Archive for July, 2007
A Glimpse of Robot Hell
Re-animating the long-forgotten corpses of ShowBiz Pizza / Chuck E Cheese animatronic characters, who have truly sinned, programmer ChrisThrash shows us a brief glimpse of the afterlife that awaits wayward machines.
Chris’ brilliant Dante-esque series of youTube videos not only take us through the ironic punishments of Robot Hell, but also provides a humble look into the work that goes into the programming of the doomed.
(Warning: Video Content may violate Asimov’s First Law.)
Robots Play Video Games So You Don’t Have To
Guitar Heronoid is the latest in a growing number of video game playing robots, designed to free us from the drudgery of leisure time.
Guitar Heronoid uses optical pattern recognition to monitor the playing screen, and solenoid-driven hands to play an unmodified “Gibson” Guitar Hero controller, passibly jamming through the robot’s favorite game.
While it’s still no threat to your average 8-year-old guitar hero, inventors Rafael Mizrahi and Tal Chalozin are working on an updated version with improved readiness to rock.
With practice, Guitar Heronoid may be able to join an elite cadre of robots that play a coveted “perfect game.” Previous “perfect” gaming robots include legendary Super Mario Brothers Playing Lego Robot, a Lego controller-tickler that blindly, albeit flawlessly, conquers the first level of Super Mario Brothers, and WiigoBot, another Lego/Nintendo combination robot designed to play a perfect game of Wii Bowling.Link (via a suggestion from Randall. Thanks!)
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Gundam Crisis: Giant Robot Theme Park Ride Opens Next Week
There’s a 60-foot (18 m) giant robot in Fujiyoshida Japan, who desperately needs your help.
In a hanger beneath the mysterious amusement park Fuji-Q Highland, the mighty full-scale Mobile Suit Gundam awaits urgent repairs that only you, and perhaps every other visitor to the park this summer, can perform. Time is short, and the Earth Federation is in grave danger, so each visitor will be equipped with a digital tablet to diagnose and repair the colossal mechanical anime hero.
Now, while this is right up Mr. Future’s alley, giant robot troubleshooting and repair does stretch the concept of a traditional amusement part ride a bit. If nothing else, though, Gundam Crisis (the ride!) promises to be an excellent mix of animatronics, 3D CGI animation, and old-fashioned stagecraft, to help you get your robot-hero-of-the-future fix on.
Link to the official Gundam Crisis Site.
Link to the excellent Robot Watch Coverage (translated).
Qwerk: Life After Lego Mindstorms
So you love your Lego Mindstorms set, and built many a brilliant contraption. But the gang at the malt shop robotics club just won’t take you seriously when everything you’ve invented is made out of plastic bricks. What’s the next step?
You might want to give CMU’s Terk/Qwerk platform a shot. Developed as springboard for robotics and AI education, Qwerk is the all-singing, all-dancing hardware brain they’ve designed a slew of tools and projects around. It sports a 200 MHz Arm9 processor running Linux 2.6, Ethernet, WiFi, Webcam video support,4 2-amp motor controllers, 16 servo controllers, 16 digital I/Os, a cup holder, a built-in audio player, a Xilinx FPGA, and … more.
But all that hardware would be no jolly good without the wisdom to use it, so CMU has set up a half-dozen project “recipes” to help get you get your feet wet. Their (free) software tools range from a web-cam based remote control and robotic “dance-moves” recorder to a Java development environment and extensions for using the Microsoft Robotics Studio.
Though it doesn’t come with bricks, cogs and wheels, for only $350 Qwerk looks like a steal.
(via KurzweilAI.net )
No commentsIt Takes a Lazy Robot to Move Like a Human
Honda’s Humanoid Robot Project recruited Stanford Robotics Professor Oussama Khatib to research just how lazy a robot would have to be to move like a human being.
By observing a group of Stanford students and a tai-chi master, according to the physorg article, Khatib’s team came to the conclusion that humans learn how to move by recognizing which positions and motions cause them discomfort, and then avoiding those positions.
Using these observations, they’ve developed a computationally lightweight motion model based on the principal of continuously minimizing muscular effort, without pre-planning the entire motion itself.
They’re now applying this model both to a simulated “lazy” robot known as StanBot, and hope to use it in an upcoming version of Honda’s Asimo. Because this approach is less computationally intense than current methods, Khatib’s team hopes it will give Asimo, and other robots, a greater ability to manipulate it’s environment in real-time, while moving though it.
No commentsRobot Workers Go Postal
Industrial robot giant Yaskawa Electric, along with the Mitsui Co. have developed the parcel sorting worker of the future.
The system’s two-armed Motoman-DIA10 robot is able to recognize and rapid-sort everything from boxes to clothing. It can easily match the thousand-parcels-an-hour speed of the dedicated human worker it’s been designed to replace assist.
For eager corporate job-seekers the world over, starting in the mail room may no longer be an option.
Link (via Pink Tentacle)
Requiem for a Pair of Orbiting Space Robots
(… and it goes a little like this )
July 9th 2007, marks the last predicted operational day for the Orbital Express robot pioneers, ASTRO and NextSat, before they are de-orbited, and returned to the earth from whence they came. (albeit faster, and on fire.)
ASTRO and NextSat made robotic history twice this year, first when ASTRO completed an unprecedented autonomous refueling in orbit, and then again in April when ASTRO gave NextSat his battery, 100 miles above the earth at roughly 10,000 miles an hour.
News of the end came as NASA and DARPA had apparently asked the Air Force for a little extra space-robot runtime, but backed down when confronted with the bill.
So observe, if you will, a moment of silence for the bots, maybe spill a little WD-40 on the curb. But remember them, always, at their finest:
FT Robot: Something in the Way She Moves
Scifi Tech Blog Writes:
Robo-Garage’s resident genius Tomotaka Takahashi demonstrated graceful FT Robot on the runway at New York Japan Society’s Tech Epoch. The slender, diminutive FT, driven by one on-board computer, two gyroscopes, 23 motors, and the power of love, is just over a foot tall.
Takahashi and Kyoto University’s Robo-Garage, known for their work on realistic robot movement and gaits,consulted with professional models to make FT’s movements distinctly feminine, and lifelike. Takahashi believes that half of all robots will be “female” in the near future.
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