Well, since Phil made the choice last week, I thought I'd thow out the video this week:
Give that bot a skin or shell and it would be ready for mass production. Note that built-in segwayesque mobility.
UPDATE: And don't miss this one. Johnny Lee demos Wii Remote Hacks. A $50 interactive white board, 3D head tracking for like $10. H/T to my brother Daniel. Cool stuff:
University of Sheffield professor Noel Sharkey recently stated that armed military robots "pose a threat to humanity."
The armed robots that have been fielded so far all have a human controlling the trigger. He thinks that could change. I agree. As AI's grow in power we will be tempted to take humans out of the loop. We shouldn't do this.
Sharkey also stated that terrorists might reverse engineer these devices and start using them instead of suicide bombers. Terrorists, of course, will use any method at their disposal, but I doubt seriously that reverse-engineering our robots will be the way they go.
The SWORDS robot.
Click the picture for a better look.
It is much more likely that terrorists will continue to use off-the-shelf devices. Terrorists, of course, already use "improvised explosive devices" (IED's) in Iraq.
"01 Call Missed."
If a terrorist duct taped an IED to a remote controlled 1/8 sized model car (like this one - video at the link), he could chase down a crowd of civilians or a squad of soldiers at 45 mph with little risk to himself. And he could do it for less than $500. With simple cheap possibilities like that, it's just not likely that they would spend the money necessary to reverse-engineer our robots.
Robots like the SWORDS already help defend our soldiers against IED's. Our need for these robots would only increase if the terrorists started improvising robots of their own.
What do frogs and teflon have in common besides the frying pan? They're helping science get a jump on (as it were) resistant antibiotic strains.
Research scientists at the University of Michigan have identified antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) on the skin of frogs--but the AMPs that work so well on the skin's surface have a couple of nasty habits inside a host. They break down when exposed to enzymes, and they have a tendency to stick to and damage host cells.
Dr. Neil Marsh has found an ingenious solution to both problems--coating the AMPs with nonreactive fluorine coating --aka teflon.
According to the story at Discover.com, the "same technology that keeps your eggs (or frog legs) from sticking to the pan may someday be a key part of a new family of antibiotics." Marsh’s Teflon-tipped AMPs show promise--the story says they may even work a bit better than natural, untreated AMPs, at least against some bacteria.
How about an assembly line made out of Lego blocks that build Lego cars?
One day, the human civilization will spread out to the stars. Self-replicating Von Neuman robots will scour the universe looking for the basic materials we need to move ever onward -- you know, stuff we can make multi-colored interlocking children's blocks out of.
Last month I wrote about UAV's and their land-based brothers:
It doesn't take a lot of imagination to see where this technology is going. UAV's could end up looking like F-22's and our infantry could look like this:
It's amazing how similar the real thing is to the prop from Terminator.
We've already got three of these in Iraq. Many more are on the way.
I'm guessing it was something kind of like this.
Free Geekery presents the DIY Guide to Becoming a Real Cyborg. It all boils down to 10 easy steps:
1. RFID Implants
2. Watch the Future
3. Become One with Your Computer
4. Leap Tall Buildings in a Single Bound
5. Become a Human Transformer
6. Talk to the Wired Hand
7. Become a Vehicle for Change
8. Dress Accordingly
9. Refuse to Live with Your Genes
10. Get a Futuristic Life
Well, I feel that I've got 2 and 3 covered (although not in the sense described in the article.) But the one that really intrigues me is number 4 -- I don't think even 10 years of sledge hammer workouts will get me in that good of shape. I'm going to need bionic enhancement. Fortunately, it's available:
Now that you've purchased the watch and the head monitor, you might want to add a little bounce to your walk with Powerizers. If you're an adult and somewhat athletically inclined, you can lay claim to the ability to jump up to 6 feet in the air and to take running strides up to 9 feet in length. You'll pay for this ability, however, as a pair of Powerizers currently costs $329.99 plus shipping and handling if you order them online. A physically fit bill collector who owns a pair of these shoes might fall under the "evil" category.
Some forward-looking musicians take us to a post-Singularity world where the intelligence that dominates is distinctly unfriendly. Pretty funny, though. (Warning, one line is not terribly work or family friendly.)
Hat-tip: Ivan Kirgin
...to really creep me out.
Exhibit A, The Toddler-bot:
This machine could represent numerous advances in anthropomorphic robotics, but geeze. Apparently this is meant to represent a human toddler. I knew the Japanese weren't having many kids, but had no idea that Japanese toddlers were this rare.
According to Wikipedia, the uncanny valley hypothesis states that "as a robot is made more humanlike in its appearance and motion, the emotional response from a human being to the robot will become increasingly positive and empathic, until a point is reached beyond which the response quickly becomes that of strong repulsion. However, as the appearance and motion continue to become less distinguishable from a human being's, the emotional response becomes positive once more and approaches human-to-human empathy levels."
I wouldn't think that this pasty-faced weirdness qualifies as "uncanny." I'm not sure why that thing is so unsettling, but It's not because it's too real.
Uncanny or not - anthropomorphic creepiness explains why the first robots we've accepted into our homes tend to be diminitive toys like Robosapiens or the cute Teddy Ruxpin or completely nonanthropomorphic like the Roomba.
I'd guess that when we do finally get truly helpful anthropomorphic robots, they'll have very stylized faces. They'll also be short in order to be nonthreatening. Being able to reach tall shelves is useful, so some height variability - a telescoping abdomen - might be employed.
UPDATE:
My brother-in-law Lonnie put his finger on why this is so disturbing: "That thing's like a shaved teletubby!"
UPDATE 2:
A still picture just doesn't convey the weirdness of this thing like a video:
Don't try this at home. Unless, of course, you have an industrial robot with a swivel chair mounted on it.
I would also recommend a few trial runs with a crash-test dummy to make sure you've programmed the thing right. You don't want to discover your mistake by having Robby pile-drive you headfirst into the concrete floor.
...and it could probably set itself. I give you the walking table
Here we have another fine example of better living through robotics technology grafted onto mundane, low-tech items. Or maybe it's the first such example. But the point is -- it's an example. And I'm eager to see more.
Something I rarely ever do is click on the Google Adsense links in the sidebar and at the top of the page. (Although I highly recommend that you, dear reader, check out this valuable information and click, click, click your way to a brighter tomorrow.) But I just couldn't resist the one that read:
I figured it had to be a joke. But follow the link... it's on the level.
I love this line: "Personally serving customers since 1983."
I bet a lot of the robots they can't move are programmed for etiquette and protocol. Who needs that?
This is what you get when you cross an Imperial Walker from Star Wars with the Oliphants from The Lord of the Rings - a 30-foot tall robotic elephant!
The 30 foot tall robot elephant was built especially as a part of a Jules Verne centennial celebration. Verne, the author of classics like Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, and Journey to the Centre of the Earth, would have been absolutely delighted.
The robot not only walked through the streets amazing the crowds, it actually sprayed water on them from its trunk!
Don't miss the video.
Mark Steyn paints a very pessimistic picture of the developed world's future in his recent article, "It's the Demography, Stupid." Steyn points out that the replacement fertility rate is an average of 2.1 live births per woman. The United States' birth rate is practically equal to this replacement value at about 2.08 live births per woman.
I'm doing my part.
The population of most of the rest of the developed world is not holding up as well. Japan's birth rate is 1.39. The European average is very close at about 1.40. This means that both Japan and Europe are losing about a third of their population every generation.
Steyn points out that this is a problem because the typical modern democracy tends to be a welfare state. The only demographic that's growing - old people - depend on the diminishing young population to pay for their pensions, medicine, and health care.
So Europe has found that it must open its gates to immigration. The problem, for anyone who's watched what's going on in France, is that some of these immigrants don't share a belief in "liberal pluralist democracy."
I would guess that Japan, with it's comparably low birthrate, will fare much better in the coming years than Europe. Japan has a stronger tradition of accepting personal sacrifice for the sake of the greater good than socialized Europe. If the population is told that certain welfare programs will have to be cut back, they are likely to accept this quicker and respond faster than Europe.
Also, there's the issue of robots. The Economist had an interesting article late last month about how the Japanese are very accepting of robots.
[T]he consensus among Japanese is that visions of a future in which immigrant workers live harmoniously and unobtrusively in Japan are pure fancy. Making humanoid robots is clearly the simple and practical way to go...
In western popular culture, robots are often a threat, either because they are manipulated by sinister forces or because something goes horribly wrong with them. By contrast, most Japanese view robots as friendly and benign.
As robots and other AI's become smarter and more capable every year, this cultural acceptance of robots will become more and more important to Japan. Perhaps Europe will see Japan's success and adopt robots as well.
How will this affect the United States? We don't have the same depopulation problem that Europe and Japan have, but we do have the Western distrust for robots. So we don't need them like Europe or want them like Japan. This probably means we'll be late adopters, and that could become a major problem for our country. We might learn to upgrade humans to compete with super-efficient robots, but robots will be easier to upgrade or replace as new technology becomes available.
Time will tell.
Check out Kinematic Self-Replicating Machines by Robert Freitas and Ralph Merkle. Summary:
This book offers a general review of the voluminous theoretical and experimental literature pertaining to physical self-replicating systems. The principal focus here is on self-replicating machine systems. Most importantly, we are concerned with kinematic self-replicating machines: systems in which actual physical objects, not mere patterns of information, undertake their own replication. Following a brief burst of activity in the 1950s and 1980s, the field of kinematic replicating systems design received new interest in the 1990s with the emerging recognition of the feasibility of molecular nanotechnology. The field has experienced a renaissance of research activity since 1999 as researchers have come to recognize that replicating systems are simple enough to permit experimental laboratory demonstrations of working devices.
Via Fight Aging!
Via GeekPress, the company that brought us Roomba -- the cute, almost cuddly household cleaning robot -- is moving into some surprising new territory:
IRobot Corp. of Burlington, famous for its robotic vacuum cleaners, has teamed up with researchers at Boston University to develop a military robot capable of spotting enemy snipers.IRobot demonstrated the system, called REDOWL (for Robot Enhanced Detection Outpost with Lasers), at the Association of the United States Army convention in Washington yesterday. Testers struck pieces of metal to simulate gunshots. REDOWL quickly aimed its infrared camera and laser rangefinder at the source of the noise, just as it did in tests at a Medfield gun range.
REDOWL is based on PackBot, which was the first IRobot unit to be drafted into military service. PackBot is the Ensign Redshirt of the military robot world, scouting out dangerous terrain and being the first to enter buildings that may be booby trapped.
If this REDOWL business starts to sound a little too much like the Terminator, fear not. At least not yet:
In theory, a REDOWL system could fire back at an enemy, but [deputy director of the Boston University Photonics Center Glenn] Thoren said the hardware isn't strong enough to support the weight of a gun. Besides, he said, it would be dangerous to have a weapon-toting robot that could open fire on its own.
"You need to have a man in the loop," he said.
I just wonder whether IRobot realizes what they're potentially sitting on, should they start to combine some of these functions. Say you had a robot that would be the first in for any dangerous situation, that warded off bad guys, and that vacuumed. Shucks, throw in a tolerance for chick flicks and some basic childrearing skills -- as well as a good-providing career like, say, architecture -- and we're well on our way to the world's first robotic husband.
We need to watch out, fellas. It isn't just factory jobs that can be replaced by automation.
 | 
Roomba hacking sounds promising, but THIS seems a little extreme doesn't it? |
The iRobot company is opening the Roomba's robotic vacuum to third part developers.
In early July the company will post instructions for controlling its Roomba vacuum cleaner via the built-in serial port, so programmers can modify it however they want -- from equipping it with a camera to, yes, adding an arm and training it to retrieve brewskis. iRobot hopes the move will foster the development of Roomba accessories -- like the ecosystem of add-ons that has sprung up around the iPod -- thus driving sales.
Others are already contemplating using the Roomba as a sort of robotic security camera - allowing you to control a mobile home camera from a webpage.
This is just in time for the third generation Roombas that will be released later this summer.
Via Kurzweil AI:
University of Wyoming researchers have received a $100,000 National Science Foundation grant to further develop swarm of tiny robots that could help clean up oil spills or respond to a terrorist attack.
A swarm of small robots would cover a larger area more quickly than a single robot, and if one failed, the others could take up the slack. Eventually they hope to develop robots that could fly or swim.
(Read the original article.)
Such swarms will have many applications. They could help out quite a bit in firefighting and search-and-rescue scenarios. Imagine a sufficiently large (and sufficiently dispersed) robot swarm hovering around the US-Mexico border, programmed to report any movement where no movement should be. Such a swarm would be more effective in sealing the border than any number of Minutemen (or National Guard troops) could ever dream of being.
Of course, there's got to be a downside. What about the government using robot swarms to control us? What about robot swarms gone bad, evolving their own intelligence and sense of purpose competitive with our own? If you're interested in that kind of thing, Michael Crichton published a novel a couple of years ago about a robot swarm with marked gray-goo tendencies that causes all kinds of problems. An interesting page-turner, but the consensus these days is that the gray-goo scenario is imminently avoidable.
Crichton's robots were microscopic in size. The smaller we make the individual robots that make up the swarm, the more we'll be able to do with them. Eventually, swarms of nano-scale robots will be released inside our bodies to ward off the effects of disease and aging. And one day, we'll have swarms of nanobots acting in concert to create what will be the most useful product ever invented: Josh Hall's utility fog.
As Josh explains it:
Nanotechnology is based on the concept of tiny, self-replicating robots. The Utility Fog is a very simple extension of the idea: Suppose, instead of building the object you want atom by atom, the tiny robots linked their arms together to form a solid mass in the shape of the object you wanted? Then, when you got tired of that avant-garde coffeetable, the robots could simply shift around a little and you'd have an elegant Queen Anne piece instead.
You may as well make your car of Utility Fog, too; then you can have a "new" one every day. But better than that, the *interior* of the car is filled with robots as well as its shell. You'll need to wear holographic "eyephones" to see, but the Fog will hold them up in front of your eyes and they'll feel and look as if they weren't there. Although heavier than air, the Fog is programmed to simulate its physical properties, so you can't feel it: when you move your arm, it flows out of the way. Except when there's a crash! Then it forms an instant form-fitting "seatbelt" protecting every inch of your body. You can take a 100-mph impact without messing your hair.
Dang. I have got to get me some of that stuff.
An interesting breakthrough, robots that expend about the sae amount of energy getting themselves around as human beings do:
A trio of androids that amble along with exceptional power efficiency and "instinctive" co-ordination were unveiled for the first time on Thursday.
The three mechanical bipeds, built by researchers from Cornell University, the University of Michigan and Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US and Delft University in the Netherlands, respectively, walked along in an amiable, if somewhat awkward fashion.
"Our robots demonstrate that utilising the natural dynamics of the body can make robots much more efficient," says Steve Collins, a member of the team from the University of Michigan. "For any autonomous robots to be practical, they must be energetically efficient."
Contrast these energy-efficient droids with Honda's Asimo they're about 10 times more efficient. That's huge. But I imgaine they're still quite expensive to build. Still, it won't be long before somebody finds something useful to do with these kinds of robots. Then two things will happen:
1. The cost will go way down.
2. They will become much more energy efficient than human beings.
For better or for worse, those developments will mark the beginning of the end of (what's left) of the manual labor market. After that, we're only a few steps away from a world that Dr. A. himself would have found strangely familiar.
via Kurzweil AISee, I told you this was a good idea. And what a great name...Rotundus. Actually, that's kind of what I feel like after a little too much holiday indulgence.
Spherical security robots are a good idea, but I hope they stick with the shiny metallic ones as shown in the linked article. I, for one, would be wary of any soft, bubbly implementation of the same idea.
(via GeekPress)
Via
Kurzweil
AI, check out this New
Scientist report on a new modular, shape-shifting robot:
A shape-shifting robot comprised of many independently moving components has been demonstrated walking, rolling and slithering for the first time.
The prototype robot - called ATRON - demonstrated its various metamorphoses in Tokyo on Wednesday. For example, reconfiguring its many individual modules allows the robot to change its mode of locomotion on command.
As you can see in the photo, the modules are described as being "roughly spherical" in shape. Here we have a primitive, macro-scale implementation of the modular nanobot. All we have to do now is make these robots a little smarter and a little more mobile (they need to be able to fly and swim as well as roll around on the ground) reduce their size by a factor of a few million, and figure out a way to start producing trillions of them. Then the fun really begins.
Nothing to be alarmed about, folks. Just another one of those monkeys-controlling-robots-with-their-brains stories. No big deal. Happens all the time.
Move along, now.
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