Can We Build Robotic Eyes?
Geeks are now discussing the topic of “computer vision”, and this article includes a video showing how robots are taught to perceive images. (”For robots, the choice of eyes varies, from single light-dependant resistors to high-resolution video cameras…)
But interestingly, researchers have already determined that the state-of-the-art machine vision systems are all outperformed by systems based on human biology.
Robot Future Arrives in South Korea?
South Korea’s government is investing $750 million to become the world robot leader within the next eight years.
They plan to get a service robot in every home within a decade, and they’re developing English-teaching robots to replace up to 30,000 human instructors at language institutes. The demilitarized zone even inspired an “Intelligence Surveillance and Guard” robot “that detects and interrogates intruders, sounds alarms, and can fire with a Daewoo K-3 machine gun.”
And finally, they’re building “Robot Land” – a combination grad school, R & D robotics center, and theme park with 340 robots, including the 364-foot tall Robot Taekwon U – “Voltar the Invincible”.
Plus, South Korea also has 3,000 computer specialists just to counter online attacks from North Korea…
How a Spider Robot Leads a Student to Intel
Intel is now discussing a dancing humanoid robot project with the Arizona college student who built the famous dancing hexapod “spider” robot!
It got him an “A” in his cognitive robotics class — and 100,000 hits on YouTube — but in a new interview, Matt Bunting explains how he’s culminating a lifelong fascination with robots…
The Science (Fiction) Of Embodied Cognition
John Pavlus writes on io9.com:
Science fiction has long played with the idea of projecting unified personalities/minds/”souls” into different bodies. The premise is baked into the plots of stories like Avatar and Caprica. But how would it work in the real world?
That’s what the science of “embodied cognition” is all about. The basic idea in this new(ish) research area (which overlaps with cognitive psychology, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, robotics, and others) is this: Your mind is defined by your physical form. Not just in terms of “the mind is what the brain does”-we all are pretty down with that already. This takes it further to encompass the whole enchilada: your mind-your “I”-is a function of a cephalized, bipedal, plantigrade, bilaterally symmetrical body between 1.5 and 2 meters tall with two arms terminating in five-fingered…
10 Profound Innovations Ahead
By Jeremy Hsu for Tech News Daily:
Today’s world looks increasingly like the future. Robots work factory assembly lines and fight alongside human warriors on the battlefield, while tiny computers assist in everything from driving cars to flying airplanes. Surgeons use the latest technological tools to accomplish incredible feats, and researchers push the frontiers of medicine with bioengineering. Science fiction stories about cloning and resurrecting extinct animals look increasingly like relevant cautionary tales.
But even the best of science and technology has yet to solve climate change and famine, or conquer disease. More and more people live on a planet with shrinking resources, which leads to political strife and conflict. Here, we examine some of the hottest areas where researchers hope to forge a better tomorrow.
No. 10. Read My Mind
True mind-reading devices…
Inventor Unveils $7,000 Talking Sex Robot
By Brandon Griggs for CNN:
Las Vegas, Nevada (CNN) — To some men, she might seem like the perfect woman: She’s a willowy 5 feet 7 and 120 pounds. She’ll chat with you endlessly about your interests. And she’ll have sex whenever you please — as long as her battery doesn’t run out.
Meet Roxxxy, who may be the world’s most sophisticated talking female sex robot. For $7,000, she’s all yours.
“She doesn’t vacuum or cook, but she does almost everything else,” said her inventor, Douglas Hines, who unveiled Roxxxy last month at the Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Lifelike dolls, artificial sex organs and sex-chat phone lines have been keeping the lonely company for decades. But Roxxxy takes virtual companionship to a new level.
Powered by a computer under her soft silicone…
The Day That Robots Drew First Blood
Humankind will never forget! David Kravets writes in Wired (there’s a uncanny coincidence in the article):
January 25, 1979: A 25-year-old Ford Motor assembly line worker is killed on the job in a Flat Rock, Michigan, casting plant. It’s the first recorded human death by robot.
Robert Williams’ death came on the 58th anniversary of the premiere of Karel Capek’s play about Rossum’s Universal Robots. R.U.R. gave the world the first use of the word robot to describe an artificial person. Capek invented the term, basing it on the Czech word for “forced labor.” (Robot entered the English language in 1923.)
Williams died instantly in 1979 when the robot’s arm slammed him as he was gathering parts in a storage facility, where the robot also retrieved parts. Williams’ family was later awarded $10 million in damages. The…
AI Researcher To Build…AI Researcher
Artificial Intelligence researcher Jurgen Schmidhuber says his main scientific ambition “is to build an optimal scientist, then retire!”
The Cognitive Robotics professor has worked on problems including artificial ants and even robots that are taught how to tie shoelaces using reinforcement learning, but he believes algorithms can be written that allow the programming of curiosity itself. And he offers a fascinating metaphor for life after the development of AI.”It’s a bit like asking an ant of 10 million years ago: If humans were created tomorrow, what sort of implications do you think that would have for all the ant colonies?
Jürgen Schmidhuber at Singularity Summit 2009 – Compression Progress: The Algorithmic Principle Behind Curiosity and Creativity from Michael Anissimov on Vimeo.
“In hindsight we know that many ant colonies are still doing fine, but some of them (for example, those in my house) have goal conflicts with humans, and live dangerously.”
He’s also created art using algorithmic information theory, and describes the simple algorithmic principle that underlies subjective beauty and creativity…
A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter: Is This How Artificial Intelligence Begins?
Very weird. I agree with the author of this article, does sound like it came from the mind of William S. Burroughs. Scott Timberg writes on io9.com
A devious device looking suspiciously like the pain box from Dune — or a minimalist sculpture from the ’60s — is now selling on eBay. In fact, that’s all it does. This robot sells itself on eBay every week.
Called “A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter (2009),” by the artist Caleb Larsen, the imposing cube has a mind of its own, literally:
Hooked up to the internet, it will put itself up for sale every seven days. Right now — the auction lasts until Thursday — you can land it for just north of four grand. But a week later, the cube will offer itself up for sale…
Why Do We Fear The Headless Dog Robot?
Whether it’s the BigDog military quadruped robot or an anthropomorphic robot with the ability to sweat, “All of them are disturbing to watch,” and this article documents what Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori calls “the uncanny valley,” or why near-lifelike creatures can seem real but unhealthy and even genetically unfit.
“The Uncanny Valley effect is most often evoked by the face, which is why it may not be a good idea for sex dolls to look too lifelike, and why people look scary after too much plastic surgery….”
But interestingly enough, the BigDog robot doesn’t have a face! In this case its the legs which are so realistic, they create the impression that the robot is alive. But whether it’s the robot that climbs vertical walls or the locomotion robot shaped like a giant…
World’s Smallest Robot Can Move Atoms!
Prof. Nadrian "Ned" C. Seeman
A New York professor just built the world’s smallest robot The nano-scopic device is just 150 x 50 x 8 nanometers in size – and over a million of them could fit inside a single red blood cell!
The tiny nanorobotic device has the ability to place specific atoms and molecules wherever scientists want them to. And it can even build nanoscale structures and machines – including a nano-sized walking biped!
Israeli Robots Remake Battlefield
Charles Levinson writes in the Wall Street Journal:
TEL AVIV, Israel – Israel is developing an army of robotic fighting machines that offers a window onto the potential future of warfare.
Sixty years of near-constant war, a low tolerance for enduring casualties in conflict, and its high-tech industry have long made Israel one of the world’s leading innovators of military robotics.
“We’re trying to get to unmanned vehicles everywhere on the battlefield for each platoon in the field,” says Lt. Col. Oren Berebbi, head of the Israel Defense Forces’ technology branch. “We can do more and more missions without putting a soldier at risk.”
In 10 to 15 years, one-third of Israel’s military machines will be unmanned, predicts Giora Katz, vice president of Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd., one of Israel’s leading weapons manufacturers.
“We…
Ukraine Begins Employing Giant Combat Robots for Security?
Interesting post from Rosa Golijan on Gizmodo about an article found in Pravda:
“TIS is proud to inform that we are the first in our Kominternovsky region to employ Giant Humanlike Combat Robots within the Security Department. Model TIS-1CB.” That’s the caption for this photo. What are they up to in Ukraine?
Update: Thanks to all those who sent in the explanation for this strange metal fellow. Sergey G’s details, in particular, were very helpful:
TIS (Transinvestservice) is logistics company near Odessa. They had problems people finding their warehouse (you know — knowing to turn left after 15 km and stuff like that), so TIS set up an giant robot made from old cars as a signpost.
As a side-note: “Giant Human Like Battle Robots” is a popular meme in Russia and Ukraine. “When [are we] going to employ Giant Humanlike Battle Robots to protect our borders?” was a winning question for Putin on his nationwide interview with Internet folk. Yuschenko (Ukrainian president) was asked this as well since then.
Wow, gotta love Putin’s sense of humor, why are dictators always a barrel of laughs?
Will Sex Robots Provide “Longevity Orgasms”?
Science author Hank Hyena predicts sex robots in the future will provide orgasms “Three times a week or whatever our physician/longevity coach recommends. Because orgasms — particularly the hormone-exploding O’s we’ll enjoy with carnal cyborgs — are excellent for our mental and physical health.” (One researcher reports we can live 4-8 years longer if we have at least 350 orgasms per year.)
But there’s other benefits besides health benefits… “Remember the most convulsive, brain-ripping climax you ever had…? Sexbots will electrocute our flesh with climaxes twice as gigantic because they’ll be more desirable, patient, eager, and altruistic than their meat-bag competition, plus they’ll be uploaded with supreme sex-skills from millennia of erotic manuals, archives and academic experiments, and their anatomy will feature sexplosive devices…”
So when will they finally get here? Henrik…
Buy Your Very Own Robot Doppelganger!
That man’s robot doppelganger looks very confused … Good god, man! What have you done to him?! Posted on Pink Tenacle, (creepy…):
Department store operator Sogo & Seibu has announced plans to sell two humanoid robots custom-built to look like the people who purchase them.
Dr. Hiroshi Ishiguro with his robot double — Roboticist Hiroshi Ishiguro already got his.
The mechanical doppelgangers are available for a limited time as part of a special New Year’s promotional sale at Sogo, Seibu, and Robinson’s department stores. They will be built by Japanese robotics firm Kokoro, which is perhaps best known for its line of Actroid receptionist humanoids.
In addition to providing the robot with the owner’s face, body, hair, eyes and eyelashes, Kokoro will model the robot’s facial expressions and upper body movements after the buyer.…
Edwardo Robot Hands
SittingNow.co.uk continue their rebooted ‘CounterTech’ series, with another great article from DisInfo’s Joe McFall:
Almost 'throwing some horns', which would be handy at metal shows
This week, Italian scientists announced that in a month-long experiment conducted last year, an amputee’s nervous system was attached to a mechanical hand disconnected from his body. The man, Pierpaolo Petruzziello, was not only able to move the robotic appendage, but was apparently able to receive feedback and feel sensations from the hand. From the Baltimore Sun:
- The Italy-based team said at a news conference in Rome on Wednesday that in 2008 it implanted electrodes into the nerves located in what remained of Petruzziello’s left arm, which was cut off in a crash some three years ago.
- The prosthetic was not implanted on the patient, only connected through the electrodes.…
Robot Surgeons and Joystick Heart Surgeries
Video in this article shows the “Heartlander,” a miniature mobile robot that delivers therapy to the surface of a beating heart…using a joystick! Like the Star Wars 2-1B series medical droid, real medical robots can now provide surgery that’s minimally invasive — or even performed remotely — while offering greater precision, decreased blood loss, and smaller incisions with quicker healing time and less pain.
Other examples include the ViRob, a tiny “millibot” 1 millimeter in diameter and 5 millimeters long that can travel inside the human body to collect tissue samples, deliver medicine…
Man Controls Robotic Arm With His Mind
Ariel David reports for the Baltimore Sun/AP:
An Italian who lost his left forearm in a car crash was successfully linked to a robotic hand, allowing him to feel sensations in the artificial limb and control it with his thoughts, scientists said Wednesday.
During a one-month experiment conducted last year, 26-year-old Pierpaolo Petruzziello felt like his lost arm had grown back again, although he was only controlling a robotic hand that was not even attached to his body.
“It’s a matter of mind, of concentration,” Petruzziello said. “When you think of it as your hand and forearm, it all becomes easier.”
Though similar experiments have been successful before, the European scientists who led the project say this was the first time a patient has been able to make such complex movements using his mind…
Could Machines Feel Joy?
Ben Goertzel, the CEO of artificial intelligence company Novamente, asks whether machines will ever really feel, in the same sense that humans do?
“This is a separate question from whether machines can be intelligent, or whether they can act like they feel. The question is whether machines if suitably constructed and programmed can have awareness, passion, subjective experience … consciousness?” Goertzel led a machine consciousness workshop in Hong Kong, and summarizes current theories about artificial intelligence, and notes that Tufts professor Daniel Dennett believes it’s absolutely possible – if the machines are programmed correctly!
This article also appears in the latest issue of H+ magazine.
