Sexy Robots Videos

Stevan Harnad gave an interesting keynote talk at the recent Julian Jaynes Conference on Consciousness that both reminisces about Julian Jaynes and addresses the question of whether consciousness depends more on language or feeling. Harnad updates the classic question asked of Julian Jaynes about whether or not is was alright to kick a dog if dogs were not conscious. And what can we learn about consciousness from speculating on the likelihood of Jaynes kicking dogs and robots? More than you might think. Harnad's talk can be found in a newly released paper titled, "What it Feels Like to Hear Voices: Fond Memories of Julian Jaynes" (PDF format).

An article in Aviation Week states that last week, a MQ-9 Reaper UAV destroyed a "vehicle carrying a remotely controlled explosive device in southeast Iraq". Gizmodo claims that this is "the first time in history" that two unmanned systems "engaged and destroyed" each other. Other articles do not go that far; they only state that this is the first combat engagement for this particular UAV. The Reapers have reportedly have been in combat in Iraq since July 18 of this year, and in Afghanistan since last year. One source says that "the Reaper costs about 80 percent less than a manned fighter-bomber," "uses more than 90 percent less fuel, and can stay in the air over a target three or four times longer than a jet fighter". The smaller and less powerful MQ-1 Predator UAV is also being used in combat missions.

Traditional robotics applications such as CNC and welding have relied on the idea that robots should be extremely rigid, with very precise mechanics and encoders. This leads to robots that are very bad at interacting with the real world. Animals, which are very good at interacting with the real world, are full of wiggly, springy, imprecise actuators. A new paper (PDF format) from the CMU Robotics Institute looks at the benefits of adopting this principle in robot leg design. Using compliant, spring-like mechanisms, the robot can recycle energy and exert higher mechanical power when walking or running. The researchers examine a range of compliance using a variable stiffness leg, called the Electric Cable Differential (ECD) Leg.

With the goal of inspiring and educating young robot builders everywhere, kidbots.com's mission is to show how millions of old, obsolete computers can be turned into programmable robots. Included is a brief introduction to electronic components, PC components, CPU operation, and programming. Special attention is paid to use of the PC's parallel printer port as general purpose I/O to control actuators and read digital sensors, along with simple code examples in BASIC. The site is summed up with a fun animated gif showing a tin-can robot walking across a pile of old motherboards.

Using micro-claws or sticky material (depending on the task at hand), RiSE can climb up trees, fences and vertical walls with help from his surface-conforming body and rigid tail. Video of RiSE at Boston Dynamics' website shows off his capabities. RiSE is 25cm long, weighs to 2 kg and uses 2 motors per leg. Sensors include inertial measuring, joint positions, strain and foot contact. Boston Dynamics is working on future versions using dry adhesion to tackle vertical climbing on glass and other slick surfaces.

Howard Gordon writes, "Robot remote control via Internet is not a new concept, but this demo, created by Ogilvy New Zealand for BP Australia takes things to a new level." You can find more info about the project in the Surveyor news blog. Another reader pointed us to an interesting PLoS Biology paper that discusses some interesting parallels between language evolution and biological evolution including evidence of punctuated (no pun intended) equilibrium. The Swirling Brain pointed out a Technology review story on a new MRI technique called Diffusion spectrum imaging (DSI) which is revealing new information about the organization of brain cells. He also noticed stories on an artificially intelligent glider, a Scientific American report about a clever psychological experiment on free will, new spoilers about Terminator Salvation revealing a religious "building robots is a sin" theme, and an article on the winners of the UK MoD Grand Challenge. Roland Piquepaille's latest blog post is about an AUV being used to explore the world's deepest underwater volcanoes in the Caribbean. Know any other robot news, gossip, or amazing facts we should report? Send 'em our way please.

Without soldering, welding or gluing, Jeremy Mayer re-invents mechanical typewriters into fantastic works of living-system-inspired art. The result is a mechanotronic style distinct from the iron-oxide-encrusted SteamPunk genera, sporting cleaner lines and a more natural look. Jeremy's creations include full-scale, anatomically correct humanoid figures as well as 4-legged beasts.

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.".

Photos are popping up in blogs all over the net of a shiny, silver Cyberdyne Systems Terminator skull. It has a white teeth, glowing red eyes, and a DVD player that's revealed by opening up the top of the skull. Yes, that's right, the endoskeletal skull of a killer robot that plays DVDs in its head. These things appear to originate in Asia but no one has been able to identify the manufacturer or exact cost yet. There are more angles and close up photos around if you look for 'em.

Via Craftzine, we noticed a B-Side blog report on the most amazing R2-D2 cake ever (actually, it's red so I don't think it's an R2-D2, maybe an R2-D1 or something?). Anyway, as edible astromechs go, this one is pretty cool. The body is made of many levels of red velvet cake while the legs were cut from giant Rice Krispy treat blocks. Once assembled, the whole thing is coated with white, red, and silver icing and all the expected details are added. There's a nice photo sequence of the R2 cake being assembled and of the actual presentation at a kiddo's birthday party. The cake was made by Mark Joesph Cakes in Brooklyn, New York.

Ed Okerson was the first of many robots.net readers who sent links to a NewScientist story about the rat-brained robot from the Univserity of Reading. Instead of the usual silicon-based embedded controller, this robot sports a carbon-based unit made up of 300,000 rat brain neurons. The mini-brain lives in a jar of nutrients and antibiotics. A multi-electrode array (MEA) feeds sensor information into the brain and transports control signals out of the brain to the motors. Unfortunately, the brain is growing so bored that it's exhibiting bursts of seizure-like activity. "Like a creature with no limbs or senses, the cut-down brain is simply bursting out of boredom". While the rat brain may not be enjoying life much, the scientists are having a blast and suggest the research may help them understand Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, epilepsy, and other diseases caused by malfunctioning neurons. For more, see the BBC story and video, the Slashdot discussion, or original University of Reading press release. Update: Roland Piquepaille just posted about this robot as well.

According to a new Telegraph UK article, "a deep mathematical analysis of living things has come up with an insight into why they are special". The research was done by a researchers at Edinburgh University and the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences. What they've discovered is a way to make the behavior of artificial and virtual creatures self organizing and self regulating, allowing them to learn through trial and error without explicit instructions. The idea is not new and follows similar research going back to 1990. The article includes video of virtual dogs learning to jump and virtual humanoid learning to stand. Previous systems had explicitly encoded goals in the programs as well as basic instruction on how to move. The new algorithm, called homeokinesis, has no predefined goals, and provides no initial information about the virtual environment, making it more like the natural world. The researchers are also beginning to experiment with the algorithm in real robots. For more videos and papers on the new system, see Terra autonomica - The world of self-organized creatures.

We're all familiar with personal space; the invisible bubble that encompasses our mental image of our body. Personal space expands to encompass tools (even cars) that we mentally incorporate as part of our body and may also change size according to our mood. We're less conscious of Peripersonal space; an invisible bubble that represents localized reaching distance. Any object in our peripersonal space can be reached or manipulated directly. Objects outside our peripersonal space require us to move toward them before they can be manipulated. There has been some debate as to how our brains determine the boundry of peripersonal space. A new paper (PDF format) suggests the brain doesn't determine the peripersonal space boundry purely by vision but with the help of feedback from the motor representation areas of the brain. Robots must solve these same problems and understanding how the human brain does it should give roboticists something new to think about.

Time for another weekly dump of stories from the editor mailbox. This week Davide Faconti of Pal Technology Robotics writes, "You have already written a story about us. Our team needs to grow in the next month: we need about 8 people joining forces with us to develop the best possible humanoid robot (better than Asimo, hopefully!!!)." So if you've been looking for a chance to work on one of the most advanced humanoid robot projects in the world, here it is. Davide also sent us a YouTube video of REEM-B appearing in front of the crown prince in Abu Dhabi. Mark Miller, aka the Android Man, sent a photo of his latest robot art creation. VIA announced the appointment of Harald Welte as their Open Source liaison. This is good news as it means VIA will be freeing more of their driver code and hardware specs, making life easier for hardware hackers like us. The Swirling Brain wants us to know about The Death of HAL. Roschler sent us links to his Femisapien review and a YouTube Wall-E video. Roland Piquepaille posted in his blog about a project to teach language to robots. And, finally, Trossen Robotics announced their new Robobuilder robot kits. Know any other robot news, gossip, or amazing facts we should report? Send 'em our way please.

It's New Year's eve 2026. Will the robot overlords even notice you're missing? Or will they simply clean around your decayed remains following a preprogrammed script of daily duties? Will swallows penetrate the faux window? Will Jesus get revenge for unnecessary impalation? These questions and more are asked by the animated Soviet version of Ray Bradbury's short story "There Will Come Soft Rains".

A Telegraph.co.uk article, Can we make software that comes to life? covers the debate among biologists, computer scientists, physicists, mathematicians, philosophers and social scientists who have gathered in Winchester to discuss artificial life. After more than a decade of work, researchers think they've hit a barrier with what can be done with evolution within a software environment. The scientists think the problem is the lack the self-organizing principles in software that are part of the physical and chemical world where biological evolution occurs. The article notes that this self organization can be seen in something as simple as a saucer of oil that's heated. What's needed is a better understanding how self organization integrates with natural selection. The article also covers other aspects of artificial life research including both "wet" ALife (artificial biological life) and "in silico" ALife (software based life).

According to a LinuxDevices.com article, embedded controller maker Glomation has announced a new ARM9 single board computer for $69, the GESBC-9260E. It looks ideal for robot applications with a 200MHz Atmel ARM CPU, 64MB SDRAM, 128MB Flash, SD slot, 10/100 Ethernet, 2 USB host ports, 1 USB device port, 3 UARTs, 1 RS-485, I2C bus, SPI, real time clock, watch dog timer, 3 16 bit timers with PWM capability, 1 20 bit timer, 4 channel 10 bit A/D, 20 GPIO pins. It runs on 5V drawing less than 400ma. It's supported by Linux 2.5.25 or newer kernels and the GCC 4.2 tool chain. For more see the full GESBC-9260E specs on Glomation's website.

Emanuel Diamant has written a paper that will be published as a chapter in a forthcoming book, "Frontiers in Brain, Vision and AI". His paper has the provocative title, "I'm sorry to say, but your understanding of image processing fundamentals is absolutely wrong" (PDF format). Diamant observes that the biggest argument about machine vision is whether we should be working on visually-enabled cognitive systems or cognitively-enabled vision systems. He says this argument is groundless because "perceptual and cognitive faculties of vision are separate components of human (and consequently, artificial) information processing systems". Whether you're interest in robot vision or human vision, this is an interesting read. For more of Diamant's idea on vision, see the list of previous papers available on his website.

Here's another load of interesting robot stories from the editor's mailbox. Tom Benson of Readybots writes, "Just wanted to send you our latest announcement (and video) of Readybot". Readybot is a kitchen cleaning bot that we've mention before. Robosoft sent us this news, "ROBOSOFT announces the delivery of three VolcanBuls to Vulcania. These vehicles, without a driver and guided exclusively by GPS, take visitors on a 1km tour through the park to observe the Puy volcanic mountains and to learn about their history." Robots and volcanoes in one places. What more could you want? Michael Somby writes, "I wrote an article discussing software packages available for service robotics applications". The Swirling Brain sent links to a story about robot snowmobiles that help scientists study the melting ice in the Antarctic, a list of the 7 creepiest robots ever, a GEARlog story about Care-O-Bot 3, an io9 report (with photos) on the Pittsburgh Robot 250 Festival that we reported on a while back. He also noticed a cool Wired photo gallery of wooden steampunk robot art by Michael T. Rea, and another of the Vstone Blackbox robot. Oh, and for Battlestar Galactica fans, he spotted a trailer for the new Caprica series. The latest from Roland Piquepaille includes a story on the DelFly autonomous air vehicle, a wire-bending dental robot that will make you smile, and a robot buoy to track oil spills. Know any other robot news, gossip, or amazing facts we should report? Send 'em our way please.