AusRobotics

Filed under: Robots

As we've seen, snake-like robots have long since move beyond the realm of nightmares into a frightening reality, and they just seem to keep on getting more and more plentiful. This latest one comes to us from UK-based OC Robotics, and has the notable distinction of being just a half-inch in diameter and a full 24 inches long, which is apparently just the ticket the US Department of Defense was looking for (it's currently testing the bot). Like other similar bots, this one boasts a camera and tool on its tip, and it can be operated using a joystick, which actually controls each of the independant "vertebrae" that makes up the arm. As you might have guessed, the company is already hard at work on even longer versions of the bot, but if you're not willing to wait for that, you can apparently put in an order for one of its current models right now.

[Via Crave]
Read | Permalink | Email this | CommentsDonald Melanson

An experiment with spatial frequency and phase. Here I've convolved each row of the original image with a one dimensional Gabor filter at a few different frequencies.



For each frequency the filter is applied with a number of phase offsets and the maximally responding phase is selected. In the animation below red indicates negative phase (0 to -90 degrees), blue indicates positive phase (0 to 90 degrees) and black indicates something close to zero phase.

It's been a while since we've seen a Rodney Brooks interview, so we thought you'd enjoy reading Newsweek's recent interview. He talks about the importance of gaze direction in making robots socially interact with humans. He answers the question of what the most interesting robots are that he's seen lately. He talks about the Uncanny Valley and human-looking robots. He says that the popular conception of robots as different from humans is an artificial distinction since we're both machines, just of different types. But he notes, "Whether we humans are smart enough to build such machines is a different question. Maybe we're just not smart enough. That pisses off the scientists when I say that.".(author unknown)

Scientists at the University of Reading have created a robot that is controlled by a biological brain composed of cultured neurons. Several other institutions have tried to achieve the same feat, but until now it has not been done. The developers are extremely proud of their creation, but the work is far from over.

The technology is going to be used in various studies of the brain. Currently, a project has been created that will study the how the brain stores memories and specific pieces of data. The long-term goal of the project is to learn more about neurological diseases such as Alzheimer's disease and how they occur.

So how exactly does this invention help with those studies? Well, in order to understand that one must learn how the robot and its brain work together. In simple terms, the cultured neurons are placed on a Multi Electrode Array (MEA), which communicates with the robot via bluetooth, sending messages from the brain cells. The MEA consists of approximately 60 electrodes that pick up electrical signals created by the cells. Currently, the "brain" is able to tell the robot when and where to move. When the robot nears an object the electrodes are stimulated and the brain knows that it is near something. The whole process is quite amusing.

The next part of the project (studying memories and data in the brain) will also use the robot as the scientists see how it remembers and reacts to an environment it has previously been in. By seeing the robots reactions and analyzing the brain cells, scientists will be able to get more information on exactly how the brain deals with data. After more on that is learned, the project will continue on to further studies of the brain and all along the robot will likely learn and grow just like us humans. Kind of cool isn't it?

Via Kate Hartman's flickr -

The XBee Lilypad project that Rob Faludi and Kate Hartman have been working on is looking great. They took the cc-licenced board design from Leah Buechley's Lilypad Arduino and made this sewable XBee radio.

More:

LilyPad Arduino meets XBee radios for a chat

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Open source hardware | Digg this!Becky Stern

Here's a neat video of a funny robot on the roof of the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts. The robot was made by Golan Levin with Lawrence Hayhurst, Steven Benders and Fannie White.

"Double-Taker (Snout)" (interactive installation, 2008) deals in a whimsical manner with the themes of trans-species eye contact, gestural choreography, subjecthood, and autonomous surveillance. The project consists of an eight-foot (2.5m) long industrial robot arm, costumed to resemble an enormous inchworm or elephant's trunk, which responds in unexpected ways to the presence and movements of people in its vicinity. Sited on a low roof above a museum entrance, and governed by a real-time machine vision algorithm, Double-Taker (Snout) orients itself towards passers-by, tracking their bodies and suggesting an intelligent awareness of their activities. The goal of this kinetic system is to perform convincing "double-takes" at its visitors, in which the sculpture appears to be continually surprised by the presence of its own viewers — communicating, without words, that there is something uniquely surprising about each of us. Double-Taker (Snout)

An Arduino, model bulldozer, servos, and sensors can be hacked together to make a sub-$100 robotics platform, appropriately named Ard-e.

While certainly nowhere near as fancy as this Wall-E replica, the price is right and the Arduino's got a huge body of pre-existing code for working with sensors that the aspiring roboticist can build upon. I'd particularly like to see a trash-compacting version...

Full disclosure: imadami is the maker of this project and also my youngest brother. And no, I don't want to hear about how much cooler this project is than my own!:)

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Robotics | Digg this!Luke Iseman

Ok, so we've heard a lot of stuff about The Singularity, but what about its proponents? Here we study the singularitarian in his natural habitat, and attempt to classify some of the unique behaviors exhibited by these rare creatures.

Articles of Faith

The classic Singularitarian gesture is known as articles of faith. Here both hands are raised to shoulder level or slightly above, with palms upwards as if preaching to the mostly already converted. This gesture is deployed sparingly but with devastating effect to emphasize climactic moments of singularitarian fervor.




The NanoTech Pinch

The nanotech pinch is an extremely common manoevre used during discussions of nanotechnology and is especially favoured when talking about molecular nanotech. The arm is extended with fingers brought together into a spatially precise pinching action, emphasizing the tininess of the subject under scrutiny. This gesture has been used with great success by Ray Kurzweil, but subsequent innovations by Ben Goertzel exponentially increased its efficacy with the introduction of the dual nanotech pinch, or "doubletech".




The Graph Zeppelin

The graph zeppelin manoevre, or simply "the zeppelin", is used especially when talking about graphs of which Singularitarians are particularly fond, which are usually of the exponential type. In a spectacular swooping display, often delivered without forewarning, one arm reaches downwards whilst the other curves majestically skywards, as if plotting points in a two dimensional space.

Animatronic hackers are reprogramming the old Rock-a-Fire robotic band (as seen at Showbiz Pizzas around the country) to perform contemporary rock songs and producing their own fan videos for today's hits.
Today's updated set list revival comes partially courtesy of Chris Thrash, who purchased a vintage set of Rock-afire robots in 2006 and began putting them through the hip-hop paces and posting the resulting videos on YouTube a year or so later.

While Fechter was wary of the new videos at first -- they were posted without his authorization or consent, and include some racy lyrics that don't exactly jibe with Rock-afire's family-friendly image -- he saw a spark of potential when one of Thrash's videos tallied nearly 500,000 views in a matter of weeks.

"I decided to make an investment in the whole YouTube phenomenon," said Fechter (pictured above), who works to train a handpicked crew of programmers to crank out new shows every month. Fechter even recruited the original Rock-afire Explosion vocalists to re-record some hit tunes, like Shakira's "Hips Don't Lie."

Animatronic Band Moves From Pizza Parlors to YouTube, Rock-afire Explosion vids on YouTube

See also: Video: documentary on Showbiz animatronic band

Animatronic hackers are reprogramming the old Rock-a-Fire robotic band (as seen at Showbiz Pizzas around the country) to perform contemporary rock songs and producing their own fan videos for today's hits.
Today's updated set list revival comes partially courtesy of Chris Thrash, who purchased a vintage set of Rock-afire robots in 2006 and began putting them through the hip-hop paces and posting the resulting videos on YouTube a year or so later.

While Fechter was wary of the new videos at first -- they were posted without his authorization or consent, and include some racy lyrics that don't exactly jibe with Rock-afire's family-friendly image -- he saw a spark of potential when one of Thrash's videos tallied nearly 500,000 views in a matter of weeks.

"I decided to make an investment in the whole YouTube phenomenon," said Fechter (pictured above), who works to train a handpicked crew of programmers to crank out new shows every month. Fechter even recruited the original Rock-afire Explosion vocalists to re-record some hit tunes, like Shakira's "Hips Don't Lie."

Animatronic Band Moves From Pizza Parlors to YouTube, Rock-afire Explosion vids on YouTube

See also: Video: documentary on Showbiz animatronic band

Last year, we wrote about some R/C helicopters from Georgia Tech that were able to land on 60 degree slopes under computer control. Looks like Stanford has its own autonomous helicopter program, and they’ve been able to teach their helicopters to do all sorts of crazy stuff without anyone at the controls. The acrobatics in the following video are not preprogrammed maneuvers… A human pilot first performs some sample sequences, and a computer “watches” the trajectory of the helicopter and figures out how to duplicate (and improve upon) them. After the autonomous acrobatics in the video, you’ll see a set of six sample trajectories in color (flown by a puny human pilot) as well as a seventh trajectory (in white) which is what the computer calculates to be the ideal representation of the maneuvers:

There’s a ton of fancy math involved (read the paper here), but the upshot is that a computer can learn how to fly a helicopter better than an expert, after simply watching the expert fly for a while. According to Stanford, “in all cases, the autonomous helicopter’s performance exceeds that of our expert helicopter pilot’s demonstrations.” In of itself, this is not surprising, but the key here is that nobody has to program the robot to do anything specific. Programming robots to do what you want them to do is one of the biggest obstacles to practical robotics since it generally takes a substantial amount of knowledge and skill. Software like this, which allows robots to watch us and teach themselves, has a great deal of promise. And not just for helicopters… It’s also good for making omelettes.

You can see more vids on the Stanford Autonomous Helicopter Project’s YouTube channel.

[ Stanford Autonomous Helicopter ] VIA [ AI Robotics ]

Filed under: misc hacks

It might not be as elegant or technologically-advanced as a Segway or a motorized unicycle, but this easily constructed 2-wheeled robot might be a fun project for a free afternoon. The heart of the balancing mechanism is an SPDT switch with a button cell attached that reverses the motor when the robot begins to tip in one direction. It's not controllable and it tends to fall over quite a bit, but it's a good starting point and could be refined by lowering the center of gravity or figuring out a simple way to change the motor speed based on how far the robot has tipped over. There are no accelerometers or tilt switches so the components could be sourced from a parts bin, and its simple design definitely leaves a lot of room for improvement.Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
Ross Fairgrieve

Our pal I-Wei Huang, of Crabfu Steamworks, has issued a challenge on the Trossen Robotics Forums. It's a contest, judged my I-Wei, to find the most "characterful" robot. He writes:

To bring a bunch of hardware the illusion of life and character. This is NOT about AI or fancy software or hardware. It's not to achieve real character or personality, but the ILLUSION of it. Autonomous robots can enter too, but this isn't a contest of the smartest robot, but a smartest "looking" and "moving" robot could win. This is about the art of breathing some charm into a bunch of electronics.

The prize is a $100 gift certificate from Trossen.

CONTEST: The Crabfu Challenge

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Announcements | Digg this!Gareth Branwyn

The effects of visual disparity - observing a scene from two different viewpoints. To the right to can see one of the original images (the Rodney robot looking at a cup). To the left you can see both left and right images interlaced together. There is a big difference in horizontal position for nearby objects such as the cup, but not such a big difference for more distant objects such as the mirror to the far right.



When processing images all we're really dealing with are intensities of light - the number of photons hitting each picture element of the sensor. One missing piece of information which would be really useful for matching purposes would also be to know the phase of the light for each pixel (remember that light is both a wave and a "particle"), but unfortunately current imaging technology can't provide this information. When looking at a surface with very little texture (intensity variation), such as a blank wall, it may be that biological vision is exploiting phase detection to see what's really there.

I love the way this LEGO NXT beastie walks - he's so expressive! Via NXT Step

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in LEGO | Digg this!Patti Schiendelman

A little tidbit for all of you in the greater Bay Area - Ken Goldberg, robot god of UC Berkeley, will be speaking at Science Cafe on August 18th at the Atlas Cafein San Francisco.

Photo Courtesy Berkeley Engineering Forefront
Ken Goldberg: Not just a robot guy, but the frontman for his very own telerobotic emo band*

Is there decision-making strength in numbers? Professor Goldberg and his students are looking into questions raised by robots and social networks — and working on a new class of interfaces and games based on networked robots and cameras that quantify a measure of “leadership” to bring about group discovery and decision-making based on the power of crowds.

Ken will report on experiments and questions raised by robots and social networks, ranging from Ouija boards to human “tele-actors,”and tell a true story about how invasions of privacy led him and his students to study how robots can assist in monitoring the natural environment. Ken will describe a robotic system they’ve deployed to assist the search for the Ivory Billed Woodpecker, a bird of extreme interest to birdwatchers, ornithologists, and conservationists whose last confirmed sighting was in 1944. Ken will also describe the Berkeley Center for New Media, a highly cross-disciplinary center with over 110 affiliated faculty from 30 Cal Departments.

*not really

If you love the Arduino software but find yourself hampered by the included ATmega168 chip's memory size or pin count, Zach Hoeken has a solution - Sanguino is a new microcontroller board inspired by the Arduino. We took the biggest baddest 40-pin DIP that Atmel makes and made a board with it. Its based on the atmega644P which provides 64K of flash, 4K of ram, 32 GPIO pins, and tons of other stuff. The best part: its compatible with the Arduino software, which means all of your code should run on it no problem, and you can program it just as easily.Sweet - the extra pins alone would satisfy this arduinaut - I do believe I'll have to give this board a go.

- Sanguino kits

- Sanguino website.

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Arduino | Digg this!Collin Cunningham

A couple of our favorite robot guys from back in the day, Inertia Labs, are just pleased as punch and pink with enthusiasm to show of their spiffy new robot platform design, which they have been noodling with for over a year now and have just gotten up to their exacting, stainless-steel loving, onerously precise, picky-pants standards:

They have teamed up with Surveyor Corp produce these kits, and all snark aside, Inertia Labs makes some truly quality product (Zander’s not even my boss anymore so I am no longer even contractually obligated to say that).

Get your very own Inertia Labs/Surveyor robot kits, mobility base, parts, and etc Right Here.

A few technical specs and details from Alexander Rose:

“This new design merges two of the electronics boards, uses 4 motors (one per wheel,) a low profile LiPoly 2000Mah 7.2v battery to make the whole unit more compact, faster, and stronger.

Like our other kits these chassis are designed around the Sanyo NA-series gearmotors, that have been specially made with long shafts for direct drive of the wheels and treads.

You can purchase the complete unit, just the base to update your older SRV, or components. The standard base is ready to run with the electronics from Surveyor. Only six wires need to be soldered.

You can also use this mobility base with a speed controller and Rx to make a treaded RC robot as with our other kits.

Also, it comes fully assembled RTR with charger. It’s super spiffy - wifi-enabled, drive-by-internet capable, treaded, open source, fast processor, video, lipoly powered, blah blah blah.

These men truly bleed science.

In case you weren’t already completely convinced that this is the simply the most superlative platform kit that has ever been invented, ever, check out this awesome application of the platform. By awesome, I of course mean totally sweet.

Wall climbing robots have all kinds of potential uses, from inspecting damage on ships to catering to voyeurs and perverts with a taste for gadgetry. OObject has put together a comprehensive list of these creations including a version that climbs with static electricity and another freaky looking bot dubbed the "Ninja II". Definitely not the kind of thing you want peeking into your window when you do those embarrassing things that you do when you think no one is looking. [OObject]

Sean Fallon

The U.S. military has a goal -- that it's 30% robotic in twelve years. Why? Because robots don't feel pain, and when they die you just solder them back together or build a bitchin' chair out of the scrap metal. While advances in robot technology will probably result in more radical robot designs and allow for the military's goal of a 30-percent robotic force, there will always be human involvement in the control process. Researcher Bill Smart had this to say about our future robot army: "It's a chain of command thing. You don't want to give autonomy to a weapons delivery system. You don't want the robot to make the wrong decision." Wow, somebody actually talking some sense for once. Clever, Bill. Or should I say smart? Get it? Because that's your last name. No, I'm not making fun of you. Jesus, it was a compliment you jackass. Anyway, this whole human vs. robot for control of weapons systems is a real Catch 22 (love you Joseph). On the one hand, you don't want robots to have any control over anything, because all they want to do is kill us all and have oily robotic orgies. But on the other hand, you put a man in front of a giant red button that reads "DO NOT PUSH, THE WORLD WILL END" and 9 times out of 10 -- as soon as nobody's watching -- he's got his pants around his ankles and is mashing that thing with his dick like candy's gonna rain from the sky. U.S. Military To Be 30 Percent Robotic In Twelve Years [io9] Thanks to Karilyn, whose radiant beauty had originally distracted me from giving her credit for the tip.(author unknown)