tagged w/ Robotics
-
Google Inc.'s quest to popularize cars that drive themselves seemed to hit a roadblock today when news emerged that one of the automated vehicles was in an accident. But in an ironic twist, the company is saying that the car was not driving itself; a human was.Google Inc.'s quest to popularize cars that drive themselves seemed to hit a... more
-
-
From the FIRST Robotics Competition 2011 Districts held March 25/26 2011, at Skyline High School in Ann Arbor, Michigan USA.
Dean Kamen, founder of FIRST traveled to Ann Arbor this past weekend to welcome the teams and make the formal announcement of the FIRST LED light bulb fund raising program to help school teams increase student involvement.
The entire FIRST Robotics Competiton was "FIRST" rate, please see our other videos for samples of the student's accomplishments.
This HandyRacing video presented without our normal titles and credits to solely feature the accomplishments of the Mason High School program and the FIRST Robotics Competition organization. This video produced for the The Mason High School (MI) team which is also looking for local community support for next year's 2012 team.
Thanks for checking out the video, this FIRST Robotics Competition program is really special in so many ways!
Please take a moment and listen to Mr. Kamen's opening remarks.
Thank you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CidqGP3iqpcFrom the FIRST Robotics Competition 2011 Districts held March 25/26 2011, at Skyline... more
-
-
Can we build robots that can be taught in the same way that humans teach each other? That isn’t how we teach robots now. Will this make them more useful in natural disasters?Can we build robots that can be taught in the same way that humans teach each other?... more
-
-
Lyndon Baty's weakened immune system won't allow him to attend classes at his local high school in Knox City, Texas. Fortunately, though, there's a robot capable of doing that for him.
Baty, who suffers from Polycystic Kidney Disease, is now remotely attending his freshman classes via a VGO robot, which allows him to interact with his teachers and fellow students from the comfort of his own home. All the teen has to do is log on from his laptop, turn on his webcam, and use the 'bot's video conferencing system to sit in on classes. As soon as the bell rings, Baty can wheel his four-foot robot to his next class, using a remote control system.
Until now, Baty's condition has confined him to his house, where he never had the chance to even indirectly engage with his teachers -- or, more importantly, his peers. "My best friends were my parents," the student said. "No offense against them, but I want other friends." When school officials received a chance phone call from 'bot manufacturer VGO Communications, they decided to explore the option, and ultimately purchased the robot for $5,000. Clearly, the investment has paid off. "It's absolutely amazing," Lyndon gushed. "I would have never thought when I was sick that I would ever have any interaction, much less this kind. It is just like I am there in the classroom."
http://www.switched.com/2011/02/04/lyndon-baty-uses-robot-to-attend-high-school/Lyndon Baty's weakened immune system won't allow him to attend classes at... more
-
-
A Japanese company has created a robotic exoskeleton that is designed to help make disabled people mobile again, enabling them to stand up, walk and even climb stairs.A Japanese company has created a robotic exoskeleton that is designed to help make... more
-
-
If your idea of surgery comes mainly from TV-doctor dramas, you'll find this operating suite at the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit a bit disorienting. There's a major surgery in progress — that's what they tell you, anyway — but you can't see a patient. For that matter, you can't see the surgeon. There must be a scalpel wielder here somewhere, but all you can see is people sitting at machines in near darkness. The largest of the machines is a weird behemoth in the center of the room, spiderlike, shrouded in plastic sleeves and protective drapery.If your idea of surgery comes mainly from TV-doctor dramas, you'll find this... more
-
-
arning, intelligent robot. Marge - a robot developed by UK scientists can read and learn in the real world. Created by Ingmar Posner and Paul Newman at the University of Oxford, Marge is a project where the scientists expect it to be able to navigate and learn by using human words and languages.
In an interview the scientists agree that text spotting is hard as text is a such a variable thing. “It appears in so many guises in so many places, in so many sizes, and of course the real world is full of reflections, occlusions, etc”, says Newman.
“The brain says, ‘I’ve done something kinda like this before, so I can adapt to this new activity that has been presented to me,’” said Grant. Marge is built with a complex set of algorithms which fill the gap and help the robot understand and make sense of things that it does not know.
The scientists installed a Optical character recognition software in Marge with a spell check and a dictionary which enables the robot to understand and identify objects and letters. The robot was successful in identifying that Barclays was a bank.
http://bit.ly/gSQzyvarning, intelligent robot. Marge - a robot developed by UK scientists can read and... more
-
-
The gruesome scene above started out as a sweet teddy bears' birthday party, but quickly degenerated into a fiery conflagration when the bears’ robot servant attempted to cut them a piece of cake.
This nameless failure of a robo-waiter (seen in action below) was the winning video entry in SparkFun Electronics’ Antimov competition – a contest challenging amateur robot engineers to build a bot that defies Isaac Asimov’s third Law of Robotics: that a robot must protect its own existence. Instead, these robots attempt menial tasks and destroy themselves while failing spectacularly at accomplishing their goals.
The event took place on Saturday in Boulder, Colorado, but participants were invited to send video submissions as well. The birthday party inferno, submitted by Dennis Brunner, was actually supposed to be a live entry, but due to fire regulations, the fire marshal wouldn't allow it, and the party became a video entry.
A knack for robocide seems to run in the family: the winners of the live competition were Brunner's children: Brian, 13, and Rebecca, 11. Their Lego robot, dressed as a bank robber and balanced on a seesaw, cut through a rope attached to a bag of money, which fell on the seesaw, flinging the robot into the air and smashing it into smithereens.
"We didn't have that many live entries," said Pete Dokter, director of engineering at SparkFun. "Apparently people figured out that it was going to take real work to do it and they would have to destroy their creation in the end."
Speaking of destruction, observe the sad fate of video entry ChefBot: a friendly, only marginally creepy-looking little guy on a mission to make you a delicious crème brûlée. Sadly, as you will see, he too is doomed to end in flames.
Dokter says SparkFun intends to run the competition again next year and that people have "expressed renewed interest." With any luck, that means we'll have more demonstrative robot fireballs to look forward to in 12 months.
http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2010-10/video-contest-most-spectacular-robot-failuresThe gruesome scene above started out as a sweet teddy bears' birthday party, but... more
-
-
Hanson Robotics latest female HumanKind robot "ALICE" created for MIRA Labs in Geneva Switzerland. I hope everybody that watches this realizes how incredible it is for this one head to achieve all those emotions. In "A.I." we had to have 7 "Teddy" heads to do something like this! Truly amazing work.Hanson Robotics latest female HumanKind robot "ALICE" created for MIRA Labs... more
-
-
Raytheon’s second-generation exoskeleton (XOS 2), essentially a wearable robotics suit, was unveiled for the first time recently during an event at the company’s Salt Lake City research facility. XOS 2 is lighter, stronger and faster than its predecessor, yet it uses 50 percent less power, and its new design makes it more resistant to the environment.Raytheon’s second-generation exoskeleton (XOS 2), essentially a wearable... more
-
-
-
PARIS (AFP) – Biotech wizards have engineered electronic skin that can sense touch, in a major step towards next-generation robotics and prosthetic limbs.
The lab-tested material responds to almost the same pressures as human skin and with the same speed, they reported in the British journal Nature Materials.
Important hurdles remain but the exploit is an advance towards replacing today's clumsy robots and artificial arms with smarter, touch-sensitive upgrades, they believe.
"Humans generally know how to hold a fragile egg without breaking it," said Ali Javey, an associate professor of computer sciences at the University of California at Berkeley, who led one of the research teams.PARIS (AFP) – Biotech wizards have engineered electronic skin that can sense... more
-
-
Built by robotics students at Carnegie Mellon, Uncle Sam the Snakebot is simultaneously horribly awesome, and awesomely creepy.
Uncle Sam is programmed with a variety of different "gaits", or types of movement patterns, which are based on the real-life behavior of real-life snakes. The goal is to create a modular—and, thus, relatively simple to produce and scale—robot that can get to and through places where people, and less-willies-inducing robots, can't maneuver.
http://www.boingboing.net/2010/09/05/snakebot-inspires-dr.htmlBuilt by robotics students at Carnegie Mellon, Uncle Sam the Snakebot is... more
-
-
A weakly random round up of funny, weird, and WTF articles from around the intertubes. This week: 16 lists of lists, Anna Chapman returns, Vladimir Putin fires his crossbow at whales, and a real terrorist tries out for Canadian Idol. Oh, and plenty of robots and Japan stuff too.A weakly random round up of funny, weird, and WTF articles from around the intertubes.... more
-
-
Eupraxia is a National Level Technical Symposium conducted annually by the Association of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (AEEE) of SSN College of Engineering, Chennai, India. From Paper Presentation and Project Display to Robotics and Circuit Debugging, the symposium comprises of events where the biggest battles of wits can be witnessed. Thousands of students throng to this technical meet every year. Eupraxia ‘10 is this year's edition of the event and promises a huge total prize money of about Rs.1,00,000/-. There are also numerous workshops being conducted during the event. Eupraxia ‘10, to be held on August 31st, is definitely the place to be for students who want to prove their mettle.Eupraxia is a National Level Technical Symposium conducted annually by the Association... more
-
-
This week, the Spanish World Cup team will be lining up for their free blowjobs and is King Tut's penis really missing? Weird, Odd, WTF moments from around the globe.This week, the Spanish World Cup team will be lining up for their free blowjobs and is... more
-
-
Giant baby robot spits fire on Roppongi and more sophomoric, crass, weird, odd, WTF articles from around the intertubes. Oh, and plenty of robots and stuff about Japan too.Giant baby robot spits fire on Roppongi and more sophomoric, crass, weird, odd, WTF... more
-
-
The International World Cup of Robot Soccer - 2010 RoboCup is held in Singapore June 19 - 25 this year. UBC demonstrates how soccer robots work. Soccer is being used as a platform to do research on robotics and artificial intelligenceThe International World Cup of Robot Soccer - 2010 RoboCup is held in Singapore June... more
-
-
The International World Cup of Robot Soccer - 2010 RoboCup is held in Singapore June 19 - 25 this year. UBC demonstrates how soccer robots work. Soccer is being used as a platform to do research on robotics and artificial intelligence.The International World Cup of Robot Soccer - 2010 RoboCup is held in Singapore June... more
-
-
ON a Tuesday evening this spring, Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Google, became part man and part machine. About 40 people, all gathered here at a NASA campus for a nine-day, $15,000 course at Singularity University, saw it happen.
While the flesh-and-blood version of Mr. Brin sat miles away at a computer capable of remotely steering a robot, the gizmo rolling around here consisted of a printer-size base with wheels attached to a boxy, head-height screen glowing with an image of Mr. Brin’s face. The BrinBot obeyed its human commander and sputtered around from group to group, talking to attendees about Google and other topics via a videoconferencing system.
The BrinBot was hardly something out of “Star Trek.” It had a rudimentary, no-frills design and was a hodgepodge of loosely integrated technologies. Yet it also smacked of a future that the Singularity University founders hold dear and often discuss with a techno-utopian bravado: the arrival of the Singularity — a time, possibly just a couple decades from now, when a superior intelligence will dominate and life will take on an altered form that we can’t predict or comprehend in our current, limited state.
At that point, the Singularity holds, human beings and machines will so effortlessly and elegantly merge that poor health, the ravages of old age and even death itself will all be things of the past.
Some of Silicon Valley’s smartest and wealthiest people have embraced the Singularity. They believe that technology may be the only way to solve the world’s ills, while also allowing people to seize control of the evolutionary process. For those who haven’t noticed, the Valley’s most-celebrated company — Google — works daily on building a giant brain that harnesses the thinking power of humans in order to surpass the thinking power of humans.
Larry Page, Google’s other co-founder, helped set up Singularity University in 2008, and the company has supported it with more than $250,000 in donations. Some of Google’s earliest employees are, thanks to personal donations of $100,000 each, among the university’s “founding circle.” (Mr. Page did not respond to interview requests.)
The university represents the more concrete side of the Singularity, and focuses on introducing entrepreneurs to promising technologies. Hundreds of students worldwide apply to snare one of 80 available spots in a separate 10-week “graduate” course that costs $25,000. Chief executives, inventors, doctors and investors jockey for admission to the more intimate, nine-day courses called executive programs.
Both courses include face time with leading thinkers in the areas of nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, energy, biotech, robotics and computing.
On a more millennialist and provocative note, the Singularity also offers a modern-day, quasi-religious answer to the Fountain of Youth by affirming the notion that, yes indeed, humans — or at least something derived from them — can have it all.
“We will transcend all of the limitations of our biology,” says Raymond Kurzweil, the inventor and businessman who is the Singularity’s most ubiquitous spokesman and boasts that he intends to live for hundreds of years and resurrect the dead, including his own father. “That is what it means to be human — to extend who we are.”ON a Tuesday evening this spring, Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Google, became part... more
-
