Robotic Blogs

This is not directly robot related.
I wanted to explain the association between Robot Gossip's online store, Roboteria, and the new video download service at Amazon.com.

UnBox Videos are DVD quality videos that you download from Amazon.com to your PC. They have a fair selection so far. They say that you will be able to download episodes of television shows right after they air - much sooner than the DVD release.

I have added an UnBox Video page in Roboteria to highlight some of the robot related stuff that is available for download now, but you cannot download them from Roboteria yet. You must go to Amazon.com make the purchase. Just click "Go to Amazon.com" to find the video and download it.

For a limited time you can get a free download with the purchase of a DVD.
Check out the details here or click the graphic below.

From online San Jose Mercury News:

On a February weekend visit home from college in 2001, 18-year-old Patrick Hsu noticed an odd toy robot dog that had been mailed in a box weeks earlier. His father had opened the box, then set the contraption aside when he noticed it needed batteries to function. Later, Patrick Hsu placed batteries in the robot -- triggering a hidden bombing device that killed him.

It is not clear exactly the role played by an engineer who is on trial now. He claims that he only mailed the dog and had no knowledge of its murderous intent,

The supposed mastermind of the plot, who was featured on America's Most Wanted, is believed to be in Venezuela. He hatched the scheme for some kind of revenge against an ex-girlfriend or her family or some kind of dumbass excuse.

We just need to remember, folks, robot dogs don't kill people - people do.

MercuryNews.com | 01/29/2007 | Trial begins in '01 bombing

Scraping high value minerals from the bottom of the sea is moving ahead with Neptune Minerals' (LSE:NPM)announcement that will be starting their next survey project off New Zealand.

Neptune has contracted Geo Subsea based in Bergen, Norway for high resolution mapping and geoassay in Neptune's permitted area north of New Zealand.
They have a Comanche ROV included in the survey team with depth capabilities to 3000 meters and the ability to collect samples up to several hundred kilograms in size.

They are going after SMS, Seafloor Massive Sulphides, which are very rich deposits of minerals on the seafloor. The deposits are formed from superheated volcanic materials spewing from deep within the Earth into the ocean through channels called 'Black Smokers.' When the hot liquids hit the cold water on the bottom of the ocean they form vast fileds of mineral laden suphides.

Neptune is not alone in moving forward with subsea mining. Earlier this month Nautilus Minerals (TSXV: NUS.V) announced that they had contracted with Canyon Offshore, now part of Helix Energy Solutions Group, for assay work in their Solwara prospect off of Papua New Guinea. After mapping and identifying targets, they will begin drilling test holes later this year with two new drilling ROV's currently being built by Perry Slingsby.


SMS deposits have a much higher yield of metals minerals than land-based deposits. Should the mining operations pay out as expected, the seafloor mining industry will easily rival land mining for production.

Robot Gossip: Gold From the Bottom of the Ocean

Factory robots have long been able to do the machine and assembly work. Now they can also do the inline part inspection.

Just add an Orus3D SKEYE 3D scanning head to the arm of your favorite factory robot. The scanned image is sent to a vision controller and compared to inspection criteria stored in the image library. Viola! You have RoboGuage.

The line inspector could even feed instructions back to the production robots to make adjustments on the fly.


Orus3D - Tools for Guidance and Inspection

Echo robots are being developed to help sophisticated urbanites hook up.

The small robots can wiggle and probably talk a little. They are small enough to carry around with you. At home you connect it to your pc and program your interest profile into it. Then you carry it around with you as a sort of fetish of your personality. As you walk around, the flirtatious robot broadcasts your profile to other Echos riding along on the shoulders of other totally cool people. When your Echo finds another with its same interests it nudges you, dances or waves its cute little arms - your choice. I would want maybe just an elbow nudge and "hey, psst, check it out," on the sly. I wouldn't want my Echo to appear too desperate.

Dude, totally web2o.

See a short video of a prototype.
Echo Robotics Blog