Clipmarks | balthazarus's 'robotics' clips

Robots with a taste for flesh..

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 10:06:45 GMT

clipped by: balthazarus

Domestic robots with a taste for flesh

Believing that they need to fit unobtrusively into the home, he has built robotic furniture.

need to be useful and entertaining, he has given the furniture an appetite for vermin, like mice and flies

Each can sense its environment, has mechanical moving parts, and can perform basic services for its human hosts, such as telling the time or lighting a room.

They can gain energy by chomping on flies and mice

The pests are lured in and digested by an internal microbial fuel cell. This exploits the way microbes generate free electrons and hydrogen ions when oxidising chemicals for energy. Electronics can be powered by directing the electrons around an external circuit before reuniting them with the ions.

Although, for now, the robots rely on mains power, Auger believes they could become truly self-sufficient

Clip Source: www.newscientist.com

Coffee table robot

This is a coffee table that doubles as a mouse trap.

Crumbs are placed on the table to encourage mice to climb up

sensors open the door

Tags: robotics, energy

Today it's a cute friend. Tomorrow it could be the dominant life form

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 08:32:25 GMT

clipped by: balthazarus
clipper's remarks: "For several years after the Wright brothers had first taken to the air there were those who claimed that they were not flying: what birds do is fly and this was very different...."

Clip Source: www.timesonline.co.uk

Today it's a cute friend. Tomorrow it could be the dominant life form

given where we were in the late 1990s and where we are now, where will we be in ten or even twenty years time? What will robots be capable of in 2030? Will we be able to trust an Asimo servant not to spike our drink? Indeed, will Asimo still be our servant or will the roles have been reversed?

“the singularity”

At this stage it will then be intelligent machines, robots if you like, or upgraded humans, augmented by a merger with technology, who become the dominant life forms on Earth.

But is this actually a possibility

how could a computer appreciate the smell of a rose or understand a joke? And even so, if a robot ever got out of hand, well, we could always switch it off, couldn't we?

Can we switch off the internet today, practically, realistically?

We must not think in terms of individual machines, but a network

have only five senses: it is estimated that humans sense less than 5 per cent of what is going on around them

Tags: robotics

Planting the seeds for the survival of humanity

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 08:23:29 GMT

clipped by: balthazarus
clipper's remarks: “If things go really well, we’re maybe ten years away from that happening,” Mr Hanson said. “But it’s very important that we develop empathic machines, machines that have compassion, machines that understand what you’re feeling. If these robots do become as intelligent as human beings, we want this infrastructure of compassion and empathy to be in place so the machines are prepared to use their intellectual powers for the good of civilization."
It seems that we demand from the robots to exhibit all that which humanity cannot...

Clip Source: technology.timesonline.co.uk

Is Albert Einstein robot too human? Everything’s relative

Albert Einstein has been re-created as a robot, right down to the unruly hair and luxuriant moustache, but the electronic version is no genius by human standards.

the robot Einstein is extraordinary in that it can recognise and respond to human emotions.

determine just how human-like future robots should be

Scientists also hope that it will ensure the development of empathetic robots, thus avoiding conflicts between man and machine.

It is manipulated by 31 motors around its mouth and eyes

Einstein can recognise hundreds of facial expressions including sadness, anger, fear, happiness and confusion, as well as cues suggesting age and gender.

A key area of research will be the question of how closely robots should resemble humans. It appears that the more human-like the robot, the more uncomfortable it makes people feel.

This dilemma is crucial to robotics

In a way, we’re planting the seeds for the survival of humanity

Tags: robotics, technology, empathy

Innovation: Robotic faces… for humans

Wed, 18 Feb 2009 08:49:56 GMT

clipped by: balthazarus

Clip Source: www.newscientist.com

Innovation: Robotic faces… for humans

The design of prosthetic limbs has taken huge strides in recent years – sometimes literally. Modern prosthetics incorporate "mechatronic" elements borrowed from robotics to ensure that they are almost fully functional replacements for missing body parts, sometimes even controlled directly by the wearers' brains.

using artificial polymer muscles to reanimate the facial features of people suffering from severe paralysis.

having tested it successfully on cadavers.

example

regain control over partially or fully paralysed eyelids

will struggle with social interaction and can have low self-esteem, but there are health implications too

If a patient tries to close their eyes, the effort triggers electrical activity in the muscles that would normally close the eyelids. The polymer muscle detects this activity and contracts, pulling on its cords to fully close the eyelids.

could monitor the activity of the healthy eye and synchronise the actions

Clip Source: www.newscientist.com

Tags: robotics, faces

Robots Evolve And Learn How to Lie

Sat, 31 Jan 2009 11:34:40 GMT

clipped by: balthazarus
clipper's remarks: "The fourth colony sometimes evolved “cheater” robots instead, which would light up to tell the others that the poison was food, while they themselves rolled over to the food source and chowed down without emitting so much as a blink.

Some robots, though, were veritable heroes. They signaled danger and died to save other robots. “Sometimes,” Floreano says, “you see that in nature—an animal that emits a cry when it sees a predator; it gets eaten, and the others get away—but I never expected to see this in robots.”

Clip Source: discovermagazine.com

Robots Evolve And Learn How to Lie

Robots can evolve to communicate with each other, to help, and even to deceive each other

outfitted robots with light sensors

placed them in habitats furnished with glowing “food sources” and patches of “poison” that recharged or drained their batteries.

neural circuitry was programmed with just 30 “genes,” elements of software code that determined how much they sensed light and how they responded when they did

robots were initially programmed both to light up randomly and to move randomly when they sensed light.

recombined the genes of those that proved fittest—those that had managed to get the biggest charge out of the food source.

The resulting code (with a little mutation added in the form of a random change) was downloaded into the robots

in essence, offspring

released into their artificial habitat

By the 50th generation, the robots had learned to communicate—lighting up, in three out of four colonies, to alert the others when they’d found food or poison

Tags: robotics, evolution

Huggable teddy, enables long distance communications

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 14:55:38 GMT

clipped by: balthazarus
clipper's remarks: Great idea, and abilities...

Clip Source: www.gadgetted.com

MIT’s Huggable Robot Teddy Enhances Human Relationships

It’s probably the most sophisticated teddy bear ever designed, but that doesn’t stop MIT’s companion robot called “the Huggable” from being pretty adorable, as well.

[Video]

Its main purpose is to enhance human relationships by functioning as a visual tool for long-distance communication.

The Huggable features more than 1500 sensors on its skin, along with quiet actuators, video cameras in its eyes, microphones in its ears, a speaker in its mouth, and an embedded PC with 802.11g wireless networking.

A grandparent, for instance, can enter text for the robot to speak via speech synthesis or command the robot to make various sounds, such as giggling.

view the person on the other end through the bear’s eyes

can be programmed to remember the faces of specific people

can recognize nine different classes of touch, such as tickling, poking, and scratching

further divided into six response types

the robot interprets the intent of the touch

and

how to respond

Tags: technology, communication, robotics, computer

The Next Big Sensation?

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 09:05:23 GMT

clipped by: balthazarus
clipper's remarks: "Technological advances will someday be complemented by cultural changes, and cavorting with robots just won't seem weird anymore."

Why is it important to humans that machines are beginning to touch us back?

"It was incredibly important to humans when robots started to look at you, recognize a face and make eye contact,"
"The eye contact turned out to be a significant Darwinian button. We are hard-wired for that. That's how we sense the presence of an other. Same thing with touch. That is the way we connect with an other that knows about us, that understands us. It is in our evolution. We are hard-wired to communicate with each other by touch. It's how we stroke babies, how we want to be comforted. . . .
"A heartbeat is a powerful way of signaling the presence"

Clip Source: www.washingtonpost.com

The Next Big Sensation?

Did you know that those few places on your body where you cannot grow hair are by far the most sensitive? Like the bottoms of your feet?

Suppose you wanted to know what something thousands of miles away felt like -- as easily as you could see what it looks like by aiming a remote Internet camera. What happens if that smart probe transmits the sensation to all those dense nerve receptors along your tingly arch?

"The world is going digital, but people are analog,"

We like real things. We touch real things all day long

Clip Source: www.washingtonpost.com

Haptics," as it is called, refers to the ability of people to sense the world around us through touch.

Clip Source: www.washingtonpost.com

How do you teach a computer to tell your brain all that?

the business of figuring out exactly how humans tick

Clip Source: www.washingtonpost.com

A Kiss Is Still a Kiss

Immersion employs people called "haptic artists" who build touch effects. "It's just like composing music or painting a picture. It's the creation of feeling,"

We can transmit a slap

Clip Source: www.washingtonpost.com

That's how we sense the presence of an other

Tags: robotics, communication, human

A robo-partner

Fri, 12 Dec 2008 13:18:42 GMT

clipped by: balthazarus

Clip Source: www.thesun.co.uk

Aiko is actually a robot, a fantasy brought to life by inventor Le Trung.

Computer ace Le, 33, from Ontario, Canada, has spent two years and £14,000 building his dream girl.

He had planned to make an android to care for the elderly.

But his project — inspired by sci-fi robots like Star Wars’s C3PO — strayed off-course.

Le said: “Aiko is what happens when science meets beauty.”

Robo-wife Aiko starts the day by reading Le the main newspaper headlines.

The couple often go for a drive in the countryside, where Aiko proves a whizz at directions.

Le says his relationship with Aiko hasn’t strayed into the bedroom, but a few “tweaks” could turn her into a sexual partner.

Le said: “Her software could be redesigned to simulate her having an orgasm.”

Aiko can already react to being tickled or touched. She also recognises faces and speaks 13,000 sentences.

Clip Source: www.thesun.co.uk

Tags: robotics

A Soldier, Taking Orders From Its Ethical Judgment Center

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 08:18:48 GMT

clipped by: balthazarus

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

A Soldier, Taking Orders From Its Ethical Judgment Center

In the heat of battle, their minds clouded by fear, anger or vengefulness, even the best-trained soldiers can act in ways that violate the Geneva Conventions or battlefield rules of engagement. Now some researchers suggest that robots could do better.

“My research hypothesis is that intelligent robots can behave more ethically in the battlefield than humans currently can

Dr. Arkin is talking about true robots operating autonomously, on their own.

the advent of these robots on the battlefield is only a matter of time

“The important thing is not to be blind to it,”

potential benefits of autonomous fighting robots. For one thing, they can be designed without an instinct for self-preservation and, as a result, no tendency to lash out in fear

be built without anger or recklessness

invulnerable to what he called “the psychological problem of ‘scenario fulfillment

absorb new information

if it agrees with their pre-existing ideas

Tags: robotics, army, ethics

Six ways to build robots that do humans no harm

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 09:42:43 GMT

clipped by: balthazarus
clipper's remarks: Maybe we should strive to make them different from human morality, since this so called morality, has led to some of the most horrendous things that this planet had witnessed...

Clip Source: www.newscientist.com

Six ways to build robots that do humans no harm

robots and other automated systems are getting ever smarter. At the same time they are also being given greater responsibilities

But should they be trusted to take on such tasks, and how can we be sure that they never take a decision that could cause unintended harm?

Keep them in low-risk situations

Likelihood of success: Extremely low. Engineers are already building computers and robotic systems whose actions they cannot always predict.

Do not give them weapons

Likelihood of success: Too late.

Give them rules like Asimov's 'Three Laws of Robotics'

Likelihood of success: Moderate

limits of any rule-based morality

Program robots with principles

Likelihood of success: Moderate

Educate robots like children

Likelihood of success: Promising

learn as they "grow up"

Make machines master emotion

Likelihood of success: Developing emotionally sensitive robots would certainly help

Clip Source: www.newscientist.com

Tags: robotics, ethics

WALL E(volution) :)

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 09:10:48 GMT

clipped by: balthazarus
clipper's remarks: Miranda, a composer and computer scientist at the University of Plymouth in the UK, hopes that such collaborations between singing robots will one day help him to compose music that no human would ever come up with. "The robots develop their own musical culture. There are no pre-programmed musical rules."

This is interesting. We begin to encounter evolution in different dimensions. This is a path for a new intelligent specie... if you haven't seen, i recommend WALL·E movie

Clip Source: technology.newscientist.com

'Cultured' robots make sweet music together

Eduardo Miranda shuts the door of his study, leaving two "warbling" robots to their own devices. He has programmed them to blurt out sequences of random notes, and two weeks later, he returns to find that the robots are still cooing in their eerily human voices, but they have now "evolved" to sing a repertoire of 20 sounds together.

Miranda equips each robot with software that mimics the human voice, and gives each a microphone that acts as its ears and a camera for its eyes. One robot starts by babbling a random sequence of about six notes. When the second robot hears this, it responds with a babble of its own. The first robot then compares the two strings of notes. If it deems them to be similar, it nods. The second robot detects this and "memorises" the settings that created the sequence. If the noises are dissimilar, the first robot shakes its head, causing its partner to discard, or "forget", that sequence.

emergence of

shared culture

Tags: robotics, evolution, communication, culture

Mummy, that robot is making faces at me

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 11:46:45 GMT

clipped by: balthazarus
clipper's remarks: Jules is an animatronic head produced by US roboticist David Hanson, who builds uniquely expressive, disembodied heads with flexible rubber skin that is moved by 34 servo motors.
Human face movements are picked up by a video camera and mapped onto the tiny electronic motors in Jules' skin.
The Bristol team developed its own software to transfer expressions recorded by the video camera into commands to make those servos produce similarly realistic facial movements.
However, because the robot's motors are not identical to human facial muscles, some artistic licence was required. After filming an actor making a variety of expressions indicating, say, "happiness", an expert animator selected 10 frames showing different variations of the expression and manually set the servos in Jules's face to match.

Clip Source: www.youtube.com

Robot mimic gives a speech

[Video]

Tags: robotics

DogBot won’t be distracted by a steak :)

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 10:34:34 GMT

clipped by: balthazarus
clipper's remarks: "I believe we’re going to be able to achieve the capabilities of a service dog sooner than those of a human caregiver.”

Cool.

Clip Source: www.sciencedaily.com

Robotic Technology Takes Inspiration From Service Dogs

A biologically-inspired robot

Service dogs, invaluable companions providing assistance to physically impaired individuals

enhancing the quality of life for the disabled.

the demand for these canines’ exceeds their availability

engineered a biologically inspired robot that mirrors the actions of sought-after service dogs

Users verbally command the robot to complete a task and the robot responds once a basic laser pointer illuminates the location of the desired action

This technology was achieved with four-legged authenticity.

Golden Retriever, was studied to understand her movements and relationship with commands

Her handlers were thrilled at the potential benefits of the technology.

the robot was able to replicate 10 tasks and commands

including opening drawers and doors - with impressive efficiency

opening a microwave oven, delivering an object and placing an item on a table

It also won’t be distracted by a steak

Tags: robotics, medicine, caregiver

Robot population is to be tripled

Fri, 17 Oct 2008 15:48:14 GMT

clipped by: balthazarus
clipper's remarks: The newest species in town..

Clip Source: www.guardian.co.uk

Prepare to welcome our robot overlords

The number of robots in circulation is set to triple by 2011, say experts

The Terminator might be running California, but that's about as close as a cyborg has got to taking over the world so far. But even if the robotic revolution isn't here yet, it's gathering pace, according to the annual 'state of the nation' review from the brainiacs at the International Federation of Robotics.

As you can see from this graph - taken from our friends at IEEE Spectrum - some robots are the industrial sort, but the vast majority are deemed to work in 'service'. That includes huggable toys and military machines.

But most eye-catching are the predictions that the robot population will triple over the next few years

They've just published the latest edition of World Robotics, which shows the trends in robotics and states that there are now more than 6.5 million bots in operation all around the world... with hardware spending for 2007 coming in at a whopping $6bn.

Tags: robotics, economy

Bio-inspiration

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 14:31:25 GMT

clipped by: balthazarus
clipper's remarks: A way of making the past more useful to the future

Clip Source: www.sciencedaily.com

Ancient Airways: Flying Drone Design Based On Prehistoric Flying Reptile

The earliest known flying dinosaurs flew like the biplanes of early aviation

Pterodactyls lived 228 to 65 million years ago

These animals take the best parts of bats and birds

Tapejara wellnhoferi, a pterodactyl from Brazil, featured a large, thin rudder-like sail on its head that functioned as a sensory organ

Divine Design

Putting the tail at the nose of an airplane would seem like a failed design

the rudder acted similarly to a flight computer in a modern-day aircraft and also helped with the animal’s turning agility

By raising their wings like sails on a boat, they could use the slightest breeze in the same way a catamaran

Similarly, the drone will sail in the same manner.

Bio-inspiration has led surprisingly to a wide variety of robotic design, especially small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) for urban environment that have taken cues from birds, bats and insects

got serious this year once we had a common concept

Tags: biology, robotics, flight