In Episode 111, Robots Podcast speaks with Francesco Mondada, organizer of the Robotics Festival at EPFL, a yearly event which this year gathered over 15,000 visitors for hands-on workshops and demonstrations. They also walk you through the many exhibits showcasing multi-robot systems, flying robots, rehabilitation robots, and robotic salamanders. In the news segment, which precedes the interviews, they mention research at Harvard which has produced a soft robot which can change color to blend with or stand out from its surroundings, and research at the University of Geneva which has produced a collar that measures and transmits a sheep's heartbeat. Aggregation of this information over a flock is significant enough to detect, for example, an imminent wolf attack, and the collars are also capable of dispensing wolf repellant.

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Salah Sukkarieh is an Associate Professor in the School of Aerospace, Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering, within the Faculty of Engineering & Information Technologies, at The University of Sydney. He is also Director of the Australian Centre for Field Robotics (ACFR), which is included within the ARC Centre of Excellence for Autonomous Systems. In this interview he provides us with an overview of the Centre's past and present projects, pointing out how Australia's geography and demographics have acted to galvanize interest in field robotics there, particularly in the mining sector, and how they are likely to continue to shape the distribution of resources for ongoing research. He also discusses how the context for robotics has changed with the accumulation of experience and proven designs, such that a roboticist can now speak to a client with confidence about various potential approaches to addressing their needs.

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Depending on which time zone you're in, either yesterday evening or early this morning, a rocket-powered sky crane lowered the Curiosity rover gently to the surface of Mars, just in time for Curiosity to send a few low-res images before the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and Odyssey, either of which could relay its signal back to Earth, dropped below the horizon and lost contact, culminating years of planning and months of anxious anticipation. Considering the complex sequence of steps involved, the narrow window of time within which each had to be performed, and the fact that all were performed autonomously by the system in flight or by the rover itself, this successful landing is a major victory for the incorporation of robotic technologies into rocket science. Congratulations to all involved!

Last week, SenseFly and Pix4D announced deals with drone maker Parrot, in which Parrot will invest in both companies, 5 million Swiss francs in SenseFly and 2.4 million in Pix4D. Both spinoffs of EPFL, SenseFly and Pix4D have a history of cooperation, with SenseFly providing the camera-equipped UAVs for which they have also developed navigational software that allows them to fly complete missions autonomously, and Pix4D providing the software that transforms the thousands of images produced by the drones into unified geographical information. (Kudos to Engadget for their prompt reportage.)

Ask any roboticist of a certain age, whether a professional or hobbyist, how they first got interested in robots. Odds are good they'll mention a 1976 TAB book, written by David L. Heiserman, called Build Your Own Working Robot. The book described the construction of Buster, a small, wheeled robot. This was before the era of ubiquitous microprocessors. Buster's brain was a mass of TTL logic chips that implemented surprisingly complex behaviours. In some ways, Buster was not unlike Grey Walter's vacuum tube-based turtle robots from the late 1940s and was likely the first significant step forward in behavior-based robots since Walter's turtles. Did you ever wonder what Dave did after writing those books or what he's up to today? Read on to find out!

Many robots, one controller, or at least that's the idea. The Tactical Robot Controller (or TRC) is the latest innovation out of QinetiQ North America's Unmanned Systems Group. The TRC is a lightweight, wearable controller that allows the Marine or Soldier to control a family of unmanned ground vehicles, various unmanned air vehicles, and unattended ground sensors. The TRC can also be used to control a variety of third party unmanned aerial vehicles.

As he was planning on attending anyway, Australian Ron Vanderkley volunteered to cover JPL's Open House 2012 for Robots Podcast. He managed to get interviews with several JPL staff members, which are collected together in this episode, along with his own narration. (Great job, Ron!) The above video is just one of many from the Open House that have been posted to YouTube.

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Mazor Robotics announced on July 16th that its Renaissance robotic platform, already in wide use for spinal surgery, has received U.S. FDA clearance for use in brain surgery. The Renaissance platform is a surgical guidance system which first builds a 3D model based on a high-quality CAT scan, assits the surgeon in planning the surgery, and then during the surgery assists the surgeon by guiding the placement of instruments and implants. Mazor Robotics has, over the past year, accumulated an extensive collection of Videos in their YouTube channel.

In a joint press release, US companies InTouch Health and iRobot have announced a new telepresence robot for hospitals. The robot called "RP-VITA" builds on iRobot's AVA platform introduced at last year's Consumer Electronics Show. Similar to the AVA, the RP-VITA uses a tablet as the user interface and has autonomous mapping and navigation capabilities. The RP-VITA can also connect with diagnostic devices, such as otoscopes and ultrasound, and comes equipped with the latest electronic stethoscope. The robot is currently pending clearance by the US Food & Drug Administration (FDA), with results expected in the last quarter of 2012.

The 2012 (2nd annual) Robot Film Festival screening took place nine days ago, in the 3LD Art & Technology Center (New York City). Selected entries appear on the Robot Film Festival website, and Automaton has put together a highlights video.

On which side of the 'uncanny valley' would you place the robotic child in the above video? Researchers at Osaka University are developing a robot in the form of a 1-to-2 year old child, with the idea that it should be so realistic that it will elicit natural responses from human caregivers, enabling studies of human social development that can't otherwise be documented from the perspective of the child. For more information, see Automaton's article and this paper by the researchers.

Researchers in the Department of Computer Architecture and Technology, University of Granada, and in the Department of Computer Architecture and Electronics, University of Almería, have developed a biologically-inspired adaptive microcircuit which functions as an artificial cerebellum, controlling a robotic arm with human-like precision.

To date, although robot designers have achieved very precise movements, such movements are performed at very high speed, require strong forces and are power consuming. This approach cannot be applied to robots that interact with humans, as a malfunction might be potentially dangerous. To solve this challenge, University of Granada researchers have implemented a new cerebellar spiking model that adapts to corrections and stores their sensorial effects; in addition, it records motor commands to predict the action or movement to be performed by the robotic arm. This cerebellar model allows the user to articulate a state-of-the-art robotic arm with extraordinary mobility.

Having noticed a recent trend towards robotics companies releasing videos with high production values, this one caught my eye. Aldebaran Robotics is hiring, and produced an edgy video called Shape the World to call attention to that fact.

In the latest episode (#108, July 13th, 2012), Robots Podcast talks with Andra Keay, cofounder of Robot Launchpad, a robotics startup accelerator based in Silicon Valley, about recent events, lean startup methodology, funding, and gender. (Her Masters thesis project on “the Naming of Robots” explored how roboticists express identity and gender through their technology.) Calling herself a Robot Startup Evangelist, Andra is passionate about growing robotics, one startup at a time. Supported by key actors in the field including Erin Rapacki and Ryan Calo, Robot Launchpad aims to bridge the software, web and mobile startup worlds of Silicon Valley and San Francisco with the robotics community and the flourishing local maker sphere. She brings us into her world of lean startup methodology, minimum viable products, and tells us about the importance of women in science. Before launching Robot Launchpad, Keay completed her Master of Digital Cultures at the University of Sydney, specializing in Human-Robot Interactions. Passionate about robotics for a long time, she has also been running science and robot workshops for children since 1995, including coaching competition teams in MoonBots, FIRST LEGO League, and RoboCup Junior.

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We're overdue for another roundup of news from the editor's inbox! Reader Bill Rogers sent a link to a recent CNN story on the Uncanny Valley and how the brain copes with conflicting information. Yuval Haimovits let us know about the latest research on thought-controlled robot avatars. Our friends over the plastic pals blog sent links to stories on the newest Chinese humanoid robot, news on the TeenSize-OP robot from Robotis, and a strange toe-tapping robot named Shimi powered by an Android phone (see also our story on Shimi). Long-time reader Guy Posey wrote to let us know about his new e-book titled, ELI-C, a novel with robots, cyborgs, even a "mysterious sorcerer". Check it out! Author Joe Tripician let us know about his new science fiction book, Immortality Wars, which takes on the Singularity along with nanotechnology and mind uploading. 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.

Last Monday (July 2nd), Hizook posted a thoughtful piece, Being Honest in Robot Videos: Motion Capture, Speedup Rates, and Teleoperation, which covers even more ground than its title suggests. The article doesn't take issue with unrealistic portrayals of robots in movies, nor with robots built as art or robot performances. Rather it calls into question what might be termed misrepresentation in videos depicting research robots, due to missing or inadequate notice of certain conditions, resulting in the creation of a false impression regarding the current state of the art and unrealistic expectations for the near future in the minds of the general public, undermining support for needed research on the premise that it's already been done. The article touches on the use of external localization and motion planning systems (as opposed to accomplishing the same feats entirely with on-board sensors and processors), the distinction between teleoperation, scripting, and autonomous operation, time compression (making the robot appear to be moving faster than it really is), and tethering (for physical support, for power, and/or for low-latency, high-bandwidth communications), and suggests some best practices for providing notice of each. The comments which follow the article are also worth reading.

Above, researchers at UPenn and MIT print blood vessels, using sugar. Once the sugar hardens, cells suspended in gel are added. Once the gel solidifies, the sugar is dissolved and removed. After the break, another video shows a process where powdered stainless steel is printed using a binder (weak glue), then infused with bronze.

Would you like to watch Curiosity pile up sand behind its wheels as it struggles up a slope, this video is about as close as you're likely to get, at least until Curiosity actually lands on Mars. For more, check out the JPLnews channel on YouTube.

A two-armed robot, called Mahoro, jointly developed by Japan's National Institute of Advanced Science and Technology (AIST) and Yaskawa Electric Corporation, and marketed by Nikkyo Technos, Co., Ltd., already being used in labs at pharmaceutical companies and universities, is both faster and more precise than veteran laboratory technicians performing the same repetitive tasks. Using the robot to handle hazardous materials also reduces risk to laboratory personnel. DigInfo TV has more detail.

Direct from their website...

To celebrate their 25th year in business the Boca Bearing Company is giving away over $20,000 in cash and prizes as part of their 2012 Boca Bearing Innovation Contest. Winners will be chosen based on a video submission of their innovative mechanical project that utilizes ball bearings, roller bearings, linear bearings or any form of full ceramic or ceramic hybrid bearings anywhere in the application.

One finalist will be chosen by the voting public each month in 2012 to win an iPad2 ($500 value each). The Grand Prize winner and two Runner Ups will be chosen by Boca Bearings from the monthly finalists. The two Runner Up Finalists will each win their own 3D Printer from Makerbot Industries ($2500 value each). The Grand Prize winner will receive a check for $10,000.

The Boca Bearing Company believes in supporting those individuals or companies with a focus on Art, Science, Technology, Engineering & Math. These are the creative people that push the limits of new technology and will be the drivers of our future economy.