Gladiatorial matches between bipedal humanoid robots is just one of the reasons to get excited about Robo-One, an event last weekend in Toyama City, Japan.
This year’s event showed some interesting new robots such as a thought-controlled robot, a robot that can flip its head back so you can ride it, and a mini-Gundam robot.
Check out these videos of these robots that kicked up a storm at Robo-One. Got any other great videos or photos from Robo-One? Let us know in the comments.
Takeshi Maeda is known to robot lovers as the man who designed the red, bi-pedal Omni Zero robots. Maeda showed the latest version, the Omni Zero 9, at Robot-One. It’s an eerily humanoid robot that can autonomously walk a few steps. Among the stunning features of this robot is it ability to lie flat on the ground and roll up a ramp using the two wheels that make up its shoulders, kind of like a slow, mechanical Jean-Yves Blondeau. It’s a sight worth watching!
The Omni Zero 9 also competed at the Robo-One Championship, as shown in the following video:
The robot’s head also flips back so if you are small enough and brave enough to sit in the gap, you can actually ride the robot. If you are wondering how big the robot is, then here are the stats: The Omni Zero 9 is just about 3.4 feet tall and weighs 55 lbs. The robot won one of the three prizes at the championship.
Thought-controlled robot
Brain interfaces are becoming popular among videogamers who use electrodes hooked up to their skulls to control the movement of characters on the screen.
Taku Ichikawa, a fourth-year student at the University of Electro-Communications in Tokyo, is trying to do something similar with a robot. Ichikawa uses 12 electrodes to measure his neural activity, which in turn issues commands via a wireless connection to a robot that is about 20 inches tall and weighs 4.4 lbs.
Ichikawa’s robot can perform three types of movement: walking forward, rotating right and using its single arm for stabbing attacks, says Japanese newspaper Mainichi Daily News. The thought-to-action process is not instantaneous though. It takes a total of about 1.5 seconds for the robot to begin doing what Ichikawa is thinking.
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