After Pepper, its ASRA C1Humanoid Robot for SoftBank
SoftBank, a giant in Japanese Telecom has recently unveiled its emotion reading robot called Pepper. After this robot, SoftBank revealed another humanoid robot named ASRA C1 developed by Asratec. It is designed to interact safely with people. Specifications: ASRA C1 is a bipedal humanoid robot having the following specs: It weighs around 13.5 kg (battery included) and 1.2 meters high It has 35 degrees of freedom with two legs and fours arms The limbs are powered with Futaba servo motors It boasts 11.5V Lithium Polymer battery It makes use of various sensors like gyro, accelerometer, geomagnetism, and camera It can be interfaced with Wireless LAN and Bluetooth Features: If a user holds a robot’s hand, ASRA C1 will automatically stand up by reading the motion of the user’s hand It can be controlled from a remote place using a smartphone The user can attach head mounted display on the head to control robot’s head If a child touches the robot, it can autonomously change its state to assure safety It is capable of absorbing quick vibration and shock smoothly The whole body of the robot can be operated with the help of a joystick It can even copy the motion of the user using Kinect Sensor It has the ability to recognize a man’s voice and moves using the speech recognition function of Windows Asratec has posted videos for all the above features in their official website. We have embedded one astonishing video of it for our visitors in which the robot acts according to a human motion: httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIf0AlNPzwg
KOBIAN – Humanoid Comedian Robot
The above video brings you the funny moments of KOBIAN Comedy Robot. This robot was developed by Japanese Researchers at the Waseda University, and it was recently presented in IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2014. The research team led by Prof. Atsuo Takanishi categorized comedy into three different methods: Funny Behaviours like equivoque, blue jokes, induced laugh, overblown, and sympathetic story Funny Contexts like running gag and unexpected performance Funny Characters like imitation, self-flattery, and self-deprecating humour The researchers appointed some volunteers to find if KOBIAN is really performing funny. They wired up EMG sensors, accelerometers and video cameras facing towards their faces to determine various facial expressions like laugher and smiling. According to the research, the robot was found funny for some moments. But, the researchers were confident in KOBIAN that it will perform better to make people feel better. They were able to sort out this problem with an experiment having POMS (Profile of Mood States) psychological test to access people’s feeling. The result has been a success as it has improved the moods of the volunteers after watching KOBIAN. The next phase of research will be the implementation of complicated dramas with various comedy tricks. They also planned to conduct different experiments in different subjects. Let us wait for some years to check out it enthralling performance.
HitchBot – The Wikipedia-Reading Robot
HitchBot, a free-spirited robot is ready to explore Canada to meet new friends on the go. It is developed at Port Credit, Ontario by Dr. David Smith of McMaster University and Dr. Frauke Zeller of Ryerson University. It is the successor of KulturBot, which is made to travel from one art gallery to other for tweeting artwork photos and venues. The developers are going to put their robot on the side of the road from Halifax to Victoria, believing that it creates some good relationship with humans along the way. HitchBot is planned to hit the roads of Canada on July 27, 2014. You can follow it on Twitter, Instagram, and HitchBot’s official website. Looks & Performances: HitchBot is simple and light-weighted. It has a shape of bucket and wears gardening gloves and wellington boots. It doesn’t have an independent movement and it is completely dependent on human beings for travel. It equips a basic machine vision system and a microphone. It can identify speech and motion, and surprisingly, it can speak. It is capable of carrying out multiple conversations, face to face communication, and social media updates. The developers are little bit worried for HitchBot on its travel to Victoria, as it has a chance to be stolen or taken for selling its electronic components. Let us hope for the best, and expect HitchBot to complete his charming and trust enough conversation with humans to have a secure ride through Canada.
Pepper Robot can be your Emotional Companion
Will anyone believe that a robot can understand your feelings and act upon it? It might be a false statement a week before, but now it has become true with Aldebaran’s new Pepper Robot. This robot is not designed to make your house or office works rather than that it speaks, reads your emotions, moves, and lives autonomously. The company proudly says that Pepper robot is designed to live with humans. Pepper robot is capable of understanding your emotions by using his emotional knowledge. He analyses your facial expressions, body languages, and other normal activities to know your emotions. He will predict your mood and adapt to it. In case, if you are bothered about something, he will try to cool you by playing your favourite music. Moreover, Pepper can show his emotions by his body language, voice, and funny gestures. Pepper will be eager to interact with humans. As the days go by, Pepper will understand your way of living and learn new things to surprise and entertain you. Pepper Robot is initially developed for SoftBank Mobile (Japan’s Biggest Mobile Phone Company) to receive customers in their stores. Pepper’s ultimate goal is to learn and recognize you every day to be your closest companion at home. In other hand, Aldebaran’s goal is for Pepper to live with humans, not just in stores but also at everyone’s house. Have a first look @ Aldebaran’s Pepper Robot in the below video: httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osD6O4LAcpo
Be Ready to Customize Intel’s 3D Printed Jimmy Robot
Jimmy, a 3D printed research robot is the idea of Intel futurist Brain David Johnson and executed with the teamwork of researchers at the University of Southern California, Trossen Robotics, and Olin College. Jimmy was revealed last week by Intel at the Code Conference in California. It is named as 21st Century Robot Project, which started with an objective to give everyone an opportunity to build and customize their own robot. Jimmy Robot will be available for approx. US $1000 later this year through 21st Century Robot Project, and the users will have the access to download the required files for printing. It is an open-source model, and Johnson feels that it will give space for the users to share their innovative ideas and designs. He also adds that ideas will be delivered from our end along with the user ideas to offer far more innovation and creativity. Jimmy’s Hardware: It is developed with aluminum exoskeleton for easy tweaking and expansion. It is equipped with an Intel NUC D54250WYK minicomputer having 4th Gen Intel Core i5-4250U Haswell Chipset. It boasts a 4GB DDR3 RAM and 32GB SSD. It offers various connectivity options like Wi-Fi 802.11ac, Xbee, and Bluetooth. It also has USB 3.0 & 2.0 ports, Ethernet, HDMI / Display Port Video Output, 2 Mini-PCIe Slots, up to eight-channel audio, and SATA port. Overall, Jimmy looks to be a good idea for robotics enthusiasts like us. I personally feel this will help in improving our creativity and innovative ideas. The below video brings Jimmy Robot on action: httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRZn7_lpD2U
Arduino Simplicity Gaining Roots Through Arduino Yun
Arduino Yun is actually a microcontroller board based on Atmega 32u4 and AtherosAR9331. Atheros is a processor which could support Linux distribution.
Will Arduino Zero eat up Arduino Uno?
Well, we all are aware of what could an Arduino Uno do for us, its immense use, its inexpensive cost, simple programming and references for programming if you are not good at it, Free ware IDE, extraordinary support for it from Arduino forums, be it whatever you name it we have a library for it. This is the manner which Arduino Uno has changed our lifestyle. Because no other prototyping can come even near to it. They are their own competitors, and they have made one more board named Arduino Zero. Well, one thing goes in our minds, what is the difference? Let’s get to know overview of zero and then let me tabulate the differences
Touch Bionics Reveals the Updated i-limb Ultra Revolution
Touch Bionics, the world’s leading prosthetic technology provider has announced the updates of their i-limb Ultra Revolution at the OTWorld 2014 International Congress, Germany. The i-limb was introduced in 2007, and it was the first commercially available bionic hand with complete articulation.