Older Articles

Researching Robot Consciousness

Posted 27 Aug 2003 at 03:11 UTC by The Swirling Brain

Guardian Unlimited has an article stating that British scientists will start research on building a thinking robot. British scientists have been given a huge 700k Euros (~$775kUS) grant from the UK's Adventure Fund to study creating a conscious robot. Artificial Consciousness is perhaps the final frontier for robotics. The British reserachers are hoping to figure out such concepts like just what thinking really is, and how to make a robot self-aware. They hope for the robot to have such attributes like a sense of place, imagination, directed attention, planning, decision and emotion. With all the money going out for making thinking robots through DARPA and scientists in Japan begging for money to make a robot as smart as a 5 year old, perhaps someone somewhere will make some intelligent machines soon.

Cast Iron Dummy

Posted 25 Aug 2003 at 13:29 UTC by steve

In what may be the best definition of a robot since Douglas Adams', "Your plastic pal who's fun to be with", the Hindustan Times defines a robot as "A cast iron dummy that walks like a hopeless arthritic and talks like Tonto". It presents the definition only to say that ASIMO has proven it wrong by walking like a real human. It then predicts we have about 30 years before robots become more capable and intelligent than humans.

The Spy Who Wouldn't Die

Posted 23 Aug 2003 at 18:22 UTC by The Swirling Brain

NewScientist has an article about a British 007 spy snake robot can survive battlefield damage. The snakebot is made up of many segments that move through the use of nitinol muscle wire. If one of the snakebot's segments becomes damaged or disabled, the other links can relearn its locomotion. The snakebot has clevar built-in genetic algorithm software to rearrange its undulating so that it can drag along a dead link, and keep on going, albeit less gracefully and probably slower, to allow the robot to still arrive at its destination. The snakebot hasn't managed to slither out of the lab yet, or really self-heal yet, or really evolve yet, but they claim that Darwin would be proud of it if he were still alive. This built-in adaptation concept should keep the robot at its fittest as parts die off and prolong its survival until its inevitable extinction.

Robo-Legs to Help the Elderly Walk

Posted 23 Aug 2003 at 00:09 UTC by The Swirling Brain

The Herald Sun has an article that says that Japanese companies will market a 'robot suit'. The powered robot exoskeleton, code-named HAL-3 (Hybrid Assistive Leg), will aid the aged or physically disabled people to walk, climb stairs, or sit down. The suit consists of a computer, batteries, and four actuators at the knees and hip joints. Rembember that exoskeleton palet jack thing that Sigourney Weaver used in the movie Aliens?

Man vs Machine in Space

Posted 22 Aug 2003 at 20:43 UTC by steve

Space.com has a new article on the recurring theme of whether man or machines should be the primary means of exploring space. The article covers a lot of well known robots both real and imagines from Robby to Sojourner.

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Global Hawk Gets FAA Approval

Posted 22 Aug 2003 at 02:14 UTC by The Swirling Brain

NewScientist has an article announcing that the Global Hawk pilotless plane will get to fly routinely in civilian airspace. The Global Hawk has the ability to see and avoid other aircraft and it will be flying at altitudes above 60k feet which is well above commercial traffic so the FAA gave in and approved it for civilian airspace. Previously the USAF had to file a flight plan 30 days in advance with the FAA, now they can file and fly the same day. So, look up in the sky, it's a bird, it's a plane, it's a robot pilotless airplane flying overhead in civilian airspace. Did you ever think you'd see the day where pilotless robot airplanes would share civilian airspace with human piloted airplanes?

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Intro to Artificial Neural Networks

Posted 21 Aug 2003 at 22:27 UTC by steve

Carlos Gershenson has released a short introduction (PDF format) to artficial neural networks (ANNs). It starts with a little history and a comparison to biological neurons. The backpropogation algorithm is also covered and a list of other resources on the topic is provided.

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30 Year Robot Research Project Proposed

Posted 21 Aug 2003 at 00:50 UTC by steve

Mitsuo Kawato and other Japanese researchers have proposed a new 30-year, 50 billion yen research program to develop humanoid robots with the "mental, physical and emotional capacity of a 5-year-old human". A Japan Times article compares the projects to the US Apollo Project which sent men to the moon and produced a huge number of technological benefits as a side-effect. (The Apollo project cost the equivalent of 7.2 Trillion yen).

Robots that Think and Design Themselves?

Posted 20 Aug 2003 at 03:37 UTC by The Swirling Brain

This article from NewsObserver.com talks about robots that design themselves. Researchers from Brandeis University have created the Golem Project, a system where tubelike machines design themselves virtually in software. Then the virtual robots are allowed to try out their designs in the real world for movement and locomotion. They like to call it robotic evolution, however right now it seems to be algorithms for finding out which design works better for locomotion rather than truly mutating the robot into a higher life form. Currently they have to help assemble the robots from the virtual design to the real world, but someday they hope that their robots will be able to do self-directed evolution and build themselves. Once they can build themselves, will we see the first Terminator?

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Introduction to the CAN Bus

Posted 18 Aug 2003 at 13:41 UTC by steve

Many of the embedded controllers and other chips used by robot builders include support for the Controller Area Network (CAN) bus. But what is it? And can it be used for anything interesting? Embedded.com provides a short introduction and overview on the subject, titled A short trip on the CAN bus. You'll learn that CAN is the most widely used bus architecture in automotive design. Interestingly CAN defines only the physical and data-link layer protocols, leaving the higher-level protocols to the user. This can lead to incompatibility but, fortunately, there are a couple of standard protocols that can be adopted. Embedded.com offers a second article comparing the two most common CAN bus protocols, CANopen and MicroCANopen.

Patent Granted on Laws of Robotics

Posted 16 Aug 2003 at 14:35 UTC by steve

Just when you think the US Patent office has reached the pinnacle of stupidity and irresponsibility, they suprise you by achieving a new extreme of insanity. Move over software patents, gene patents, and business method patents. Now you can patent systems of ethics. In July, 2003, a patent was granted for "The Ten Ethical Laws of Robotics" to John E. LaMuth, a family counselor and author of self-help books on ethics. LaMuth's "holistic theory" of ethics reads like a mix of greek philosophy, freudian psychology, and new-age psychobabble. But maybe it will be profitable. Think of all the patent royalties Moses could have collected by now on his 10 Commandments or the lucrative lawsuits for competing religous sects suing each other over patent infringment. Of course, the most obvious question here is why Asimov's 4 Laws of Robotics weren't considered prior art. For more on LaMuth and his patent see this Lucerne Valley Daily Press article.

Cognitive Machine Claimed by Sandia

Posted 15 Aug 2003 at 13:06 UTC by steve

Sandia National Lab issued a press release this week claiming they've developed a cognitive machine using a software model of human thought processes. The software models both human logic and human emotion, allowing it to think like a human, according to Sandia. Among the goals of Sandia's Cognitive Systems Project are creating software that "Goes where you go, knows what you do, and knows what you know". DARPA considers this technology just "phase 1" of a project to create humans with machine augmented cognition.

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iBOT Climbs Its Way to FDA Approval

Posted 15 Aug 2003 at 03:34 UTC by The Swirling Brain

A Wired Article announces that the FDA has given approval to the iBOT Robo-Wheelchair. The iBOT Mobility System is made by Independence Technology (a Johnson and Johnson company), and is a robotic self-balancing wheelchair that can saftly go up and down stairs, can lift a patient to reach those items on high shelves, and can even four wheel (mud dog?) over rough terrain. Now that the iBot is FDA approved, you may see iBots segue (segway?) into clinics across the country.

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Robot Demonstration gets Rave Reviews

Posted 14 Aug 2003 at 03:47 UTC by The Swirling Brain

Down in San Antonio, Texas at the Lackland Air Force Base, the Air Force Brass got to see an impressive military robot demonstration. The robots they saw ranged from rHex (that we've reported about before), a hexapod robot that can climb over rocks, to the palm sized Wall Crawler that has six wheels and can rove on walls or ceilings or on the outside of ships or aircraft for video inspection. The Air Force is looking at these robots for various force-protection applications and the robots received nothing but rave reviews they said. I'd bet it was a fun demonstration to watch!

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All You Need is Love?

Posted 13 Aug 2003 at 19:39 UTC by steve

When it comes to learning, cognition may not be enough. But neither is emotion. Your robot needs both according to a new research paper (PDF format) by Sandra Clara Gadanho of the Institute of Systems and Robotics in Protugal. The paper suggests that emotion and cognition must interact in learning and decision making. An experiment is described involving a Khepra robot that must navigate a maze to find enegry sources in order to survive. The robot learns faster when it derives an emotion of well-being from making choices that promote survival.

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Mars Rovers Receive Brain Transplant

Posted 13 Aug 2003 at 03:47 UTC by The Swirling Brain

A Wired article says that Nasa needs to swap out some brains on the Martian rovers. Nasa will toss out some software commands that are no longer needed and replace it with some more smarts to make up for a spectrometer that has already gone bad. The brain transplant will take a long time to do because it's being transmitted at the blazing rate of about 0.5k bps (for reference, your regular phone modem these days communicates at 48k to 56k baud or about 100 times faster). Other than that the Nasa rovers are in good health and should arrive at Mars sometime around the beginning of the year. This download software as ya go method is a one way Nasa saves on hardware (does that really matter that much?).

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Sharp BlueStreak SoC

Posted 12 Aug 2003 at 20:25 UTC by steve

Development kits for another new controller were announced today that should interest robot builders. This is the Sharp BlueStreak SoC (System on Chip) processor. The BlueStreak LH7A404 is a 32bit ARM922T running at 200MHz with LCD and touch screen controller, Ethernet, Audio Codec, CompactFlash, PCMCIA, SmartCard, USB, I2C, SPI, SSI, Microwire, IrDA, 3 UARTS, parallel, realtime clock, 3 timers, 60 GPIO, 4 PWM and a JTAG port. Since the BlueStreak is ARM-based it will run Linux. The BlueStreak SoC by itself (a 256-ball PBGA part) costs around $40. Development boards are available from Logic starting at $349. Logic also makes BlueStreak-based "card engines"; tiny 3" x 3" boards with all the surface-mount parts (the BlueStreak, 64MB SDRAM, 32 MB Flash) already in place.

KoreBot: A New XScale SBC

Posted 11 Aug 2003 at 20:36 UTC by steve

Several people submitted this story over the weekend so there must be a lot of interest in XScale boards out there. K-Team has introduced a new single board controller designed specifically for robotics use. The board, called KoreBot, sports a 400 MHz Intel XScale CPU, 64MB RAM, and 32MB Flash, and operates on anything from 3 to 30 Vdc. The board include 2 USB host and 1 USB client ports, a JTAG port, 2 Compact Flash Type-1 sockets, 2 RS-232 ports, I2C bus, SSP/SPI bus, 2PWM and 53 GPIO pins. The board must be ordered from Switzerland and is priced at 650 Euros (about $738).

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Hackerbot

Posted 10 Aug 2003 at 15:56 UTC by steve

Hackerbot is a two-wheeled autonomous robot created by Eric Johanson, Paul Holman and others to roam through areas using WiFi networks, detecting and logging insecure transmissions. Despite the name, the robot seems to act more like a cracker, not a hacker. The 40lbs, battery powered robot was demonstrated at the recent Defcon convention in Las Vegas. According to Eric, Hackerbot's code will be released shortly as Free Software licensed under the GNU GPL. Other stories about Hackerbot can be found on News.com, MSN news, and Slashdot.

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Robots in Your Blood

Posted 9 Aug 2003 at 03:43 UTC by The Swirling Brain

Do you faint at the sight of blood? Would you faint if that blood were actually grey goo as in a bunch of little robots? Well, that's what this Yahoo article is proposing that someday your blood may be completely replaced by nanites. There has already been many borg-like nanotechnology ideas for monitoring your bloodstream. There has even been Matrix-like ideas for using your blood to generate power for the little guys. But, hey, why not go all the way and just turn yourself into a borg drone. I mean, everyone's doing it so why not? Doesn't it make you wonder just how far us humans might be upgraded (downgraded)? One should draw from the mind just what all the risks might be. As Prince Charles worries, we might just turn whole earth into grey goo. And, what would be worse is if that grey goo was actually self-replicating, aritifical blood. Icky.