robocup

Quake rescue robot rocks Kinect to find victims

It seems you can do almost anything with robots and Kinect--perhaps even save lives. Students at the U.K.'s University of Warwick are using the motion controller on a robot that's designed to help find victims in quake-hit buildings.

With a look that seems inspired by "Short Circuit" star Number 5, Warwick's Teleoperated Search & Rescue Robot (PDF) can crawl over obstacles and fit into cramped spaces.

It has six tracks and a sensor-laden "head" on an articulated arm, and is powered by two Roboteq AX3500 motors.

It can use its new Kinect sensor to map terrain in 3D, perhaps identifying areas in a collapsed building where victims could be trapped.

The Kinect is an improvement to past versions of the robot that saves significant sums compared with Lidar laser sensors, which use light to image objects and create maps.

The team also wants to equip the crawler with a manipulator that could help bring food and medicine to trapped victims.

The robot won the European rescue championship at RoboCup last year in Germany, and aims to win this year's world competition in Turkey. … Read more

Autobots vs. human World Cup champs by 2050?

The line has been drawn and the goal set.

The RoboCup Federation, a nonprofit organization based in Japan, aims to develop autonomous humanoid robots that are advanced enough to pit themselves against human World Cup champions by 2050.

While we're probably still some way off from the military drones in "Iron Man 2," the organizers of the yearly RoboCup competition, which will take place in Singapore between June 21 and 24, hope the event will fuel interest among students of robotics and artificial intelligence.

At the press conference Thursday morning, we learned from Jonathan Kua that the … Read more

Hobby robot Robovie packs PC power

Osaka, Japan-based robot maker Vstone has announced a new humanoid hobby robot that has its own 1.6GHz Intel Atom Z530 processor, compatible with Windows and Linux.

Developed in collaboration with Japan's ATR labs, the new Robovie-PC represents an evolution in hobby robots with its advanced electronics.

Robovie-PC attempts to fill the gap between high-end machines in research labs and competitive hobby bots as seen in Robo-One and Robocup.

The 15.3-inch Robovie-PC comes preassembled and has an impressive 20 degrees of mechanical freedom, a gyro sensor and accelerometer, as well as onboard Wi-Fi and a 1.3-megapixel CMOS … Read more

Humanoid robot Nao wants to be friends

Aldebaran Robotics is showcasing the skills of its pint-size humanoid robot Nao ahead of its planned mass market release in about a year.

Nao is definitely one of the coolest humanoids around that stands a chance of making it into households as a real product. Aldebaran envisions it as "an autonomous family companion."

Fully programmable, the 23-inch bot boasts 25 degrees of freedom, affording it an impressive range of motion. Check it out in Nao's new promo vid after the jump.

Nao can grasp objects with its prehensile hands; process image and sound data; and navigate its environment using its sonars. Multimedia features include high-fi speakers, microphones, and CMOS digital cameras.

The biped runs on an x86 AMD Geocode 500 MHz CPU, 256MB SDRAM, 2GB flash memory, and lithium polymer batteries that last about 90 minutes per charge.

With striking similarities to Sony's discontinued Qrio humanoid, you'd think Nao was made in Japan. Pas du tout. Aldebaran is based in Paris, though Nao can only speak English. … Read more

Who won RoboCup 2007?

RoboCup 2007, the international robot soccer, rescue and home chore competition, concluded Sunday night with an awards ceremony, but some are still wondering who won.

The organization used Wikipedia as a central location from which to post results for its different events, but the information from many links remained incomplete as of Monday afternoon. It's left some followers of the event flummoxed.

About 300 teams, comprising 1,700 people from 37 countries, participated in RoboCup 2007, which was held this year at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta.

The event to promote artificial intelligence and robotics included soccer … Read more