Video Friday: Dubstep Robots, Supersonic Drones, and Autonomous Aquatics

Video Friday is back ... with a vengeance

2 min read

Video Friday: Dubstep Robots, Supersonic Drones, and Autonomous Aquatics

Yes. It's back. After a week-long trip to the East Coast that nobody is allowed to call a vacation because we were working the whole time, Video Friday HAS RETURNED. And you know what that means: we're playing a little bit of catch-up, so this one's a whopper.

We couldn't make it to Mexico City for RoboCup 2012, but luckily for us BotSport TV was there with a bunch of video cameras and a production budget.

More matches on BotSport's YouTube channel.

 

If you haven't seen this yet, here's what Curiosity has to look forward to in the seven minutes between entering Mars' upper atmosphere and landing:

If you had seen that already, here's a newer video showing JPL's Mars rover drivers (actual job title) practicing some dune rovering out in the Mojave desert:

 

Since drones don't have to carry people, they can be made small and fast. Very small, and very fast, ad you don't have to be a giant military contractor to do it, either. Here's what you can do for between $50,000 and $100,000:

This isn't going to be the first supersonic drone or anything- for example, check out Lockheed's D-21 drone that would launch from the back of the SR-71 at Mach 3.

Via [ Forbes ]

 

Yeah, we generally don't like movies where some robot ends up going crazy and kills a bunch of people, but this trailer for Prototype looks like it could be fun anyway.

Via [ io9 ]

 

This video contains dubstep, but don't worry, you don't have to know what dubstep is to enjoy it.

Er, so like, is that little robot in the back okay, or...?

[ Fluxel ]

 

And lastly this week we've got coverage of AUVSI's 2012 RoboBoat competition. We'd have made a post out of this in its own right, but AUVSI always makes up these videos that explain everything so well that it's hard for us to add much, so we're just going to put them all up here instead. This year's theme was poker (yeah, a little hokey), and as you watch the vids, remember that the boats are 100% autonomous and trying to use vision to identify navigation targets on water that's reflecting a changing sky.

 

 

 

[ RoboBoat ]

 

Haha, you probably thought we were done just because we said "lastly" just then, but no, we've got two more vids for you. It's another competition from AUVSI, this time featuring autonomous robotic aircraft, called SUAS, for Student Unmanned Aerial Systems.

 

[ SUAS ]

The Conversation (0)