June 11, 2006
Trust me, I'm a robot
IN 1981 Kenji Urada, a 37-year-old Japanese factory worker, climbed over a safety fence at a Kawasaki plant to carry out some maintenance work on a robot. In his haste, he failed to switch the robot off properly. Unable to sense him, the robot's powerful hydraulic arm kept on working and accidentally pushed the engineer into a grinding machine. His death made Urada the first recorded victim to die at the hands of a robot.
This gruesome industrial accident would not have happened in a world in which robot behaviour was governed by the Three Laws of Robotics drawn up by Isaac Asimov, a science-fiction writer. The laws appeared in “I, Robot”, a book of short stories published in 1950 that inspired a recent Hollywood film. But decades later the laws, designed to prevent robots from harming people either through action or inaction (see table), remain in the realm of fiction.
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Home >> RoboticsJune 03, 2006
iRobot Scooba Exposed
Robots have long fascinated humanity. Movies like "Artificial Intelligence: AI" (2001) and "I, Robot" (2004) portrait possible futures where all your mundane chores are performed by a mechanical life form. Just imagine not ever cleaning the windows, doing the dishes, or washing your car! On average, a family spends 1.8 hours per day doing just such activities. That is 12.6 hours a week, 655 hours a year, or 2,047 days of your life wasted on something that a robot could do.
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Home >> RoboticsSeptember 25, 2005
Racing Robots
Wanted by the Pentagon: A muscular, outdoorsy specimen. Must be intelligent and, above all, self-driven.
When 20 hulking robotic vehicles face off next month in a rugged race across the Nevada desert, the winning machine (if any crosses the finish line) will blend the latest technological bling and the most smarts.
The military sponsors the race to speed the development of unmanned vehicles for combat. The project had an inauspicious start: Last year's inaugural contest ended soon after it began when the robots careered off course or abruptly stalled. One even got tangled in barbed wire.
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Home >> RoboticsSeptember 17, 2005
Soccer-playing robots
Soccer-playing robots are kicking their way to world titles in artificial intelligence research.
Thursday, at the University of California at Merced, soccer "coach" Raul Rojas — a computer science and mathematics professor from Germany — gave a talk about his championship team.
"The soccer field is a good laboratory," said Rojas, who teaches at Freie Universitaet in Berlin. "It's small enough, but it's also very complex. The game is very fast."
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Home >> RoboticsSeptember 13, 2005
Mac mini robot
Researchers at the University of Oklahoma have built a Mac mini-powered robot, which uses iSight as its eyes.
The project aimed to: "see what it is like to control a robot using the built-in visual and aural sensors before designing an agent to do the same task". The researchers eventually hope to create an autonomous robot.
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Home >> RoboticsSeptember 05, 2005
Pilotless helicopter
Robots with artificial intelligence are moving from the realm of imagination to reality, opening opportunities for both military and commercial use.
New Mexico State University graduate and undergraduate engineering students and a faculty member are developing an autonomous helicopter _ one that can pilot itself without a human in the cockpit or holding a remote control.
From the university's NASA-funded RioRoboLab, which specializes in combining robotics and artificial intelligence, they are working with White Sands Missile Range and Lockheed Martin Corp.
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Home >> RoboticsJuly 22, 2005
Autonomous undersea robot developed
University of Hawaii scientists say they are close to completing the nation's first autonomous robotic vehicle for deep-ocean work.
The $12 million battery-powered aluminum submersible is about the size of a sport utility vehicle. The robotic unit has computers and sensors that allow it to make a decision to perform a task and a 5-foot, 150-pound autonomous manipulator, or arm, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin reported Tuesday.
Song Choi, assistant dean of the university's College of Engineering, said 99 percent of the vehicle's system is autonomous. He said 1 percent is semiautonomous for safety, allowing a signal to be sent to the vehicle to stop and return.
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Home >> RoboticsJuly 08, 2005
Will RFID-guided robots rule the world?
Take a closer look and you'll see the children wearing small electronic devices, tiny radio transmitters that signal the bot when the kids wander out of safe range. Equipped with a camera, the robot relays live video to a remote security facility. When a stranger approaches one of the children, the robot, controlled remotely, gets aggressive. On six wheels, it pursues the intruder, flashing bright lights and sirens and spewing a thick cloud of smoke. The cyber-guard snaps a few pictures, too.
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Home >> RoboticsJune 22, 2005
The next generation of prosthetics
Every week, 3,000 people lose a limb. They join the more than 4 million American amputees living in the United States. Prosthetics can help, but they're a far cry from the real thing.
Jay Martin, of Scott Sabolich Prosthetics & Research in Oklahoma City says much has been mimicked in prosthetics, but a few things are lacking. One is the control system. Prosthetics don't allow people to have a varied control corresponding to their environment. Secondly, they don't mimic whole natural biomechanical movements independent of the terrain. Martin says with the most advanced technology currently available, the ankle is positioned at a set angle and has a limited range of motion.
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Home >> RoboticsJune 16, 2005
'Curious' Aibos
Sony has succeeded in giving selected Aibo pet robots curiosity, researchers at Sony Computer Science Laboratory (SCSL) in Paris said last week. Their research won't lead to conscious robots soon, if ever, but it could help other fields such as child developmental psychology, they said during an open day in Tokyo.
More than 50 years ago Alan Turing, considered by many to be the father of computer science, speculated about the possibility of creating synthetic consciousness. Progress has been made with AI (artificial intelligence) systems, which have typically used task-defined learning algorithms that enable programs to define what is good or bad about particular sets of information in relation to achieving preset goals, according to SCSL researcher Frederic Kaplan.
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Home >> RoboticsJune 15, 2005
Japan's robot-led recovery
Ten teenagers huddled over a Transformer-like robot in a humble classroom are pioneers in a Japanese initiative called "super science", a nationwide effort in public education to nurture future leaders in technology.
While fears are growing that Japan is being overshadowed by the clout of China, along with increasingly successful businesses in other Asian nations, hopes are high for the program, which grants high schools money to pay for their own original technology curriculum.
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Home >> RoboticsJune 11, 2005
CajunBot
To help protect American military personnel, the U.S. Department of Defense has been mandated by the U.S. Congress to have one-third of its ground combat force unmanned by 2015. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the research agency for the U.S. Department of Defense, created the Grand Challenge to encourage the development of an autonomous “thinking” ground vehicle capable of navigating totally on its own.
A total of 106 teams applied to participate in the March 13, 2004 race, of those, UL Lafayette's CajunBot was one of only 13 vehicles that competed in the Grand Challenge. As expected, none of the vehicles were able to complete the course in 2004. The longest distance traveled by any contestant was 7.4 miles.
Read more about CajunBot
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Home >> RoboticsJune 07, 2005
The machine that can copy anything
A revolutionary machine that can copy itself and manufacture everyday objects quickly and cheaply could transform industry in the developing world, according to its creator.
The "self-replicating rapid prototyper," or "RepRap" is the brainchild of Dr. Adrian Bowyer, a senior lecturer in mechanical engineering at the University of Bath in the UK.
It is based on rapid prototyping technology commonly used to manufacturer plastic components in industry from computer-generated blueprints -- effectively a form of 3D printer.
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Home >> RoboticsMay 11, 2005
ROBEA Project
The machine called RABBIT, which resembles a high-tech Tin Man from "The Wizard of Oz," minus the arms, was developed by University of Michigan and French scientists over six years. It's the first known robot to walk and balance like a human, and late last year, researchers succeeded in making RABBIT run for six steps. It has been able to walk gracefully for the past 18 months.
Complete Article
Read More about ROBEA Project
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Home >> RoboticsMay 05, 2005
Penelope: The Robo-Nurse
Meet “Penelope”, the robo-nurse of the future. With nurse shortages becoming a problem nationwide, Penelope’s creators hope that their creation can help reduce the burden put on nurses.
The robot will not be involved with the actual care of the patients – the most important role of its human counterpart. Instead, its main job will be to help surgeons in the operating room with simple tasks.
Her developers, Michael Treat and his team at Robotic Surgical Tech, Inc., endowed her artificial intelligence specific to surgical situations. Penelope uses voice recognition technology to “listen” for the surgeon’s commands. When the surgeon asks for a scalpel, she repeats the word, and using a visual processing capability, reaches for the tool and hands it to the surgeon.
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Home >> RoboticsApril 30, 2005
iBOT
INDEPENDENCE® iBOT™ 3000 Mobility System, one of the most scientifically advanced devices of its kind ever brought to market. Power across sand, gravel, grass and other rough terrain…travel easily over curbs…rise to an "eye-level" position where you can reach new heights …climb up and down a flight of stairs -- you can do all this with your iBOT™ Mobility System. Created for people like yourself who want to be more active, this is the first powered mobility system that lets you go more places and do what you love - on your own and with little planning.
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Home >> RoboticsApril 27, 2005
Building robots with people in mind
n the isolated, otherworldly landscape of Utah's painted desert, NASA scientist William J. Clancey made an important breakthrough about how to create robots to assist astronauts on a future mission to Mars.
As geologists on the team explored the depths of a ravine, Clancey realized one of the most important needs of space travelers is the ability to stay in touch with home base.
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Home >> RoboticsApril 13, 2005
Hi-Tech Carers
By 2050, the over 65s in Japan are expected to make up a third of the population... and it's likely that technology will be relied upon to help look after them. My Special Partner is part of a Golden Years mini-series broadcast on BBC Two.
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Home >> RoboticsApril 11, 2005
i-Copter
ROBOT helicopters could be buzzing over Australia's broadacre paddocks and rural fires in the near future with a Brisbane aerospace company developing a low-cost model similar to surveillance craft used by the military.
At slightly less than $1 million the intelligent helicopter developed by privately owned V-TOL Aerospace won't be on the shopping list of every farmer and rural firefighting unit.
The V-TOL i-Copter™ Seeker is an intelligent VTUAV platform that can be customised to carry payloads of up to 10kg in a 230mm 2 axis gyro-stabilised gimbal. Operational Control is semi-autonomous or autonomous using a secure wireless LAN (i-Copter™ operating in V-TOL i-System™) that also provides a secure data link for real time sensors.
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Home >> RoboticsApril 02, 2005
ACTROIDS
From hostesses to security, the expo is a venue for testing human interaction with automatons.
A head and tusks of a frozen mammoth may be the main draw for some at the Aichi Expo. But hordes are also flocking to glimpse what the future has in store: robots as common as household appliances.
The expo features many such robots working alongside, or even in place of, humans.
The idea to showcase them was the brainchild of the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO). It aims to show off cutting-edge Japanese technologies now leading the world of robotics.
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Home >> RoboticsMarch 26, 2005
Homo Sapiens: deep-sea probes
Developing a robot that can independently quarry the secrets of the deep sea is Taro Aoki's dream.
For now, the closest he has come is the ``Urashima,'' an autonomous underwater vehicle developed by the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC) in Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture.
The real Urashima is loaded with state-of-the-art technology. Cable-less and unmanned, it travels underwater by drawing power from a fuel cell and following instructions from a built-in computer.
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Home >> RoboticsMarch 10, 2005
Nuts-and-bolts world
Creators of animated movies are routinely asked to fashion characters, stories, maybe an occasional new animal or creature. As in, let's meet the inhabitants of Andy's room ("Toy Story"), or explore deep waters with clown fish Marlin ("Finding Nemo"). Come along for the ride and see how we've re-imagined a world that you think you know.
When "Robots" opens nationally tomorrow, it will be the culmination of a dream for Shreveporter William Joyce. This celebrated author and illustrator of children's books will have envisioned an entirely new world for the big screen.
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Home >> RoboticsFebruary 22, 2005
Robots That Act Like Rats
Sanjay Joshi, assistant professor of mechanical and aeronautical engineering, and associate professor of psychology Jeffrey Schank have recorded the behavior of rat pups and built rat-like robots with the same basic senses and motor skills to see how behavior can emerge from a simple set of rules.
Seven to 10-day-old rat pups, blind and deaf, do not seem to do a whole lot. Videotaped in a rectangular arena in Schank's laboratory, they move about until they hit a wall, feel their way along the wall until their nose goes into a corner, then mostly stay put. Because their senses and responses are so limited, pups should be a good starting point for building robots that can do the same thing.
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Home >> RoboticsJanuary 26, 2005
Japanese engineer a giant leap for robotics
An Osaka-based consortium of robotics experts has thrown down the gauntlet to future players of the beautiful game with the confident claim that their humanoids will be so skilful that they will play mankind off the park within 50 years.
"By 2050, our aim is to beat the winners of football's World Cup and we are very confident that we will be able to do that," Shu Ishiguro, who heads Robot Laboratory, says.
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Home >> RoboticsJanuary 20, 2005
Bionic Robots
Researchers at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) have developed microscopic robots made of silicon that are powered by muscle tissue. The microbots were created by allowing the self-assembling cells to grow on a tiny robotic structure, less than one millimeter long.
Each structure had two legs with feet, and the cardiomyocytes, muscle cells from (in this case) a rat's heart, grow in an organized manner on the silicon superstructure (i.e., the skeleton). Since the muscle cells grow on their own, there is no need to graft muscle tissue to the superstructure. The structure can then be powered by placing it in a system charged with glucose, similar to a living body. The muscles then contract in an organized manner, causing the microbots to "walk."
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Home >> RoboticsJanuary 13, 2005
Robot makers say World Cup will be theirs by 2050
THE footballers of tomorrow will have the midfield guile of Zinedine Zidane, the finishing ability of Andriy Shevchenko and the staying power of Roy Keane.
A Japanese consortium of robotics experts has thrown down the gauntlet to future players of the beautiful game by claiming their engineered humans will play mankind off the park within 45 years.
"By 2050, our aim is to beat the winners of football’s World Cup and we are very confident that we will be able to do that," said Shu Ishiguro, who heads Robot Laboratory in Osaka. "When we have accomplished that, we will have a society in which humans and artificial intelligence are completely in harmony."
Mr Ishiguro and his team are placing their faith in the offspring of VisiON.
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Home >> RoboticsJanuary 12, 2005
Sixth Sensors
Dr. Stephen C. Jacobsen, robotics guru and head of the College of Engineering's Center for Engineering Design, has one of the most hyper-organized offices I've ever seen. Cabinets full of meticulously color-coded files line the walls, and his phone projects toward him on an articulated stalk. When I walk in, he seems entranced with the images on a large computer monitor.
You get the sense that this is a guy whose time is so valuable that everything around him must be structured perfectly to prevent a single moment's thought or movement from going to waste.
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Home >> RoboticsJanuary 06, 2005
Android learns faces, shakes hands
A team of South Korean scientists unveiled a bipedal robot equipped with wireless networking capabilities Thursday, which they claim is the first such android ever developed.
Called NBH-1, short for network based humanoid, the robot boasts the ability to communicate remotely with external computer servers from which it can receive software upgrades, said Yoo Beom-jae, who led its development.
"Through the wireless networking ability, NBH-1 can recognize people using facial recognition technology," said Yoo, a professor at the state-run Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST).
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Home >> RoboticsDecember 26, 2004
Robots take over across the globe
Robby the Robot and C-3PO may still be years away from reality, but robot vacuum cleaners, medical robots, surveillance robots, underwater robots and demolition robots are here now.
And rather than replacing the human work force, robots are creating a booming job market for engineers, software developers and other technical professionals, experts say.
American Honda Motor is touring the country with the company's Asimo robot, visiting schools to show off the two-legged 'bot to students and spread awareness of careers in the robotics industry.
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Home >> RoboticsDecember 24, 2004
Robocopters dodge obstacles, each other
The Berkeley Aerial Robot (BEAR) project passed a significant milestone earlier this month, when a 130-pound model of a helicopter successfully guided itself through a course that included random obstacles that weren't on its internal map--a first, according to the university.
The project, funded in part by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), is part of a larger effort to create robots that can get to places too dangerous or difficult for humans to go.
John Deere and iRobot, for instance, are working on an autonomous ground vehicle that will be able to bring supplies to soldiers at the front lines. Next year, the U.S. Army will deploy a robot car with a machine gun that will drive itself--but a human will be in control of the gun.
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Home >> RoboticsDecember 21, 2004
Four-limbed robot for surgery
Mount Elizabeth Hospital has paid S$2.5 million for the first four-armed robotic surgery machine in Singapore. It is the first private hospital to use the four-limbed robot.
It looks more like a Hollywood science fiction prop, but the robotic machine, code-named Da Vinci, has performed 24 real-life operations since November.
Doctors like to think of it as an extension of their own arms. Surgeons now have two extra limbs: one to hold a camera with 10 times magnification and the other to act as an assistant's arm.
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Home >> RoboticsDecember 20, 2004
You, Robot
When word got around that Hans Moravec had founded an honest-to-goodness robotics firm, more than a few eyebrows were raised. Wasn't this the same Carnegie Mellon University scientist who had predicted that we would someday routinely download our minds into robots? And that exponential advances in computing power would cause the human race to invent itself out of a job as robots supplanted us as the planet's most adept and adaptive species? Somehow, creating a company seemed ... uncharacteristically pragmatic.
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Home >> RoboticsDecember 09, 2004
Firm's robot arm braves crowded field
Entering what is becoming a booming but crowded field, a young medical technology firm in Hollywood called Z-KAT is hoping to build a billion-dollar business by developing a robotic arm for surgeons.
''This could be huge,'' says Chief Executive Maurice R. Ferre. ``We think we can save the healthcare industry $15 billion a year.''
Ferre, 44, is the son of the veteran Miami politician of the same name. A physician who studied in Boston, he developed there a med-tech company, Visualization Technology, building it from three to 180 employees before selling it to General Electric in 2002 for more than $100 million, according to published reports.
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Home >> RoboticsDecember 05, 2004
Bridging into the future
A tiny, four-wheeled robot zipped across the table Saturday toward the pair of eye glasses it had been programmed to retrieve.
Five engineers watched anxiously to see what would come of their two months of design and programming work. When the robot's recovery arm crashed down, missing the glasses and sending the robot into an empty-handed retreat, 10 small hands shot out towards it, tweaking this and reattaching that.
The robot was made of Legos, and the engineers were between 12 and 14 years old, but the look on their faces made it clear that they weren't just playing around. The TechGyrls, a team from the Westmoreland County YWCA, were practicing for their robot's final run in the First Lego League Challenge at Carnegie Mellon University's National Robotics Engineering Consortium building in Lawrenceville.
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Home >> RoboticsNovember 27, 2004
Robotic turkey gets a spring in its step
Researchers at MIT's Leg Laboratory have built a series of legged robots, including one-legged hoppers, bipedal runners, bipedal walkers, a quadruped, and two kangaroo-like robots.
Legged robots may be useful for everything from exploring inaccessible or hazardous locations to providing service or entertainment in the places we live and work. Understanding how humans and other animals walk and run is interesting scientifically and important medically. Leg Lab research has been used to develop a new and improved artificial knee that adapts to terrain, among other applications.
The first walking robot was Spring Turkey, which could only walk in circles attached to the end of a mechanical boom. Later came Troody, a fully autonomous bipedal robot modeled after the dinosaur Troodon, which could walk around on its own. The latest is Butch, a protoceratops, which will simulate a realistic-looking dinosaur with the help of special effects.
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Home >> RoboticsNovember 23, 2004
The human behind this year's hot robot
Robosapien took its curmudgeonly place this year in a toy menagerie that also includes cyber-critters ranging from the occasionally annoying talking Furby pet to the gleaming, expensive Sony Aibo robotic dog.
The humanoid robot stands out in part because there's a human behind the marketing campaign: Mark Tilden, the British-born "robotics physicist" at Hong Kong-based Wow Wee. Tilden says he has worked for "NASA, DARPA and JPL through Los Alamos National Laboratory, and other government and private research agencies studying robotic methods."
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Home >> RoboticsNovember 17, 2004
Bio-inspired modules open new horizons for robotics
Inspired by cell biology, European researchers have created the world’s first shape-shifting robot made of many modules, which could lead to new applications in fields ranging from medicine and space exploration to education and entertainment.
On display at IST 2004 in The Hague and being showcased on 17 November in Tokyo, the HYDRA project’s robots have broken new ground in robotics and artificial intelligence through a simple but highly effective design that allows the devices to configure themselves into almost any shape and perform a variety of functions.
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Home >> RoboticsNovember 05, 2004
My baby bot
NEC designer Junichi Osada calls his latest robotic wonder his baby, and he isn't kidding.
NEC's young genius has obviously developed a close relationship with the small robot that goes far beyond mechanical boundaries.
Osada has programmed PaPeRo with a startling range of human responses
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Home >> RoboticsOctober 25, 2004
A robotics population to explode
The growth of robotics is expected to take off and gather momentum in both home and industrial markets, the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (ECE) reported in a new survey of the world's robots.
"The chances of having an obedient robot do unwelcome or dangerous jobs have increased tremendously," the report stated.
The World Robotics Survey 2004 was produced by the ECE and the International Federation of Robotics.
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Home >> RoboticsOctober 21, 2004
High-tech club builds 12-inch airplane
A group of 20 UA students are working on an award-winning Micro-Air Vehicle design, which carries an onboard Global Positioning System, infrared sensors and cutting-edge artificial intelligence.
The students are part of the Micro Air Vehicle club, which hopes to develop a small, hard-to-detect unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV, for use in military applications.
Machine foresees the future of micro air vehicle mainly in the area of defense where one can track the inaccessible areas. The autopilot micro vehicle with advanced communication/sensing/control and computation technologies like GPS, IR and AI and neural networks which will create its own map and maneuver in the areas no one know about.
For now this is an expensive hobby and research which need a lot of funding but in coming future with rapid advancement in technologies it will become a big area of robotic research like now is Human Robotics.
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Home >> RoboticsOctober 12, 2004
INEEL researchers putting more brains into robots
Researchers at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory are trying to put some thought into the robots that have been taking over many of the world's routine tasks.
Their effort could help reduce the numbers of soldiers and civilians killed or wounded by improvised explosive devices.
Robotics researcher David Bruemmer and his colleagues are developing programs that would increase the intelligence behind the robotic ability to mechanically reproduce the actions dictated by human operators.
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Happy birthday, dear robots
Monday marked the first of four days celebrating the anniversary of Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute. This month marks the 25th year of innovation for the Robotics Institute.
The Institute was founded by Raj Reddy, Angel Jordan, and Tom Murrin, professors at the time, when the field of robotics was relatively primitive. Their vision has put Carnegie Mellon on the map in that field. Their goal was to make Carnegie Mellon "the best place on the Earth to do robotics research."
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Home >> RoboticsSeptember 30, 2004
Robot Music
A new guitar-sensation has hit the world stage and musicians from around the globe are clamouring for a joint billing.
This star can play styles from classical to heavy metal, and can pluck and strum guitar strings with super-human speed and precision.
But despite talent and adoring fans, there's no ego, because the guitarist in question is a robot.
"GuitarBot" was created in New York two years ago by the group Lemur, or the League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots.
Karen Barlow caught up with Lemur artist and engineer, Eric Singer, who's touring Australia with "GuitarBot".
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Home >> RoboticsSeptember 25, 2004
Robby
Robby the Robot served human masters on Altair IV in the film Forbidden Planet. While he certainly looks the part of an otherworldly metallic automaton, Robby is actually a fake. The robot suit separates into three pieces that are then worn by an actor.
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Home >> RoboticsSeptember 20, 2004
Sony's biped entertainment robot - QRIO
The Gulf operations of Sony Corporation, Sony Gulf, has extended an invitation to QRIO, the entertainment robot developed by the company, to visit the Middle East for the first time during this year's edition of the GITEX Shopper 2004, which has been accepted.
Embodying the precepts of 'Artificial Intelligence' and 'Information Technology', QRIO – which is an acronym for 'Quest for Curiosity' – can walk, talk and do a lot more.
QRIO, which has been a feature of Sony's participation at leading international events for some time now, will be a full time attendee at the GITEX Shopper 2004, the Middle East's premier IT exhibition which opens on the 2nd of October in Dubai.
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Home >> RoboticsSeptember 19, 2004
A Fully Autonomous Robot Builds Its Own Brain and Learns from Scratch
For the first time in history, a robot has built its own synthetic central nervous system and then learned not only to walk, but how to autonomously enter and navigate the corridors of complex buildings.
This dramatic experiment was recently conducted at Imagination Engines, Inc. (IEI) in St. Louis, Missouri. Company President & CEO, Dr. Stephen Thaler points out that heretofore, scientists in the field of artificial intelligence have grossly over exaggerated claims that their robots are autonomous when in fact, immense scholarly efforts have been poured into writing what he calls “if-then-else” computer programs. Alternately, he points out that genetic programmers have devised schemes wherein neural circuitry evolves to enable robots to perform moderately challenging tasks. However, close analysis of the engineering results reveal that these feats are not so amazing, nor are they accomplished in convenient time scales. Tasks as simple as navigating a simple racetrack maze typically requires about 48 hours, not to mention the month invested in writing and perfecting the underlying computer program!
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Home >> RoboticsSeptember 16, 2004
Biomimetic Robots
From the ominous Klaatu of The Day the Earth Stood Still to the Terminator, we've seen robots typically portrayed on screen as stiff, humanoid machines. But it's not just Hollywood that has locked robots to the human form.
"A lot of conventional thinking pervades the field of robotics," says Morley Stone, a program manager in the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's defense sciences office. "They still look very much like they are depicted in grainy black-and-white films. You see this humanoid robot that doesn't walk very well. We still haven't improved upon that all that much."
Forget the anthropomorphs. Today, researchers are looking in the cupboards of their local diners and under rocks for biological inspiration to create a new generation of flying, crawling, and swimming automatons known as biomimetic robots. Intrigued by how other species have adapted to a whole world of environmental niches, researchers are working to understand and reverse-engineer the adaptive traits of creatures, including those—like the seemingly indestructible cockroach—we might much rather step on than study.
Posted by Vishwakarma C. K. @ 07:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Home >> RoboticsSeptember 10, 2004
Rise of the robot
Robots hold a persistent fascination for our culture. Ever since Rossum's Universal Robots by Karel Capek in 1920, and the more enduring Metropolis, directed by Fritz Lang in 1926, we have wanted robots to do more of the hard work - yet been continually disappointed by what they can actually do.
The year 2001 came and went without any sign of a computer with anything like the intelligence or awareness of HAL from 2001:
A Space Odyssey, or a C-3PO from Star Wars. Instead, what did we get? Sony's Aibo - a rather limited robot dog. If you ever needed a metaphor for how technological reality lags behind dreams, there it is.
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Home >> RoboticsSeptember 08, 2004
Robots invade the table football pitch
Fans of table football, or foosball, will no longer have to hang around at the pub waiting for a friend to turn up before they can play. A robotic foosball table will be able to give them just as good a game.
Foosball is a table-based game in which players twist, push and pull rotating metal rods attached to figures representing soccer players. The idea is to use the model players to kick a ball into the opponent's goal.
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Home >> RoboticsSeptember 03, 2004
Pool-playing robot
Michael Greenspan is no pool shark, but the Queen’s prof has built a robot he hopes one day might rival the best players in the world.
Greenspan, who describes himself as a “very average pool player,” got the idea to build a pool-playing machine while attending a robotics conference in Vancouver in 1998. After spending all day looking at cutting edge robotics technologies, he and some friends were out playing pool.
“My game wasn’t going great and it occurred to me that it would be a lot more likely for me to build a robotics system that could play a decent game of pool than it would be for me to master the game itself,” he says.
Posted by Vishwakarma C. K. @ 03:13 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
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