Radical robots
On the 11 February 1938, the first ever science fiction TV programme was broadcast by the British Broadcasting Corporation. It was a 35 minute adaptation of R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots) by the Czech playwright Karel Capek. The play was the first time that the term ‘robot’ had been used, so we celebrate this by looking at amazing automatons:
Cheapest robot
Walkman, a 12.7-cm (5-in) tall robot, was built from the remains of a Sony Walkman costing US$1.75 (£1.15) at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico, USA, in 1996. In tests the robot struggled to get free when its legs were held without being programmed to do so, and without making the same movement twice.
Fastest 25m sprint by a robot
The fastest 25m sprint by a robot is 6.5 seconds by Scuttle, built by Mike Franklin (UK), at the Royal International Air Tattoo, Fairford, UK, on 16 July 2005.
Fastest selling entertainment robot
Sony's AIBO Entertainment Robot ERS-110 (aibo means "pal" or "partner" in Japanese) retails for US$2,066. When Aibo made its first appearance on Sony's website on May 31, 1999, 3,000 were sold within 20 minutes. AIBO is 11-in (27.9cm) tall and can recognize its surroundings with a built-in sensor. It can be programmed to perform tricks or "play" on its own. On June 1, 1999, 2,000 AIBOs became available over the internet in America and the initial rush to buy the robotic pet puppy caused web servers to crash.
Largest robot
The Tower Belcon, completed in 1998, is a concrete conveying robot. It measures 70.5m (231ft) high, with a 76.5m (250ft) boom. The robot can deliver 180m3 (6,356ft3) of concrete an hour via its two concrete buckets, which have a combined volume of 3m3 (105ft3). The robot was designed and manufactured by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Tokyo, Japan.
Smallest robot humanoid
The smallest humanoid robot in production is the Be-Robot, which measures 153 mm (6 in) high and is able to walk, kick and perform push-ups. The robot was manufactured by GeStream (Taiwan) and demonstrated at the Global SMEs Convention on 6 September 2007 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
11 February 2008