EZ-Robot releases build-your-own kit, realistic Cylons due any time now (video)

DJ Sures' homemade Wall-E was the beginning of his project to bring personal robotics to the masses: thanks to his company, EZ-Robot. The startup sells kits that let you retrofit that Teddy Ruxpin doll in the garage into a fully-functioning killbot. $235 will buy you a wireless controller, ultrasonic distance sensor, wireless tracking camera, three standard servos, two continuous rotation servos, battery pack and software that'll let you control the bot without having to learn to code. The software also includes vision tracking (facial, motion and color), speech recognition and the whole thing will even integrate with your Roomba -- although we're not sure how far you'll get if you ask it for a sandwich.

At Brookside, inspiring braniacs — one robot at a time

Photo for the Record Gazette by Mike Sturman Brielan Sadler, a fourth-fifth-grade combo teacher at Beaumont’s Brookside Elementary School, is having her Robotics Club members build a Mars Rover-type robot.Published: Friday, November 4, 2011 12:11 AM CDTBeaumont’s Brookside Elementary School has its share of braniacs.In fact, Janae Keels, 9, is so tech-savvy that when her mother got a new phone and had trouble programming it, the girl jumped in to help. So it’s no surprise that Keels was attracted to Brookside’s after-school Robotics Club.“(The club) is pretty fun,” she said while helping her three teammates build a robot during a Thursday afternoon meeting. “I like to take things apart and put them back together.”Putting things together, in this case a motorized Mars Rover-like contraption, is what the club is all about.Brielan Sadler, a fourth/fifth-grade combo teacher at Brookside, runs the club. “When I started this, I just wanted to give kids the opportunity to experience new technology, to see computers as more than just game-playing devices,” said Sadler, who has been at Brookside since it opened in 2004.Although the club was her brainchild, Sadler was influenced by her mother, who is a teacher at Colton’s Sycamore Hills Elementary School, which is a NASA Explorer School. At such a school, students are encouraged to study science, technology, engineering and mathematics using NASA’s resources. Sadler said Brookside is seeking the NASA designation.The Colton teachers “did some robotics there and went through some training at JPL,” she said, referring to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. “And I got to spend a day at JPL, which was really cool.”So, she decided to bring some of that coolness to Brookside. As the Gifted and Talented Education coordinator, she applied for and won a grant to begin the club.With the money, she purchased eight Mindstorm kits, which cost between $200 and $250 each, to use in the club. Each robot-building kit contains 828 pieces, enough to build an assortment of devices. When the GATE program was discontinued, Sadler opened the club up to all fourth- and fifth-graders. Although the kits are out of date and need upgrading, Sadler said that will have to wait until the money is available.“We were looking for kids who could work together, who were innovative thinkers and problem-solvers,” she said. “We were not looking for techno geniuses.”The first assignment of the year is to build a mini-Mars Rover, then use the included computer program to tell the robot what to do.“It’s fun to activate them and see them move in different directions,” said Keels, who wants to be a robot builder someday.The computer program, called LabVIEW, teaches the students the basics of computer programming through the use of icons instead of a complicated coded program. For example, when the student is ready to program the robot, a sensor is plugged into a computer, and the action starts.First, an icon that tells the robot to start is dragged from a menu to a position on a blank screen. Should the student want the robot to move forward for 10 seconds, a second icon is dragged next to the first. To stop and change direction, other icons are dragged over until a string of commands is in place.The robot reads the senor wirelessly, and off it goes.“I like technology and computers,” said Josh Cash, 10, who wants to be a marine biologist or an inventor. “It’s fun hanging out with my friends and making computer stuff together.”For Kaitlyn Mixon, 10, the club is a first step toward the future.“This is a good way for me to interact and get smart with robots,” she said. “I want to be a scientist and build rovers. My parents are really proud of me.”Sadler said parents have been very supportive.Beverly Kelley’s daughter, Selah, 10, is in the club.“I’m seeing them learn teamwork, which is just as important as everything else,” she said as she waited for her daughter to finish up. “They’re having so much fun they don’t realize they’re learning. And Miss Sadler is an amazing person.“This is really great, especially for the girls.”Sadler said when the club started, mostly boys showed interest. Now, the 28-member club has about half boys and half girls.“Girls are better problem-solvers,” Sadler said. “When a problem comes up, the boys are more likely to just throw up their hands and say, “It doesn’t work.”But, despite any problems that may arise, all members would agree with Cash, when he calls the club “awesome.”

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Team planning to build robot looking for students, mentors

By Lauren Gentile • Citizen Patriot Staff Writer

A high school student team called the Jacktown Vectors next month will start building a robot that can complete tasks based on their commands.

First, the group is looking for students and adult mentors.

A meeting at 6 p.m. tonight at the Jackson Area Career Center will offer information to those who are interested. Normally, the team consists of about 12 students from Jackson County schools and four mentors.

The robot will be begin to be built Jan. 9 and is expected to be complete by late February. The team works Monday through Friday and some Saturdays from 3 to 6 p.m.

The team starts with a box of parts and rules.

Last year, the robot had to be able to pick up objects and place them in a bin.

“Team members will get involved in the fill product development cycle, said John Riedeman, a Career Center engineering instructor.

Students will travel to two competitions this year, at Eastern Michigan University and Grand Valley State University. Last year, they placed very highly at both, said Cindy Lyons, Career Center communications specialist.

NASA Announces Robotics Student Competition 2012 Grant Awards

NASA is continuing its support for the annual FIRST Robotics Competition, which inspires student interest in science, technology, and mathematics through a challenge to design and build a robot. The agency is awarding grants totaling $1,386,500 for student teams in 37 states to participate in FIRST, or For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology.

"NASA participation in FIRST puts us on the cutting edge with the leaders of tomorrow," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said. "NASA's FIRST volunteers have given tens of thousands of students a crucial mentoring experience and helped them understand what engineers and researchers really do to mount challenging missions of robotic and human exploration. FIRST inspires students to pursue the technical careers of the future – careers that will help America send humans to Mars and reveal the unknown."

Each FIRST team receives an identical kit of parts and has six weeks to design and build a robot. Other than dimension and weight limitations and other technical restrictions, the look and function of the robot is up to each team. NASA volunteers support many teams throughout the process.

The competition is structured like a professional athletic event and teams compete in an arena the size of a small basketball court. Robots must have offensive and defensive capabilities. Teams collaborate to complete tasks, while simultaneously preventing opposing teams from completing the same activity.

This year, 45 regional competitions will take place in the U.S., along with four additional international competitions in March and April. The FIRST Championship competition will be held in St. Louis in April.

"We were pleased to see the growing interest in these engineering programs, as indicated by the increase in applications this year," said Dave Lavery, program manager for the NASA Robotics Alliance Project (RAP). "After a rigorous review process, we were able to select 241 teams for receipt of a grant award."

NASA plays a significant role in FIRST and other robotics competition programs by increasing access and encouraging young people to investigate careers in the sciences and engineering. The competitively selected cooperative agreement for the grants is funded by RAP and sponsored by the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. It is managed by the RAP Project Office at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, CA.

NASA founded RAP in 1995 to supply engineering expertise for robotics and engineering competition programs such as FIRST. During the past 16 years, RAP has awarded about $45 million to academic and non-profit organizations across the nation to stimulate America's intellectual capability in fields tied to robotics engineering. Each NASA center participates in RAP and also contributes its respective expertise, funding and other resources.

NASA has participated in the FIRST program since 1995, and is the largest single participant. Other participants have included Motorola, General Motors, Ford, Boeing, and Johnson & Johnson.

The FIRST program was founded in 1989 by Dean Kamen to inspire an appreciation of science and technology in young people, their schools and communities. Based in Manchester, NH, FIRST is a non-profit organization that designs accessible, innovative programs to build self-confidence, knowledge and life skills, while motivating young people to pursue academic opportunities.

Testing critical thinking skills

Children study a problem and then build a robot to fix it

Lafayette ? Twelve teams of robot makers comprised of fifth- through eighth-graders from various towns in Sussex County rose to the challenge posed by FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) and Lego at a FIRST Lego Tournament held at Lafayette Township School last Saturday. Each year FIRST announces a new theme for the competition, based upon a real-life problem that scientists and researchers are currently trying to solve. The theme for 2011 is The Food Factor Challenge, and teams worked to find a way to minimize disease and pathogens in food using robotics.

According to Pete Domasky of Sparta, one of the Pope John robotics team managers, each team must first investigate the topic to discover a problem that they can solve by designing a robot, a playing field and programming the robot to complete certain tasks. For example, research conducted by the Pope John team included a field trip to a farm where they learned how different types of disease invaded agriculture. Ultimately, the Pope John team decided to build a laser that would destroy pathogens and disease on food that was being transported by conveyor belts.

Lafaytte's team, back row, from left: Keith Bimbi, Ryan Lucey, Charlie Toepfer, Samantha Lange, Mikayla Schappert, Julia Tomlinson. Front row, from left: Caleigh Fortunato, Gavin Waple, Daniel Banas, Marisa PuzinaThe Lafayette team, "looked at the problem of contaminated lettuce and all the recent recalls of bagged lettuce," said their coach Nancy Estevez. "Their solution was to build a device that tumbled the lettuce in ozone gas, which killed contaminants. It is like a salad spinner, but is installed inside the refrigerator. The device also included an ecoli indicator, which turns blue if any of the bacteria is present on the lettuce."

This was the first year Lafayette's team, the Kung Food Fighters, participated in the event. "They were rookies," said Estevez, "but they did an excellent job. In the Robot Games Lafayette came in 10th, and in the Project they scored 39 out of a possible 40 points."

Scoring

There are 15 possible tasks that can be accomplished during the Robot Games part of the challenge, but teams can choose how many they want to do. Points are awarded for each task completed within a 2.5-minute time frame. The playing field and robot are built using Legos and Lego-based attachments; programming is done via the “block” which is inserted into the robot and contains the computer module.

“The Food Factor Challenge is not really a competition,” says Domasky. “Two teams, working side-by-side, put their robots through the paces. Both teams are working independently, doing their own thing. But, all of the kids are acquiring building, engineering and strategic thinking skills.”

What the program is all about

“The best way to summarize First Lego League is to say that it is a robotics program for 9- to 14-year-olds, which is designed to get children excited about science and technology ? and teach them valuable employment and life skills. [It] can be used in a classroom setting but is not solely designed for this purpose. Teams, composed of up to 10 children with at least one adult coach, can also be associated with a pre-existing club or organization, homeschooled or just be a group of friends who wish to do something awesome.

... Teams of up to 10 children, with one adult coach, participate in the Challenge by programming an autonomous robot to score points on a themed playing field (Robot Game), developing a solution to a problem they have identified (Project), all guided by the First Lego League Core Values. Teams may then choose to attend an official tournament.”

Source ? www.firstlegoleague.org

Harvard researchers build flexible robot that can crawl, slither under a pane of glass

 Harvard scientists have built a new type of flexible robot that is limber enough to wiggle and worm through tight spaces.

It's the latest prototype in the growing field of soft-bodied robots. Researchers are increasingly drawing inspiration from nature to create machines that are more bendable and versatile than those made of metal.

The Harvard team, led by chemist George M. Whitesides, borrowed from squids, starfish and other animals without hard skeletons to fashion a small, four-legged rubber robot that calls to mind the clay animation character Gumby.

In recent years, scientists have been tinkering with squishy — sometimes odd-looking — robots designed to squeeze through hard-to-reach cracks after a disaster like an earthquake or navigate rough terrain in the battlefield.

"The unique ability for soft robots to deform allows them to go places that traditional rigid-body robots cannot," Matthew Walter, a roboticist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said in an email.

A team from Tufts University earlier this year showed off a 4-inch (10-centimetre) caterpillar-shaped robot made of silicone rubber that can curl into a ball and propel itself forward.

The Harvard project, funded by the Pentagon's research arm, was described online Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The new robot, which took two months to construct, is 5 inches (12.7 centimetres) long. Its four legs can be separately controlled by pumping air into the limbs, either manually or via computer. This gives the robot a range of motions including crawling and slithering.

The researchers tested the robot's flexibility by having it squirm underneath a pane of glass just three-quarters of an inch from the surface.

Scientists manoeuvred the robot through the tiny gap 15 times using a combination of movements. In most cases, it took less than a minute to get from side to side.

Researchers eventually want to improve the robot's speed, but were pleased that it did not break from constant inflation and deflation.

"It was tough enough to survive," said Harvard postdoctoral fellow Robert Shepherd, adding that the robot can traverse on a variety of surfaces including felt cloth, gravel, mud and even Jell-O.

There were drawbacks. The robot is tethered to an external power source and scientists need to find a way to integrate the source before it can be deployed in the real world.

"There are many challenges to actively moving soft robots and no easy solutions," Tufts neurobiologist Barry Trimmer, who worked on the caterpillar robot, said in an email.

Robotics researcher Carmel Majidi, who heads the Soft Machines Lab at Carnegie Mellon University, said the latest robot is innovative even as it builds on previous work.

"It's a simple concept, but they're getting lifelike biological motions," he said.

MorpHex robot can seamlessly transform from unassuming sphere to walking hexapod

Take a look at the MorpHex, a transforming, walking, and dancing hexapod robot designed from the ground up by Norwegian engineer Kåre Halvorsen.

Let’s face it, robots are awesome. We, as a society, and perhaps even more broadly, as a species have had a fascination for our eventual robotic overlords dating to as far back as ancient China, Greece, and ancient Egypt. All of which are recorded to have attempted to build self-operating machines, some resembling animals as well as humans. It would appear that this tradition has not been lost on modern society, as Norwegian engineer Kåre Halvorsen has designed and created his very own robot.

The MorpHex is indeed an impressive little robot that can transform from a simple globe seamlessly into a crab-like walking hexapod. It can interact with its environment and when finished retract to its spherical base form. It features a very simple, yet elegant design in its own right and once you check out the video below you’ll also appreciate just how cool it all looks once it begins to transform and move .

For a more detailed look, you can also check out how the MorpHex was built step by step.

[Via: Robots Dreams]