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Spy robot for your house

SpyCye, a small-sized yet useful spy robot for your house, which your wife will love it. SpyCye is such an intelligent one that is multifunctional, which can serve as your house watchdog, vacuum the house, and even serve your guests with tea and biscuits on demand. SpyCye can simply move around to help you check every corner of your house. When you’re on vacation, you can get SpyCye to dial into the Internet, then you can just connect to any Internet-ready PC anywhere, log on to www.web-bots.com and look around your home. It weights only 10 pounds and 16 inches wide. It’s pretty easy to set up. Just plug the home base in, hook up the SpyCye Robot to the base, connect it to a computer and load the included Map-N-Zap software and you’re good to go. It costs about $700 and it’s got much more functions than many more expensive robots.

Product Page, Buy Online Here

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Anybots, dynamically balancing robots

More robots are being made to resemble their creators, usually in appearance, behavior and capability. Anybots, a Canadian company that has only three guys, is currently developing the kind of two-legged robots that walk as we do. These robots are different from others by knowing how to balance itself dynamically. They’re unlike other two-legged robots, which are pre-programmed for walking. Dynamic balancing is simply knowing how to control or take another step or direction to avoid falling. The two robots that are under development by Anybots are Dexter and Monty.

Dexter has two legs, stands 5′10″ tall, and weighs 135 lbs. It balances dynamically, walks and will be able to run. Monty has one fully articulated hand driven by 18 motors and one gripper. Dexter’s legs and Monty’s arms are driven by compressed air. Driven remotely by a human operator, they can perform a wide range of industrial and household tasks.

Via [Slashdot], Anybots

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Spyke’s still alive!

Still remember Spyke? The big-sized and clumsy robot, which was said to have bugs during its demo at CES 2007. The buggy version failed to return to its dock for recharging. I guess all its bugs have been fixed now as it’s available for pre order at Gizoo.co.uk. Just to refresh you what Spyke can do for you. Despite its big size, it’s got quite a number of useful functionalities such as VOIP phone, digital music player, video surveilliance, snapshot, sound and video recording etc. At least as your most loyal watchdog for your house! Spyke is controllable via Wi-Fi from your PC. The spec also says that it will return to its recharing dock once battery is low.

£199.95 (Pre-order) at Gizoo.co.uk

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SuperBot, modular robot

Here is another robotic concept that makes use of small pieces united to form a bigger one. The modular SuperBot, is in the progress of development by ISI’s Wei-Min Shen, who just recently reported his significant progress to NASA. The SuperBot is each an identical modular units, just like Lego, which can then be plugged into each other to form robots that can stand, crawl, wiggle and even roll.

Each of this SuperBot module can be configured into different systems for different tasks, such as rolling tracks, spiders, centipedes, snakes and long arms etc. Each by itself is a complete robotic module, which has its own power supply, micro-controllers, sensors and funtionalities of movements etc. Shen has a some videos here for the demo of its progress.

The SuperBot concept sounds similar to another robotic concept, the NanoBot, which we’ve seen earlier on. The NanoBot is the robot with nano size, which can be united to form bigger robots. But NanoBot is only a concept for the sci-fi movie, whereas SuperBot is already in good progress of development.

Source

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Scary spider-like robotic creatures

It sounds like something that only happens in sci-fi movies will become real to us? The robotic world is working on some kind of insect or spider-like robots. It surelyl presents a scary look, which will possibly result that one day this kind of human creation will turn against their creators. Despite the future impact, scientists still proceed on researching to make robots to have as many legs as the arachnids do. This is simply because of research has shown that robotic creatures resembling spiders or insects can scramble across gap-ridden surfaces much better than they currently can. Arachnids can walk much better than a 2-legged robot in the less-than-ideal conditions, since the bugs are able to distribute their weight just so across their myriad of legs. This biological method is being applied to robotic limbs.

Via [Engadget]

Robot Arm

If you think that you always run out of hands, two arms are simply insufficient, then this Robot Arm shall come in to help! It’s a USB robotic arm, which is fully programmable. Some assembly work needed to join it up into a complete arm before using.

The Robot Arm can perform actions such as to grab, release, lift, lower, rotate wrist and pivot sideways for 350 degrees as you command with a wired controller. Robot Arm has the basic robotic sensing and movement principles. It’s semi-transparent with LED lights embedded. Once operated the LED will flash and allow you to observe the gear mechanism and the robot’s movement in detail.

I do not like much of the idea having a wired controller, I wish to see something controllable via Bluetooh or speech, which I could just sit back and relaxed, then command the Robot Arm to pick up and arrange all my stuff scattered around on my desk! Availability: in Japan, in March, about $80.00.

Product Page Via [OhGizmo], Via[AkihabaraNews]

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The robotic soulmate finder

Isn’t it hard to find the love of your life these days? Don’t worry, the Echo robot is just the right pal to help you out on finding the soulmate of your life!

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Robosapien becomes Spidersapien and Homersapien

The robotic toys’ world is getting more and more hilarious, after seeing the dancer, i-Sobot and the pro skater, Plen. Here comes another two robotic toys, the Spidersapien and the Homersapien. These two robots have taken on the personality of the super hero, Spiderman, and the doughnut beer guzzling family man, Homer Simpson.

The Spidersapien comes with all the original Robosapien features but with his new personality comes a host of new features including Spider-Man armour, a vocabulary of “Spider-Man” phrases and he pretends to shoot webs with “Web-shooter” noises. Homersapien just loves dressing up as Homer Simpson and mimicking his phrases such as “Doh”. It comes with sculpted Homer head as well as a unique Simpson’s accessory and packaging.

No words on pricing

Source: Pocket Lint

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Lobster-like Nanobot!

Nanotech lovers, here is a robot that has nano size, which fits the nanotech. Sorry, it’s just a concept! Daniel Kocyba’s Nanobot, which is a concept to fit into the science fiction movie of Michael Bamber’s. The movie has part to play with the implementation of nanotechnology and nanobots used for medical and millitary in mid 21st century. It looks either like the offspring of some scary insects or lobster. This nanobot works independently in its active state and has the ability to join with other bots to form larger machines when in a passive state.

[Via Core77] More Pictures of Nanobot here

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Plen, skateboarding robot that rocks!

Here is another robot small enough that can go on your desk. Plen, another mini robot from Japan, with amazing balancing skill. It knows not only to stay upright on a pair of roller skates or skateboard, but can do a few of fancy tricks on them too. Amazingly, it knows how to get itself on and off the skateboard, control it, accelerate, stop and swinging into different directions just like a pro.

Having this surely gets rid of your office boredom, while seeing it play some fancy tricks on boardskating skateboarding! Plen is equiped with Bluetooth, which you probably can control it using your smartphone. Too bad is its price is $2000.00, which is hardly affordable by most people.

To relieve your office boredom, both the Plen and i-Sobot will do well to keep you amused. Well, Plen’s skating skill definitely rocks! The decision is yours!

Take a look at the 2 video clips at Plen’s website, showing its amazing boardskating skateboarding skills.

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