At the Consumer Electronics Show this week, iRobot announced the iRobot Create, an inexpensive, programmable home robot platform, based on their cleaning robots, Roomba and Scooba. iRobot is selling the basic kit, which includes the robot, battery pack and serial cable starting at $130.
The chassis is virtually identical to the Roomba minus the vacuum motor, dustbin, and rotating brushes. 32 sensors have been added and it has an open cargo bay and a 25-pin expansion port. Users can add and mix-and-match sensors, grippers, wireless connections, digital cameras, computers, or other electronic devices. Windows XP is supported through a serial port and it can operate with Microsoft’s Robotics Studio development kit.
When we get our hands on one we will post a full review here. Meanwhile Tom over at Robot Magazine has a hands-on look at the bot.
Check out this innovative quad-legged robot from the Tokyo Institute of Technology. It walks through the grass, but check out what it does when it hits the pavement:
Honda demonstrated their new and improved humanoid robot, Asimo, at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas this past week. Asimo can now run at 4 mph, kick a soccer ball, and climb up and down stairs. See for yourself in this video:
Nominations for the third annual Engadget awards are open now until Saturday, January 6th. Head over to Engadget to nominate the Robot of the Year. Nominations are limited to robots that were introduced and sold for the first time in 2006.
The Roomba robot vacuum, developed by iRobot, has sold over 2 million units to date and made it into the top 20 selling items on Amazon.com’s home-and-garden section this past week. Joel Garreau of the Washington Post discusses how most Roomba owners name their robot vacuum and consider it a member of their family. Garreau concludes:
“This is the year for a lot of mainstream American families that our robots emotionally became one of us.”
NASA’s Martian rovers, originally designed for a 3-month mission length, are still operating after three years. Spirit and Opportunity are located on opposite sides of Mars and have taken over 160,000 pictures.
Jim Bell, head of the rover imaging team summarized the success of the mission:
“It’s just amazing the rovers have survived — in fact actually thrived — in that environment for so long.”
Bill Gates has written an article in the January 2007 edition of Scientific American in which he looks at the current state of the robotics industry and where things are headed. Gates compares the the robotics industry today to the early years of the Personal Computer in the late 1970’s:
“…the challenges facing the robotics industry are similar to those we tackled in computing three decades ago. Robotics companies have no standard operating software that could allow popular application programs to run in a variety of devices. The standardization of robotic processors and other hardware is limited, and very little of the programming code used in one machine can be applied to another. Whenever somebody wants to build a new robot, they usually have to start from square one.”
Gates also mentions that the government of South Korea hopes to put a robot in every home in that country by 2013.
YouTube has the latest Transformers Movie trailer for your viewing pleasure. The movie is not in theatres until 4 July 2007. I was expecting something a bit more kid-friendly but the end of the trailer seems to suggest otherwise. Peter Cullen returns as the voice of Optimus Prime. Did you know he also has provided the voice for Eeyore in Winnie-the-Pooh and KARR in Knight Rider?
Posted by robotcafe 
Posted by robotcafe 
Posted by robotcafe 
The Roomba robot vacuum, developed by 
NASA’s Martian rovers, originally designed for a 3-month mission length, 