Science Made Cool

Robot Ships

Now this is just awesome: DARPA is studying the construction of robot mini-frigates to track and follow submarines without any crew on board at all. The logic of it is that a small unmanned "platform" (which means, you know, a boat) can tail subs using noisy, un-stealthy active sonar -- pinging away happily all day long to maintain a fix on the target. This is difficult for present-day ships because of the danger that if a conflict develops, the sub's first target would be its stalker. But who cares if an unmanned ship gets sunk? Nobody has to write a letter of condolence to General Dynamics.

New Frontiers In Robotic Creepiness

At times I think Japan must have some secret Ministry of Stuff That Will Freak Out The Foreign Devils. How else to explain this: A Tokyo department store is now selling robot duplicates of people. That's right, for Christmas you can give that special someone an exact android replica. (Presumably their first U.S. outlet will be in Stepford, Connecticut.)

I don't know about the rest of you, but if my wife told me she was getting a robot duplicate of me made, I'd start brushing up on my robot combat tips at the very least. Or go hole up in a bunker in the mountains with Sarah Connor and the gang.

Probably the creepiest aspect of this incredibly creepy story is that apparently most of the buyers so far have bought robot duplicates of themselves. Either they're the world's worst narcissists, or they're such boring people they figure nobody else will be able to tell the difference anyway.

Fish Bots!

Japan is a country which one could fairly describe as being obsessed with robots, and obsessed with seafood. So perhaps it's only natural that artist and educator Masamichi Hayashi has combined the two great national passions by making robot fish.

He isn't the first to dabble in pisciform cybernetics. Nekton Research has been doing the same for years now, and is now part of the growing iRobot empire. Their fishbots even incorporate the same mechanical methods used by real fish.

There's an obvious end point to this:  an International Battle of the Robot Fish!

Rude Mechanicals

Puck:     My mistress with a monster is in love.
            Near to her close and consecrated bower,
            While she was in her dull and sleeping hour,
            A crew of patches, rude mechanicals,
            That work for bread upon Athenian stalls,
            Were met together to rehearse a play
            Intended for great Theseus' nuptial-day.

And now some really mechanical mechanicals are performing A Midsummer Night's Dream at Texas A&M University. Robots are playing some of the parts -- the article doesn't say which roles, but I'm guessing some of the fairies, since it mentions flying 'bots. It's an experiment of sorts, to see how people react to robots in unusual situations. Interestingly, the robots got kind of banged up, because humans tend to think of robots as indestructible metal monsters rather than delicate machinery.
 

More Bear Robot News

This is starting to look like a trend:  bear-shaped robots.  Why?  I don't know, but there you are.  Japanese engineers at the RIKEN institute and Tokai Rubber have teamed up to create a cheerful-looking bear-shaped robot to assist the elderly and hospital patients.

I can't wait for this gentleman to get hospitalized and run into one. It would be a showdown of epic proportions.

A tip of the old bearskin to the Pink Tentacle Web log.

Robot Jellyfish!

Robot Jellyfish! What else need be said? A group of engineers in South Korea have built a robot jelly which swims the same way that living ones do, using electo-active polymers which work like muscles.

But who cares? It's a Robot Jellyfish!