Robots are not only taking our jobs, but soon the homeless will be obsolete as well if the Don-8r (“donator,”) robot has anything to say about it. He is designed to collect change and keep on collecting it. It is the creation of University of Dundee student Tim Pryde.

He created the robot to help raise money for charity. So far it has had some success panhandling around the school’s campus. I bet that many people who have never helped the homeless would gladly give this bot some money. It’s a perception thing. They are more apt to give a cute bot a donation than a scary and dirty human. Hopefully this bot can actually help those who need it in the future, in some big ways.

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Don-8r the panhandling robot

The Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory has been busy teaching TALON how to detect radiation. The bot is trading in it’s weapons for radiological sensors, digital cameras, and a GPS device. This modified TALON will be used to keep an eye on the radiation levels surrounding the Fukushima nuclear power plant.

TALON arrived in Japan last week, joining two additional TALONs equipped with sensors that can identify over 7500 environmental hazards. Seems like TALON has things covered in Japan. We can’t think of a better bot for the job.

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TALON robot helps Japan find radiation

Learning is fun. Here are 20 facts about robots. Did you know all of these?

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20 Facts About Robots Infographic

Roboticists at National Taiwan University’s Bio-Inspired Robotic Laboratory have built the Quattroped, basically a rectangular robot that is able to transform its wheels into legs when it encounters stairs or rough terrain. It may not be Optimus Prime, but you gotta start somewhere.

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Transforming robot can turn its wheels into legs

We’ve seen the Geminoid series before, very realistic robots that came from Japan by Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro. Now it has invaded Europe. A professor from Denmark has created a Geminoid of his own, and this one is more realistic than Hiroshi Ishiguro’s creation.

It’s called the Geminoid-DK, based on the Geminoid-F and this one is made to look like the professor instead of a female. The robot looks incredibly lifelike and could fool many a meat-sack. Can these get any more realistic?

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Geminoid-DK robot is uncomfortably human

As humans get even lazier and yet require more food, we are going to need our farm bots to step things up a bit. They are going to have to plant seeds for us. This five-legged machine named Prospero can autonomously navigate in any direction and avoid objects. He senses where seeds have been already planted, so if the robot detects that the ground is in need of a seed, he will dig a hole, drop the seed, move the soil back over the hole and then spray paint the ground to mark it.

He has fertilizers and herbicides on board and he can ‘talk’ (via infrared) to other robots in order to maintain crop-creating efficiency.

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Prospero The Robot Farmer Plants Seeds

LOPES (Lower-extremity Powered ExoSkeleton) is a rehab robot that can get patients moving for therapy needs and such. It isn’t in rehab itself. Researchers at the Netherlands’ University of Twente began work on LOPES in 2001 to assess motor skills and teach stroke victims how to walk again. Now, ten years later, LOPES has eight degrees of freedom and automatically adjusts to fit the support needed for each patient. It has come a long way.

The researchers are working on a more compact and user friendly version and they expect a market-ready version to be available by mid-2012. To give it something to do in the meantime, LOPES has been enlisted in a larger EU project called Mindwalker, testing advanced control algorithms “to be used in autonomous exoskeletons.”

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LOPES Rehab Robot

In some ways, we don’t mind robots taking over the world. I mean, they can have all of the cleaning chores. All we ask is that you don’t impale us, decapitate us or crush our skulls with their metal hands. The folks over at Fujitsu have released video footage showing off the fact that they taught a robot how to erase a whiteboard.

It’s a proof of concept video, so forget that the bot is too small to reach it on it’s own. He will still clean the hell out of it, while plotting our deaths.

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Japanese humanoid robot learns to clean

The latest resident of the Uncanny valley is this terrifying fake baby. Terrifying on one hand because it moves so much like a real baby, but not so terrifying compared to a real toddler because this one doesn’t poop and vomit everywhere. This monstrosity comes from Osaka University and is called AFFETTO.

The goal here was to create a robot modeled after a young child that could produce realistic facial expressions. They succeeded and it has reminded me that babies are just as creepy as some robots. I hope they never team up.

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Fake Robot Baby Is Terrifying

Tom Hardwidge creates some nice looking robo-insects and while they don’t fly around and dive bomb those you dislike, they look awesome. You can call them steampunk or robo-art, but they just plain look cool. If you order one you not only get the bug, but also a wooden presentation box with a little leaflet detailing the sculpture’s name, phylum, class, order and some of the preliminary sketches.

Tom Hardwidge

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Arthrobots Look Pesky, But Cute