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Robot Round-Up

Isnt it funny how american robots are built for millitary purposes while Japanese are for peacefull??

Is this a reflection of culture as a whole or attitudes to robots?

Or a bit of both?
 
Nasa to conquer space with swarms of tiny robot pyramids

greets

Nasa to conquer space with swarms of tiny robot pyramids

Tim Radford, science editor
Wednesday March 30, 2005
The Guardian

Nasa is working on the ultimate in adaptable spacecraft - Ants, or autonomous nanotechnology swarms.

The first steps have just been taken at the Goddard space flight centre in Maryland by an awkward robot creature called the Tetwalker hobbling across the floor of the lab.

Tet stands for tetrahedral: the prototype is an empty pyramid with four electric motors at each node linked to each other by six struts.

Article continues
Tet can telescope the length of each strut, thus altering the robot's centre of gravity so it topples - enabling it by successive topples to move flip-flop fashion in any direction.

Future models will have motors measured in thousandths of a millimetre, and eventually millionths. Struts will be replaced by carbon nanotubes invisible to the eye and completely retractable - enabling the pyramid to shrink until its motors touch.

In perhaps 30 years, millions of Tetwalkers will work in swarms, equipped with collective artificial intelligence, changing collective shape as needed, journeying to planets by forming solar sails riding on the pressure of sunbeams.

Entering an atmosphere, they could form an aerodynamic shield; on landing, they could morph into a snake and slither over broken ground. If they found something, they could grow into an antenna and radio Earth. And if they hit something, they simply flow back into the right shape.

"When we get hurt, new cells replace damaged ones. In a similar way, undamaged units in a swarm will join together, allowing it to tolerate extensive damage and still carry out its mission," said Steven Curtis, of Nasa. "If current robotic rovers topple over on a distant planet, they are doomed.

"Tetwalkers move by toppling over. It's a very reliable way to get around."
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1447674,00.html

mal
 
US robot builds copies of itself


US researchers have devised a simple robot that can make copies of itself from spare parts.

Writing in Nature, the robot's creators say their experiment shows the ability to reproduce is not unique to biology.

Their long-term plan is to design robots made from hundreds or thousands of identical basic modules.

These could repair themselves if parts fail, reconfigure themselves to better perform the task they have been set, or even to make extra helpers.

So far, the robots, if they can be called that, consist of just three or four mobile cubes.

Each unit comes with a small computer code carrying a blueprint for the layout of the robot, electrical contacts to let it communicate with its neighbours, and magnets to let them stick together.

By turning and moving, the cubes can pick up new units, decide where they belong, and stack them alongside each other to make new devices.

In a little more than a minute, a simple three-cube robot can make a copy of itself.

That offspring version can then make further copies. It is only a toy demonstration of the idea, but lead researcher Hod Lipson, of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, has bold plans for these intelligent modular machines.

"Space applications clearly come to mind. If you're sending a robot to one of Jupiter's moons, and the robot breaks, then the mission is over," Dr Lipson told the BBC.

"So you would like to have a robotic system that can adapt, or to repair itself, remotely. So that would be one clear application."

Other applications could be down mines or in nuclear facilities. The researchers have previously used aspects of evolution to help them design robots.

Combining this with the biology of self-repair and of replication would make huge changes to the field of robotics.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4538547.stm
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An interesting site I didn't see mentioned elsewhere:

http://www.androidworld.com/

This site is devoted to androids. An android is an anthropomorphic robot - i.e. a robot that looks like a human. Many android developers call their creations "humanoids" rather than androids. We also have robotics links, robot links, animatronics links, and research links.
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The 2020 vision of robotic assistants unveiled



A futuristic world, complete with autonomous household companions, android medics and even robot entertainers, will greet visitors to the Prototype Robot Exhibition in Japan from 9 June, 2005.

The exhibition forms part of the World Expo 2005 in Aichi, Japan, which runs from 25 May to 25 September.

Several utility robots, including autonomous garbage collectors, vacuum cleaners and security guards, are already patrolling the wider Expo. But the Prototype Robot Exhibition gives academics and commercial researchers a chance to showcase a more distant vision of robot utopia. The exhibition features a mock-ups of homes, streets and workplaces from the year 2020 and more than sixty different types of robot will be exhibited.

"This is a chance for researchers to show-off their best work," says Henrik Lund, an expert in modular robotics from the University of Southern Denmark. "You get the feeling that it's quite competitive."

Robot companions
The home of 2020 contains several robotic companions to keep human inhabitants company and help with everyday tasks. Among these are ApriAlpha and ApriAttenda, autonomous assistants developed by Japanese company Toshiba to keep elderly people company or young children occupied at home.

ApriAlpha is an armless droid that stands 43 centimetres tall and can recognise its owner's voice and respond with greetings or reminders. Its larger sibling, ApriAlpha, can also recognise a person visually, using stereoscopic cameras, and even follow them around a building. Both can be reprogrammed with new tasks throughout their lifetime.

Housekeeping also appears to have been entirely delegated to domestic robots in the home of the future. For example, Japanese company Miraikikai will demonstrate WallWalker, a bot capable of sticking to windows and cleaning them autonomously. A luggage-carrying robot developed at Meijo University is another autonomous assistant at the exhibition.

Lund says Japan already has a burgeoning market for home-based helper robots and believes the demand will continue to grow. "I think there's a huge potential market in Japan," he told New Scientist. "Though whether there will be the same market in the West remains to be seen."

Medical help
A futuristic hospital scene will show different types of medical robot currently under development in Japan. These include EVE, a humanoid bot from Nagoya University that has replica human organs and is designed to help train nurses and doctors.

Also from Nagoya University is a microscopic surgical bot called Hyper-Finger that can perform microsurgery within an abdominal cavity and is controlled by a single finger.

Some even more bizarre future responsibilities for robots appear in another area of the exhibition dedicated to entertainment bots. For example, two humanoids, Wakamura from Mitsubishi and Robovie-R created by ATR Intelligent Robotics and Communication Laboratories, have been programmed to perform jokes and slapstick comedy by Yoshimoto Kogyo, a TV production company from Osaka.

The Partner Ballroom Dance Robot, developed at Tohoku University, provides an artificial dance partner while the Batting Robot, from Hiroshima University, gives baseball pitchers a chance to practise their fastballs and curveballs.

Slithering shape-shifter
More exotic forms of robot will also be displayed at the exhibition. This includes a modular, reconfigurable robot called M-Tran III built by Satoshi Murata and colleagues at Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (NIST).

M-Tran III consists of identical components and can switch between different forms of locomotion. It can walk on four limbs like an ape or shift shape in order to slither like a snake. A video showing M-Tran III in action (2.5MB mpeg) can be downloaded from the NIST researchers’ homepage.

Another shape-shifter on display will be Koharo - a spherical, rolling robot developed at Ritsumeikan University, in Kusatsu. By contracting its sides, Koharo can cause itself to roll along or even leap through the air.

The exhibition runs until 19 June.


http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7421
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Robotic bins and singing benches in Cambridge

Singing benches let loose in city

Robotic bins that move and chuckle, benches that flock together and sing when the sun comes out, have been unleashed in Cambridge.
The Junction, one of the city's arts venues, unveiled the public arts display in the Plaza on Thursday.

The "interactive" technology will allow the street furniture to respond to members of the public.

The six bins and six benches - which are solar-powered - were created by London artists, Greyworld.

Andrew Shoben, from Greyworld, said: "At first glance it may look like nothing has changed at all but the bins and benches all have unique personalities.

"They are what's called "generative" so that over time they develop more and more personality.

"You'll find that one bench may be particularly attracted to a particular bin. They will chuckle and giggle sometimes or make rude noises."

Artistic and executive director of The Junction, Paul Bogen, said: "They're great because they're fun and art should be fun and it should be something people enjoy and not just stodgy and theoretical."

Mr Bogen hopes the cutting edge technology would help keep the bins and benches safe from theft.

The Junction has a three year maintenance contract with Greyworld and plans to name all the bins and benches individually to make carrying out repairs easier.

The project cost £110,000 and was funded by the Arts Council and the National Lottery.
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Source

What happens if all the bins like one particular bench, do they start making rude noises at each other and fight over it?

What if they all follow you down the street....chuckling and giggling... :eek!!!!:
 
Another sotry about teh walking octopus that may inspire robot design:

www.forteantimes.com/forum/viewtopic.ph ... 954#546954

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Robots designed for everyday life not reay for living room

Thursday, June 9, 2005 Updated at 8:23 AM EDT

Associated Press

Nagakute, Japan — Robots of all shapes and sizes were batting fastballs, drawing portraits, teaching the waltz and doing standup comedy at a Japanese exposition – but several years of testing are still needed before most of them can be used in public, developers say.

Lined up in a row of booths, the more than 60 robots on display starting Thursday at the Prototype Robot Exhibition – being held in a corner of the sprawling expo in Aichi, Japan – are designed to become part of everyday lives, helping the sick, rescuing disaster victims and entertaining families.

The exhibit, which runs through June 19, aims to showcase Japan's leadership in robotics. With the nation's economy still sluggish, corporations, researchers and government officials are hoping the sector can provide new growth opportunities.

The Japan Robot Association, a trade group, expects the Japanese market for next-generation robots – those being developed now as opposed to industrial robots currently in use – to grow to $14-billion (U.S.) by 2010, and to more than $37-billion by 2025.

All the robots on display, however, were test models that researchers are several years from being used safely and reliably in public. Several robots had obvious glitches.

Cooper, a mechanical portrait artist developed by a candy maker, was drawing the faces of visitors on large cookies with a laser-pen. It has a program that translates images from a digital camera into line drawing instructions, but sometimes the robot delivers only a mishmash of scribbles, said Yukata Saito, spokesman for developer Yoshikawa Kikai Seisakusho Corp.

Many of the robots were designed to help communication. One worked as a fancy videophone, replicating the moves of the distant caller with its mechanical arms and projecting a three-dimensional image of the caller on its face.

One model called Batting Robot has a vision system that handles 1,000 images a second, more than 30 times as many as the human eye can, that should allow it to accurately hit pitches of up to 160 kilometres an hour. At the expo, however, it was using a plastic bat to hit rubber balls at far slower speeds.

Hiroshima University Associate Professor Idaku Ishii believes the robot can help train major-league baseball players, although a more practical purpose is processing information at lightning speeds, such as detecting cracks in walls during an earthquake.

The exhibit boasts a lineup galore of entertainment robots.

Humanoids Robovie and Wakamaru have been programmed by a famous comedy agency to put on a slapstick routine.

A model called InterAnimal is a teddy bear about 120 centimetres tall that moves its arms and nods in synch to the sound the human voice. Developers claim it helps children who have problems talking with adults.

The robot that looks most like a human being is the Repliee Q1expo, which is covered with a skin-like substance and moves its mouth and shifts its torso as though it is breathing. It also gives the illusion of reacting to approaching people.

But Repliee sometimes goes into what appears to be spasms when its program hits a glitch.

Still, it may be a precursor of the day when robots will be helping with tasks such as guiding the elderly around the streets or selling tickets, developers say.

“When a robot looks too much like the real thing, it's creepy,” Osaka University Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro said. “But if they resemble human beings, it also makes communication easier.”

More whimsical is the golden Kinshachi Robot that swims like a fish. The slithering robot has comical bulging eyes, but it has a serious purpose: To go into the ocean to monitor the safety of bridges and gather information for fishing, according to Ryomei Engineering Co., which also develops more lifelike carp and sea bream robots.

The robots, which originated as shipbuilding research, rent for about $940 a day, although there have not been many requests to buy or rent them, sales official Hiroo Minoda said.
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Source
 
Singing benches let loose in city

Robotic bins that move and chuckle, benches that flock together and sing when the sun comes out, have been unleashed in Cambridge.

The Junction, one of the city's arts venues, unveiled the public arts display in the Plaza on Thursday.

The "interactive" technology will allow the street furniture to respond to members of the public.

The six bins and six benches - which are solar-powered - were created by London artists, Greyworld.

Andrew Shoben, from Greyworld, said: "At first glance it may look like nothing has changed at all but the bins and benches all have unique personalities.

"They are what's called "generative" so that over time they develop more and more personality.

"You'll find that one bench may be particularly attracted to a particular bin. They will chuckle and giggle sometimes or make rude noises."

Artistic and executive director of The Junction, Paul Bogen, said: "They're great because they're fun and art should be fun and it should be something people enjoy and not just stodgy and theoretical."

Mr Bogen hopes the cutting edge technology would help keep the bins and benches safe from theft.

The Junction has a three year maintenance contract with Greyworld and plans to name all the bins and benches individually to make carrying out repairs easier.

The project cost £110,000 and was funded by the Arts Council and the National Lottery.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/camb ... 077680.stm
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Sounds awfully chaotic.
 
i bet the bins and benchs will still end up in the river :rofl:
 
melf said:
i bet the bins and benchs will still end up in the river :rofl:
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Probably even faster than they do now...
 
This is now a couple months old, but I didn't see that it's been posted. I guess the first "mass-produce[d] humanoids for the home" :wince: are now a reality and residing in selected living rooms across Japan. It doesn't say specfically what dance the choreographer programmed it to do, though. (For some reason I now have this image of an animatronic KC & the Sunshine Band----Do a little dance, make a little love, get down tonight----) :madeyes:

Walking, dancing human robot goes on sale

Associated Press
April 19, 2005

A small walking man-shaped robot for home security and entertainment is going on sale in Japan for $5,450.

The 15-inch tall, 5.5 pound robot called nuvo from ZMP Inc also comes in a fancier $8,200 version with the same functions and a design inspired by lacquer-ware painted on its body.

The robot can walk, get up and respond to voice commands such as "turn right." It links to mobile phones so that people can check on images of their homes taken on a digital camera inside the robot's head. It can be controlled by a remote and is programmed to do a dance.It also makes musical sounds.

The creators are billing the machine as an eye-pleasing addition to fashionable homes, the collaboration of a designer and a choreographer as well as a computer chip maker.

Tokyo-based ZMP is planning to sell 2,300 robots, and shipments are set for late April. Orders are being taken through the Internet and robots will also be sold at a Tokyo shop. The robots are being sold only in Japan, the company said.

Japan leads the world in robotics, and Japanese companies, including automakers Honda Motor Co and Toyota Motor Corp, have produced experimental human-shaped robots. Sony Corp has sold the Aibo dog-shaped entertainment robots, but ZMP says it's the first to mass-produce humanoids for the home.
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http://mdn.mainichi.co.jp/features/0504/19robot.html
 
Robo-pups created with curiosity in mind



A litter of robotic puppies exhibiting a form of artificial curiosity is being put through kindergarten at Sony's research and development lab in Paris, France.

The Aibo pups display an innate artificial curiosity similar to that seen in baby animals. They slowly learn to explore the surrounding world, before playing with toys and trying to communicate with other Aibo dogs.

The Aibo is a popular robot dog designed to interact with its owner and perform simple tricks. This new litter was programmed by Sony researchers Pierre-Yves Oudeyer and Frédéric Kaplan, who wiped all of the dogs' conventional programming and rewrote their control system from scratch.

Each of the new Aibo dogs was given two software control mechanisms. Firstly, a "low-level learning system" which controls simple behaviour but also tries to predict how this will affect the surrounding sensory world - how kicking a ball will cause it to move across the floor, for example. Secondly, a "meta-learning system" which analyses the accuracy of predictions made by the low-level system and controls overall “motivation”.

Interaction between these two components is critical to the reprogrammed Aibos' uncannily inquisitive nature. The meta-learning system prompts the robot dogs to pursue behaviours that they can rapidly learn to predict, but which also have maximum learning potential. This tends to makes the robot dogs inherently curious, seeking out increasingly complicated scenarios with which to interact. But it also means they will effectively become bored with activities that do not stimulate them to their, albeit artificial, satisfaction.

Playground rules
"The idea is to build some sort of abstract motivation based on a form of curiosity," Oudeyer told New Scientist. "Basically, the baby robots search for situations in which they experience some sort of progress."

In an experiment called the Aibo Playground Project, Oudeyer and Kaplan placed the robotic pups in a child's activity-pen and left them to investigate. They found that the robots learned progressively, initially just moving their limbs in an uncoordinated manner, before tentatively exploring their surroundings and biting nearby soft toys.

After several hours, however, the bots started kicking their toys and even trying to interact with conventional Aibo dogs. A short video (Windows Media Video 7.8MB), available from the researchers web site, shows an Aibo pup that has learnt to play with its toys and bark at another robot nearby.

Oudeyer says every subject followed a similar learning pattern, but there was also variation among Aibos, a pattern also seen in learning animals. He believes the research could eventually help robot designers create machines that are much more flexible and adaptive in unpredictable circumstances. But he also says the project could shed light on how human intelligence benefits from curiosity and experimentation. "We hope, by building these robots, we might shed some light on the development of human children," he says.

Biological learning
Other robotics experts agree that it may be necessary to learn from biological organisms in order to take robots to a smarter and more adaptive stage.

"Playful curiosity is absolutely fundamental to learning in many animals," says Steve Grand, founder of UK robotics research company Cyberlife Research. "Curiosity created the cat, and the human, so why not the robot?"

Olaf Sporns, an expert in artificial neural systems at Indiana University, US, adds that: "Robots that are driven by curiosity may be able to develop on their own, without programming or supervision."

And Max Lungarella, an expert in adaptive robots at the University Of Tokyo, Japan, says that an in-built inquisitiveness could eventually hold the key to robots that independently explore the world around them. "Curiosity might provide the necessary drive to act and interact with the environment," he told New Scientist. "I like it very much."

However, Lungarella also cautions that the nature of curiosity in biological entities, including humans, remains extremely complex and poorly understood. "I am not sure if it's possible to map curiosity onto an algorithm," Lungarella says. "However complex the algorithm might be."

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7561
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Endurance test for robot Humvee


A robotic Humvee has managed to drive itself for seven hours without crashing on a race course in the US.
The robotic vehicle built by Red Team Robot Racing from Carnegie Mellon University covered 200 miles (322 kilometres) during the trial.

The test was part of preparations for a robot vehicles race across the Mojave desert organised by the US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency.

The race, called the Grand Challenge, is due to be held on 8 October.

The aim of the competition is to encourage research into robot vehicles. To win a cash prize of $2m (£1.13m), the autonomous racers must make their own way across the desert course within a specified time limit.

Veteran racer

In the first Grand Challenge held last year, none of the robot cars taking part made it to the finishing line.

Sandstorm, from Carnegie Mellon University, made it the furthest distance down the course and the team are now looking at doing better this time round.

In an endurance test of the vehicle's computers, sensors and mechanical systems, Sandstorm drove 131 laps on a race course near Pittsburgh, covering the distance in seven hours.

The adapted hummer averaged 28mph (45kph) and hit a top speed of 36mph (57kph).

"That doesn't sound like a big deal for a human-driven car, but it is a very big deal for the pioneering of computer-driven vehicles," said Red Team leader, robotics professor William "Red" Whittaker.

"That distance, speed and duration are unprecedented for a completely autonomous machine. However, this machine and 19 others will face far more difficult conditions in the race across the Mojave Desert.

"Sandstorm ran a quick pace on this track, but the Mojave will not be so easy or forgiving."

Sandstorm and its sister machine, the Hummer H1ighlander are among the 40 vehicles taking part in qualifying rounds for the Grand Challenge between 26 September and 6 October.

Out of these, 20 will make it through to compete in the desert marathon for the cash prize.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4678565.stm
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Homo Aves said:
And now the Cars are going to take over the world!
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Well they cant be that far off already, they have the numbers, now they have the means!


Japanese develop 'female' android


Japanese scientists have unveiled the most human-looking robot yet devised - a "female" android called Repliee Q1.

She has flexible silicone for skin rather than hard plastic, and a number of sensors and motors to allow her to turn and react in a human-like manner.

She can flutter her eyelids and move her hands like a human. She even appears to breathe.

Professor Hiroshi Ishiguru of Osaka University says one day robots could fool us into believing they are human.

Designed to look human

Repliee Q1 is not like any robot you will have seen before, at least outside of science-fiction movies.

She is designed to look human and although she can only sit at present, she has 31 actuators in her upper body, powered by a nearby air compressor, programmed to allow her to move like a human.

"I have developed many robots before," Repliee Q1's designer, Professor Ishiguru, told the BBC News website, "but I soon realised the importance of its appearance. A human-like appearance gives a robot a strong feeling of presence."

Before Repliee Q1, Professor Ishiguru developed Repliee R1 which had the appearance of a five-year-old Japanese girl.

Its head could move in nine directions and it could gesture with its arm. Four high-sensitivity tactile sensors were placed under the skin of its left arm that made the android react differently to differing pressures.

The follow-up has the appearance of a Japanese woman. To program her motion, a computer analysed the motions of a human and used them as a template for the way Repliee Q1 moves.

She can be designed to follow the movement of a human wearing motion sensors or to act independently.

"Repliee Q1 can interact with people. It can respond to people touching it. It's very satisfying, although we obviously have a long way to go yet."

Professor Ishiguru believes that it may prove possible to build an android that could pass for a human, if only for a brief period.

"An android could get away with it for a short time, 5-10 seconds. However, if we carefully select the situation, we could extend that, to perhaps 10 minutes," he said.

"More importantly, we have found that people forget she is an android while interacting with her. Consciously, it is easy to see that she is an android, but unconsciously, we react to the android as if she were a woman."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4714135.stm
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I can see it now....The childless old couple and their robot boy.

(was that a traditional folktale or an anime?? Doesnt matter.)
 
Thankfully not another Kursk, even if it would have been on a smaller scale.


Robotic craft rescues Russian sub



Seven Russian submariners were dramatically rescued by a diminutive robot craft on Sunday after spending 76 hours trapped in freezing conditions, with a rapidly dwindling supply of oxygen.

The crew of a Priz AS-28 submersible - itself a rescue vehicle - was trapped 190 metres below the surface, 100 kilometres from the coast of the Kamchatka Peninsula on the eastern edge of Russia. Their craft had become ensnared in seabed cabling and fishing nets on Thursday.

Russian navy ships had tried in vain to free the ship by looping cables underneath it before the British robot sub could arrive to help with the rescue effort. In order to conserve power and oxygen, the crew of the stricken sub shut down power and climbed into thermal suits in one compartment, breathing as lightly as possible.

At around 0326 GMT on Sunday, with just an hour of oxygen remaining, the robot sub managed to cut through enough fishing net to allow the Priz sub to escape from its tangle. The crew filled their submarine's ballast tanks with air and bobbed back to the surface in just 3 minutes. The crew were even able to open the hatch for themselves and emerge dazed but unscathed from their ordeal.

Ticking clock
"The hardest thing was knowing that the clock was ticking," Peter Nuttall, a member of the robot sub team told The Guardian after the rescue. "If the vehicle had broken down for any reason, that could have been it."

The remotely-controlled sub is owned by the British ministry of defence but its operators work for Rumic Ltd, a contracted firm based in Cumbria, UK. They were the first of several international rescue teams to reach the scene after the Russian government issued an international call for help on Thursday.

The Russian defence minister, Sergei Ivanov, who greeted the submariners as they were brought ashore in the port of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatski, praised the robot sub team for the efforts. "We have seen in deeds, not in words, what the brotherhood of the sea means," he told reporters.

The Super Scorpio "Tethered Unmanned Work Vehicle System" is operated remotely, via a cable connected to a ship above. The robot sub is 2.7 metres long, 1.7 metres wide and can dive to a maximum depth of 900 metres. On the front of the craft is a pair of lifting arms with pincer-like mechanical cutters capable of slicing through steel cables up to 7 centimetres thick.

The increasingly desperate rescue operation evoked memories of the Kursk tragedy of August 2000 in which 118 crewmen died when their nuclear submarine sank in the Barents Sea. Although the submarine only sank to 100 metres it had been breached by an onboard explosion, making rescue attempts extremely difficult. Nevertheless, the Russian government was severely criticised for taking four days to ask for international assistance.

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7802
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Kids battle robot in goldfish-catching contest

Catching goldfish might seem like child's play but, for a net-wielding robot, it is an extremely challenging task.

The goldfish-grabbing bot, known as "Poipoi", was developed by researchers at the Nara Institute of Science and Technology (NAIST), in central Japan. It has been entered into an annual goldfish catching competition for children, which takes place in nearby Yamatokoriyama, on 20 August.

"The city is famous for its goldfish-scooping contest," says NAIST artificial intelligence expert Masatugu Kidode, who adds that Poipoi can catch between six and 10 goldfish in 3 minutes.

Although this falls considerably short of the best human contestants – who can scoop up around 60 fish over the same time – Kidode says Poipoi represents an important step forward for robot-kind.

Swoop and scoop
The bot is essentially mechanical arm connected to a computer and an overhead camera. The camera keeps track of goldfish in a pool below the arm, allowing the computer to predict where and when the arm should swoop down to snatch up as many fish as possible.

"In this project, we are studying dynamic image analysis with lots of moving objects," he told New Scientist, noting that the same principle used to rapidly track large numbers of moving fish can also be applied to moving cars and even people in crowds.

Robotics expert Derek Magee at the University of Leeds in the UK, says the task is actually deceptively difficult – at least for a machine. "The hardness in the problem arises if the fish pass in front of each other," he says. "It depends on the density of fish."

But Magee adds that similar techniques are already being developed to track humans in CCTV footage and sports players for technical analysis.

Besides having a practical side, Kidode hopes the robot will provide plenty of entertainment for spectators at the goldfish competition, even if it fails to scoop a prize this time around.

A short piece video of Poipoi in action can be seen on the website of the Japanese news service, NHK. http://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/2005/08/12/k ... 0125.html#

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7838
 
IQ test for AI devices gets experts thinking

How do you tell just how smart your robot is? Give it a universal IQ test, researchers suggest.

Traditional measures of human intelligence would often be inappropriate for systems that have senses, environments, and cognitive capacities very different from our own.

So Shane Legg and Marcus Hutter at the Swiss Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Manno-Lugano, have drafted an idea for an alternative test which will allow the intelligence of vision systems, robots, natural-language processing programs or trading agents to be compared and contrasted despite their broad and disparate functions.

Although there is no consensus on exactly what human intelligence is, most views cluster around the idea that it hinges on a general ability to achieve goals in a wide range of environments, says Legg.

The same concept can be applied to an AI system, by measuring its ability to carry out complex tasks within its particular environment and then comparing the complexity of its environment with those of a wide range of other AI systems.

“But there is a problem,” he says. Before putting this into practice the AI community will have to thrash out an agreement on what counts as the average environment. And that will not be easy.

Thrown gauntlet
Under Legg and Hutter's definition, for example, the chess-playing computer Deep Blue would come out as less intelligent than a generalist learning algorithm, as Deep Blue is only designed to carry out a very specific task.

But consensus or no consensus, the test is likely to face a lot of resistance, says Blay Whitby, an expert in human and artificial intelligence at the University of Sussex in Brighton, UK. For one thing, some people would even dispute that intelligence involves goals, he says.

Also it may imply that rather a lot of computer programs should suddenly be considered intelligent, he says: “Some people may object to this.”

But Legg’s test is a good place to start, says Whitby, not least because it throws down the gauntlet to the AI community to come up with a definition of intelligence that will work for all AI. “This is a very important – perhaps the most important – issue to be resolved for the future of AI,” says Whitby.

He adds that all too often intelligence is identified with human intelligence but, given the wide range of systems in AI, this anthropomorphic approach is not always appropriate.

The Turing Test, for example, is often seen as the ultimate challenge for artificial intelligence. This is typified by the annual Loebner Prize where computers converse with people in an attempt to convince them they too are human, frequently with very limited success.

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7842
 
Thin skin will help robots 'feel'


Japanese researchers have developed a flexible artificial skin that could give robots a humanlike sense of touch.
The team manufactured a type of "skin" capable of sensing pressure and another capable of sensing temperature.

These are supple enough to wrap around robot fingers and relatively cheap to make, the researchers have claimed.

The University of Tokyo team describe their work in the latest issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The researchers explain how pressure-sensing and temperature-sensing networks can be laminated together, forming an artificial skin that can detect both properties simultaneously.

Takao Someya, lead author on the latest research, previously developed a form of artificial skin capable of sensing pressure.

But the ability to sense temperature as well allows the scientists to more closely imitate the functions of human skin.

Someya and his colleagues used electronic circuits as pressure sensors and semiconductors as temperature sensors. They embedded these sensors in a thin plastic film to create networks of sensors.

Organic materials

The transistors used in the circuits and the semiconductors both use "organic" materials based on chains of carbon atoms.

This makes them mechanically flexible and relatively inexpensive to fabricate.

"Both of those characteristics sound compelling. The material sounds like it could have lots of functions," Dr Douglas Weibel, of the department of chemistry and chemical biology at Harvard University told the BBC News website.

"The materials they're using may not be completely novel but the integration appears to be something new."

The University of Tokyo scientists say their breakthrough has the potential to improve how robots will function in the real world.

And they add that there is no need to stop at simply imitating the functions of human skin.

"It will be possible in the near future to make an electronic skin that has functions that human skin lacks," the researchers write in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Future artificial skins could incorporate sensors not only for pressure and temperature, but also for light, humidity, strain or sound, they add.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4154366.stm
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Good article here about the latest developments in miniature spy planes, or drones.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4185648.stm

They are supposed to be hard to see or hear, and can morph body-shape like a bird to make flying in cities easier.

I wonder how many glimpses of these will get reported as UFOs or Rods?

For myself, I'm going to regard all the seagulls round here with even more suspicion than I normally do. :D
 
Just watch the eyes and listen. There's a faint wiring sound as the irises open... :p
 
rynner said:
For myself, I'm going to regard all the seagulls round here with even more suspicion than I normally do. :D
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So if they shit on your head, you'll know they're the real thing. :)
 
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