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Here’s a smart solution for lifting and transferring patients in a better way: Named as ITRI MediRobot, the conceptual device put forward by Pilotfish is servo-controlled, which can display information including weight, blood pressure and so on via a sensor on the sling while transferring the patients to other places.  The whole process finished by ITRI MediRobot is slow and safe, without causing any physical strain or discomfort to the patients. Also, it can serve as an infotainment terminal.

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Congratulations guys, your iPhones are no longer merely a smartphone from now on, as they can turn into robot dogs too… with the assistance of this new accessory launched by Japan-based company BANDAI. Though it’s bit of hard to imagine, the robot dog can actually do many things as a real dog does, including running, jumping, playing games and so on.

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Undoubtedly we’ve already met many robot babies in movies and TV shows, but this one, who mimics a human baby so smartly, still astonishes us. The “baby” is made for an upcoming, unnamed television show, and it can create extremely realistic movements such as crying, twisting its body and so on.

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Sponsored by DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), AeroVironment has created a tiny mechanical flying robot that can fly as real birds. The mini robot is shaped like a hummingbird, remotely-controlled without an external power source to fly, hover, mover forward and backward in the air.

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It’s never impossible to see robots act as flexibly as human beings, because there’re many more techniques created to endow robot machines with powerful abilities, and the Elastic USB Cable is rightly one of those great inventions. The new cords turn to be really flexible, capable of being stretched by a factor of 1.5, and thus ideal for producing clothes built with electrical devices or the skins for humanoid robots.

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Robots are no more solid and cold machines as we’ve ever known. From Harvard University, the new robot is an ambidextrous automation featuring flexible polymers. Its inspiration comes from starfish, worms and squid, and thus the robot is built with inflatable chambers within its legs and central spine to help it move.

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Though many of my friends love cup noodles, they seldom know that the first cup noodle was launched by Nissin Food in 1971. Now forty years have passed, the Nissin has collaborated with Japan’s Vstone (JP) robotics to make some Cup Noodle Robot Timers in commemoration of the 40th anniversary of cup noodles. There will be totally 10,000 timers sold to the public under some sort of a lottery system.

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Next month at the FRAC Centre in Orléans, France, there will be a six meter high and 3.5 meter wide tower built by flying robots. It totally needs 1500 polystyrene foam bricks to assemble the structure, and all those materials will be lifted and transported by the mobile robots. The installation will be open to the visitors from 2 December 2011 to 19 February 2012.

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Time is a mystery, while Hans Andersson’s LEGO Clock makes time more complex and mystical. Named as “Time Twister”, the Rubik’s Cube-esque LEGO Clock is constructed with two Mindstorm, five motors and black and white LEGO bricks. When switched on, the blocks will then be rearranged to display the time by communicating through Bluetooth. As the designer offers no detail about its basic principles, I still don’t why and how the clock works. So if you know, hopefully you can share it with us.

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Welcome to a new time with your personal robots Luna. It is the world’s first personal robot, which is announced to have the ability to handle almost all kinds of works and even comes with its own app store where additional functionalities such as face recognition would be sold. [Read the rest of this entry...]

How dexterous a hand can a robot have? Probably we would get an answer from the DLR’s Anthropomorphic Hand-Arm-System. The hand consists of 52 drives and more than 100 sensors, and therefore all its tendons feature 19 degrees of freedom (the tendons of human’s hands equate to 20 degrees of freedom). That’s really amazing! [Read the rest of this entry...]

The Tama-Robo Ball Robot is recently quite popular in Japan and we bet it would soon find some new fans in America. Tama-Robo comes with four light sensors and as a result it will move toward the light whenever the robot “feels” the light. But before you play with the Tama-Robo, you’ll firstly need to put him together. So have you gotten ready for that? The Tama-Robo is soon coming! [Read the rest of this entry...]

Plant Robot, designed by Japan-based Akira Nakayasu, gets its name not only from the same shape as real plants, but also from the fact that it can make the leaves wave too. It has 169 mechanical branches and each of them is controlled by a separate engine. As a result, the leaves will wave automatically when you sweep your hands across them. [Read the rest of this entry...]

We’ll all become a lazy person… I mean, who would ever want to do the cleaning any more, especially when they can get the help from the Floor Washing Robot? It looks smart, but performs rather well in cleaning the floors and hard-to-reach spaces in your rooms. Moreover, the robot can even tell whether or not your kitchens need to be cleaned and offer a most suitable service. Wanna have a try now? Check out the video below before that. [Read the rest of this entry...]

A special English teacher, a robot, was invited to work at an elementary school in Daegu, southeast of Seoul recently. He is not tall, has a big belly, and walks around the classroom on wheels. His way to teach English is quite unique, that is to communicate and interact with student via a TV display panel on his face. Isn’t that interesting? [Read the rest of this entry...]

A Czech-based student, using Arduino programming, creates this innovative lamp that would automatically run into dark space and illuminate it. It features an “S” shape, consisting of wheels, lights and several other parts. It is also endowed with “life”, which means that the lamp will be nodding its head when giving out light. [Read the rest of this entry...]

Obviously the Robot Headphone Splitter is another gift you need to get for your friends. It comes with a cute look and its two eyes are actually headphone sockets that allow at least two people to enjoy music at the same time. The silver guy is compatible with any devices that have a 3.5 mm headphone socket, thus whenever you’d like to share music with a friend, you can easily make it. [Read the rest of this entry...]

For anybody who dreams of a cozy life, they need a “DreamBots – WheeMe”. It is a palm size robot but performs extraordinarily well to massage your body coz it is embedded with unique sensor technology. So as WheeMe moves, it would gently press your body while never falling off or losing its grip. Isn’t that magic? [Read the rest of this entry...]

Kid’s Walke is a 1.6 meters tall bi-pedal exoskeleton coming from Japan. Designed to be piloted by children, the exoskeleton suit would move the kids around and help them accomplish certain tasks via the control of hand grips. [Read the rest of this entry...]

Natan Linder and his LuminAR make us love MIT more and love lamps more. The MIT student integrated a small scale digital projector with a robotic arm, creating an innovative interactive system that can help the users to check out images and emails directly on the table top. Its articulated robotic arm can also be used in combination with a laptop or a mobile phone. For a demonstration, continue with the video after the break. [Read the rest of this entry...]

Coming from Carnegie Mellon University, Snackbot takes the very name from one of its main jobs: to serve snacks. And the other job of the robot is to serve as a research platform for kinds of researches. It is intended for both fully autonomous and semi-autonomous operation. With various sensors built in, Snackbot could communicate with people through verbal and non-verbal mechanisms, participate in simple sociable activities, distinguish those people around it and learn to recognize new objectives, etc. In one word, Snackbot is a cute-looking robot with various skills. [Read the rest of this entry...]

Hello, everyone, we’d like to introduce you our new friend, the Nyago Cats, creative robotic toys from Japan’s TakaraTomy. Just keep clapping your hands and these lovely kitties will then start to roll and roll. If you’re considering feeding pets while not planning to spend too much time taking care of them, the Nyago Cats are obviously your best choices. [Read the rest of this entry...]

Recently, a robot designed by Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International (ATR) is being tested in Kyoto-area supermarket. His name is Robovie-II and his work is to help the elderly with grocery shopping. Firstly, the shoppers should make a shopping list at home on a special mobile device, which will later be detected by sensors at the supermarket. After that, a waiting robot will accompany you to shop, reminding you of needed commodities, introducing certain items and even remarking how delicious the beef seems. Though so far it’s still being tested, I’ve started to look forward to a widespread use of Robovie-II. If we’re really too busy to accompany our grandmas out for shopping, why don’t we create something as clever as us to help her? I have to say, the idea behind the robot is quite great. [Read the rest of this entry...]

Why do we say, these days nobody is still caring about paper books? In my mind, the ever-developing digital storage devices will never completely take the place of paper books. And we do need to store books, especially valued old books in a better way. The British Library has built up a new Additional Storage Building (ASB) that adopts seven robotic cranes to retrieve books. Seven million books are hoped to be stored in the new library. [Read the rest of this entry...]

Let me see …well, the twin robots are just like the two sides of a coin, one is an angle and the other is a devil. For example, when you play chess, the black robot will mess up the chessboard while the white one will guide you a clever move. Preparing a vacation? The black would have already made a flight reservation to Bali Island for you, using your credit card of course, and the white robot? Wow, the considerate guy has collected up your luggage. Not that the white robot is better than the black, but only with both they two, life will truly be splendid. [Read the rest of this entry...]

Robobuilder is the creator of the 5720t ‘Huno’ robotics kit with a special capability of dancing. And even long before Christmas, these robots have already prepared a Xmas dance for the festival, as you can see from the video. [Read the rest of this entry...]

Researchers from Israel have developed the mini robot that is expected to be widely used in the medical field. Measuring merely 1mm, the robot could move inside vessels (at a speed of 9mm per second) to deal with the clogging artery and inject some drug. And all its actions are controlled by the extracorporeal magnetic field, which means a real-time manipulation and a safety operation. Until now, scientists are still concentrating efforts on advancing the maneuverability of the robot, equipping it with a camera, for example.

The Bathroom Cleaning Robot, from Russia, is an innovative techie assistant to clean and tidy up your bathrooms automatically. You will be amazed at its perfect performance! When connected to water tap, the robot then starts to clean your room with a cleaning cloth. Whatever the showers, bathtubs, sinks, floors or walls, the cute robot can all clean them in an efficient way. More than that, the sucker pads on bottom still allow it to climb up the wall to ensure a thorough cleanliness.

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Well, I believe you have also noticed that clock is a favorite to all designers. But different from those clocks we showed you, the robotic digital clock is for those who understand sign language well, because it shows time all by hands.

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Robot is no longer a fanciful gadget, but what about one that has an iPhone for head and all controlled by it? Still exciting! The cute robot can wake you up in morning, dancing to music and show different facial expressions.

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This pool skimmer is driven by the solar power and lets you keep your swimming pool clean in an eco-friendly way. With a pair of solar panels on the top of the skimmer to collect the sun’s energy and store it in a rechargeable NiMH battery, the pool skimmer also can change the station and reduce the work intensity automatically, according to the environment.

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A car then, a robot now, and then a car again, has transformer Optimus Prime come out of the movie? In fact, it’s a real transformer robot that is well constructed to morph into a robot from a motorized truck. Though it looks much smaller with a bare12 inches tall than those big guys in “Transformer Ⅱ”, it’s still worth watching. Let’s see more on Youtube.

Developed by Panasonic and Japan’s IRT Research Institute, this dishwashing robot which is called KAR (Kitchen Assistant Robot) can finish washing dish totally by itself. [Read the rest of this entry...]

Some human like robot can walk like a real person or even clime stairs, but jumping stairs seems impossible for them.

Dong Han Kim and his team at the Seoul National University of Technology in South Korea have designed a robot that can jump up stairs using two empty plastic soda bottles. With the built-in sensor, it can detect the upcoming obstacles and then calculate the jump height. [Read the rest of this entry...]

To be frank, feeding fish is a tedious job which is absolutely fit for robot. So you should just try this robotic fish feeder. What you should do is to fill the container with bait, then it will do the rest job for you. [Read the rest of this entry...]

Playing hokey game is not an easy job for people, but how could a robot do it? A team of engineering from Nuvation, a hi-tech company, will give you the answer. You’d better think twice before you say that you will sure win this robot.

Video after the jump

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How can a robotic hand see the object before touching it? May be built-in camera is an acceptable explanation. But scientists provide a better way to do this.

Using electrolocation, the fingertips of the robot hand sent out a weak electrical impulse, and approaching objects interfere with than impulse, which allows the hand to form the object before touching it.

Video after the jump:

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RiSe is a new robot developed by Boston Dynamics with funding from DARPA in conjunction with several universities. It has six legs, each of which is powered by two electric motors. The variety built-in sensors can detect the surroundings based on which the onboard computer control the legs to fit for different vertical terrains, just like a real gecko, except for the number of the legs. [Read the rest of this entry...]

If this robot has an extra turtle shaped cover, I bet you cannot tell the difference between it and a real turtle. [Read the rest of this entry...]

This trashcan-shaped robot can walk like a crab. Plus, its action is very funny. When you are bored, you can get some happiness from him. [Read the rest of this entry...]