We’d had some indication that robot teachers could be headed to classrooms sooner or later, but it looks like things may now be progressing faster than anyone thought. According to South Korea’s etnews, the country has announced plans to invest in a so-called “R-Learning” program that promises to put robotic teaching assistants in up to 400 pre-schools by 2012, and expand to a full 8,000 pre-schools and kindergartens the following year. Those apparently wouldn’t be in charge of the class (yet), but they would be used to do things like recite stories, and could let parents check in on the classroom and send messages to their children. If that trial program proves to be successful, the robots could then be expanded to elementary schools, and the Korea Institute of Science & Technology (the folks responsible for the bots) is apparently already eyeing international possibilities.

Plastic Pals

etnews

In a world where the Headtime scalp massager not only exists but presumably even sells, is it any wonder thatassistant robots like this here fella are cropping up? While keeping the design somewhat generic in order to be able to adapt the bot to the particular circumstances where it is employed, the designers at Kawada Industriesare keen to promote the NEXTAGE as a step toward humans and machines co-existing and working together in harmony. Sounds peachy, doesn’t it? Of course, some meatsack will have to be made redundant to make way for the machines, but humans were always going to be sacrificed for the greater robotic good. That was the plan all along. 

There is certainly no shortage of humanoid robots conspiring to attack your savings, but few look to offer the combination of tiny size and amazing dexterity of the Robovie-nano, the little guy from Vstone who is now shipping to would-be Dr. Frankensteins. He’s just 230mm tall (about nine inches) and weighs 575g (about a pound and a quarter), but looks to be at least as nimble as larger forebearers and is far cheaper than most, costing just ¥49,350 ($540) to start — less than a set of those sweet robot hands we spotted last week. For that you won’t get the optional “gripper shaft” mitts shown above, or the paintable Lexan bodywork he sports in the video after the break, but nobody ever said a robot needs clothes, right? – via impress-

The biannual International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence has this year shed light on a new effort to standardize robot instructions around a common platform, so that designers won’t have to “reinvent the wheel over and over” with every project. Presently, robot design is undertaken in an ad hoc fashion, with both hardware and software being built from scratch, but teams at Stanford, MIT and the Technical University of Munich are hoping to change that with the Robot Operating System, or ROS. This new OS would have to compete with Microsoft’s robotics offering, but the general enthusiasm for it at the conference suggests a bright future, with some brave souls even envisioning a robot app store somewhere down the line. Video after the break

Honda may have bestowed plenty of improvements on ASIMO over the years, but it looks like an alumni of rival robot maker Waseda University has taken it upon himself to deliver some improvements of his own that make it even more lifelike, though no doubt just as prone to tumbles. The key, it seems, is to ditch the robotics and high-tech materials altogether and instead use something called “wood,” which can be fashioned into a shell (or “costume,” if you will) that’s able to accommodate one slightly uncomfortable human. Either that, or ASIMO has been robot-napped from Honda and is now being held at an undisclosed location. Check out the video after the break to decide for yourself.

A Japanese company has unveiled a robotic suit that is designed to help people with weak limbs or limited physical range to walk and move like an able-bodied person.

The suit, called HAL – or Hybrid Assistive Limb – is the work of Cyberdyne Corporation in Japan, and has been created to “upgrade the existing physical capabilities of the human body”.

HAL, which weighs 23kg, is comprised of robotic ‘limbs’, and a backpack containing the suit’s battery and computer system. It is strapped to the body and controlled by thought. When a person attempts to move, nerve signals are sent from the brain to the muscles, and very weak traces of these signals can be detected on the surface of the skin. The HAL suit identifies these signals using a sensor attached the skin of the wearer, and a signal is sent to the suit’s power unit telling the suit to move in unison with the wearer’s own limbs.

We essentially can’t get enough of advanced robots doing things that look human — probably in the same way we can’t get enough of pretending our dog understands English. Anthropomorphism aside, Toyota’s humanoid running robot is really impressive. It’s got a super impressive sense of balance, and he’s quite fast on his feet — running at an average of 7 km an hour (yes, that’s faster than ASIMO can run), too. We can say with 100 percent certainty that we’d like to hang out with this guy