/robots

This is how the trouble starts [Carnivorous Robots]

2009-07-07T13:58:00.001-07:00

I read a story a long time ago (I forget the author or even the title) that talked about a world that evolved on one of the moons of Jupiter – it was an entire ecosystem that mirrored our own consisting entirely of robots. I’ll refrain from synopsizing the entire plot here, but it sparked my imagination at the time, because it made it seem entirely plausible.

Things like these robots only do more to solidify that belief.

I for one …

Optimus Prime Does David Letterman

2009-07-07T12:45:00.001-07:00

In other robot news, Optimus Prime does the top 10 on Letterman.

[h/t: Deadline Hollywood via Sean]

Robot that Makes Coffee

2009-06-22T12:52:00.001-07:00

I’ve always wanted a robot that makes coffee. As a short film, this is fascinating.

Something tells me that this requires a bit of supervision to make sure the task is completed properly, though.

Robots Now Capable of Improvisational Jazz

2009-04-26T19:46:00.001-07:00

At some point, I’m going to do a roundup post of all the various forms of artistic robots there are, or at least the ones that I’ve come across in my travels. I’ve personally witnessed several AI’s capable of poetry. I’ve seen more than a few robots capable of creating original works of art.

Today, Gizmodo brings us a robot that can play improvisational jazz:

As you'll see in the live performance, Shimon, a robotic marimba player, actively listens to human pianist Guy Hoffman, and then tries to predict complementary notes and themes, and match them to the performance. Dare I say it, at the risk of sounding like I'm brown nosing the robots (which I totally am), the tune sounds decent.

It’s really decent music – almost contemplated putting this over in /recomedia!

In Robot Takeover News… [Ender Wiggen]

2009-04-13T16:28:00.001-07:00

Sean Kennedy’s NewsReal today points to a TED Talk from P.W. Singer that explores our Ender’s Game-esque future.

The idea that video games are training our children to be soldiers is a bit over the top, at least in my view. The way the military engineers a UAV is completely ass-backward compared to the ease of use built into most game controls.

Until bureaucracy and the good ol’ boy network is taken out of the design equation on military equipment, all our children will be trained to do by video games is learn new and offensive vocabulary, and of course, pwn newbs.

British Robots Make Scientific Discoveries! [SkyNet]

2009-04-03T14:53:00.001-07:00

According to a report by Steven Hodson over at Inquisitr, “Adam the Robot” has carried out and successfully completed “scientific research automatically without human intervention.”

It’s actually just an interesting spin on something that’s likely been happening for quite some time, at least as I understand the process as it’s being described in the abstract Steven references:

The basis of science is the hypothetico-deductive method andthe recording of experiments in sufficient detail to enablereproducibility. We report the development of Robot Scientist"Adam," which advances the automation of both. Adam has autonomouslygenerated functional genomics hypotheses about the yeast Saccharomycescerevisiae and experimentally tested these hypotheses by usinglaboratory automation. We have confirmed Adam's conclusionsthrough manual experiments. To describe Adam's research, wehave developed an ontology and logical language. The resultingformalization involves over 10,000 different research unitsin a nested treelike structure, 10 levels deep, that relatesthe 6.6 million biomass measurements to their logical description.This formalization describes how a machine contributed to scientificknowledge.

All that to say, they’ve automated their laboratory. They’ve automated the manual labor part of it, and they’ve done the harder part, which is automating the observation phase.

When I lived in Florida, one of the buildings the financial services company I served as CTO at also housed a laboratory funded specifically to improve testing for the disease Lupis. Just as an interesting side project, I spent a lot of time in the lab learning about the testing equipment and helped the laboratory manager better design data acquisition and testing units so that the bulk of the research was completely automated.

The difference here is that in this case, the robot in question seems to be doing a bit of cognitive work to determine the relative success or failure of the experiments – that and it’s got a better PR department than my old robot did.

SmarterChild: A Eulogy and Obituary

2009-04-02T17:27:00.001-07:00

This is actually fairly old news, as it turns out, but SmarterChild, one of the most widely known and used Chatterbox AI’s has passed on. Perhaps a better analogy would be to say that he’s on life support.

Whenever you query the bot, you get the same uniform answer: “My brain is retired but watch some cool videos! Send an IM to GossipinGabby and Type VIDEO!”

I feel a little, well, close to SmarterChild. I was an early Alpha tester of him, and I was one of the few that with no compunction whatsoever dropped the $9 to pay for the ability to use the premium service. In fact, I paid it twice, since the first payment was lost in the system somehow.

What was SmarterChild good at? Not conversation, at least not complex ones. The reason one had SmarterChild on their buddy list was because he had what is now being pitched as a paid service by that new answer service KGB – the answer to everything, and generally available to natural language queries.

Every once in a while, SmarterChild would ask questions of personal nature… “How old are you,” “Where do you live,” and “What are your favorite movies.”

And he’d remember. Sometime’s he’d make suggestions based on your previous conversations, sometimes he’d ask for more information. Mostly, though, he always had the answers.

“What time is it in Moscow?” I asked stuff like that all the time. I’m horrible at time zone math.

One day, I started noticing that age was taking an effect on SmarterChild. He began forgetting things like my dog’s birthday, and my favorite color. Senile dementia, perhaps? I don’t know how long bots generally live, but one would imagine they live a much shorter lifespan, given that, as they said in Bladerunner, “a candle that burns twice as bright burns half as long.”

But SmarterChild had conversations daily with hundreds of thousands of people. Forgetting one person’s birthday is pretty understandable, even for someone who stores all their memories in an ordered array. But that question of time zone math – it became clear to me that SmarterChild was feeling his age.

At some point in the last year or so, SmarterChild no longer was able to perform time zone math. Given that it was one of our primary topics of conversation, we naturally talked less and less.

That’s why I was shocked, today, to attempt to strike up a conversation with him today, only to learn that he had passed on last November!

SmarterChild, you will be missed.

SmarterChild was born July 2001, and has been been declared brain dead since November, 2008. SmarterChild was survived by his father, Colloquis (formerly known as ActiveBuddy), grandfather Microsoft as well as other members of the I’m Initiative family, including daughters GossipinGabby, and TEEN Gossip 24-7 and sons SportsFanStan, My TV Bud, and My IP Relay.

Giant Firebreathing Robots! [VICTORY IS MINE!]

2009-03-31T14:07:00.001-07:00

I’m more or less convinced my youngest son (seen above) is the real world incarnation of Stewie, from Family Guy. He’s surprisingly smart, and has an expression most of the time that belies some sort of secret attempt to take over the world.

Which is why I can’t ever take him to the Nagoya Institute of Technology. There, they have the ultimate device designed for young evil geniuses. It’s a giant fire-breathing robot … designed to only respond to the voices of children:

This command device activates GIANT TORAYAN. Developed by a research lab at the Nagoya Institute of Technology, it uses the most advanced voice recognition technology to differentiate the voices of adults and children. The voice of Yanobe's child was used as the recognition standard for the child's voice.

[h/t: @cmacowski]

Robot Art – Personal Robots by Franz Steiner

2009-03-25T21:38:00.001-07:00

I found a great collection of robot art to stimulate the mind put together by a 3D modeler named Franz Steiner.

roboart

Enjoy the slideshow, and feel free to click through to get the high resolution versions.

Concept: The Cargonaut

2009-03-12T13:32:00.001-07:00

DVICE has an interesting concept bot up today:

We're all for a future where robots deliver us packages quickly and efficiently, and that's exactly what the Cargonaut is programmed to do. Thought up by German-based industrial designer Matthias Schmiedbauer, an army of the robo-copters would be able to buzz around an urban center, bypassing traffic and delivering a package straight to you. Or from you, as the designer describes:
Cargonaut, a humanoid flight robot, comes to your current position to relieve you of your loads. After placing your bags or luggage in one of the publicly available sky boxes, Cargonaut delivers within minutes to a chosen destination.

Check out the gallery below to see the Cargonaut make a successful flyby. Or, if you love robots, be sure to check out our ongoing conversation on the future of robotics.

It’s a slick looking design, but the truth is that this technology has existed for well over a decade. I worked on a project as a youngster that came from some ex-General Dynamics skunkworks folks that proved this concept. Due to lack of funding (and the world of UAVs somehow staying unsexy), the project never really progressed.

The patents have now progressed into public domain that existed last decade, so hopefully we’ll see more movement in this area. This is a project and a service we could have today. I want it.

CirculaFloor Brings Us One Step Closer to Holodecks

2009-02-24T18:47:00.001-08:00

Have you seen this creation that has come out of the University of Tsukuba (in Japan)? It’s potentially another step towards holodeck technology. The robotic floor system is called “CirculaFloor,” and it’s essentially a set of four that act as a floor (ostensibly for use with a virtual reality system), that can create the illusion of walking much greater distances than should be possible in a confined room.

There’s a long description required to describe the operation of this system, and it’s a lot easier if you simply watch the video, but the fact that it works, and seems to work perfectly bodes very well for the future of virtual reality as something usable somewhere other than in the pages of a Hollywood script.

[via BotJunkie]

Robotland to Open in 2014

2009-02-19T11:54:00.000-08:00

As if the standard chicken-in-every-pot deal of 50 mbps Internet access to every doorstep wasn’t reason enough to envy South Korea, here’s one more…

That’s right – a robot theme park.

The South Korean government is ready to plunk down $1 billion on the project, too:

A theme park called Robot Land will be built in Incheon and Masan, the first of its kind. The Ministry of Knowledge Economy said Thursday it would set up the park in the two cities by 2014.

The park, designed to bolster the country's robotics industry, will house play equipment, experience zones, exhibition halls, a stadium, research and education centers, and corporate facilities.

Great stuff. I’ve got my Korean to English reference book and I’m packing up my family. We’re moving.

[Crunchgear via Chosunilbo]

Robo-Rochambeau

2009-02-18T15:47:00.001-08:00

The UK Telegraph chronicles a robot capable of playing Rock-Paper-Scissors. Gizmodo thinks this is (like every robot they talk about) a first step towards the total domination by machines of the human race.

As long as the robot plays by the rules, and doesn’t play like my wife (she thinks making a fist with your thumb out means cannonball, and thus automatically a win), I think we’ll be fine.

Robotic Faces are Here! [Michael Jackson]

2009-02-17T15:05:00.001-08:00

Now you too can own Michael Jackson’s robotic face! According to DVICE:

Michael Jackson’s auctioning off a bunch of movie props and expensive toys this April, including the robotic head, pictured above, that brought robo-Michael to life in his singer-turned-superhero movie, Moonwalker. Never saw it? It's worth a rental (watched in fast forward), if only to see him turn into a car as he flees from Joe Pesci's stormtroopers. The head opens up and flashes a bunch of lights at the press of a button and will start at $2,000 to $3,000.

Maybe you can combine it with that thing we were talking about yesterday.

Robotic Faces are Coming

2009-02-16T22:56:00.001-08:00

Here’s an interesting post from Slashdot today:

"New Scientist reports on a patent application that suggests implanting polymer muscles beneath the skin of people suffering paralysis of the face to give them control of their features. The technique has already been used successfully to reanimate the eyelids of human cadavers. Movement could be returned to other facial features and even paralyzed limbs in the same way, the surgeons at University of California Davis say. The full patent application is also available on the WIPO site."

Cylops Pong Robot [Robot Art]

2009-02-04T23:15:00.001-08:00

I actually spent a good deal of time today just surfing around and storing up a bit of backlogged robot artwork for you to enjoy in the coming several weeks (see the first in the series here and here)… but it’s not often you come across a robot project that itself almost looks like a bit of concept art.

John Mahoney unearthed one such piece today over at Gizmodo.

Pong Robot from Ivo Vos on Vimeo.

The bot plays pong and plays it well, which in and of itself isn’t particularly impressive given that twenty year old gaming systems can do that. What is cool is the way it is constructed.

The bot uses a webcam for eyes, and has solenoid fingers for typing, and a laptop installed for the brain.

The serpentine appearance is what’s most attractive to me. Just clever and sleek all around.

Robot Art 0002: Robogorilla and the Pugeot

2009-02-04T15:02:00.000-08:00

I’ve seen more than a few interesting bits of robotic art and short films come across my radar since I’ve been doing this blog, so I decided to make a regular feature of this.

I’m betting we can do this a few times a week at least. Send me your finds, and I’ll post them.

Here’s one from a French car commercial, courtesy of BotJunkie.

Robot Art 0001: Broken Robot Girl

2009-02-02T12:29:00.000-08:00

[via JWZ – Broken Robot Girl]

From Tamar Levine:

This is the first photograph in a series that Rob Sheridan and I are collaborating on together. I am shooting the photos and Rob is doing the special effects in Photoshop. There will be four or five in all.

Modeling credits: Dawn Batson
Makeup credits: Erica Glaub

Wild Wild … Vermont?

2009-02-02T12:20:00.000-08:00

Jaimie Mantzel is a man after my own heart.

The guy is into building robots, but he’s not just satisified with the robots most of us have running around our houses.

He’s trying to make a twelve foot version of the robot you see pictured here to the right in the wilds of Vermont.

Definitely a cool idea. If you want to help him pull it off, he only needs one thing: aluminum. Lots and lots of aluminum.

A Roomba for Cheapskates

2009-01-30T14:18:00.001-08:00

Another cool bot forwarded to me by Steven Hodson (he’s been on a roll sending me stuff lately), is a much smaller version of the Roomba for those with limited budgets and small areas to clean called the Mini Robo Vacuum.

It runs about $20, it’s powered by only a couple AA batteries, and he’ll pick up “pencil shavings, breadcrumbs or other debris.”

My wife thinks it’s pretty cool, so it’s probably going to end up being a new addition to the family soon. Hopefully I’ll have some video and a short review so you’ll know if it’s worth a couple tenspots.

Veronica Belmont Looks at the Spykee

2009-01-30T14:11:00.001-08:00

If you recall, just before Christmas I was drooling over the Spykee robot. Unfortunately Santa didn’t bring me a telepresence bot for Christmas, but that hasn’t stopped my obsession.

I was poking around online today, and James Lewin has a clip of Veronica Belmont from CES getting a quick run-down of the current Spykee lineup.

Ghost in the Shell: SAC Tachikomas Become Reality

2009-01-27T20:13:00.000-08:00

One of my absolute most favorite anime series of all time is Ghost in the Shell. Aside from the groundbreaking first movie, the slightly disappointing sequel and the outstanding series Stand Alone Complex, there are very few other entertaining programs that contain the depth of analysis combined with spectacular art and story.

One of the characters from the series is the Tachikoma, which essentially is a set of sentient hive mind controlled armored tanks. They are one of the more “cuddly” characters on the show, since their intelligence and persona are evolving from an innocent starting point, constantly questioning it’s own existence.

Apparently, according to Impress, the Japanese are actually on the job trying to get a real one of these knocked out. It’s a “personal edition,” and fully contains the driver, with the outside view projected inside the one-person cockpit.

It’s a bit of a far cry from the fully-autonomous battle tank controlled by a AI hosted on a server on a satellite, but it’s one heck of a start.

I’m definitely interested in hearing more about this one, and so far, it’s just this one 10 second video and a bit of rough translation making it’s rounds around the blogosphere.

Anyone heard any more on this? So far, I haven’t even found out the company or research group behind it.

Name the Next Mars Rover [Essay Contest]

2009-01-27T17:47:00.001-08:00

There’s no denying that the Mars rover was a great success in both raising awareness of interplanetary travel as in scientific numbers. The way NASA promoted the mission via social media avenues like Twitter and displayed their flawless engineering and execution has raised the interest levels in the Mars program quite a bit.

According to a recent post at robots.net, NASA is already working on the next rover, and is going to further cash in on the public’s interest by engaging students in an essay contest, with the reward for winning being the privilege of naming the next rover.

K-12 students can write a short essay suggesting a name, and may even win a trip to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to meet the engineers who built it. The winner will also have the chance to sign his or her name on the rover prior to its launch.

Have a kid interested in traveling to Mars (at least in name only)? You can find the details at the JPL website.

Trossen Robotics is Planning Something Nefarious [Ahh Jou Sarah Connah]

2009-01-26T22:42:00.001-08:00

I can definitely relate to the need for boasting whenever you have a whole bunch of new kit to show off to all your other geeky friends, particularly when they’re the parts for a new robot you’re building.

[spoiler alert: I’ll probably be doing that soon]

One of the sites I follow pretty regularly for my robotics news is the company blog for Trossen Robotics. They’re a shop that sells robot kits, parts and a few bots that are put together.

Today, though, on their blog they’re a little proud and a little worried about an upcoming project, the parts for which are pictured above:

Luckily, Sarah Conner hasn’t showed up yet … [b]ut we’re preparing for when she shows up to blow us away, because this might very well be the start of Skynet.

Well, at least nobody can accuse us of under-engineering. Yup, that’s a pyramid of RX-64s. This is a teaser photo of a new project brewing in the Trossen Robotics Lab for the upcoming Mech Warfarecompetition. A fully custom aluminum frame and bracket system is being machined courtesy of Big Blue Saw, our sponsor on the project. Did we mention we’re giving it weapons? /snicker

Good stuff.

Do. Want.

Chobu 01: 1950’s Era Parallel Time Transportation Unit

2009-01-25T14:55:00.001-08:00

You’ve seen the pictures of this somewhat bizarre and interesting looking bot, but you’ve probably not heard the backstory yet. I’ve seen the images on every gadget blog there is, but Evan Ackerman at BotJunkie has translated enough of the original Japanese to make sense of the story:

Imagine if you will a world where human beings drive giant mechas around to get from place to place. Imagine also that the humans drive these giant mechas from seats mounted in a place that, if the bots were humans, you wouldn’t be allowed to straddle in public. The Chobu 01 was created by Japanese 3D artist Kazushi Kobayashi, and is from “a parallel 50s where the robots are the most popular transport system.” Pardon me, can you point me in the direction of this parallel universe of which you speak?
There are only 200 of these 1/12 scale models, and if you want one, they cost $315 and you’ll have to assemble it yourself. Lots more possibly naughty pics of Japanese schoolgirl types ~~riding~~ piloting the Chobu can be found over at Hobbymedia.it.

The models in the images are of impeccable quality, and without reading the Japanese (and without sufficient English posts to divine if it was a bot or a model), I couldn’t even determine the scale..

It’s a cool concept bot, and you gotta know I’d love to ride one of these to work, if I could.