Tag Archives: robot

Pudding Beansprout Robot can teach children proper English at home

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Concept Pudding Beansprout Robot

A future with robots as trusty companions may happen. It’s already happening these days as we are more glued to the mobile screen and computers than ever. It seems to be inevitable as technology advances and as society evolves. We’re not sure if we’ll ever live until that Terminator-like era but robots, no matter what form, may someday rule the world.

It doesn’t mean we’ll go on hating robots. We love robots and related technologies as they’ve become really useful. We just need to draw the line and put boundaries on what such machines can do. The Pudding Beansprout Robot is a concept device meant for kids. It’s a smart robot that can help children learn English at home.

Designer: InDare Innovation

Pudding Beansprout Robot Design

The robot can be a learning partner for a child who wants to learn English. The Beansprout device can teach the language efficiently and systematically. It can also deliver a lot of information, lessons, and facts that will help in any kid’s education.

Pudding Beansprout Robot Sketches

The cute light green robot features a chubby body. It will remind you of Big Hero 6’s Baymax because it’s one of the inspirations apart from a beansprout. It looks like a toy so children will be attracted to it. Its head can do a 300° rotation angle so it can turn different ways. It offers a more immersive English education to the children the whole day so learning is truly fun.

Pudding Beansprout Robot Concept

The industrial design of the robot may be similar to other robots for kids but this one is more intelligent. It’s mainly to teach English to children who want to learn. It takes advantage of AI technology as it “talks” to the kids just like a teacher would. With the robot, the children can know the correct pronunciation of words and learn spoken English in the most authentic way.

Pudding Beansprout Robot Smart Screen

Kids can listen to the robot. Just don’t expect the robot to do things for you because its features and functions are limited. The Pudding Beansprout Robot comes with an LCD screen with a camera and a speaker on the body. Its eyes light up in robot mode so the screen looks like a face.

The Pudding Beansprout Robot was designed by Shenzhen-based group inDare Innovation. It’s the same group that worked on the EtsMe personal and private cloud storage tool from last year. The company has a number of other innovative projects that have the potential to go really big and the Pudding Beansprout Robot is just one. It can deliver a pure English conversation environment with the children at home. Learning shouldn’t stop at school so this kid-friendly robot will be more than useful.

Concept Pudding Beansprout Robot Details

Concept Pudding Beansprout Robot Design Details

Concept Pudding Beansprout Robot Parts

Pudding Beansprout Robot Tablet

Pudding Beansprout Robot Tablet Design

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Microsoft Moab is a cute robot that can learn how to balance balls and eggs

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Until the metaverse buzz came along, a lot of the hype was placed on AI and machine learning. The way this technology was portrayed makes it almost like a magic sauce that made anything and everything smarter. Reality couldn’t be more different, though, especially for developers trying to learn the ropes of the different technologies involved in AI. Microsoft set out to make the learning process easier and, curiously enough, ended up with an interesting robot that tries to learn one of the oldest tricks in the book: balancing a ball.

Designers: Microsoft with Fresh Consulting

At first glance, Microsoft Moab doesn’t look like your typical robot. It doesn’t even look like a typical machine aimed at developers. It looks more like a cross between a robot vacuum cleaner and a weighing scale with a glass platform held up by three legs. When it does its thing, however, it resembles a creature lying on its back and flailing its legs to keep a small ball from falling off.

Learning how to balance a ball sounds so trivial, and that’s exactly the point with things like AI and machine learning. Things that we take for granted as humans aren’t exactly intuitive for machines. Adding another layer of complexity is how humans need to learn how to teach these machines to learn, which is what this Moab robot tries to offer in a non-intimidating way.

In a nutshell, Moab uses a camera to see the ball or any rolling object placed on top of its plate and then tries to move the plate until the object becomes stationary. After mastering that, developers can move on to giving Moab “obstacles” to overcome by poking the ball, for example, or using an object that’s not completely spherical like an egg. Moab doesn’t learn all of these automatically, though, and developers learn the ropes of machine learning, including things like visualizing their data in simulations before transferring that to the robot.

What makes Project Moab rather unique is that it was created as a product from beginning to end. Unlike what would usually be characterized as a DIY project or a hack, Moab’s form, the materials used in manufacturing the robot, and even the packaging were made with a commercial product in mind, and it might even be available for purchase in the near future.

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Hyundai envisions Boston Dynamic’s Spot as your ambassador to Mars in the metaverse

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The metaverse will supposedly let us be anywhere we want, and all we need is a robot proxy to explore other planets.

The term “metaverse” has been around long before Facebook’s dramatic rebranding, but its popularity definitely spiked in the past few months thanks to that. The idea of moving around in virtual space and interacting with other people half a world away is as old as the Internet and science fiction, but the possibility of seamlessly blending the real and the digital has only been possible these past years. Now companies are scrambling to get on the metaverse bandwagon, and Hyundai’s ideas include using Spot to be your stand-in for places you wouldn’t otherwise be able to reach.

Designer: Hyundai

Spot is one of the most popular robots in mainstream news and possibly also one of the most infamous. Built to be less horrifying than BigDog, the quadruped robot became Hyundai’s property when the carmaker bought Boston Dynamics. Spot proved to be a hit in the past two years, allowing doctors to safely check up on patients remotely or letting security personnel remind people to practice physical distancing from the safety of a control room.

Hyundai, however, also has another use for Spot, at least in the distant future. In its vision of the metaverse, the robot will act as people’s bodies, eyes, and even hands while exploring places they couldn’t reach. That includes visiting Mars with family and meeting other people who are presumably totally human.

This metaverse version of Spot, however, won’t be like the telepresence robots that are already available today. Spot will be equipped with various sensors that can gather environmental data, like the temperature of a certain object or the strength of a Martian sandstorm. That data can, in turn, be used to let their human controllers feel those exact same events safely on Earth, presuming they’re inside some vehicle or room that can recreate that environment.




Spot is actually just one part of Hyundai’s “metamobility” concept, a concept that includes the things that the company is best known for. Those include self-driving vehicles and other robots that will help humans either go the distance or stay at home while still reaching places. And, of course, Spot will be with humans every step of the way, just like a good robot dog.

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This robotic cat will nibble on your finger in a quirky attempt to reduce your stress

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More than just looking cute and heartwarming, these animal plushies will try to calm you down in the oddest way they can.

Given the many sources of stress and worry these days, some people might be dreaming of the simpler days of their childhood. In addition to having very few concerns, infants and toddlers also have behaviors and coping mechanisms that they outgrow in a few years. Some of those gestures, however, work both ways and give comfort even to the adults that experience them. That’s what a Japanese robotics company is trying to offer, thankfully without involving any children or anything resembling them.

Designer: Yuki Engineering

“Play-biting,” as it is called, is a gesture that’s almost universal not just among human babies but also some animals. It has the psychological effect of providing comfort, not just for the one nibbling but also the owner of the finger. Of course, that behavior is unacceptable for adults and is dangerous for grown pets, so Yukai Engineering is using robots to act as proxies for babies.

Called “Amagami Ham Ham,” Japanese words that refer to “soft biting,” the robots are dressed up as cute cats and dogs and almost look like regular stuffed toys. The difference, however, is that the toys activate the moment you put your finger inside their mouth. They suddenly spring to life, or at least their mouths, and start nibbling on your finger to help you release some stress.

It isn’t just a simple, mechanical kind of biting either. Amagami Ham randomly picks one of two dozen variations of “ham” or “biting,” making it almost like an adventure each time you put your finger inside. Those might be too subtle to differentiate one from the other, but the company says they’re meant to replicate the different ways babies and pets nibble fingers or other objects.

There is no word yet on when Amagami Ham Ham will land in the market, but you can almost bet that it will happen eventually. After all, Yukai Engineering did launch the Qoobo robotic pillow with a tail a few years ago, and that was no joke, no matter how ridiculous or eerie it initially looked. Now the company is aiming to use cuddly robots to free humanity from the dilemma of whether they want their finger nibbled or not in order to relax.

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This cabinet on wheels can fetch you things like a loyal canine

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There’s finally a robot for the home that’s not just for sucking up dirt on the floor.

Robots are coming, whether we like it or not. They may not be the kind that’s negatively portrayed in movies, at least not yet, but few of them can be considered “friendly,” even in appearance. Today’s robots also seem to stand on two opposite ends of a spectrum, with sophisticated but nightmarish Spots on one end and simplistic but single-purpose Roombas on the other. Few other robots are designed for home use, but a company backed by Roomba maker iRobot and the Amazon Alexa Fund is aiming to change that in the simplest but most useful way possible.

Designer: Labrador Systems

At first glance, this robot looks nothing like the typical robots you see both in homes (on the floor) and in factories. When it isn’t active, it looks more like a tall shelf with an open box compartment. In fact, the faux wooden sides of that compartment, available in Light Maple and Warm Teak colors, seem to be designed to blend with your furniture and masquerade as a simple shelf.

It’s anything but simple, of course, and this shelf on wheels can move around your house on its own at your beck and call. You can tell it to bring you your medicine or the plates for setting the table, or you can tell it to accompany you to the laundry room while it carries the washing load for you. Appropriately, this robot is named the Labrador Retriever.

In some cases, this robot is powered by some of the same technologies that robot vacuum cleaners use to navigate your house. After learning the lay of the land, it uses 3D vision to drive itself to or away from you, avoiding obstacles along its path. It can be controlled manually, through an app, or by voice, specifically through Amazon Alexa. It also has some special tricks of its own, like sliding a specially-designed Labrador-branded tray of food or medicine onto its shelf without any human intervention.

Unlike robot vacuum cleaners, the Labrador Retriever and its smaller sibling, the Labrador Caddie, aren’t just designed to make life easier. In fact, they were primarily envisioned to empower those with physical difficulties or handicaps to be productive and live normal lives. Of course, that means that these robots need to have designs that won’t haunt your dreams, and thankfully, the Labrador Retriever is as inconspicuous as a modern minimalist cabinet, contrary to what its name might suggest.

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LEGO Mega Factory Builds a Log Cabin Out of Cucumbers

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Move over, gingerbread houses, because this LEGO Mega Factory built by YouTuber The Brick Wall is capable of constructing an entire log cabin out of cucumbers, which will henceforth be known as a cuke cabin. The massive LEGO factory took 83 days of planning and construction, and consists of 23,000+ pieces, 21 motors, and 7 controllers, and has a footprint of 64″x 44″ x 22″. Obviously, it’s a little more complicated than the minifig I just assembled with two heads for legs.

In the video, the LEGO factory cuts 18 cucumbers to size, mills the vegetables, cuts notches for stacking, cuts cucumbers for doors and windows and roofing planks, then assembles the entire home, complete with drilling holes and securing draft pins (wooden skewers) to keep the logs in place. It then builds a fence and playground around the home. It probably goes without saying, but that cabin is even nicer than my current apartment.

And I thought assembling any LEGO set without dozens of extra pieces was an accomplishment, meanwhile, this guy went and build a whole automated cucumber cabin factory! Now he just needs to build a LEGO factory that can build LEGO cucumber cabin building factories, and this project will finally meet its logical conclusion.

Meet Eilik, a feisty little AI robot that lives on your desk like a tiny Tamagotchi with a personality

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Sure, we’re years away from getting our own JARVIS, but the Eilik is a step in that direction. With a personality that’s less like Stark’s AI and more like Baby Groot, the little robot stands obediently on your desk, letting you interact with it through voice commands and touch. Modeled with an aesthetic that’s highly reminiscent of Eve from Wall-E, the tiny bot responds, reacts, and engages back with you, giving you a little tabletop companion to make your day just a wee bit stress-free.

Designer: Shaw Yeung

Click Here to Buy Now: $109 $149 (27% off). Hurry, only 1268/3000 left! Raised over $650,000.

Instead of being a robot that prides itself on intelligence, efficiency, and accuracy, Eilik highlights an area that most robots often ignore – emotional intelligence. With its emotive personality, Eilik makes sure work never feels boring. Just like a Tamagotchi, the little robot demands attention, scowls when it doesn’t get any, and smiles when you tickle it or pat it on the head. It responds positively to rubs and pats, and gets annoyed when you flick at it. Lift Eilik off the ground and it gets scared of heights, and the best way to pacify it is to either calm it down by rubbing its head, back, or belly, or giving it food – in the form of magnetic little food replicas that attach to its movable arms.

Responds to touch.

Sensitive to quake.

Afraid of heights.

Eilik responds using its hands, head, and a dynamic display for a face. With highly expressive eyes that tell you how it’s feeling, Eilik even makes emotion-appropriate sounds and noises, sort of like an electronic pet that purrs on its own or mimics what you say like a physical Talking Tom. If left alone, Eilik will entertain itself (and you too), although you can even pair two Eiliks together and they’ll play with each other and occasionally even have adorable tussles and toddler-esque fights. Pair multiple Eiliks together and they literally form a tiny army that sings and dances in unison, like your own personal minions. Yes, they even sing Christmas carols!

 




The importance of Eilik, however, lies beyond its toy-like nature. It isn’t just another AI-powered tabletop pet, but rather, hopes to be the first step towards having real-life robot assistants in the future. Eilik relieves stress the way a pet would, but it also helps with work by acting as an alarm clock, a stopwatch, or a Pomodoro timer, with future updates adding even more functionality to your tabletop bot-buddy.

On the hardware front, Eilik is built with pretty sophisticated internals. The robot uses a proprietary EM3 servo motor that allows the hands to be more flexible and dexterous. In fact, the hands act as controls for the robot’s screen brightness and volume, allowing you to simply adjust them by lifting the hands up or down. A slew of sensors within the robot allows it to detect voices, touch, impact/shock, and even if it’s being elevated, and the robot effectively communicates using its dynamic face unit, speakers, and even a vibration motor that provides haptic feedback similar to an animal reacting to being petted.

Each Eilik comes as a standalone unit that stands at 5.2-inches tall, and ships with a manual, Eilik’s software, as well as a USB-C cord for charging it as well as connecting it to a PC to configure the bot. If your desk’s lacking a little panache and personality, Eilik’s available for a Kickstarter-special price of $99, with the little robo-buddy shipping in April 2022.

Click Here to Buy Now: $109 $149 (27% off). Hurry, only 1378/3000 left! Raised over $600,000.

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Tiny autonomous solar-powered robot roams around on deserts, planting seeds to cultivate greenery

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A graduation project from Mazyar Etehadi of the Dubai Institute of Design and Innovation, A’seedbot is a self-operating drone that manually plants seeds across the desert terrain. With an end goal of turning uninhabitable sandy terrain into a lush green landscape, the A’seedbot drives around autonomously through the day, pulling power from the solar panels mounted on its upper surface.

With an undeniably strong Wall-E vibe, the A’seedbot’s prime duty is to help cultivate barren land. Operating autonomously and entirely alone (I’m pretty sure Pixar should make a movie on this), the A’seedbot begins its journey every morning, paddling across the sand with its propeller-style feet that push it forward, while the rear end of the robot helps plant seeds into the soft terrain.

“The robot is equipped with solar panels to charge during the day and navigate its way through the terrain at night, to identify fertile areas, report on them as well as plant seeds based on the data retrieved from its sensors and navigation system”, explains designer Mazyar Etehadi.

What’s so interesting about the A’seedbot is its unique shape, designed as a prime example of ‘Form follows Function’. The robot’s length-wise design can be separated into its 3 parts, ‘Seeing’, ‘Navigating’ and ‘Planting’. Two ultrasound sensors on the front allow the robot to assess the terrain in front of it, while a movable head lets it look in various directions to choose the right path. Once decided, paddle-shaped legs help the A’seedbot push itself forward and even change directions, looking almost like a tiny little seal on land. Lastly, the end of the robot rests against the ground, promptly pushing seeds into the sand wherever the robot deems necessary. Its internal processing unit helps the robot understand terrain, decide the locations to plant seeds, and monitor them every few days, while the solar panels on the top help the robot sense how harsh the sun is… while conveniently also providing it with power, that gets stored in the A’seedbot’s internal battery. Deploy enough of these robots and they could potentially help cultivate parts of a desert, turning them into oases of greenery!

Designer: Mazyar Etehadi

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This modern homebuilding system relies on robotics and custom automation to build prefabricated dwellings!

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Automated Architecture Ltd. showcased its robotic assembly system for home building and prefabricated home dwellings during 2021’s Global Investment Summit (GIS).

On October 19, 2021, the Global Investment Summit (GIS) saw 12 of the UK’s leading “green innovators,” selected by the UK government to emphasize the importance of implementing green technology into our day-to-day. Just in time for the COP26 (UN Climate Change Conference UK), GIS shows how the UK can shape the future of green investment. Weaving green technology into architectural building methods, Bristol and London-based design and technology company Automated Architecture Ltd., (AUAR) showcased a new robotic assembly system for prefabricated dwellings.

AUAR comprises a modular timber building method that designs prefabricated, custom homes based on a given site’s conditions and landscape, and the buyer’s lifestyle and home preferences. Relying on robotics and custom automation methods from ABB Robotics, AUAR redefines what homebuilding can look like in the 21st century. Through AUAR, individual timber building blocks, chosen for the building materials renewability, are robotically prefabricated and stacked together to form tiny dwelling units.

In a similar fashion to the revolutionary 1950s assembly lines that created suburban housing developments like Levittown, AUAR forms its own production line, one that’s much smaller in size and personnel. The AUAR robot lines timber panels together to form building modules that are stacked together and assembled into tiny homes with the help of local craftspeople and builders. Following their use, the timber blocks can be disassembled and reused for other purposes, creating less construction waste and adhering to circular design principles.

Noting the lack of change in homebuilding methods, CEO and co-founder of AUAR, Mollie Claypool suggests,

“The demand for new homes is astronomical—two billion are needed in the next 80 years—yet the way we build them has not changed in hundreds of years. Traditional attempts to modernize housing construction result in extreme centralization and huge capital expenditure, further widening the divide between housing developers and local communities. Our approach offers a community-driven, climate-conscious alternative—a way to revolutionize the way we design and build homes and empower people and communities to live better and more sustainable lives.”

With help from local neighbors and assembly lines, AUAR works with small communities to build tiny dwellings. Opting out of big factory assemblage and globalized production chains, AUAR aims to cut down its carbon footprint by utilizing local resources and increasing community development.

Designer: Automated Architecture Ltd., (AUAR)

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You can buy yourself an open-source, trainable cat-version of the Boston Dynamics robot

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A rather adorable cross between a pet and a STEM toy, the Nybble is a small DIY robot feline that you can build and train to follow commands.

Named Nybble, the toy comes from the folks at Petoi (who even built a scaled-down consumer version of the Boston Dynamics dog). Nybble, however, has a body made from laser-cut MDF sheets and runs on its proprietary NyBoard processor, developed specifically for the robotic cat.

Nybble’s architecture makes it a rather nimble, flexible little cat, as it borrows directly from a cat’s skeleton and even builds on its canine predecessor, the Bittle’s design. The cat’s movement and behavior are pretty lifelike, brought about by the 11 servo motors that operate all its joints and the software that lets you make your Nybble sit, stretch, sleep, balance, say hi, and play dead. Try getting your regular cat to follow commands… I dare you.

Click Here to Buy Now: $209

The robot cat comes outfitted with two ultrasonic sensors on its front that act as the robot’s ‘eyes’. It sports a USB input that lets you connect it to a device to tinker around with its open-source code and teach it new tricks (in Scratch, Python, or C++), and even comes with Bluetooth and WiFi dongles as well as an infrared remote controller. Other parts include a holder for two 14500 Li-ion rechargeable 3.7V batteries that give Nybble up to 45 hours of play-time, and even silicone covers for the cat’s feet, to give it friction as well as prevent it from accidentally scratching your furniture.

Built as an exploratory toy, Nybble takes about 4 hours to build from scratch, although its body kit could easily be modified to give it a different character. The cat’s highly extensible with support for Raspberry Pi and Arduino ecosystems, and a whole slew of additional sensors (all available on Petoi’s website) to make your robot cat even more advanced. Just promise us you won’t make it sentient…

Designer: Petoi

Click Here to Buy Now: $209

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