Robots

We all wanted so badly for the Tacocopter to be real, but the supposed Silicon Valley quadrocopter taco delivery service was just a clever fake, designed to appeal to our most basic desires for Mexican food delivery by airborne gadget.

Just because we've had our hopes dashed once doesn't mean we shouldn't come back for more. A new hope has arisen. It's called the Burrito Bomber. As its name might suggest, the Burrito Bomber is a flying drone capable of dropping a burrito payload from the sky.… Read more

Call it too little, too late.

Mitsubishi is the latest Japanese conglomerate to show off a new robot to work at the devastated Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, following Toshiba's flubbed demo of a quadruped walker.

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI), Japan's largest defense contractor, yesterday unveiled the Maintenance Equipment Integrated System of Telecontrol Robot (Meister), a two-armed unit that rolls around on four tracks.

The remote-controlled bot can wield a variety of tools such as cutters and drills, clear obstacles, and pierce through concrete to check radiation levels, according to MHI.

Just like human arms, its robotic appendages can move along seven axes. Check it out cutting a pipe in the video below. … Read more

How do you appease a 10-year-old parrot with clipped wings, a loud mouth, and separation anxiety? Give the intelligent bird a way to get around the house so it can follow you, of course.

That's exactly what Andrew Gray -- a retired Navy officer currently pursuing his master's in engineering at the University of Florida -- created for his beloved family parrot, Pepper. Gray invented the Bird Buggy, a robotic vehicle with two-wheel drive that the parrot can perch on and drive around freely so it can tag behind people and not feel lonely. No kidding. … Read more

We've seen transforming robots before, and I'm not talking about anything related to Hasbro.

Researchers from MIT are among many engineers and tinkerers trying to design robots that perform different functions by changing their shape or appearance.

Japan-based Brave Robotics has designed a 1/12-scale RC car that can transform into a humanoid robot. It can shuffle around, grab footage with its Wi-Fi camera, and even fire little missiles from its arms. … Read more

After a record-breaking 9,000-mile journey across the ocean, a small autonomous robot recently arrived in Australia having collected and transmitted a wealth of scientific data that could lead to a better understanding of the world's seas.

On November 17, 2011, a Silicon Valley startup called Liquid Robotics launched four of its Wave Glider robots from San Francisco, two of which were heading toward Australia and the other two on their way to Japan. The hope was that the Wave Gliders, which are designed to travel across the globe without fuel or outside propulsion, would set the Guinness World … Read more

You gotta hand it to the marketers who come up with robot acronyms. Can it get any better than Extreme Access System for Entry (EASE)?

Sounds innocuous enough, right? Until this little critter tries to float into your room to spy on you. It's one of two bots unveiled by CyPhy Works, headed by iRobot co-founder Helen Greiner.

EASE and PARC (that's Persistent Aerial Reconnaissance & Communication), a communications relay, are compact flying machines that can fly between 3 feet and 1,000 feet while remaining tethered to their human controllers via microfilaments. … Read more

There are few formalities more terrifying than the prospect of having to shake hands with a potentially miscalibrated robot. If it misinterprets the size of your hand, it could end up crushing a few phalanges and create an embarrassing scene for both machine and master.

Boston-based MIT spin-off Robot Rebuilt is working on a solution by creating a more sensitive, perhaps even more gentle robot hand.

Eduardo Torres-Jara first began working on a robot named Obrero that is capable of sensitive manipulation at MIT, and now he's in the process of striking out on his own with a successor bot named Tactico that's even more in touch with its (tactile) feelings.… Read more

When I see a cute critter like Fizzgig or an Ewok in a movie, I want to take it home with me. I get the same feeling when I see Pixar's sweet Luxo Jr. lamp mascot. It's like a little metal puppy you want to hold on your lap and take care of.

The sprightly lamp has now hopped out of the screen and into the real world thanks to a project created at the Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand by Adam Ben-Dror, Joss Doggett, and Shanshan Zhou. This lamp is black, rather than white like Luxo Jr. The project is called Pinokio and the lamp is imaginatively named "Lamp."

Pinokio uses six servos, a Webcam, and Arduino to track human faces, play hide-and-seek, hear sounds, and try really hard to get your attention.… Read more

We've seen several designs for military exoskeletons that can boost soldier strength, but these leg braces from Canada's Bionic Power generate electricity on the go.

The PowerWalk system looks like an athletic knee brace and weighs about 1.7 pounds. The braces generate about 12 watts of electricity when the user walks at a normal pace; an hour's walk can apparently produce enough juice to recharge four cell phones.

That's especially handy for soldiers who have to carry up to 28 pounds of batteries on a 72-hour mission to power everything from flashlights to night vision goggles, according to Bionic Power. … Read more