Mr. Future

From a BBC Technology Article:

“Nasa has confirmed that laptops carried to the ISS in July were infected with a virus known as Gammima.AG.

The worm was first detected on earth in August 2007 and lurks on infected machines waiting to steal login names for popular online games….

The laptops infected with the virus were used to run nutritional programs and let the astronauts periodically send e-mail back to Earth.

The laptops carried by astronauts reportedly do not have any anti-virus software on them to prevent infection. ”

If NASA can’t secure a Windows machine as scrutinized and isolated as a laptop on the ISS, imagine how much harder it is to reliably lock down a home or office network.

Link

Robot Watch has a great article on a new Robo-One competition in Japan, to be held September 6th in Kawasaki’s Azeria “underground city.”

The competition’s goal is to have your robot “Buy things [in] the underground city”, which sounds fantastically sci-fi, post-apocalyptic chic. To accomplish this the robots may use both tele-operational control and autonomous behavior.

In the five minute qualifying rounds, robots were sent around with a shopping basket. Their mission: picking up 3 eggs and a small (robot-sized) t-shirt, placing them in the basket, and returning to their operators.

Needless to say, egg manipulation is extra-challenging for robot hands, and Robot Watch has some excellent video footage of robot-splattering trial and error.

Link (English machine-translated link here.)

Looking for that mid-range robot to bridge the gap between your i-Sobot and a Robonova? Mech-RC is hoping to occupy that niche soon.

Their core platform is a 17-servo humanoid robot with a remote control and a custom set of gui-oriented pc software focused on animation and integration of sensor accessory kits. While there’s only a few paragraphs of background information out so far, it looks like they’ll be offering optional orientation sensors, infra-red “weapon” gaming sensors and lights, and an interface board for additional servos and sensors.

The Mech RC comes in 2 body styles, a basic-black cylon-esque model, and a MechWarrior style “Ground Pounder” (pictured below-left)

The brochure also mentions a “coming soon” education-oriented model (below-right), with MS Robotics Studio integration, wireless BlueTooth connectivity, and an onboard camera. Sweet.

We can’t wait to find out more about this promising looking line of robots. No release date mentioned yet, but you’ll know more when we do.

Link - (via Toyology)

The Engineer reports on a project at Plymouth University that combines computer vision / object recognition, and A.I. learning with human-robotic interaction.

The work at Plymouth is an effort to apply human learning processes to robotic systems, teaching the robot word meanings and object recognition as if it were a small child.

“There will be speakers, a microphone and two cameras in the robot’s head, which [researcher] Belpaeme said will be able to pick out humans in a room, make eye contact, track human gaze and interpret pointing gestures and correlate them with what is being pointed at.

‘We are going to make the robot look cute and we are going to try to trick people into teaching the robot things just as they would a small child.’”

Link (via Ralph. Thanks Ralph!)