstorms RCX along with some serious engineering in both the hardware and software departments.

Patients needing delicate surgery for prostate cancer treatment are requesting robotic assistance in increasing numbers in spite of unclear advantages and uncertain outcomes. One in six American men develop prostate cancer in their lifetime. Eight years ago, about 5,000 American men had the surgery using a robot, in 2009 that number had jumped to 73,000 - 86% of total surgeries performed. Dr. Cadeddu, a urologist at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas is hearing patients ask specifically for robotic assistance regularly. It's not clear whether patients are doing in-depth research themselves or are simply being swayed by marketing of the latest technology. While the robotic machinery is pricey and training time-consuming, it's thought by many surgeons and researchers that the results will prove worth it all. It might take more time to tell for certain on this one.