The fine folks at the Beijing Institute of Technology just unveiled a pair of new bots, dubbed JingJing and PuiPui. Back in 2003 BIT was showing off its BHR-1 and BHR-2 bots, life-sized humanoids that can do tai chi, and these new bots keep their predecessor’s martial arts capabilities but add in some conversational skills. [...]
Something about Le Petit Prince, the mobile, plant-loving greenhouse robot makes us indescribably sad. Is it his one, massive adorable eye? Or merely the fact that he’s named after one of the most depressing books ever written? Either way, we can’t really argue with his usefulness — the concept can carry about plants and care [...]
The original RI-MAN may have had the whole human-carrying thing down while still managing to be somewhat soft and cuddly, but it looks like the robot-makers behind it have decided to go one step further with their new model, which has been given a complete bear makeover (sans teeth and claws, thankfully). Now dubbed RIBA [...]
While Sony’s $400 Rolly never made much sense as a roll-about musical robot, at least Aldebaran Robotics’ Nao could walk upright and play a little football. Now the two have come together to battle on the dance floor. The 91 second video posted after the break is about 70 seconds too long, but consider this [...]
Theatrical bots “Thomas” and “Janet” — who look complex enough to do non-theatrical work too — have been smacking lips since a December 2008 production of Phantom of the Opera in Taiwan, but only now has video evidence of their deviant activities surfaced on the interwebs. Causing equal measures of dread, horror and subconscious freaky [...]
Simon — the creation of Georgia Tech labs and Dr. Andrea Thomaz — is a robot with an articulated torso and anthropomorphic hands — and a head that will stop you in your tracks. This handsome little fellow was designed to help study human – robot interactions, and he will be learning different social skills [...]
So you want something to look forward to in your fast approaching old age, eh? If robots playing baseball doesn’t quite cut it, how’s about a robohand that redefines what we understand by the word “dexterity”? The Ishikawa Komuro Laboratory is at it again, this time demonstrating robotic appendages with a reaction time of a [...]
Who’s this little guy? Oh, that’s just Robochan — the Kondo KHR-2HV bot with a fully-functioning iPhone 3GS fused to his head. Not interested? Well, hear us out — because we, too, have seen many an iPhone mod project in our day, leaving us jaded, easily susceptible to waking in the middle of the night [...]
Robots can travel in time, ride (stationary) motorcycles, and teach your children to disrespect you — but rarely do they have any sense of ceremony. That’s not the case with Iowa State University’s still-nameless creation, who recently served as MC to open the school’s new Electrical and Computer Engineering building. Said robot is comprised of [...]
By now, you’re no doubt well acquainted with the Albert Hubo Einstein robot developed by the mad scientists at KAIST, but some researchers at the University of California, San Diego has also been working on their own Einstein bot for the past little while, and they’ve now managed to teach it some new tricks. While [...]