Insect cyborgs may become first responders, search and monitor hazardous environs. (PhysOrg.com) -- Research conducted at the University of Michigan College of Engineering may lead to the use of insects to monitor hazardous situations before sending in humans. Professor Khalil Najafi, the chair of electrical and computer engineering, and doctoral student Erkan Aktakka are finding ways to harvest energy from insects, and take the utility of the miniature cyborgs to the next level. "Through energy scavenging, we could potentially power cameras, microphones and other sensors and communications equipment that an insect could carry aboard a tiny backpack," Najafi said.
"We could then send these 'bugged' bugs into dangerous or enclosed environments where we would not want humans to go. " The principal idea is to harvest the insect's biological energy from either its body heat or movements. The device converts the kinetic energy from wing movements of the insect into electricity, thus prolonging the battery life. Robot Sets Rubik’s Cube World Record: 5.35 Seconds. Isaac Asimov: The Three Laws of Robotics. Robot exosquelette de Raytheon-Sarcos - une vidéo Tech & Science. Scientists force two chatbots to have a conversation, prove that Skynet will be a moron.
Fukushima Robot Operator Writes Tell-All Blog. An anonymous worker at Japan’s Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant has written dozens of blog posts describing the ups and downs of his experience as one of the lead robot operators at the crippled facility. His blog provides a window into the complex and dangerous work environment faced by the operators, a small group of young technicians who, like other front-line personnel, must approach areas of high radiation, deploying remote-controlled robots to assist with efforts to further stabilize and shut down the plant’s four troubled reactors. The blog posts, which have recently been deleted, depict the operators’ extensive robot training exercises, as well as actual missions, including surveying damage and contamination in and around the reactors and improvising a robotic vacuum to suck up radioactive dust.
The material also raises questions about whether Tokyo Electric Power Co. But what is perhaps most significant about the blog is its technical content. WHERE ARE THE ROBOTS? NASA's humanoid wakes up in space, starts Tweeting. Frugal robotics: Sweeping change. First attempt at walking over rough ground for Bipedal Robot MABEL. The Fastest Human-Like Robot Has Creepy Knees and a 9-Minute Mile | Discoblog. One Per Cent: Creepy robot head reads music and sings. Melissae Fellet, reporter Try to fight your sense of rising panic as you listen to this robot serenade you. The creepy humanoid head can read a simplified music score before singing the song in a synthesised voice.
This is a somewhat disconcerting experience, but its developers are happy enough with their invention to claim that a collection of these singing heads could one day form part of a robotic theatre troupe. Chyi-Yeu Lin and colleagues at the National Taiwan University of Science and Technology in Taipei created a robot that first takes a photo of the music, which is notated with numbers and words, using cameras built into the eyes. An algorithm extracts pitch, rhythm, and lyrics from that image and sends the information to a voice synthesiser.
The synthesiser matches sounds in the Mandarin language with the Roman spellings of the lyrics. "Maybe it's one of those things that a robot can do better than ordinary people," Lin says. Robot 'Mission Impossible' wins video prize - tech - 12 August 2011. Video: Watch a robot swarm invade from the ground and air (Credit: Marco Dorigo, Mauro Birattari and Rehan O'Grady, Université Libre de Bruxelles) You could call it Mission Impossible: Robot Library Heist. An army of flying, rolling, and climbing robots have been taught to work together to find and snatch a book from a high shelf. In a striking display of military-like precision, the robotic team, dubbed the "Swarmanoid", attacks the problem with flying "eye-bots" and rolling "foot-bots". A "hand-bot" then fires a grappling hook-like device up to the ceiling and scales the bookshelf. Footage of the experiment, conducted by Marco Dorigo at Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium, and colleagues, won the video competition at the Conference on Artificial Intelligence in San Francisco earlier this week (an edited version appears above).
It's a simple demonstration, but in the future Dorigo says the robots could be tasked with more difficult and important tasks. . A swarm is born Edison Vs. Artificial chameleon tongue has bug-catching licked - 13 April 2011. See more : our animated graphic showing the artificial tongue in action FORGET flypaper - why not catch pesky bugs chameleon-style, with the flick of a robot tongue? Alexis Debray, an engineer at Canon in Tokyo, Japan, has created an appendage that mimics the astonishing dexterity of the chameleon's tongue. The firm is always looking for ways to make more efficient production-line robots, he says, and a device that mimics the chameleon's tongue may hold promise for making delicate items like cameras. The chameleon has evolved a sticky tongue that can snap out to about twice its body length at 10 metres per second, catching bugs by surprise.
Even at such speeds, though, the lizard's lightweight tongue exerts very little force on the target. That is critical, says herpetologist Ian Stephen at the Zoological Society of London, to enable the tongue to stick to the prey rather than send it flying. Having witnessed chameleons at work, Stephen thinks the manipulator has some way to go. Towel-folding robot now on general sale - tech - 14 September 2010. “Scientists of Duke, be humble.” Last Sunday Reverend Dr. Samuel Wells, Dean of the Chapel at Duke University, departed from his usual sermons on matters of faith to speak about science and religion. His motivation: the success of Gnu Atheists: The last six years have witnessed the publication of a series of books, from a variety of authors, attacking religion with a virulence not seen for a long time.
This movement has been called “The New Atheism.” It believes religion should no longer be tolerated but should be exposed, challenged and refuted at every opportunity, with a conviction founded on scientific certainty. I haven’t referred to these antagonists in sermons from this pulpit because I’ve taken the advice of my sister’s housekeeper, and reckoned that the work of Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and others, was not worth the bullets. The New Atheists have said many new things and many true things, but the new things they’ve said are not true, and the true things they’ve said are not new. 1. 3.