Giant Firebreathing Robots! [VICTORY IS MINE!]

 
I’m more or less convinced my youngest son (seen above) is the real world incarnation of Stewie, from Family Guy.  He’s surprisingly smart, and has an expression most of the time that belies some sort of secret attempt to take over the world.

Which is why I can’t ever take him to the Nagoya Institute of Technology. There, they have the ultimate device designed for young evil geniuses. It’s a giant fire-breathing robot … designed to only respond to the voices of children:

This command device activates GIANT TORAYAN. Developed by a research lab at the Nagoya Institute of Technology, it uses the most advanced voice recognition technology to differentiate the voices of adults and children. The voice of Yanobe's child was used as the recognition standard for the child's voice.

[h/t: @cmacowski]

Robot Art – Personal Robots by Franz Steiner

I found a great collection of robot art to stimulate the mind put together by a 3D modeler named Franz Steiner.

roboart

Enjoy the slideshow, and feel free to click through to get the high resolution versions.

Concept: The Cargonaut

DVICE has an interesting concept bot up today:

We're all for a future where robots deliver us packages quickly and efficiently, and that's exactly what the Cargonaut is programmed to do. Thought up by German-based industrial designer Matthias Schmiedbauer, an army of the robo-copters would be able to buzz around an urban center, bypassing traffic and delivering a package straight to you. Or from you, as the designer describes:

Cargonaut, a humanoid flight robot, comes to your current position to relieve you of your loads. After placing your bags or luggage in one of the publicly available sky boxes, Cargonaut delivers within minutes to a chosen destination.

Check out the gallery below to see the Cargonaut make a successful flyby. Or, if you love robots, be sure to check out our ongoing conversation on the future of robotics.

It’s a slick looking design, but the truth is that this technology has existed for well over a decade.  I worked on a project as a youngster that came from some ex-General Dynamics skunkworks folks that proved this concept.  Due to lack of funding (and the world of UAVs somehow staying unsexy), the project never really progressed.

The patents have now progressed into public domain that existed last decade, so hopefully we’ll see more movement in this area. This is a project and a service we could have today. I want it.