Engineers built humanoid robots that can recognize objects by color by processing information from a camera mounted on the robot's head. The robots are programmed to play soccer, with the intention of creating a team of fully autonomous humanoid robots able to compete against a championship human team by 2050. They have also designed tiny robots to mimic the communicative "waggle dance" of bees.
A world of robots may seem like something out of a movie, but it could be closer to reality than you think. Engineers have created robotic soccer players, bees and even a spider that will send chills up your spine just like the real thing.
They're big ... they're strong ... they're fast! Your favorite big screen robots may become a reality.
Powered by a small battery on her back, humanoid robot Lola is a soccer champion.
"The idea of the robot is that it can walk, it can see things because it has a video camera on top," Raul Rojas, Ph.D., professor of artificial intelligence at Freie University in Berlin, Germany, told Ivanhoe.
Using the camera mounted on her head, Lola recognizes objects by color. The information from the camera is then processed in this microchip, which activates different motors.
"And using this camera it can locate objects on the floor for example a red ball, go after the ball and try to score a goal," Dr. Rojas said. A robot with a few tricks up her sleeve.
German engineers have also created a bee robot. Covered with wax so it's not stung by others, it mimics the 'waggle' dance -- a figure eight pattern for communicating the location of food and water.
"Later what we want to prove is that the robot can send the bees in any decided direction using the waggle dance," Dr. Rojas said.
Robots like this could one day become high-tech surveillance tools that secretly fly and record data ... and a robot you probably won't want to see walking around anytime soon? The spider-bot.
