3D printers are beloved by geeks the world over. Enter the Lego 3D printer: it’s not only MADE of Legos, but it also PRINTS with Legos.
With only a few tweaks, this LegoBot could even take over the world print copies of itself, maker Will Gorman told Wired:
“There is a recursiveness to this whole thing,” says Gorman.
“I love the idea of self-assembly and the Star Trek replicator and I love Legos,” he says. “I wanted to bring those two worlds together.”
Gorman built this recursive masterpiece for the LegoWorld expo, happening from Oct 22th to 26th in the Netherlands. Dutch lego enthusiasts can visit the expo to see LegoBot in action, the rest of us can check out his website for detailed instructions on how to build your own.
Hit the jump for more info on his Lego-contraption and a video of it in action.
The warbling robot, with the Star Wars-esque designation HRP-4C, stands at about five feet, two inches (1.58 meters) tall. It has the appearance of a young Japanese girl, although one admittedly wearing a RoboCop suit minus the helmet.
How much harm would a robot cause, if a robot could cause harm?
Ok, admittedly that’s not as good of a tongue twister as the woodchuck chucking wood, but it’s a legitimate question being posed by researchers in Slovenia. In Slovenia, where electronic gadgets smack you.
Borut Povše at the University of Ljubljana has been testing the punching ability of an industrial-strength robot, inflicting everything from mild to unbearable pain on six of his colleagues and measuring how much they said it hurt. Povše told New Scientist’s Paul Marks that robots need to learn their limits to safely work side by side with humans:
“Even robots designed to Asimov’s laws can collide with people. We are trying to make sure that when they do, the collision is not too powerful,” Povše says. “We are taking the first steps to defining the limits of the speed and acceleration of robots, and the ideal size and shape of the tools they use, so they can safely interact with humans.”
Who needs people to guard a nuclear weapons facility when you can build an autonomous robot to do it?
Or, at least that’s what the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) was probably thinking when they ordered up three robo-tanks to take on the task of watching over the Nevada nuclear test site.
The first of the robots, named the Mobile Detection Assessment Response System (MDARS), just started working, according to Wired’s Danger Room, where we saw the story. Two more are scheduled to start their work in other remote locations on the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS, which is basically in the middle of the desert) within the next six months.
The NNSA claims in its press release that the new system will save six million dollars in infrastructure and a million a year in personnel and maintenance:
“The robots are a great addition to the NNSS protective force,” said Brad Peterson, Chief and Associate Administrator for Defense Nuclear Security. “The robots allow us to improve security at remote portions of the Nevada National Security Site at reduced costs. Deploying MDARS robots at NNSS is another example of NNSA’s commitment to being effective stewards of taxpayers’ money.”
Robots tend to do things a little differently. Though folding rectangular towels was a breeze for the Willow Garage’s PR2 programmable robot, UC Berkeley researchers had a bit more trouble coaxing it to match socks. A video (below) of their unconventional technique won a $10,000 prize from Willow Garage.
The trickiness comes from getting the sock right side out. The researchers decided to use a dowel, making otherwise clean laundry seem, well, a little dirty.
Astronauts aboard the International Space Station have been tweeting from space for six months now, making that Twitter phenomenon officially old and busted. So what’s the new hotness? Tweets from an ISS-bound robot astronaut.
Robonaut 2 is currently cooling its heels at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, awaiting its scheduled trip to the International Space Station on November 1st. Once on board the ISS, the two-armed humanoid bot will help out astronauts with their duties; it expects to be particularly useful on tasks that are “too dangerous or boring for astronauts.” But it will also find time to tweet.
Already, Robonaut 2 has addressed some pressing questions via Twitter with answers like these:
“Robots are non-gender by design. I’m an it.”
“No, no relation to Hal. Don’t know if I’d want to admit to having him on my family tree if I was. Def. don’t condone his actions”
Fans can get much more information from the first robot astronaut during its “twitterview” tomorrow. Send a question marked #4R2 and Robonaut will begin answering them at 10 am CST.
Biwu English kokafo wapisi? That’s “Will English kick the bucket?” in a new language called ROILA (Robot Interaction Language). Perhaps it’s an apt question of my mother tongue. Under development by a group of researchers at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands, ROILA is a language made specifically for human-robot communication.
The language hopes to make up for speech-recognition software’s shortcomings by modifying human language to be more comprehensible for machines. Using an algorithm, it takes parts of natural and artificial languages and combines them to make sure that no two words sound too similar.
But a quick look at its grammar shows that ROILA goes a step further: when it comes to sentences, ROILA has cut out all the patap (English: the crazy). Irregular verbs? No. Most gendered words? No. Most punctuation? No. From the grammar website:
Every sentence will conclude with a full stop: “.” Question marks can be used in sentences where a question is asked. We do not support commas, apostrophes and quotation marks.
After a presentation on “hydraulic leg extension” in large spiders and another on “aspects of octopedal locomotion,” researchers attending today’s Society for Experimental Biology annual meeting learned how to run like a three-legged dog.
Martin Gross of the University of Jena in Germany presented a project that could one day teach disabled planet-exploring robots how to keep trekking or damaged military robots how to survive the battlefield. Watching how his brother’s dog adapted to losing a leg, Gross was impressed with both the dog’s coping methods, and speed.
“The one with only three legs is still the fastest of all his dogs,” Gross told the BBC.
Sure, you’ve seen doctors use robots to perform surgeries, but how about robots to bring you your Jello afterward? That’s the plan at one Scottish hospital. Forth Valley Royal Hospital in Larbert, Stirlingshire is running final tests on a robot helper fleet that will deliver food, give drugs, and clean the OR–the first such system in the UK.
As the BBC reports, hospital staff can use PDAs to call the laser-guided robots, which will travel through the hospital via underground corridors and can open doors and operate elevators. The hospital will have some robots performing clean tasks (like prepping a room for surgery) and others dirty tasks (like removing clinical waste)–and believes this will reduce infection caused by the current human system.
The hospital claims that the system isn’t meant to replace people, only to give the staff more time with patients. The robot designers claim that the machines have programming to keep them from hitting people. No one claims that patients will be happy to be attended to by metallic minions, or that doctors and nurses won’t get annoyed by the robots rattling down the hallways.
Who doesn’t miss the excitement, the curiosity, the baking soda volcanoes of the typical grade-school science fair? Even the cutting-edge artists behind NYC’s Flux Factory got a little nostalgic recently, and decided to host a science fair of their own–but the displays are decidedly atypical, and there’s nary a volcano in sight. Try quantum physics and robots instead.
The science fair art exhibit was inspired by “the similarity between the creative and scientific process,” according to the organizers. And did we mention the trophies? Shiny awards were handed out to artists at an award ceremony last night for the best projects in such categories as “Big Violence,” “Most Empirically Rebellious,” and “Most Metaphysically Pursued.”
Science Fair runs through this weekend, so head over to Queens to check it out. Or you can click through this gallery for a selection of our favorite projects.
Discoblog is DISCOVER's compendium of quirky, funny, and surprising science news from the edge of the known universe. It's written by Veronique Greenwood and Valerie Ross. Email tips and suggestions to vgreenwood [at] discovermagazine [dot] com.
3D printers are beloved by geeks the world over. Enter the Lego 3D printer: it’s not only MADE of Legos, but it also PRINTS with Legos.
How much harm would a robot cause, if a robot could cause harm?
Who needs people to guard a nuclear weapons facility when you can build an autonomous robot to do it?
Astronauts aboard the International Space Station have been 
