Mr. Future

Japanese robotics company Tmsuk has formed an alliance with Microsoft to bring Microsoft Robotics Studio extensions to their range of consumer and commercial robots.

Tmsuk is probably best known for their Banryu ( Guard Dragon ) security robot, though they build everything from giant robot rescue machines to electric baby-sitters.

If nothing else, the partnership deeply underscores the advantages of having common development libraries for robotics projects.

Yoichi Takamoto, the Tmsuk president, said: “Right now, we cannot adopt one technology used in robot A to robot B. If Microsoft software comes to be used by many developers, then technological advances in robotics will dramatically accelerate.”

Microsoft is not alone in building common robotics development environments and code libraries. Later this week, we’ll be taking a look at some of the open-source alternatives to Microsoft Robotics Studio.

Link - to the Times Online coverage.
(via Artificial Intelligence and Robotics)

Maruading insects are destroying your home. Sightless, relentless, and nigh-undetectable, termites gnaw away at the American (and presumably Japanese) dream. Before they eat you out of house and home, it’s time to call in the robots.

Two new robot home inspectors from Japan are gearing up to guard your home and castle. This Yamato House Inspection Robot, a joint project of The Chiba Institute of Technology and Tsukuba University, crawls through your crawl-spaces (where else?) and sub-flooring. It seeks everything from termite invaders to water damage, and relays the evidence back to its human handlers. It’s slated for mass production in April 2008, at an approximate cost of $10,000.

Once your insect enemies have been identified, bring in Asante/NPO’s “Mirubo” to finish them off. Aside from a camera and lighting package, this water-proof, dust-proof robot comes equipped with a fearsome pesticide sprayer and poison-supply hose. A few video clips of Mirubo rescuing the historic Kamakura Shrine from termite invaders are posted on the Robot Watch article.

Translated Links (1,2) to the RobotWatch and RoboNable articles.

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.

TeRK Link and Qwerk Link

(via KurzweilAI.net )

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.

Link

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.

Link (via Ubergizmo )

The Mechatronic Systems division of Kawada Industries (what a name) has improved upon the amazing HRP-2 design by outfitting the robot worker of the future for harsh conditions, from the factory floor to the pouring rain.

Nicknamed Ma-Kun, the amazing new worker robot is dust-proof, water-proof, and has an improved balance system designed to navigate treacherous paths and slippery floors.

The HRP-3 Promet II, a product of Kawada, Kawasaki, and Japan’s AIST, was designed with the goal of developing a humanoid robot with sufficient skills to destroy all humans enter the workforce. Kawada hopes to court employers by offering the Promet II at $120,000 per robot by 2010.

After spending 5 years and $3.3 million to develop the robot, the group wisely hired anime-mecha designer Yutaka Izubuchi, known for his work on Gundam and Patlabor, to give Promet his “we got our development money’s worth” futuristic look.

Depending on its task, the robot can be configured to work autonomously or via wireless remote.

There’s a good write-up at Pink Tentacle, and a translated version of a very thorough Robot Watch article here.

UPDATE: Here’s a streaming version of the RobotWatch video files, posted by JapanProbe:

From a JPL press release:

It’s a field day for robotics hackers everywhere, as NASA releases the first installment of their CLARAty reusable robotic software framework to the public.

CLARAty development was primarily funded by the Mars Technology Program and it serves as the integration environment for the program’s rover technology developments.

With this first release, a total of 44 CLARAty modules (~100K lines of code ) are now available under the JPL Open Source License. According to the JPL press release, these modules contain everything from math infrastructure to device drivers for common motors and cameras, and computer vision, image, and 3D processing.

So head over to the downloads page, and start building the next Little Rover That Could.

Link (via JPL News)

New Scientist blogs:

MIT researcher Guy Hoffman has built the friendliest robotic desk-lamp since Pixar’s Luxo Jr.

Named AUR, the “collaborative lighting assistant” follows its human partner’s work habits, sets tone and mood, and, well, lights up the desk.

According to Guy, AUR “is aimed to evoke
a personal relationship with the human partner
without resorting to human-like features.”

Click the image below to watch a Flash video clip of AUR in action.

Brooks, professor of robotics at MIT, director of CSAIL and co-founder and CTO of iRobot, is interviewed about a variety of trends in modern robotics. From the differences in US and Japanese views on robotics, attitudes on autonomy, and robots in combat to wheeled vs. bipedal.

From the CNET article:

“What do you say about this dichotomy between the high expectations that have been raised by fiction and the reality of consumer robotics?
Brooks: Well, at least we got part of the way. If it wasn’t for the Roomba, we wouldn’t be there at all and we’d be really disappointed. You may notice you don’t have a flying car either.

I think everyone misjudged how some things work, and I normally talk about it in terms of the founders of artificial intelligence, who just had their 50th anniversary last year for 1956. In 1966, they set a summer project to solve the vision problem and they put an undergraduate in charge of it…”