Robot News Roundup

Posted 23 Dec 2009 at 16:39 UTC by Rog-a-matic

Here's a few interesting articles for your holiday-time perusal:

For $225k, you can swing by a department store in Japan and get a humanoid robot that looks like you!

Robot advances from around the world are featured in the EU Infrastructure article.

Wired's Gadget Lab shows off the hard-drive sculptures by Miguel Rivera, including a biped robot which uses 14 defunct laptop drives.

Unmanned flying vehicles are looking for a boost from research into hummingbird flight at University at Buffalo.

Advances in brain-machine interfacing is outlined in a recent article at GIGIOM.

A posting over on DIGG linked to this picture of R2 having lunch.

And we finish off with this Christmas video by rhyspross and the robot powers that be.

Cheers to all!

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Robots: Weight-Loss Coach

Posted 18 Dec 2009 at 09:40 UTC by mwaibel

With the holiday season ahead and Christmas dinners already started, many of us are beginning to feel the pinch at our waistlines and are planning some ambitious weight-loss goals as New Year's resolutions. To help with those resolutions, the latest episode of Robots focusses on robotic help for losing weight. Cory Kidd from Intuitive Automata talks about his robotic weight-loss coach that can help you take those pounds off and keep them off, and may take your Roomba's place as your new robotic best friend. To mark the festive occasion, Robots is also holding a Christmas contest for two robot kits offered by Didel SA. For a chance to win, simply tell Robots "Who created the giant 6-legged robot?" featured in one of this year's Robots episodes. Read on or directly tune in!

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C-3PO Visits St. Louis Star Wars Concert

Posted 11 Dec 2009 at 18:36 UTC by Rog-a-matic

Anthony Daniels, the actor who brought the droid C-3PO to life in the Star Wars movies, visited St. Louis Thursday for a concert to celebrate the music of the popular Sci-Fi series. Joining the 86-piece orchestra will be several movie props including C-3PO's costume which Daniels said was "ouch" every time. He used tin-snips to make modifications during filming because only he knew exactly where all the pokes, pinches and jabs were.

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Robotic Dino Stolen from Exhibit in Mexico

Posted 9 Dec 2009 at 06:29 UTC by Rog-a-matic

A remote-controlled dinosaur was stolen from an exhibit in Guadalajara, Mexico. The Australian-based "Walking with Dinosaurs" show opened Friday and one of the robotic marvels was discovered missing that evening. Considered small compared to the others, organizers are still uncertain as to how the 1.5m (5ft) tall item could have been taken. Spokesperson Karla Arroyo says the popular show which has toured worldwide will go on without the the little guy.

Axon II Microcontroller and Open Source Library

Posted 7 Dec 2009 at 19:45 UTC by steve

John Palmisano of the Society of Robots writes with news of the Axon II microcontroller, and a matching software library designed specifically for robotics. The board is about 2.5 inches square (even though it looks 12 stories tall in the animated 3D tour above!)

The Axon II, the microcontroller that powers my ERP, has finally gone on sale today. It runs a new open source library called WebbotLib, which works in a similar way to drivers on a PC. A user no longer needs to deal with low-level coding for any common external hardware, as the library is bound to already have a driver for it. Just plug and play, as the demo videos demonstrate.

The Axon II, which sells for $118, is based on the ATmega640 processor with 64KB of flash, 4KB EEPROM and 8KB of SRAM. It includes 58 total IO ports, 16 ADC, I2C, SPI, 3 UARTs, USB, 15 PWM channels, support for 25 servos, and 6 timers. The WebbotLib software library is written in C and licensed under the GNU GPL. For more technical information on the Axon II controller, see the Axon II specifications page. For more video of the Axon II in action, check the Axon II video page.

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Robots: Planetary Exploration

Posted 6 Dec 2009 at 14:57 UTC (updated 6 Dec 2009 at 14:59 UTC) by mwaibel

The latest episode of the Robots podcast focusses on space robots. Julie Townsend from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology explains her work with NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers and the lunar ATHLETE robot shown in the video above. This episode's second guest is Sebastian Gautsch from the SAMLAB in Neuchatel, Switzerland, who tells us about his Atomic Force Microscope that was sent to Mars aboard the Phoenix lander in the Spring of 2008. Read on and tune in! In addition, after more than 100'000 downloads, it's now our turn to listen to you: Take the 5-minute survey to help us improve ROBOTS!

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Robots.Video: My Heart is Von Neumann

Posted 3 Dec 2009 at 23:28 UTC by steve

Nanogirl writes, "I released a new animated music video 'My Heart is Von Neumann'. The star of the video is a digital robot singing the words of the transhumanist/extropian style pro technology song." Nanogirl is also known as Gina Miller, artist, transhumanist and futurist. You can check out more of her artistic creations in the "museum of the future". Nanogirl has also created a cute "We can do it" t-shirt featuring Rosie the robot riveter. Just the thing for that woman in your life who loves robots and the future as much as Nanogirl.

Random Robot Roundup

Posted 2 Dec 2009 at 20:28 UTC by steve

This week's roundup start off with a public service announcement. The Chase Community Giving project is donating $25,000 to each of 100 local community non-profit groups selected by Facebook users. Each user gets 20 votes to cast for their favorite groups. Please cast one of your votes for my favorite, the Dallas Personal Robotics Group (just click that big button that says "Vote for Charity"!). In other robot news, the folks at Plastic Pals note that KAIST's full-size human robot has become only the third such robot capable of running. Vincent Lopresti (of the Spaceminers) wrote to tell us that he's started a project called Land Walker to empower disabled wheelchair users with robotic legs. Matt Smith brings news of a new robot company called Robot Add-ons, started by ex-iRobot engineers, that will sell after market accessories for the Roomba. Another Matt, this time Matt Fisher of KumoTech, tells us robots from his company are featured at a new exhibit in the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. Know any other robot news, gossip, or amazing facts we should report? Send 'em our way please. And don't forget to follow us on twitter.

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Stanislas Dehaene on Consciousness

Posted 30 Nov 2009 at 21:26 UTC by steve

The folks over at EDGE have an interesting new post about Stanislas Dehaene and his research into consciousness and the new hypothesis he has formulated around it. The talk occurred at an October 17 EDGE Reality Club meeting at The Hotel Ritz in Paris.

For the past twelve years my research team has been using all the brain research tools at its disposal, from functional MRI to electro- and magneto-encephalography and even electrodes inserted deep in the human brain, to shed light on the brain mechanisms of consciousness. I am now happy to report that we have acquired a good working hypothesis.

The main thing Stanislas and his team noticed is that when neural activity in the brain exceeds a particular communications threshold across multiple brain areas, the brain enters a large-scale synchronous state and consciousness appears. The researchers have also devised an empirical test for the presence of consciousness and tested it on human patients in coma, vegitative state, and locked-in syndrome. So far, their test seems to reliably detect which patients have residual consciousness. For more, see the Cognitive Neuroimaging Research Unit.

Black Friday for Robot Builders

Posted 26 Nov 2009 at 05:32 UTC (updated 26 Nov 2009 at 14:32 UTC) by steve

It's easy to find the mainstream Black Friday sales, just visit sites like Blackfriday.info or Black Friday Ads. But where does the bargain-hunting robot builder find deals? Right here of course! Several robot and electronics companies have specials going on including Pololu, Trossen Robotics, BG Micro, and Parallax. BG Micro's sale runs through November 30 and gets you 10% off items listed on the site's main page. Paul Grayson of Pololu let us know about their sale

I am writing to let you know about Pololu's Black Friday sale, we are offering huge discounts on a number of our newest and most exciting products starting Thursday (including a $49.95 offer on the 3pi!)

Pololu is also offering their Orangutan SVP-324 microcontroller for $49.95, the Micro Maestro 6-Channel Servo Controller for $9.95, and the Jrk 21v3 USB Motor Controller for $19.95, just to name a few. And you better be quick if you want the 3pi deal as it's limited to the first 20 customers! If you're looking for hobby servos, Tower Hobbies is offering $25 off orders of $199 or more. Trossen Robotics hasn't put up a page about their special but we hear through the grapevine that using the code cyber09 might get you 10% off any product in their online store. Parallax is offering free shipping on orders over $100. Electronic Goldmine is offering a full page of specials during their Thanksgiving Sale. American Science and Surplus has a few weird items on sale. Lastly, a little late for Black Friday, but still a bargain, is SparkFun Electronic's "Free Day" - starting 9am MST Jan 7, every order is free up to $100 until they give away $100,000. Have we missed any sales? Feel free to post updates below if you find a new one. Update: If you're looking for a robot plush gift, Bunk Bots is having a Black Friday sale - try promo codes BOTS2425 or BOTS3433 for their 2 for $25 or 3 or $33 specials.

PETA asks UGA to use Robotic Bulldog

Posted 25 Nov 2009 at 21:21 UTC by Rog-a-matic

After the recent death of University of Georgia's mascot, Uga VII the bulldog, PETA has asked the school's athletic director, Damon M. Evans, to replace the mascot with an animatronic dog or a costumed mascot instead of another dog.

"It is time for the university to put an end to the cycle of suffering endured by dogs who are brought into the world solely to represent the school's 'brand'," says PETA Assistant Director Kristie Phelps.

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Brains for Hot Robots

Posted 24 Nov 2009 at 23:24 UTC by steve

Italian microcontroller company, Dave, has announced a new board based on TI's Sitara AM3505/AM3517 SoCs that may be just what you need for that robot you're about to send into the desert (or the Arctic). The new board is called the Lizard and it tolerates temperatures ranging from -40 F to 185 F. The Superscalar ARM Cortex-A8 processor clocks in at 500MHz. You get 256MB of DDR2 RAM, 2GB of NAND flash, 2 SD flash expansion ports, OpenGL acceleration, touchscreen controller, fast ethernet port, 2 USB host ports, 1 USB OTG port, CAN, 3 UARTs, 2 I2C, SPI, I2S, a keypad controller, JTAG, and some GPIO. Yes, it runs GNU/Linux. But be prepared to spend some money because those temperature tolerances come at the cost of $748 USD. For more details see the Linuxdevices.com article or Dave's Lizard press release (PDF format).

Robots: Learning

Posted 20 Nov 2009 at 10:45 UTC by mwaibel

The latest episode of the Robots podcast interviews two experts in robot learning. Andrea Thomaz from Georgia Tech studies how humans teach and how humanoids learn with the goal to improve human-robot interaction. Among other things, Thomaz has designed her own humanoid robot Simon shown in the video above (have a look at this non-youtube video to see Simon's expressive ears in action). Our second guest Sethu Vijayakumar from the University of Edinburgh has done an astonishing amount of work spanning the fields of statistical machine learning, human motor control, Bayesian inference techniques and computational neuroscience. In the interview Vijayakumar speaks about the similarities and differences between human and machine learning, and explains how robots can learn about their environment through physical interactions. Read on and tune in!

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Consciousness May Not Require Big Brain

Posted 19 Nov 2009 at 19:28 UTC by steve

In an appropriate follow up to yesterday's article on IBM's large scale cortical simulation, comes news from brain researchers at Queen Mary, University of London and Cambridge University. Lars Chittka and other researchers, who have been studying both computer simulations and animal brains, now believe that brain size is not as significant as previously believed with respect to general intelligence and consciousness. "No one would seriously suggest that a bigger computer is automatically a better computer", say the researchers.

We know that body size is the single best way to predict an animal's brain size. However, contrary to popular belief, we can't say that brain size predicts their capacity for intelligent behaviour. In bigger brains we often don't find more complexity, just an endless repetition of the same neural circuits over and over.

The larger amount of IO needed in larger animals for things such as more muscles and higher resolution sensors may be the main driving factor for needing larger brains. The researchers say it's possible significant intelligence and consciousness could be present even in insect brains. This fits in with other recent research showing that, despite their tiny brain size, bees could match the best machine-based face recognition algorithms. For more, see the full text the researchers report, Are Bigger Brains Better (PDF format), or listen to the BBC Radio interview of Professor Lars Chittka on BBC Radio 4. CC-licensed image of honeybee by flickr user Agent Opie

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