Sexy Robots Videos

A BBC news item describes some recent research into predator avoidance learning in bees. Researchers used tiny robot spiders in a variety of camouflaged colors in a simulated meadow of flowers to see how bees would react. The simplistic "robots" were modeled after the crab spider, a deadly predator of bumblebees. Each robot consisted of a solenoid that actuated two "trap pads" that would grab a bee that landed between them. Bees that had close calls with the spiders learned to be more careful and were successful at avoiding even well hidden spiders on future foraging trips. The downside to this adaptive foraging behavior is that the bees spent more time hovering in front of flowers, checking for predators, reducing the amount of pollination. The bees also began to completely avoid areas of the meadow where they spotted lots of predators, which suggests the plants themselves will suffer from predator infestation. For all the details see the research paper, Speed-Accuracy Tradeoffs and False Alarms in Bee Responses to Cryptic Predators (PDF format). This research was done by Lars Chittka and Tom Ings of the QMUL Bee Sensory and Behavioural Echology Lab.

Gadget Lab Videoblog: Sony's Robot MP3 Player Lays an Egg, Palm's ...
Wired News - 10 hours ago
(Or you can click on the Gadget Lab Video category in the right corner of this post.) This episode of the Gadget Lab Video was created by Annaliza Savage ...

KU Graduate Students Win First Place in International Robotics Contest
Kansas City infoZine, MO - 11 hours ago
"That is why we chose a multi-robot approach, so each robot could simultaneously map independent portions of the environment and merge their individual maps ...

Filed under: Robots

Shopping robots aren't totally unheard of from a global perspective, but we certainly haven't seen too many out and about in NY boutiques. Reportedly, that's about to change -- UNIQLO SoHo will soon be home to Mitsubishi's Wakamaru, a humanoid that can look you in the eye, communicate on a very basic level and somehow help you decide between this dress or that other one over there. Word on the street has it arriving sometime next week, so if any of you regulars happen to see it, let us know just how convincing it is / isn't.

[Via TokyoMango]Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Bazmarc, on Youtube, posted a series of videos(see below) showing his totally cool implementation of the WALL-E robot constructed completely from stock Lego NXT Mindstorms robot system parts. Not only is the robot realistic, it also features some very emotional, and touching, eye movements. Bazmarc's robot creation does use some third party components, like Mindsensors and HiTechnic - both Lego certified. According to comments on his build videos, the robot...

Cartoonist draws on his roots (video)
Daily Astorian,  USA - 17 hours ago
"I'm not a robot or a cartoon machine," he said. But he said he's not like some cartoonists who are angry all the time. Still, he added wryly, "It's hard to ...

PC World
Time Wasters: Name The Robot, VERY Realistic Animations, and a ...
PC World - 21 hours ago
Read about it and watch the video here. Scary, no? You ever get annoyed when people sling around acronyms and you haven't a clue? ...

Army Med-Bot Returned to Sender
Wired News - 22 hours ago
The upright robot can transmit and receive audio and video and can be driven by remote control. In theory, the robot would be positioned at a hospital, ...

Filed under: Robots

France: it's like Canada, only with less hockey, and more boring mechanical spiders. Those hosers have foisted this amazingly-styled and yet utterly dull "La Princesse" piece of street theater on the innocent, unsuspecting people of Liverpool, and the travesty is set to continue for another couple of days. Hit up the read link for BBC's video of the mundanity.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

PAX 08 : Interview : The Man Inside the "Fruit Lover"
Seattle Post Intelligencer - Sep 5, 2008
... robot costumes what else do you do for fun? I like to visit with my friends, go dancing, watch movies at home, and of course, play a lot of video games. ...

Buzz Out Loud 803: Limp-wristed robot handshakes
CNET News, CA - Sep 5, 2008
Molly Wood engages in ruthless industry analysis in the form of the Daily Buzz, the Buzz Report video, and, of course, Buzz Out Loud. ...

Most of the stories we hear about military robots involve killing people, destroying things, or helping the military do those sorts of things. It's nice to hear about some military robots helping people for change. The National Health Laboratory Service in South Africa is adapting military unmanned flying vehicles (UAVs) and micro air vehicles (MAVs) to act as robot medical couriers. The flying robots help the agency transport medical samples from more than 5,000 clinics. Quick sample delivery speeds diagnosis of tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS patients, helping to limit the impact of epidemics and speed medical treatment of patients. In some cases sterile specimen containers are delivered by autonomous landings at the testing facility. In other cases, the UAV precision drops the specimen containers at predefined waypoints. To further speed diagnosis, the results are dispatched via SMS back to the originating clinic. Story via the DIY Drones blog.

Video: Robot dancing at the Bullring
Birmingham Post, UK - Sep 5, 2008
The robot, called Titan, was on show in the shopping centre to promote the Hello Digital - a festival to be held at Millennium Point in October designed to ...

Sports Q&A: MLB Replay? A Robotic Rebuttal
Sports Central, VA - 2 hours ago
Would a robot have missed the out call at first base that practically handed the 1985 World Series title to the Kansas City Royals? No. Why? ...

Are You Crazy Enough For This?
Strategy Page - 8 hours ago
The widespread use of special robots, which use a video camera and a mechanical arm to allow the EOD technician to examine, and even disarm, ...

Robotic BigDog is US army's best friend
Telegraph.co.uk, United Kingdom - 8 hours ago
The robot, which is described as its creators as the "alpha male" of robotic animals, is about the size of a Great Dane. It runs at 4 mph and can hold a ...
Fetch Fido! The robotic dog that could revolutionise the military Daily Mail
all 2 news articles

If you're lucky enough to reside in California, or happen to be visiting there over the next couple months, be sure to check out the latest exhibitions of Liz Mamorsky's creative robot and technology based art. Billed as "functional and dysfunctional art", her works are sure to delight and inspire robot fans with a taste for the unusual. Currently Liz has three active events going. Some of her pieces will...

Unused medical robot heading back to US
Stars and Stripes, DC - 17 hours ago
In its only use at Landstuhl, the robot beamed video of the hospital’s ICU to a conference in Florida, and conference participants were able to drive it. ...

Robots Are Net's Future, Says Vint Cerf
Slashdot - Sep 4, 2008
It's a step well beyond the kind of video telepresence we are accustomed to seeing today.'" The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever ...

The original instructions for Zen meditation date back to the 12th century saying, "Think of neither good nor evil and judge not right or wrong. Stop the operation of the mind, and consciousness; bring to an end all desires, all concepts and judgments". The latest fMRI brain scanning techniques have recently been turned on practitioners of this technique to find out what happens in the brain. The results have been published in a paper titled, Thinking about Not-Thinking: Neural Correlates of Conceptual Processing during Zen Meditation (PDF format). Researchers found brain regions that are active during this mental state but not during normal goal-oriented behavior. These brain regions appear to be involved in control of voluntary attention and are also thought to be part of our "sense of self". What the meditators appear to gain from learning to control this region is, "the ability to control the automatic cascade of semantic associations triggered by a stimulus and, by extension, to voluntarily regulate the flow of spontaneous mentation." In practical terms, the meditators were in more control of their brain, able to complete conceptual tasks faster and more accurately than non-mediators in the study. So does all this have any implications for AI or robotics? If we give robots human-like minds that think randomly and inaccurately, will they eventually adopt Zen meditation to overcome those handicaps?