I’ll see all those fancy wall climbing robots we posted about earlier today, and raise you a humanoid robot that climbs walls with its hands and feet, just like you and I would if we weren’t so lazy and out of shape. Programmed by Marko Wickrath, the robot isn’t just demonstrating a remarkable amount of coordinated and reproducible agility, it’s actually deciding autonomously where to place each hand and foot based on an image of the wall from an external camera and what the robot knows about its own capabilities.

The end goal, of course, is to move all of the sensing and computation on board the robot: it’ll walk up to the wall, examine hand and footholds, calculate an optimum route, and start climbing. Why am I smelling a new Robogames event here…

[ Dortmund Droids ] VIA [ Suicide Bots ]

Do you like robots? Are you in the SF Bay Area, or anywhere else with cash to burn and/or a private jet? Combots Cup IV is the weekend after next (December 19th and 20th) at the San Mateo County Fairgrounds <. Unlike RoboGames, which has a whole bunch of different types of events, Combots Cup is all about combat, combat, popcorn and cotton candy, and combat, ranging from 30 to 340 pound robots.

If you can't make it, BotJunkie will be there for ya, but if you're anywhere within 24,901.55 miles of the fairgrounds, you have no excuse. Tickets are on sale now, here.

[ Combots Cup ] VIA [ Suicide Bots ]

As much as I love ThinkGeek, they’re obviously not familiar with the pure geek awesomeness that is combat robotics. I propose a new Rule 4:

A Geek May Not Injure A Robot Or, Through Inaction, Allow A Robot To Come To Harm, Unless Said Geek Promises To Replace Harmed Components With Stronger And More Dangerous Ones.

Although, we’d need to modify it to “stronger and more dangerous and exponentially more expensive ones” if we wanted to be realistic about it… Bah, it’s cheaper to just buy the shirt for $16 and not break your robot.

Way less fun, though.

[ ThinkGeek ]

This is all kinds of awesome, but it’s the sound that really makes it. Plus I love watching how excited the robot (named X-BRAT) gets when he spots his target. And then, kaBLAM! The target acquisition and firing system is fully autonomous, and X-BRAT is being built to compete in the Mech Warfare event at RoboGames 2010. When he’s done, his designer (xdream on the Trossen Robotics forums) will just stick him in the arena and autonomous carnage will ensue. More details are available in a discussion thread here.

VIA [ Trossen Robotics ]

I swung by the Automatic benefit art show for RoboGames 2010 last night, and was astounded by the variety and quality of robot art on display. Not only is it all awesome, most of it is for sale, and proceeds go to support your favorite robot competition. Also, if you go, one of the curators will molest you while two robots take turns humping your leg. Seriously… If it happened to me, it can happen to you.

The Automatic benefit closes tonight; the gallery is open from 5pm to midnight and there will be booze after 7. You’ll find it at the lowerDeck Gallery, 2295 3rd Street in San Francisco.

Check out a bunch of awesome robot art from the show, after the jump… If you’re interested in one of the pieces, I can put you in touch with people who will happily take your money. (Read more…)

Andrew Alter’s monstrous Mech Warrior “Hagetaka” that we previewed before RoboGames back in April ended up being just to monstrous for its own good. Andrew scaled things back a bit (but not too much) with Giger, a 5 kg, 24 servo (including 16 of those terrifying RX-64s), ten thousand dollar completely custom walking humanoid. The gait still needs a little bit of work, but remember, it’s being developed from scratch and there are a heck of a lot of servos (and other electronics) to coordinate. Besides being totally badass in its own right, Giger is going to get a weapons upgrade for Mech Warfare competitions, namely an arm or two replaced with airsoft guns.

Building a robot like this, or even a robot not nearly as complicated and/or expensive as this, takes a truly staggering amount of work and skill. Adrenalynn over on the Trossen Robotics forums has helpfully posted a series of 20 steps that will guarantee that you just might have a working Mech in time for RoboGames next April:

How To Win At Mechwarfare: 20 Simple Steps

1. Assemble a true walking ‘bot that can handle the payload
2. Teach it to walk
3. Teach it to walk untethered
4. Refine the walking
5. Integrate the camera and scoring system
6. Teach it to walk again
7. Teach it to walk untethered again
8. Increase the capacity of your batteries
9. Teach it to walk again
10. Teach it to walk untethered again
11. Add a turret and gun(s) – lighter the better
12. Teach it to shoot with some accuracy
13. Teach it to shoot with some accuracy untethered
14. Teach it to walk again
15. Teach it to walk untethered again
16. The night before/day of the event when it all blows up, start at step 1.
17. Discover that your wireless system doesn’t work for squat in the noisy RF environment. Tweak and Tune all day.
18. Finally get everything working the last day/couple matches
19. Burn up a servo (or three)
20. Rinse/Lather/Repeat

After about 100 hours of work, Giger is currently at step 4. But there’s nothing to worry about, ’cause there’s still plenty of time before step 16, where everything blows up at the last minute and you have to start over anyway. Yay robotics!

[ Let's Make Robots ] and [ Trossen ] VIA [ MAKE ]

We make it to some robot competitions in person here on BotJunkie, most of which are within 5 bucks worth of gas money from our world headquarters on my sofa here in Berkeley California. We also cover a bunch of other competitions around the country, and even internationally, but most of what we hear about comes from Japan or Europe. There are robotics communities all over the world, though, and they meet up at events like the Baltic Robot Sumo Cup, which was held in Klaipeda, Lithuania. Events included Mini-Sumo, 3kg-Sumo, and Roomba-Sumo:

It looks like it was a fairly large and definitely successful event, with the help of some seriously top-tier sponsors like iRobot and ABB, who I kinda wish I’d see on event banners around here more often.

[ Baltic Robot Sumo ]

The Hoya firefighter’s assistant robot looks like (but isn’t) a stubbier version of the Recon Scout tactical surveillance robot. It’s designed to be let loose in buildings that are on fire to search for people and transmit information back to firefighters, including live video with sound, temperature data, and some kind of smoke data. The Hoya robot differs from the Recon Scout in that it’s more compact, and has a neat little fold-out rear wheel that makes the whole 3 pound package even more compact. Oh, and it’s also waterproof and can withstand temperatures of up to 320 degrees.

It’s a great idea to have a little surveillance robots for firefighters, but while you’re at it, why not have it actually fight fires? I mean, QinetiQ robots do it, Rovio does it, Anna Konda does it, there’s even an entire event at RoboGames for firefighting robots. So give this guy a little squirt gun, and make him feel useful.

VIA [ Crave ]

Back in June when we posted our gallery from RoboGames, one of you asked about the availability of “I Build Robots” t-shirts. If one person bothered to ask, it’s probably safe to assume that at least a couple more people are interested, and Trossen Robotics has come though with a batch of shirts that may or may not be just what you had in mind. Depending on how contrasty your monitor is, the back of the shirt might show “I Build Robots” in white text over a slightly less white robot silhouette, and the front has a Trossen Robotics sunburst/lightning bolt/on button logo.

The shirts are $20 a piece, or you can just do what this kid did and make your own with a $0.25 sticker.

[ I Build Robots - Black Tee ]

Ooooh baby, can you feel that robot love? And better yet, that smashing sparking crushing robot destruction and death? Not only has RoboGames 2010 been scheduled for April 23-25th (a few months earlier than this year), but the ComBots Cup is back! We covered ComBots in May of 2008… Held at Maker Faire, it’s where Pleo got, uh, introduced to Vicious Verdict. The problem with having the ComBots Cup in May and RoboGames in June is that it didn’t allow for much time for both people and robots to recover from two days of combat, and as we’ve seen, things can get pretty brutal, so last year, the two events were sort of folded into RoboGames. Or ComBots went on hiatus. I’m not sure which. But who cares, it’s back now, and that means TWICE THE CARNAGE!

The ComBots Cup is scheduled for December 19-20, and both events have moved to the San Mateo County Fairgrounds just south of San Francisco. Lots of details will be forthcoming, and we’ll bring ‘em to you, but make sure and block out these dates on your calendar now. Plus the normal two or three days afterwords for detox.

[ RoboGames ] and [ ComBots Cup ] VIA [ Suicide Bots ]