Jamie also demonstrates the axiom that you don;t necessarily need to get all fancy with the education to build something completely extraordinary:
Just a quick note about me - I am a regular DIY’r and don’t have any formal robotics, electronics, or mechanical training. I have picked up most of my skills from various hobbies and projects, as well as my father who is a skilled woodworker. If you have a basic knowledge of woodworking and working with low voltage power, then you can build a mobile bar! Enjoy!
So back a couple days ago I mentioned I-Wei Huang, who is still cooler than you and sheds mechanical ninja-fu like some people shed viruses. Well, he’s shown up again, saving me from actually having to look for something good to post:
Found this thanks to the always awesome Lem, who got it from I-Wei, because I-Wei lives the life you wish you had:
More posts up soon if my brain ever resembles something that is not oatmeal or boiled millet.
Mister Robotics is still in Tokyo (Follow him on Twitter!), and after a month of sustained human contact I believe the Rotor is presiding in-self contained splendor in the Fortress Of Solitude, so It’s all me until then. And I like I said, my brain is millet.
The results are in at RoboExotica, the votes have been tallied, and the lovely cocktail making robots in Vienna have garnished their accolades. Eddie Codel has a good write-up of the event at LaughingSquid.
Because we lack, we present LaughingSquid’s quick post on RoboExotica, partly because I personally am despondent that I am no there, and partially because I am a paradoxically extremely busy lazy fuck this morning (Afternoon? Whatever).
Roboexotica 2008, the 10th annual festival for cocktail robots organized by SHIFZ, monochrom and Bureau of Philosophy, kicks of this Thursday, December 4th at Freiraum in Vienna’s Museumsquartier and runs through December 14th.
Until recently, no attempts had been made to publically discuss the role of cocktail robotics as an index for the integration of technological innovations into the human Lebenswelt, or to document the increasing occurrence of radical hedonism in man-machine communication. Roboexotica is an attempt to fill this vacuum. It is the first and, inevitably, the leading festival concerned with cocktail robotics world-wide. A micro mechanical change of paradigm in the age of borderless capital. Alan Turing would doubtless test this out.
The Rotor is there with Chassis (background) and collaborator Al Honig:
Zwei Groβes Bier shout-outs to Magnus, Kal Spelletich, Bre Pettis, Johannes G, Gunter, Evelyn, Tina and everyone else! Mister Robotics and I are sitting here having itchy-vein junkie fits because we’re not there, but hey turnabout is fair play I guess. . .
(The Rotor is in Vienna, Mister Robotics is in buried in Systm and I am wrangling art stars and tentacles, so apologies for the lack of posting, I shall take my beating with my tea.)
For those of you who can’t make tomorrow night’s show of kinetic art, we have a sneak preview. This centipede was made by that virtuoso of aluminum Nemo Gould, whom we have several kinds of crushes on over here at SB*. If those kind of look like bundt pans and bike brake levers, you are exactly right, Sir or Madam!
These six-legged carryings-on are the result of the Fachhochschuler Oberösterreich, which as near as I can figure out is a network of technical high schools in Austria (any Austriansreading this please to shed light on this?). They have a lovely hexapod competition, and from the funk these machines bring, they do teach them a thing or two at FH Oberösterreich.
You can get your own hexapod kit to play around with at the wonderous Trossen Robotics, which I personally think is really great idea because baby robots need new pairs of shoes over here, if you get my meaning (yes, we are proud participants in the Trossen affiliate program).
Speaking of Austria, we are shipping the Rotoroff to Vienna this Saturday for RoboExotica; his crate is almost done and we promised to put enough water and padding in there this time, so expect to hear from him and what those crazy Austrian cocktail roboticists are up to.
RoboGames fave Kazu Terasaki demonstrates an incredibly cute concept in iPhone add-ons: if your phone rings, why should you go fetch it? in this day an age, make it come to you!
Kazu has developed a kit for making just about anything into a walking robot, a la this iPhone, check it out here (some assembly and Japanese language skills required)!
[Yes, thank you I know video posts are a cop-out. I imagine someone might have something intelligent to say at some point around here, I promise. Many thanks to the adorable and Vienna-boundHead Rotor for holding down the fort for us for a while; it's been hectic around here]
The irresistible Lem sends along this experiment that one intrepid young scientist undertook to. . .well, he could be doing it to to explore involuntary impulse control, investigate natural reactions to outside stimuli, or working up a prototype for machine-face interaction.
Or he might have just wanted to see what happens when you tape a bunch of electrodes to your face and give yourself little shocks alongside an amusing little electronic track:
This will likely last precisely as long as it takes the Dailymotion people to wake up and find the C&D from Pixar in their inbox, but here it is anyhoo:
So the Rotor was just over at the Seemen Development Labs and managed to get an exclusive spy photo of the latest alcohol delivery unit under construction by Artistic Director Kal Spelletich. This gadget walks gripper-over-gripper along an overhead wire, and carries a payload of an electrically-valved bottle of Jameson, as well as some cameras and video monitors allowing you to see the world through the robot’s eyes. Too early in the development cycle to even have a name yet, you can see it in action at Roböxotica, the International Festival of Cocktail Robotics, should you happen to be in Vienna the week after Thanksgiving.
The Rotor will be there, hopefully with Chassis in tow. See you in Wien, prost!
DocPop alerts us to Ganzbot, a personable (robotable?) device that speaks and emotes. Ganzbot is designed to be hooked into microblogging site Twitter, which, among others, has ensnared MissySB and the Rotor in it’s addictive embrace.
