August 30, 2010

TREES ARE NO PROTECTION FROM SNAKEBOTS

CMU just posted this new vid of their Snakebot (Modsnake) climbing a tree and looking around. It’s still tethered, but it’s a snake, so that just makes it seem more snakey. This isn’t the first video we’ve seen of CMU’s Snakebot climbing stuff, but it’s the first one we’ve seen outside of the lab, so that counts for something, right? Sure! [ CMU Biorobotics ] VIA [ Hizook ]
August 30, 2010

MICROSOFT SURFACE IS THE ROBOT CONTROL SYSTEM OF THE FUTURE

Shared by Daniel RTS games in the future are going to be so cool I love Microsoft Surface. I’ve been in love with it ever since the hands-on demo I got back at CES 2008. Since then, Surface has trickled into a few retail settings (and become the most epic D&D tabletop ever), but it shines when it comes to practical applications, too. Mark Micire at UMass Lowell has taken a Surface table and set it up to control a small swarm of (as yet hypothetical) robots through one of the most simple and effective interfaces I’ve ever seen, a hallmark of Surface. Not only can you just tap, touch, and drag to command as many robots as you like, but if you need to take personal control, the interface for that is extremely slick, Minority Report style. Furthermore, the control interface is also the display, making it fast and intuitive to change commands based on new data. Although it’s not implemented here, a logical next step might be to update the Surface display based on real-time mapping data from the robot swarm. Another advantage of this kind of system is that you can combine multiple types of robots returning all kinds of data into one seamless command and control display. Like, imagine that some of the swarm consisted of UAVs, and you could add a Z coordinate and send them off to scout ahead. And maybe they have radar or LIDAR, and then that data gets overlaid on the display as well. Sort of like this, except real. Am I gushing? I think I’m gushing. But this is totally cool, and there’s tons of potential. It’s not even that there’s anything that innovative going on here, strictly… It’s just that Surface is able to merge existing hardware and existing […]
August 26, 2010

UAV LOSES TAIL, WING, MORE TAIL, BARELY NOTICES

We already knew that in some specific cases, robots are better pilots than humans, but this footage from Rockwell Collins really drives home the fact that under extreme circumstances, there’s just no out-flying a robot. This small autonomous demonstrator suffers all kinds of damage, but not only does it not crash, it keeps on flying its mission and then lands. For the record, humans are pretty adaptable too, but this next one takes the cake: Let me just reiterate what’s going on here: the aircraft has no aileron control and is rolling randomly, but is still able to navigate in three dimensional space (it’s flying in a big circle) by using its other control surfaces in conjunction with whatever its roll angle happens to be. At roll speeds of up to 500 degrees per second, there is no way a human could do this, but to the robot, it’s just not that big of a deal. This technology is great for UAVs, of course, but personally I wouldn’t mind in the least if every airplane I flew on had this capability sitting dormant in a subroutine somewhere until the wing falls off and everybody starts to PANIC and then realizes oh, it’s fine, apparently we don’t need that wing anyway. Next up: cut-rate airlines invest in adaptive intelligent flight control technology, auction off wings and tails. [ Rockwell Collins ] VIA [ I Heart Robotics ] and [ DIY Drones ]
August 26, 2010

BUTTERSAFE – UPDATED TUESDAYS AND THURSDAYS » ARCHIVE » WHAT IT MEANS TO BE ALIVE

Shared by Daniel Perfect (h/t Kirk)
August 25, 2010

SEASWARM BRINGS SWARM ROBOTICS TO OIL SPILL CLEANUP

Getting oil out of water isn’t that hard, on principle. What is hard is getting a huge amount of oil out of an even huger amount of water. If you think about it, this is really a perfect task for a swarm of robots, since it’s simple and repeatable and just needs to be done over and over (and over and over and over) again. With this in mind, MIT’s Senseable City Lab has created Seaswarm, a swarm of networked oil spill cleanup robots: Seaswarm is designed to be simple, cheap, and efficient. To collect oil, the robots use a wide belt covered in a special hydrophobic nanofabric (about the consistency of a paper towel) that sucks 20 times its own weight in oil (and other pollutants) out of water. The belt moves around like a treadmill, which passes the befouled nanofabric back to be cleaned while simultaneously propelling the robot forward. The video talks about heat being used to separate oil from the nanofiber, while the description on the Seaswarm website makes it seems like the oil is squeezed out using rollers… Whatever floats your robot, I guess. What I’m not too sure about is where all of that captured oil goes. Using their solar panels for power the bots can collect for several weeks at a time, and the more oil they collect, the heavier they’ll get, and the more energy it’ll take to keep them moving. The website does mention that the oil will be ‘digested,’ which I assume implies microbes, but they’ll either have to collect oil very slowly or have some wicked crazy hungry bugs to be able to get around the problem. Seaswarm is designed from the water up to utilize swarm behaviors. To combat a spill the size of the recent one in […]
August 24, 2010

BEAR LIFTS STUFF, BREAKS STUFF, LIFTS MORE STUFF

Vecna Technologies sent along this new video of BEAR, their Battlefield Extraction something Robot. I don’t immediately see any new capabilities, but BEAR does show a penchant for wanton (or premeditated) destruction, smashing through doors and car windows with no apparent sense of remorse. BEAR’s selling point (besides the cute ears) is its ability to lift ludicrous amounts of weight while simultaneously balancing on two extendable treads, which enables it to be (potentially) more useful than a human for performing certain heavy lifting and moving tasks. With all of that power comes a corresponding amount of infrastructure, though, and for BEAR to be really useful in the field it’s going to need to be both durable and easy to repair, and that huge betubed hydraulic backpack looks kinda fragile. [ Vecna Robotics ] Thanks Andy!
August 23, 2010

DEEDS WITHOUT DOERS | MINDS AND BRAINS

Shared by Daniel internet There is a concept in phenomenology that is critical for understanding the nature of animal minds: prereflective experience. This level of experience is
August 21, 2010

A COMPENDIUM OF EVERYDAY GENIUS – NYTIMES.COM

At the Vitra Design Museum in Germany, a new exhibition highlights a collection of inventions that inhabit and inform our daily lives, from bubble wrap to Velcro — brilliance hiding in plain sight.
August 16, 2010

ROBOT SELLS ICE CREAM, WE LOVE HIM FOR IT

Now, two of our favorite things in the world just so happen to be ice cream and robots. So combining the two could only lead to awesome things, right? Well, that’s Yaskawa-kun is: a robot that vends ice cream. And yes, it’s super fantastic. Currently working a Tokyo Summerland, Yaskawa-kun has a touchscreen ordering panel, and you can even watch him make your treat for you. While the video below is pretty impressive, this is one thing we just need to see for ourselves. Continue reading Robot sells ice cream, we love him for it Robot sells ice cream, we love him for it originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 16 Aug 2010 18:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink CrunchGear | source Robonoble | Email this | Comments
August 15, 2010

JAPAN DAY 1

My plane left Hong Kong just after midnight. I spent my last hours in China wandering the halls of the Hong Kong International Airport. The shops were all closed, the lights were dim, the cast cosmopolitan. I should have taken more pictures, but I wanted to find an outlet to charge my batteries and spend my last few precious minutes online, since I had no idea what my access would be like in Japan. The smoking room at HKIA was small and filthy, but it also had the highest ratio of beautiful young women to lonely old men I’ve seen. Near the smoking room was a prayer room, where I snapped this. I landed at Haneda at 5 am, after passing by Mt. Fuji just as the sun was rising. It was beautiful. The international terminal at Haneda is tiny, no more than two dozen chairs in the waiting area. I made it through customs quickly and looked around for Kosuke. I didn’t really know who I was looking for, but I didn’t see anyone who looked like they were looking for me. After a few laps around the terminal I decided to find somewhere to hang out for a while. I sat down and made myself visible and failed to find a wireless signal and didn’t really know what to do with myself. I went to the bathroom, which had both a traditional Japanese toilet and a robotic toilet from the future that was clearly labeled “Western Style”. The fact that I was in Japan with no idea where I was going and no back up plans or internet to coordinate any back up plans suddenly began to sink in. Around 6am I started worrying that either Kosuke showed up at the wrong terminal or expected me to meet […]
August 15, 2010

ONJUKU, JAPAN

The next two days were wonderful and strange. I was taken to a large house in a beach front town named Onjuku in the prefecture of Chiba, where my Great Uncle, Tomoshisa Aoyama (my maternal grandmother’s youngest brother) owned a house that he designed himself on a half acre of land. It was a mixture of traditional Japanese design with a modern twist, so there was lots of open space in the central living area, which was unique to Japanese architecture. You can see something of the layout of the house in the Facebook pictures. You can make out in the pictures that the only real furniture in the house was a long wooden board that served as the main dining table, propped up on cardboard boxes and lined on both sides with pillows, and a very expensive looking leather sofa set and a fancy wood table. Furniture in Japan is always expensive, and this seemed particular classy. So classy, in fact, that my uncle Tomo was featured in the official Onjuku community brochure. If you go to this page and click on the first link with the “NEW” animated gif, you get the official brochure in pdf format. On the second page is a picture of Tomo in his leather couch, answering some question in Japanese and generally looking like a VIP. Soon after I arrived and met the people as best I could without sharing a common language, and was able with some complicated gestures to work out the family relations, Tomo took out an old scrap book of pictures of my mom’s family, which I looked through carefully and pointed and shared some laughs with the family. I was also offered a beer, which I drank and then began to feel quite sick. Unfortunately this was also […]
August 14, 2010

PROTOTYPE OF ROBOT THAT DEVELOPS EMOTIONS ON INTERACTING WITH HUMANS OFFICIALLY COMPLETE

The first prototype of a Nao robot that can develop emotions as it interacts with a human caregiver has been completed. A team across Europe was led by Dr. Lola Cañamero of the University of Herefordshire in the UK to develop the bot, which differs in several significant ways from those that came before it. These robots develop over time in much the way that a child does, learning to interact with and respond to the human beings around them. Modeled after human and chimpanzee childhood development paths, they are programmed to be highly adaptable to the people around them, and to become attached to whatever person is most suited to its needs and ‘personality’ profile. Over time, the more they interact, the more they learn and bond to the human being. These little ones, moreover, are capable of expressing a wide range of emotions, including anger, frustration, fear and happiness. The next steps are to research the bots’ emotional and non-linguistic behavior, and to move toward combining linguistic and non-linguistic communication to become further attached and adapted to them. Yes, we want one. Prototype of robot that develops emotions on interacting with humans officially complete originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 14 Aug 2010 12:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | source University of Herefordshire | Email this | Comments
December 8, 2010

THE REACTION OF GOVERNMENTS TO WIKILEAKS SHOULD SCARE THE HELL OUT OF YOU

December 8, 2010

DINOSAUR COMICS – DECEMBER 6TH, 2010 – AWESOME FUN TIMES!

Shared by Daniel h/t ben j sexy exciting dinosaur comics that you will love, I PROMISE
December 7, 2010

THE LIST

I have decided to maintain a list of corporations, organizations, and politicans who have pulled support for Wikileaks, or have otherwise bowed to political pressure against Wikileaks, and those who have openly supported Wikileaks. I haven’t found a comprehensive list online, but there is so much noise right now that it is hard to find good info. There are questionable accusations being thrown at Twitter and Facebook (for blocking all links to torrent sites), and I’d like some clean, well-sourced data. I see a lot of references to “Amazon, PayPal, and the like” without listing the organizations that are actively suppressing Wikileaks. I think it is important for us to track who is one what side of this debate, since the lines being drawn over Wikileaks are the same lines that divide the larger debate over the future of the internet. I don’t care if there are legitimate reasons for pulling support, if the decision was independently made with no political pressure, or if it is some massive conspiracy to destroy the internet. I just want to take stock and provide sources for who falls on what side of this issue. Here we go. If anyone can add to this list as things develop I’ll try to maintain it. Wikileaks Mirrors Pulled support or spoke out against: – Amazon – EveryDNS – PayPal – Visa – MasterCard – Sen. Lieberman – Tableau Software Publicly supported: – Glenn Greenwald – Ron Paul – XipWire – Anonymous/Operation Payback – The Pirate Bay – DataCell Hedged bets: – Facebook – Twitter – OVH
December 5, 2010

RAZORFISH PORTS DAVINCI INTERFACE TO KINECT, MAKES PHYSICS COOL (VIDEO)

Razorfish ports DaVinci interface to Kinect, makes physics cool (video) Razorfish is a little marketing company that has done some impressive things on Microsoft’s Surface, things you may or may not have seen because that particular brand of pedestal hasn’t exactly become a threat to the global dumbtable market. One of Razorfish’s cool things is a so-called Surface Physics Illustrator called DaVinci, which lets a user doodle on the screen and turn those doodles into balls, boxes, levers, and fulcrums. Now that code has effectively ported that code over to Kinect, as you can see in the video below, letting you do the same sort of things but with thine own two hands floating in mid-air. You can cause shapes to levitate, create gravity between them, make things orbit, even enable magnetism that alternately pulls and hurls your little doodles across the screen. The company is said to be continuing to refine the experience and maybe, if you all ask nice, they’ll even release the app when they’re through so you can try it for yourself. [Thanks, Luke] Continue reading Razorfish ports DaVinci interface to Kinect, makes physics cool (video) Razorfish ports DaVinci interface to Kinect, makes physics cool (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 05 Dec 2010 11:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | sourceRazorfish | Email this | Comments
December 4, 2010

YOUTUBE – FLYING LOTUS – KILL YOUR CO-WORKERS

https://youtu.be/zPLNK3mn7zE
December 3, 2010

GETROBO BLOG ENGLISH: AUTONOMOUS CAR MASTERMINDS CONVERGE AT GOOGLE

Stanford University Professor Sebastian Thrun led the team that built Stanley which won the DARPA Grand Challenge in 2005. Two years later, Christopher Urmson of Carnegie Mellon University was the team leader of the group that made Boss that won…
November 30, 2010

ENGADGET EXPLAINS NET NEUTRALITY — AND OUR FULL INTERVIEW WITH PROFESSOR TIM WU! — ENGADGET

Shared by Daniel Didn’t post this when it originally came out, but the Tim Wu interview is really quite excellent. Posting now for posterity. Still trying to get up to speed on the whole net neutrality situation? Check out the intro above for a recap of the basics —
November 29, 2010

MEKA, UT AUSTIN RESEARCHERS SHOW OFF ‘SOCIABLE’ DREAMER ROBOT HEAD

The folks at UT Austin’s HCR Laboratory have been working on a Meka humanoid robot for some time now, but they’ve only just recently added one pretty significant component to it: a head. This so-called “Dreamer” isn’t just your ordinary robot head, though — described by the researchers as a “sociable humanoid head,” the head is modeled on anime and comic characters, and promises to establish an “organic link to its biological counterpart, creating feelings of quasi-affinity in response to gestures and synthetic emotions.” In other words, it’s impressive enough to hold your attention while you interact with it, and it may very well creep you out a little. Head on past the break to check it out in action. Continue reading Meka, UT Austin researchers show off ‘sociable’ Dreamer robot head Meka, UT Austin researchers show off ‘sociable’ Dreamer robot head originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 29 Nov 2010 14:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | source HCR Laboratory | Email this | Comments
November 29, 2010

FANUC PICKER ROBOT GETS TURNED UP TO 11

You might remember this Fanuc pick and place robot from a post last year: https://youtu.be/czqn71NFa3Q Not bad, right? Well, since then someone’s gone and cranked it up to nutso: https://youtu.be/vkGCsi4dXcg Wow. Good thing sorting Skittles isn’t a real job, or I’d be looking at unemployment right now. [ FANUC ]
November 28, 2010

YOUTUBE – DINTERNET.AVI

Shared by Daniel h/t Ian. Fucking amazing. https://youtu.be/lWlRa6bU0Q8
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