WowWee Mr.Personality Robot

WowWee is one of the world's best-known manufacturers of toy-robots, its numerous products being found in just about any respectable toy store around the world. And that's also the case with one of the company's latest released, a robot dubber Mr. Personality, which arrived on the market in October 2008 and could prove to be a very good companion for children and grown-ups alike.

The device can carry out a large number of functions, as for example sell jokes and stories, read one's daily fortunes, answer questions regarding their future with either “yes” or “no”. Furthermore, by using the content playback control functions on the remote controller, one can affect the outcome of branching interactive stories and can pause, rewind and fast-forward through all on-board content.

Also on the subject of control, it's interesting to mention that Mr. Personality features a couple of Function Control buttons, which can be used in order to access the alarm clock feature, the time function, the greet mode, the stand-by mode, the Meny, the Memo function and, finally, the Demo function.

In order to help it better interact with humans, the device has been equipped with several sensors, namely a sonic sensor, four IR sensors for detecting and avoiding obstacles, flinch response, and Greet Mode, 1 light sensor used in order to detect and respond to changes in ambient light levels as well as a tilt sensor that allows Mr. Personality to know exactly when it's fallen down and when it's been picked up.

Furthermore, the robot features no less than 7 different built-in electric motors, which help it carry out all of the functions mentioned above. Plus, the robot also packs a microphone, SD memory card slot, 64 MB of internal memory, all of these components being powered by a rechargeable battery that can be juiced-up via an AC adaptor.

WowWee Mr. Personality retails for just around 300 US dollars, which is quite an OK price point, given just how cool this thing could prove to be around the house.

Enter your robot in RoboGames 2009 at San Francisco

Anyone, including kids, who can build a robot can compete in the RoboGames. The sixth annual competition begins June 12 in San Francisco. Your robot can be automonous, or remote controlled. Enter your combat robot, walking humanoid, soccer bot, sumo bot, or whatever robot your imagination and tools can construct.

If you aren’t up to building your own from scratch, HiTec offers their robo-kits. Choose from either a ready-to-build android, or a fully functional, assembled RoboNova that can walk, run, flip, do cartwheels, sing, and dance. All it needs is your program to tell it what to do. It comes with 16 servos, a fully articulated gold anodized modular 12” skeleton, flexible programming interface, and blue head LED. It runs for one hour on a five cell, NiMH rechargeable battery, with other power options available. The RoboNova kit robots have won in 2006, 2007, and 2008 at the Games, in Kung Fu, Soccer, Free Style, and BiPed Race categories.

Last year, the Games had 31 events. This year you can take your chances in 43 events. Soccer is said to be the most difficult, as it requires artificial intelligence, as well as sensors to find the ball.

In addition to cash prizes you can earn gold, silver and bronze medals engraved with your name. Entry fees range from free to $340 per event. They even have a junior section that includes the Lego Open where contestants must “create a Lego Mindstorms powered robot that demonstrates originality, useful functionality, and aesthetics.”

Examples of events includes weight lifting where the goal is to encourage research in actively balancing and carrying robots. At the start line, the robot must lift the weighted bar above its head, then maintain it in that position as it carries the bar over the finish line. The NatCar event calls for autonomous race cars that can negotiate a preset course in the shortest time possible. The car must be electric powered and measure 14” x 14” square or less, axel to axel, wheel to wheel.

The event, however, isn’t all fun and games – safety considerations are stressed in the rules. Combat bots are a category unto themselves with many disclaimers and regulations beginning with the reminder that “Combat robotics is inherently dangerous.”

A big army of small robotic fleas

Probably one of the most futuristic branches of modern hi-tech are cyber gadgets that imitate form and assignment similar to human's organs or the human's body overall. Or maybe not only human's but animal's or insect's bodies. Anyway the issue is to create a robot. Why to copy a human or an animal? – because natural incarnation is the ultimate one. One of those institutions struggling to fill a common form with piece of technology is I-SWARM project. I-SWARM project is founded by EU and receives to some serious sponsor's support – all to develop a small army of robotic fleas. Their number is supposed to be at most finitely many as a thousand and what's more, they must have a collective artificial intelligence.

I-SWARM project has already made some progress and now researchers are way closer to make a collective artificial intelligence, than anyone has ever been before. A big colony of small robots is almost ready in their laboratories. Actually, there is more than one type of working robots. Different types models appeared on different stages of work and were aimed to test one part or another. All the form factor variations and technical solutions have made a robotic gadget that is four times smaller than a thumbnail. Inside it has: the main element is a tiny solar cell. Solar power here is both – advantage and disadvantage. Of course, solar panel provides robotic insect with infinite charge on the sun, but if sun rays won't reach flea's back, then it will stop because it has no battery. A model with batteries was considered too big and needed a number of wheels to move. Without wheels robot can move with the help of vibration. And that's it – no wheels mean small size and less weight. Also every one in the swarm is equipped with an infrared port to exchange information with each other, and a processor of course. The "brains" of a robotic lice is an intricate thing, so is its operating system, which fits tight in eight kilobytes of memory and just two kilobytes of RAM.

So what does collective artificial intelligence imply and what are the objectives of the gadget. First of all every single task the swarm gets, has to be performed jointly. Robots interact with each other via infrared port until everyone in the working group has been informed about what actions will be performed or what problems are faced. A usual task for robots is to move some object from one place to another or to follow an intricate path with different obstacles. As a plan for future I-SWARM robot developers speak about dividing the army into groups and giving each group a specified task on the shared problem so the colony will have a sort of complex skill.

Researchers say about their concept robots that they are as far from entering our everyday lives as we are far from moving to the Mars. But the probable usage fields are very wide. Working in zones dangerous for people is only one on the endless list.

Man Attacked by Robot Sues

This is a real warning on the fact that we rely way too much on machines created to work for us, forgetting that even them can “have a bad day,” so to say. Although no criminal intent is involved in this case, I'm sure that immediately after having read the title, you recalled some pretty bad science fiction movies where humans had to fight against robotic evil forces that were trying to take over the world as we know it. Well, I hope this incident isn't the sign that robots are planning a riot, at least not yet.

The story goes like this: in June 2007, a Swedish industrial worker at a factory in Balsta, north of Stockholm, was taking a look at a malfunctioning robotic machine, used for lifting heavy stones. He was an experienced worker and thought he assured himself by cutting the power to the machine; however, it appears that he actually failed to turn it off. When he tried to fix the robot, it was active and grabbed him by the head and lifted him up, probably mistaking him for a bigger rock. After some serious shaking, the man managed to escape by “defending himself.” He ended up with some pretty bad injuries and four broken ribs, but was happy to be alive.

Now, two years later, he won the lawsuit against the company that owned the “violent” robot. The firm was held responsible for the attack and forced to pay damage compensation of about $3,000 (25,000 Swedish kronor), considered to be a small amount taking into account the circumstances.

The lawsuit was a premiere in Sweden. "I have never heard of a robot who beat a man in this way," said prosecutor Leif Johansson. "The man was very lucky. He had four broken ribs and was almost killed," he added.