Tech: iCub Learns Language

Simpler Brain Lets iCub Learn Language:
Not all would agree but I think this advancement in robotics could be a gigantic leap in the way artificial intelligence (A.I.) grows in future robots that will need some kind of advanced A.I. For instance, how do we suppose any sentient being with the capacity to learn..learns? Although it may not be the paramount function of robotics, communicating is definitely up there in the list of obstacles needed to be apprehended if we are to have competent robots making human interactions. For it is because of communication that we learn to pass on data, and language is a form of it.

Think of it this way, a robot that understands how language works and even knows how to use it, is a robot that has been given a new pathway to understanding. A pathway that we as humans have acquired and while we haven’t mastered it I believe we do have enough experience with it to imitate it and implement it in fields where it is most needed. What I really took from this article however is the fact that the researchers looked at how the brain actually works in order to mimic the way we form and understand language. This is how robotics ought to be looked at, we see our biological nature and mimic it to the best of our abilities using technology. Working with simpler versions while upgrading along the way.

Tech: iRobot Puts Telemedicine on Auto Pilot

iRobot Puts Telemedicine on Auto Pilot:

“Called the RP-VITA, the robot uses an iPad as the primary user interface for doctors to remotely diagnose and treat hospital patients. Its makers hope the simpler operation will broaden the use of robots for telemedicine, similar to how the graphical user interface turbo-charged personal computer use.

InTouch Health’s specialty is remote-controlled robots for critical care, enabling people to be seen by doctors sooner than if they had to be in the same physical space as the physician. Getting a stroke victim, for example, to a specialist within three hours for diagnosis and treatment can make a huge difference to the patient. Similarly, specialists can provide care in intensive care units without having to physically be present, which should lower health care costs and improve care.”

Source: Technology Review

Tech: Robotic Snakes

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University are developing a modular snake robot that is both incredibly agile and vaguely unsettling. The robot’s snake-like structure allows it to crawl, swim, travel through pipes, and climb up poles.

Tech: Rock/Paper/Scissors Robot

From the Ishikawa Oku Laboratory at The University of Tokyo:

In this research we develop a janken (rock-paper-scissors) robot with 100% winning rate as one example of human-machine cooperation systems. Human being plays one of rock, paper and scissors at the timing of one, two, three. According to the timing, the robot hand plays one of three kinds so as to beat the human being.
Recognition of human hand can be performed at 1ms with a high-speed vision, and the position and the shape of the human hand are recognized. The wrist joint angle of the robot hand is controlled based on the position of the human hand. The vision recognizes one of rock, paper and scissors based on the shape of the human hand. After that, the robot hand plays one of rock, paper and scissors so as to beat the human being in 1ms.

Source: Ishikawa Oku Laboratory

Tech: Robotic Hand Can Pick Up, Throw Anything

The Cornell Creative Machines Lab has invented a low-cost, morphing robot “hand” that can pick up, drop, or throw any object, using just a balloon, coffee grounds, and a vacuum. The concept is a landmark break-through for romanticists.

Video Distraction: Boreus Hymalis

“Boreus Hymalis (Boris)” by Oakland-based artist Justin Gray is a 3000 pound tracked robot that belches fireballs and can demolish objects with its trench digging arm (video). It is based on a mid 1970′s trench digging machine. The robot was built in 2010 for the Danish festival Smukfest.

Tech: HyQ Hydraulic Quadruped Robot

This video is a demonstration of the HyQ hydraulic quadruped robot, which is able to run at speeds of up to two meters per second while surmounting increasingly difficult obstacles . The robot was developed by the Department of Advanced Robotics at the Italian Institute of Technology.

Gadgets: Festo AirJelly

I stumbled upon the above video of a robot referred to as an "AirJelly" that was created four years ago by a German company called Festo, and I was completely blown away.  Where have they been hiding this thing for the past four years?! The first thing that crossed my mind was, why the hell isn't this thing delivering my pizza already?

Video Distraction: Homemade Portal Turret

"This is the final project for my Advanced Mechatronics class at Penn State University. The robot is the skeleton of a turret from the game Portal that uses an IP webcam to track a target and fire nerf bullets at them. This is the current state of the robot as of 5/9/12, but I am currently molding a shell for the frame to make it look like the Portal turret, along with improving my code to make the tracking faster. All programming is done with MATLAB and Arduino. Enjoy!"

Gadgets: Robot Hair Washer

So, my first reaction is that robots are awesome, but need could this bot possibly be fullfilling? I mean, there's hardly a shortage of barbers, is there? Then, I started thinking about how relaxing a good scalp massage is, and I realized, it's probably not going to be long before you can get one of these for your own bathroom.

Panasonic presents its Head Care Robot. The robot is designed to support staff at hospitals and care facilities with hair washing. The robot will undergo trials for 2 months at Hair Salon Super Seo in Nishiyama City, Hyogo Prefecture, Japan.

Tech: Festo SmartInversion

Festo, has recently released a video featuring their newest high tech wonder, the Festo SmartInversion, a machine that moves through the air by turning itself inside out.

SmartInversion is a helium-filled flying object that moves through the air by turning inside-out. This constant, rhythmically pulsating movement is known as inversion and gives the flight model its name. With the intelligent combination of extreme lightweight construction, electric drive units and control and regulation technology, inversion kinematics can be indefinitely maintained to produce motion through the air.

Tech: Teaching Robots How to Spin a Web

MIT's web-spinning robot: Be very afraid?

As Nick Barber of IDG News reports, the Mediated Matter Group at MIT’s Media Lab is working on a robot it hopes will one day be able to scan its surroundings and weave a structure that’s attached to elements in the environment.
The machine isn’t able to do this just yet, but… it can be preprogrammed to weave a pretty mean web using pegs and hooks that it’s been told the positions of.
The researchers, who also study 3D printing, drop phrases like “additive manufacturing processes” and say that eventually they’ll replace the yarn shown in the video with nylon that will harden once it’s put in place. One can imagine manufacturing or construction methods that involve a machine that works with a given physical framework to create custom designs.
“We’re working on the sensing so it knows where it’s going on its own,” Research Assistant Elizabeth Tsai says in a short article by Barber.

Via: CNET News

Tech: The Hunt for AI

Marcus Du Sautoy wants to find out how close we are to creating machines that can think like us: robots or computers that have artificial intelligence. His journey takes him to a strange and bizarre world where AI is now taking shape. Marcus meets two robots who are developing their own private language, and attempts to communicate to them. He discovers how a super computer beat humans at one of the toughest quiz shows on the planet, Jeopardy. And finds out if machines can have creativity and intuition like us. Marcus is worried that if machines can think like us, then he will be out of business. But his conclusion is that AI machines may surprise us with their own distinct way of thinking.

Source: BBC

Tech: Eccerobot

ECCEROBOT is a research robot with a human anatomy-inspired structure of mechanical bones, joints, muscles, and tendons. The European research team developing ECCEROBOT believes the robot will have more human-like behavior than standard humanoid robots, simply because it is built more like a human. They are also investigating whether having a human-like structure will help the robot develop a more human-like artificial intelligence.

Source: POPSCI

Tech: Military Robotics

Robotic arms precise enough to lift a light bulb, yet strong enough to lift a set of weights. Robots that can search suspicious territory first without requiring a human being. Robots that can push around suspicious cars, break into them and take out the explosive device, safely away from any humans.

Representatives from robotics companies including iRobot and HDT Robotics, as well as government developers, were in attendance at an annual robotic conference which was held this year on Harbor Island in San Diego.

Source: SBS World News

Gadgets: The Sand Flea

Damn! Gone are the decades in which we could escape the Daleks by running up a staircases.

Sand Flea is an 11-lb robot with one trick up its sleeve: Normally it drives like an RC car, but when it needs to it can jump 30 feet into the air. An onboard stabilization system keeps it oriented during flight to improve the view from the video uplink and to control landings. Current development of Sand Flea is funded by the The US Army's Rapid Equipping Force. For more information visit Boston Dynamics.

Video Distraction: Robot Barber

The Multi-Arm UGV (Unmanned Ground Vehicle) demonstrates its dexterity by shaving a volunteer's head to raise money for the St. Baldrick's Foundation, a charity committed in funding research for finding a cure for childhood cancer.

Science: Researchers Use Legos to Build Artificial Bone

Google Science Fair 2012: How can robots aid scientific research?

Researchers at Cambridge University are building artificial bone in the lab, and they’re doing so with what might be considered an unorthodox partner: Lego. The tedious process of building up a sample of artificial bone requires a lot of repetitive dipping of samples into various substances, rinsing, and repeating. So to automate sample creation, the researchers built a couple of inexpensive laboratory robots using Lego Mindstorms.

The robots, as you will see in the video below, handle the sample creation duties, freeing up the human researchers to focus on other laboratory tasks. Which is pretty clever. Lego, for its part, sees an expanding role for itself in the laboratory and in education in general. The company has teamed up with Google for the 2012 Google Science Fair, which is a pretty cool initiative that encourages kids 13 to 18 to solve answer any question that’s been bothering them any which way they can.

News: Robo-cheetah sets speed record

Robo-cheetah sets speed record:

If there's anything scarier than a cheetah coming after you, it would have to be a headless robo-cheetah coming after you at record speed. That nightmare is now a reality, thanks to DARPA's Cheetah robot, whose 18 mph pace has set a land speed record for machines with legs.

The feat, revealed today on the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's website, is aimed at developing combat robots that can outrun and evade humans on foot — and a 3:20 mile should just about do it. (The world record for humans is 3:43.) Boston Dynamics has been working on the cheetah-bot as part of DARPA's Maximum Mobility and Manipulation program, or M3.

"This robot is galloping," Boston Dynamics President Marc Raibert told the Boston Globe. "It's the first time we've had a robot that gallops."

The previous record for legged robots was 13.1 mph, set in 1989 by the MIT Leg Lab's stick-figurish Planar Biped robot. For what it's worth, flesh-and-blood cheetahs can still run much faster, zooming at up to 70 mph.

 Source: Cosmic Log

Gadgets: Quadrotor Swarms

In his lab at Penn, Vijay Kumar and his team build flying quadrotors, small, agile robots that swarm, sense each other, and form ad hoc teams -- for construction, surveying disasters and far more.

Source: TED.com