GetRobo Blog English

ROBO-ONE humanoid robots compete to become household helpers

 ROBO-ONE is holding it's second  Humanoid Helper Project this weekend. (For those that missed the first one in 2008, check out the articles here.)

 The finals are being held right this minute in Yokohama Japan, but GetRobo guest author IKETOMU has kindly sent us his report about yesterday's preliminary. 

 The purpose of the Humanoid Helper Project is to motivate individual robot builders to develop and show off their technologies that may eventually be used to commercialize household robots. Household robots meaning not the Roombas, but the Rosies.

 In this competition, robots are remotely controlled via WiFi by operators that are looking at the environment through a PC. This year, the preliminary consisted of the following 3 events.

 1) Pouring water from a plastic bottle into a cup

 2) Carrying a dish of ping-pong balls on a tray

 3) A 30 minutes endurance race

  Three robots entered the preliminary. Doka Harumi (Doka project), THKR-4 (CAP Project) and Musashi (MARU Family). All are HUGE. As of the end of yesterday, 1st place went to Musashi,  2nd place was THKR-4 and 3rd place was Doka Harumi.

 Enjoy the videos!

Pouring water with a bottle into a cup by Doka Harumi Pouring water with a bottle into a cup by THKR-4 Pouring water with a bottle into a cup by Musashi Carrying a dish of ping-pong ball on the tray by Doka Harumi Carrying a dish of ping-pong ball on the tray by THKR-4 Carrying a dish of ping-pong ball on the tray by Musashi Thirty minutes endurance race by Doka Harumi, ThKR-4 and Musashi

Awesome multi-legged robots

 We recently wrote about robot builders in Japan becoming more interested in multi-legged robots and here are some awesome photos and a video from the 47th Kanto (Tokyo region)-Gumi (group) Robot Training Meeting  which was held at robot shop Robotma.com  in Tokyo on Valentine's Day, 2010. The meeting was organized by Ishikawa-san , who is the leader of Kanto-Gumi. 

 
 You can read more about these robots at Sanzai’s Blog  and Biped Robot News Japan.

「多脚が征く!_#4 」

Dear Hershey, Wanna start a robot competition?

 

 If you do, here's something you can look into - a robot competition that involves lots of chocolate.

 The TIROL-CHOCO Robot Competition is an annual event where robot builders in Japan gather with their robots that look like a big piece of a TIROL chocolate, which by the way is very yummy.

 The robots compete in 3 events - foot race, knocking down paper cups and carrying chocolates.

 Below is a video of the foot race from the 4th TIROL-CHOCO Robot Competition that was held on Feb. 13.

 It's really a fun family event and the interesting fact is, the chocolate company didn't have to do anything to get this going. Robot builder MASAYUKI

 and others thought it was a fun idea, because one of their robots looked like a big piece of chocolate and yes the sweets happen to have this cute wrapping paper that come in wide variety so why not start a game? They send in a proposal to the chocolate company for approval and TIROL checks to make sure that the event will not damage their brand or anything.  Then TIROL just sends them a bunch of chocolate to be used in the games and as prizes. Robot shop RT Co. sponsors the competition. 

  The winning robot is decided by a combination of points they collect in the events and a popularity vote. What a great way to be able to market a product.

 
  If you're interested, you can read more on Biped Robot News Japan.

Biped robot builders in Japan become interested in more legs

 Until recently, robots with more than 2 legs have been less popular compared to biped robots among hobbyists in Japan.

 There was just one 4-legged robot kit, the G-DOG , which HIP JAPAN started selling in July 2008.

 But nowadays, Japanese robot enthusiasts who have been working on custom-built biped robots are starting to become more and more  interested in making multi-legged robots. This is a noteworthy trend.

 It kind of started off with Shimaken -who is a well-known humanoid robot builder - when he joined the `Wonderful Robot Carnival - Petit `  with his original hexapod `Shiguma` in November of 2008. Bishii  of  (Asakusa-giken) and Tanaka  of  (Dainihon-giken) declared in December 2009 that they have begun to make multi-legged robots loaded with toy guns and sensors for future competitions. They used the image monitor such as `Remo`.

 This year,  ROBOSPOT held an information exchange meeting about multi-legged robot on Jan 23rd. A number of robot builders joined the meeting and exchanged ideas. Some people made presentations about their new robots. One of them was me. I presented the videos of my new robots with 5 legs, BT-L5 and BT-L15 .

 After the meeting, ROBOSPOT announced it's plan to start a new competition for multi-legged robots this coming spring. Mr. Morinaga , who is known as the `Father of ROBO-ONE` also started to make multi-legged robots, one being the Metallic Bio with 7 legs.

 Igaa , another famous biped robot builder know for `Saaga` and `Soga`, also made a new multi-legged robot with wheels for `the 1st Kanto Robot War` and published his video below. His wheeled complex multi-legged robot can move with high speed.

 K who is famous for a big Gundum robot at S.H.R.B. , is also making a multi-legged robot with 4 legs .

 So why is this trend happening now?

Marriage of Robotics with Handicraft

 Engineer and electronics shop owner Osamu Iwasaki who's been building robots for some time is currently interested in using "soft material" for his machines. His newest work is the RoboKnit which is a collaboration with Hanakomet who did the knitting. 

 

 A little while ago, Iwasaki-san worked with textile artist Tomoco Mouri to make the Kinetic Quilt.  He used a Lilypad Arduino, one $12 servo motor and piano wire and it took him about an hour to build this.

 He is fascinated with what in Japan is now called "extreme handicraft" which seems to have a strong following of its own. You can see examples of this art form here and there's even a group called  O-DA-I Craft where someone comes up with a theme and people send in photos of their work according to that theme.

 So why combine handicraft with robotics?

 People's reactions to these kinds of robots is what motivates Iwasaki-san. The RoboKnit is "Cute!" and many children gathered around when he was filming the video at the park.  On the other hand, the general impression of the Kinetic Quilt was "Creepy~~." "If they were just made of motors and metal, people would've reacted differently. I'm curious to find out what kind of movements and structure make people react in certain ways," he says.