It is becoming increasingly common for countries to now deploy autonomous robotic solidiers to conduct their modern day wars. Today we take a look at 5 types of robots that are helping eliminate the need of a man for the act of war. Skynet can’t be too far away?

1. Robobug: The British defense and aerospace company BAE Systems have created small electronic insects, spiders and snakes that have the ability to enter places before combat soldiers and electronically report back what’s inside.  BAE signed a multi-million dollar contract to develop the robots for the U.S. Army.

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2. RoboDog: The US army is poised to unleash the dogs of war – four-legged, petrol-powered robots to help its troops in battle. Billed as ‘the most advanced quadruped robot on Earth’, BigDog has been devised to support American troops by carrying up to four packs of equipment on awkward terrain unsuitable for wheeled vehicles. Standing at over 2ft tall and more than 3ft long, BigDog comes equipped with all manner of high-tech gadgets, including laser gyroscopes, a video camera sensor system and a sophisticated on-board computer – but, sadly, no wagging tail.

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3. The firebots: The bots - which were used to detonate bombs in Afghanistan - have been converted and are now being used to tackle dangerous fires across London. Defence company Qinetiq say the robots will protect fire fighters and minimise disruption to travellers by reducing delays on major transport systems. After assessing the risk, LFB officers can call out the team of robots some of which range from a small, stair-climbing unit which has video and thermal image cameras to ones with water hoses and giant claws on.

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4. The Marathon robots: How do you make sniper target practice more helpful and more fun? By shooting at Segway robots, of course. To train its snipers in realistic conditions, the Australian Department of Defence enlisted the help of Marathon Robotics of Sydney, Australia, to set up a course populated by Segways with plastic, 3D, human-size dummies onboard.

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5. Robot Swords: The army’s machine-gun wielding, insurgent-slaying robot SWORDS is no longer spraying foes with hot doom in Iraq. Actually, it never had the chance to notch a single frag, and never will. Apparently, there was an incident where “the gun started moving when it was not intended to move,” meaning it totally pointed somewhere it wasn’t supposed to—like at friendlies, which resulted in recall from the field and might’ve set the program back 10-20 years, according to the Army’s Program Executive Officer for Ground Forces, Kevin Fahey.

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The Arneis robot arm is equipped with a marker pen, to perform writing and drawing actions.  It can produce several thousand portraits a day (it’s not all about clean tech entrepreneurs) and share it’s creations with the audience (as seen in the video above).

The robot receive input from a camera eye and draws whatever is seen thorough the camera. Portrait artists look out Arneis is coming to a street corner near you soon…

Meet HRP-3 Promet Mk-II from Kawada Industries. A robot which will eventually replace many manual jobs performed by humans today. On the market for a cool $3 million he can handle rain, slippery surface, use tools.

The math doesn’t ad up but still would be very cool to have a robot workforce. Wait we have that already we are the robotic workforce!!!

Unplug Now……….

Great video on Robot Culture in Japan by TokyoEye. Info on where to buy your robot kits in Tokyo and where to meet up with other robot otaku enthusiasts. Also features quite possibly the coolest arcade robot game you have ever seen.

Woahh Robot Fanboys check out this amazing replica model of B9 from Lost in Space on ebay. Starting price @ $15k. You can operate B9 from the inside - just like the original TV robot. The robot took two years to construct and looks more like the original robot than many fan creations. Features included are rotating torso, extendable rubber arms with locking pins, authentic voice-activated neon and sound system, Removable powerpack turns robot on/off. To top it off B9 is signed by Bob May (actor inside original robot). Bid now | Add to watch list

Click here to view the embedded video.

Meet Domo the new upper-torso humanoid robot from the MIT CSAIL Humanoid Robotics Lab. Domo is a robot with functioning, human-like eyes, arms and hands. It is the latest robot from the American developer Aaron Edsinger.

The goal of Domo is to contribute a novel approach to robot manipulation in unstructured environments. The approach is centered on integrating compliant and force sensitive manipulators into a behavior based architecture that accomplishes useful manipulation tasks in human environments.

It is a major advance on assembly-line robots as it can sense its surroundings and does not work to a pre-programmed routine.

You can imagine in the not so distant future robots similar to Domo doing all manual labour jobs on planet Earth! Here at RoboTokyo we are considering starting the RoboForce robot labour agency. We will hire out robotic workforces to factories, offices and domestic households. Is this a viable business plan (outside of Japan) What do you think?

See Domo in Action…

Helping clean up

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Helping with chores

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Read more at http://people.csail.mit.edu/edsinger/domo.htm

Asimo We Love You!

Here at RoboTokyo we often dream of making our own robots to automate the tasks we do not want to do. We have researched the web for the best robot making tutorials and want to share them with you. Automated life here we come!

9 Tutorials on how to build a robot

How to Build a Computerized Android Robot Head for $600.00

The $50 Robot Tutorial

How to Build a Robot using a Coat Hanger

Build a Robitic Webcam

Make a Paper Robot

How to make a Robot Car

How to design a Robitic Hand

Converting a floppy disk drive into a simple robot

Another Simple Robot Tutorial - The MiniBot

Recommended Reading for budding robot makers Robot Builder’s Bonanza, Third Edition (Robot Builder’s Bonanza).

The Nike Convoy and Black Megatron Transfomer trainers produced by Takara Tomy are available in May 07 (US pre orders are currently sold out).

As soon as we know who is stocking them and for how much we will let you know!

Welcome to our little online magazine dedicated to japanese robot toys. The aim of this web site is to find the coolest toy robots, robot games, robot anime and robot gadgets. We make it easy for you the ‘robot lover’ to buy them! We hope you find what you are looking for!

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