Equipped with light sensors and LED strips, a team of ambitious geeks and gamers animated the space drones and arranged them in a game formation using a specially developed autonomous flight software.

On the ground the player sits on the laser gunner station which moves across rails and shoots laser beams. After 5 hits, the drones were taken down and out of the game.

The crew: Studio TinMan, Adam Bar-Niv, Elad Segal, Rotem Stahl, Ran Nachmany and Uri Harduf led by ForReal Team, Avi Ostfeld and VHive. “SpacedOut was finalised and first presented over the GeekCon 2016 hackathon which took place in Israel.”

“A team of 13 coders, designers, and makers were involved in the development of this ambitious project. It was an enormous effort to pull this off, and it took a diverse group of creative individuals who took part in this project”

The post Spaced Out: Real-Life Space Invaders Game Uses Drones first appeared on Gajitz.

From your robotic greeter at the front door to your automated waiter, your visit to this restaurant in Kunshan City will feature all the cybernetic staff you hoped to have serve you in the future.

Fifteen robots in total roll around the eatery, cooking food, taking orders, serving meals and greeting customers as they enter. A few humans are on hand just in case, but basically the robots run the place.

The spacious 3,200-square-foot facility is navigated by bots following black-taped lines using optical sensors, making their way between patrons to pick up dishes and drop off eats.

A touch-screen ordering system lets patrons pick their food. When the robo-waiter drops it off, customers are told to tap the bot to send it on its way.

The post Welcome, Human, to China’s Largest Robot-Run Restaurant first appeared on Gajitz.

Interplanetary spelunking sounds like a luxury sport, but for scientists it can open up whole new worlds of discovery if robots can be programmed and designed to go cave diving on other planets.

One particular“robot called LEMUR, short for Limbed Excursion Mechanical Utility Robot, is designed to climb the porous walls of a cave 150 million miles away, on Mars.” This agile robot is intended to creep into crevices on extraterrestrial surfaces, including asteroids and the moon.

“Why explore extraterrestrial caves? Partly for the same reasons scientists venture into caves on Earth. They’re protected from weather and (on other worlds) from meteoric bombardment, so their geological formations serve as frozen records of the planet’s past. Then there’s the life question. Liquid water on Mars is likely to exist underground, at depths where ice is melted by warmth from the planet’s interior.”

A robot equipped to handle caves can also navigate complex surfaces, obviating the need for wheels and overcoming difficult terrain. More about the bot: “LEMUR climbs walls in much the same way cockroaches do, gripping the surface with hundreds of tiny microspines in the pads of its paw-like feet (early designs were inspired by conversations with entomologists). For the time being, its pace is more like that of a sloth, as it makes sure every grip is a secure one. “

The post Robot Underground: Climbing Bot Designed for Space Caves first appeared on Gajitz.

Mind-controlled drones are no longer a thing of science fiction fantasies, now that real working prototypes can be steered with thoughts relayed via a skullcap wirelessly connected to a computer.

Brain activity is calibrated to the user and a series of over 100 electrodes interpret the data, turning it into a physical response, thanks to work done by Arizona State University researcher named Panagiotis Artemiadis (Human-Oriented Robotics and Control Lab director).

At the intersection of mechanical and aerospace engineering, his work on machine-brain interfaces has made it possible for minds to guide otherwise-unmanned aerial vehicles. And not just one drone: up to four can be moved around in a swarm, which makes it possible for this technology to enable even more complex navigation than a traditional joystick would permit.

Users imagine what they want the drones to do, and watch them perform on the monitor. The trick is that there may not be a single brain pattern that maps to one movement initially, but for any given user repetition calibrates the system anew. Operating multiple drones creates redundancy, too, allowing a swarm or fleet to carry out a mission even if one of its units fails.

One of the engineers on the project responded to a question about whether this is truly mind control: “The computer reads brain wave patterns. When the pilot wants to send the drones back and forth, the computer recognizes a certain set of brain wave patterns and – using Bluetooth – sends a wireless signal to the drones. So, yes, the brain actually controls the movement of the drones.”

The post Mind Control: Wireless Cap Lets Your Brain Fly Real Drones first appeared on Gajitz.

A slim cousin to larger bots from Boston Dynamics, the Spot Mini can steer around obstacles, walk up stairs and even gently unload wine glasses from your dishwasher, an incredible feat of precision and delicacy (not to mention neat at parties).

We always see gifs of clumsy robots breaking things, not knowing their own strength, but this little guy is a big step forward in safety and capability. This is incredibly important if machines of this type are designed to become part of our daily lives.

Spot’s backers ask you to “think of how delicate a robot will have to be in the future. For example, to give an older person who is very frail a shower. How do you carefully lift them, position them, make sure they’re safe in order to give them a shower and then dry them off, help them with their clothes? That’s a pretty sophisticated machine and it requires a bit of machine learning to get to that point.”

Boston Dynamics is currently owned by Google, but Toyota has its eye on the company. Whether the search giant or car company will get these into ordinary homes anytime soon remains to be seen, but if they do make consumer models, buyers can be sure at least this is one dog that can walk itself.

The post Spot Mini: Dog-Sized Robot Runs, Climbs, Does Chores & More first appeared on Gajitz.