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Biological Nanomachines

Posted 18 Aug 2001 at 14:56 UTC by The Swirling Brain

An article in Scientific American talks about that the future of nanoscience may be biological. This brings to my mind movies like BladeRunner and Dr. Who's Biological (Incubating?) Daleks. I guess you can only take mechanical so far.

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USAR Robots at IJCAI 2001

Posted 17 Aug 2001 at 12:51 UTC by josborn

The NY Times is running an article about the competition held at this year's IJCAI for Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) robots. The robots had to navigate three courses which got progressively harder in order to find targets, usually mannequins. The course was developed by the Intelligent Systems Division at NIST, which coincidentally, is where I work :-).

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Buy Your Own Smart Dust

Posted 16 Aug 2001 at 14:26 UTC by steve

A new Smalltimes article details the progress made on smart dust over the last few months. robots.net covered smart dust and micro rocket technology and related privacy concerns in early May but a lot has changed since then. Kris Pister's micro-sized sensor platforms are moving into a commercial phase. A company called Crossbow is selling a prototype kit with 3 smart dust "motes" for $950 that should be quite interesting for all sorts of robotics uses. The Crossbow prototype motes are a whopping 1 inch in size but Pister's goal is for production units 1mm or smaller.

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U-166 and the Success of AUVs

Posted 16 Aug 2001 at 05:16 UTC by steve

We posted a story on the discovery of U-166 by an AUV in early June. Now Business Week Online has a detailed story about the discovery of the German sub as well as the future of AUVs in general. They conclude that despite the high initial cost of AUVs, the long-term cost savings will allow them to displace ROVs and other, older technologies.

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Air Traffic Control and Swarming

Posted 14 Aug 2001 at 21:36 UTC by steve

Flocking or swarming algorithms simulate the movements of bird flocks or schools of fish. Swarming algorithms have primarily been used in gaming and simulations, though the US Air Force has proposed using the algorithm for positioning of satellite constellations. Now, Géraud Granger, a researcher from CENA, suggests that such algorithms could be applied to air traffic control. Granger and colleages have proposed a distributed system, called Free flight Autonomous and Coordinated Embarked Solver (FACES), that allows airplanes to coordinate navigation and avoidance manoeuvres. New Scientist has a short article on their work.

Helios UAV Breaks Altitude Records

Posted 14 Aug 2001 at 13:46 UTC by steve

The NASA Helios UAV project met a goal this morning when the solar powered, autonomous robotic platform reached an altitude of 96,500 feet (18 miles). This exceeds its own previous record of 80,200 feet as well as the record for jet aircraft of 85,068 feet set by the SR-71 Blackbird. The final goal for the project is sustained flight at an altitude of 100,000 feet which would simulate flying in the atmosphere of Mars. CNN has a story on the latest flight (which, after 24 hours in the air, is still in progress as this is written). See also the NASA Helios background page and this excellent non-NASA Helios site maintained by interns working on the flight team.

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Neuroinformatics

Posted 13 Aug 2001 at 22:39 UTC by steve

A new article posted at Technology Review suggests that Neuroinformatics, the use of information technology to understand the human brain, is what's needed to get neural net research back on track. Most artificial neural network software is based on ideas about the human nervous system that are 40 years out of date and there's very little communication between neuroscientists and AI researchers. NIMH is proposing a neuroinformatics program called the Human Brain Project which could make it much easier for researchers in the two fields to share information.

A New Review of the RL500 Robomower

Posted 12 Aug 2001 at 00:06 UTC by steve

Hubukai.com has published a new review of the Friendly Robotics RL500 Robomower. In addition to a detailed review, there are lots of photos.

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Facial Asymmetry as a Biometric

Posted 9 Aug 2001 at 14:10 UTC by steve

Facial Asymmetry is a familiar measure of attractiveness and has been used to evaluate expressions by psychologists. A new technical report from the CMU Robotics Institute proposes facial asymmetry as a new biometric for face recognition software. According to the paper by Yanxi Liu, the asymmetry of specific facial regions captures individual differences that are unaffected by facial expression and orthogonal to more traditional face recognition algorithms.

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Robot reporter to write news

Posted 9 Aug 2001 at 03:55 UTC by Rog-a-matic

This article in The Guardian talks about 'robot' software that may be used to write news articles in the future. Looks like a lot of this technology already exists which pulls text and headlines from news wires and creates a story. I suppose it could be used to create multi-language news feeds also. I find it interesting that some call this 'Robotics' and not just fancy software or even AI.

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Using Robotics to Scare Birds

Posted 8 Aug 2001 at 18:28 UTC by steve

A story from Discover News reports that researchers at the LSU Aquaculture Research Station have developed a floating, autonomous robot platform powered by solar panels. The floating robot searches for birds using a vision recognition system and scares them away by bumping into them or squirting them with a water gun. The robot floats in catfish ponds to protect the stock which is frequently depleted by hungry birds. They hope the robot will be able to replace the dangerous poisons and annoying loudspeakers currently used to stop bird predation at catfish ponds.

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McKibben Artificial Muscles

Posted 7 Aug 2001 at 14:04 UTC by steve

Glenn Klute maintains a web page about McKibben Artificial Muscles. These compressed air actuators are perhaps better known as air muscles and available from companies like Shadow Robot Co. and Images SI. McKibben Artificial Muscles were orginally developed for use in powered prosthetics devices in the 1950s but have since found their way into robotics.

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SIG, the Robot Receptionist

Posted 6 Aug 2001 at 18:20 UTC by steve

Japan Today has published an article on SIG, a humanoid robot being developed by The ERATO Kitano Symbiotic Systems Project. SIG has stereo hearing and vision. The robot has voice and face recognition systems. Real-time auditory and visual multiple-object tracking is used to point the head at the speaker. Videos of the system in action are available on the SIG website. The robot was designed to recognize and locate voices in the environments typical of a receptionist or museum guide.

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Hyperion Completes 6 Mile Arctic Test

Posted 5 Aug 2001 at 03:06 UTC by steve

The CMU Hyperion robot has completed project Sun Sync, an initial test on Devon Island in which it autonomously navigated during a six mile journey over frozen arctic terrain similar to that of Mars. Hyperion's testing is part of the Haughton-Mars Project, a larger NASA project that simulates Mars mission elements. Ananova and Cosmiverse are covering the Hyperion story (and don't forget to check out the webcams watching the rest of the Mars mission simulation.)

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August Robot Competition FAQ Posted

Posted 4 Aug 2001 at 14:51 UTC by steve

The August edition of the Robot Competition FAQ has been posted. August is a big month for competitions with RoboCup and the AAAI Mobile Robot Competition being the most highly anticipated. These two events are already in progress at IJCAI, which is in Seattle, WA this year.

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Embedded Linux on the PowerPC

Posted 3 Aug 2001 at 20:25 UTC by steve

Embedded Linux Journal is running a nice PowerPC tutorial that covers the process of getting embedded Linux running on the PowerPC-based RPX board from Embedded Planet. If you're interested in using a PowerPC/Linux combination for robotics, this is an ideal starting point.

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More on RoboCup

Posted 2 Aug 2001 at 13:19 UTC by steve

Wired is running an article with a nice summary of the RoboCup competition. They claim over 111 teams from 23 will be competing this year. A New Zealand Herald story focuses on the University of Auckland team, dubbed the 4 Stooges.

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Servo Hacking Tutorials

Posted 1 Aug 2001 at 01:33 UTC by steve

Every robot builder will need to hack a servo for continous rotation sooner or later. Fortunately, there are a few tutorials on the web that can save you a lot of time when the need arises. The Seattle Robotics Society offers a basic tutorial for hacking Futaba S-148 servos. Kevin Ross of PARTS offers another way to hack the Futaba S-148 that should work on most generic servos while fellow PARTS member Daryl Sandberg provides yet another Futaba S-148 hack that he warns may not work for non-Futaba servos. Our own Swirling Brain has written a nice tutorial for hacking the Sub-Micro Cirrus CS-21 Servo. Finally, Mondo-tronics provides a useful hack for the HiTech HS-300 servo. All these hacks will void the servo warranty and are usually irreversible... but that's what makes it fun, right?

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Can a Robot Complete a 10km Walk?

Posted 31 Jul 2001 at 03:28 UTC by steve

The Swirling Brain and I (along with a few others) have embarked on a new project. Our goal is develop an autonomous, walking robot that can complete a 10km walk to be held May 2002 to raise money for Cystic Fibrosis research. We are calling the robot, appropriately enough, CF Walker. As the design and construction of the robot progresses, we'll post an occasional update on its status.

Soccer, Ants, and Robot Teamwork

Posted 30 Jul 2001 at 14:00 UTC by steve

Post-Gazette.com is running two new articles today on the upcoming RoboCup Robot Soccer World Cup in which teams of cooperative robots attempt to play soccer. The first article is about Tucker Balch of the CMU MultiRobot Lab and his study of cooperation among ants. The second article describes the contest itself and points out why robot competitions such as Robocup differ from Battle Bots style TV shows in which the vehicles look like robots but are actually being remotely controlled by humans.

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