New version amazing robot asimo

Humanoid Robot HR-2

The HR-2 robot was constructed during a period of three months at Chalmers University in Sweden. It has 22 degrees of freedom which enables it to easily move around imitating human motions. The robot is also equipped with stereovision giving it possibilities to perform hand-eye coordination. For that task an artificial neural network is evolved. Furthermore, the artificial brain is capable of tracking faces as well as recognising them. The HR-2 is also able to speak.

Researchers demonstrate direct brain control of humanoid robot

A classic science-fiction scene shows a person wearing a metal skullcap with electrodes sticking out to detect the person’s thoughts. Another sci-fi movie standard depicts robots doing humans’ bidding. Now the two are combined, and in real life: University of Washington researchers can control the movement of a humanoid robot with signals from a human brain.

Rajesh Rao, associate professor of computer science and engineering, and his students have demonstrated that an individual can “order” a robot to move to specific locations and pick up specific objects merely by generating the proper brain waves that reflect the individual’s instructions.

Monkey With Robot Arm

A monkey has a microchip in its brain which allows it to move a robotic arm as if it were its real arm, without any visible effort.

Starfish Self Modeling Robot

Starfish robot has the ability to picture itself in different situations and configurations, and then alter its actions based on what it thinks will work best.

Real Transformer Robot

Danny’s fully automated Lego Rubik’s cube solver

 This robot can automatically acquire, analyze and solve a shuffled Rubik’s cube!

 

 

Military tests rocket-powered bionic arm

A rocket-powered bionic arm has been successfully developed and tested by a team of mechanical engineers at Vanderbilt University as part of a $30 million military program to develop advanced prosthetic devices for next generation of super-soldiers.The mechanical arm mechanical arm with a miniature rocket motor can lift (curl) about 20 to 25 pounds, three to four times more than current commercial arms, and can do so three to four times faster.

Aggressive bees may track future of flying robots

Angry bees that fly like mini-missiles could map the futures of unmanned aircraft and planetary explorer robots, thanks to new University of Queensland research backed by the Queensland Governmen t.

Robots to Save Japanese Culture?

Roboticists at the University of Tokyo and Kawada Industries have made great strides programming complex leg movements in biped humanoid robots with the necessary stability to pull off intricate dance maneuvers. HRP-2, weighing in at 5 feet and 125 pounds, uses a video motion-capture system to record dance lessons replicate them convincingly. In the video below, the robot was able to watch an instructor perform a folk dance called Aizu-Bandaisan and accurately perform it.
Source: Wired

Could Robots Replace Humans in Mines?

Why do human beings still risk their lives burrowing miles under ground and doing one of the dirtiest and most dangerous jobs in the world?

It’s an increasingly urgent question, given the recent high-profile mining accidents in Sago, W.Va., and Huntington, Utah. A small corps of engineers and robotics experts envision a day in the not-too-distant future when robots and other technology do most of the dangerous mining work, and even help rescue trapped miners.

 

Read the story at NPR 

Amazing dancing Japanese Robots

 

Robot Medic Will Deploy by 2009, according to DARPATech

 One of the first announcements at this year’s three-day DARPATech conference is going to be hard to top: the first portable self-contained surgical robot will be deployed in the next two years. Brett Giroir, director of the research agency’s Defense Sciences Office also announced that the system, called Trauma Pod, has successfully “treated” a mannequin during a test, with no complications.Read the article at Popular Mechanics 

Amazing Actroid Female Robot

The amazingly realistic female android, named Actroid DER 2, was demonstrated at the AKIBA Robot Festival here in the Akihabara district of Tokyo. 

Can cyborg moths bring down terrorists?

At some point in the not too distant future, a moth will take flight in the hills of northern Pakistan, and flap towards a suspected terrorist training camp.

But this will be no ordinary moth. Inside it will be a computer chip that was implanted when the creature was still a pupa, in the cocoon, meaning that the moth’s entire nervous system can be controlled remotely. 

The moth will thus be capable of landing in the camp without arousing suspicion, all the while beaming video and other information back to its masters via what its developers refer to as a “reliable tissue-machine interface.” 

Read the story here. 

Autonomous Vision-based Exploration and Map

This video shows the progress of a robot as it explores a real-world environment. It uses a stereo camera (and no other sensors) to detect obstacles and localize itself. It makes its own decisions about where to go, based on its expectation of the value of visiting any particular location. The environment is an indoor planar lab, about 20m on each side. Hat tip to Simra 

SuperBot Modular Robots

Wei-Min Shen of the University of Southern California’s Information Sciences Institute recently reported to NASA significant progress in developing “SuperBot,” identical modular units that plug into each other to create robots that can stand, crawl, wiggle and even roll. He illustrated his comments with striking video of the system in action, video now posted on line (watch below).

Domo Robot Helping to Clean Up

Exploration and Development in Space: Men vs. Robots

How will the actual movement of humans into space eventually play out? Will humans develop a rocket version of the Conestoga Wagon, or theMayflower? Or will humans even play a part in the next century of space development, when robots may make far more sense for initial exploration?

 Techno blogger Al Fin tackles these questions in his interesting blog. 

Robot Domo Making a Drink

Swarm theory

A single ant or bee isn’t smart, but their colonies are. The study of swarm intelligence is providing insights that can help humans manage complex systems, from truck routing to military robots. 

 Read the article at National Geographic. 

New Laws of Robotics proposed for US kill-bots

A new set of laws has been proposed to govern operations by killer robots. The ideas were floated by John S Canning, an engineer at the Naval Surface Warfare Centre, Dahlgren Division – an American weapons-research and test establishment. Mr Canning’s “Concept of Operations for Armed Autonomous Systems” presentation can be downloaded here (pdf). Read  the article at The Register

Our Civilization: Robotics

This will not be an invasion of Intelligent Machines, but rather it will be an expression of our own Civilization. – Ray Kurzweil

 

Technological Future: Human Evolution

Life and intelligence must never stagnate; it must re-order, transform and transcend its limits in an unlimited progressive process. Our goal is the exuberant and dynamic continuation of this unlimited process… – Max More 

 

Robot wars

WAR is expensive and it is bloody. That is why America’s Department of Defence wants to replace a third of its armed vehicles and weaponry with robots by 2015. Such a change would save money, as robots are usually cheaper to replace than people. As important for the generals, it would make waging war less prey to the politics of body bags. Nobody mourns a robot.

Read the article at Economist.com  

Farms Fund Robots to Replace Migrant Fruit Pickers

Vision Robotics, a San Diego company, is working on a pair of robots that would trundle through orchards plucking oranges, apples or other fruit from the trees. In a few years, troops of these machines could perform the tedious and labor-intensive task of fruit picking that currently employs thousands of migrant workers each season.Read the article at Wired 

 

Humanoid Robot Domo Helping with Chores

Introduction to Humanoid Robot Domo

Assistive robot adapts to people, new places

In the futuristic cartoon series “The Jetsons,” a robotic maid named Rosie whizzed around the Jetsons’ home doing household chores–cleaning, cooking dinner and washing dishes.Such a vision of robotic housekeeping is likely decades away from becoming reality.But at MIT, researchers are working on a very early version of such intelligent, robotic helpers–a humanoid called Domo who grasp objects and place them on shelves or counters. 
MIT postdoctoral associate Aaron Edsinger gets some help from Domo, an assistive robot he has been developing for the last three years. Photo / Donna Coveney

‘Guessing’ robots navigate faster

Robots that use educated guesswork to build maps of their surroundings are being tested by US researchers. The approach could let them navigate more easily through complex environments such as unfamiliar buildings, the researchers claim.

Navigation is one of the biggest challenges faced by mobile robots. One popular technique, dubbed SLAM (simultaneous localisation and mapping), involves having a robot build a map of the local area, whilst also tracking its position.

Now, George Lee and colleagues at Purdue University, US, have come up with an altogether different approach. They have developed an algorithm that uses information already collected to “guess” what comes next.

Read the article at NewScientistTech.