Robotics
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Robot learns to recognise itself in the mirror - tech - 22 August 2012
NICO spends a lot of time looking in the mirror. But it's not mere vanity - Nico is a humanoid robot that can recognise its reflection - a step on the path towards true self-awareness. In fact, Nico can identify almost exactly where its arm is in space based on the mirror image.
Estamos acostumbrados a ver robots caminantes como ASIMO o AlphaDog en los que los ingenieros han invertido tiempo y esfuerzos en conseguir que estas máquinas puedan caminar sobre dos o cuatro piernas imitando un movimiento natural. En estos casos, los ingenieros han desarrollado rutinas específicas que permiten que se accionen los servomotores que conforman las articulaciones de las piernas mecánicas y el robot pueda caminar, sin embargo, ¿sería posible que un robot aprendiese a caminar por sí solo? La respuesta a esta pregunta no es nada sencilla pero desde la Universidad Cornell han intentado darle respuesta con el desarrollo de un robot que intenta aprender a moverse de una manera óptima por sus propios medios .
¿Puede un robot aprender a caminar por sí solo?
Paul Marks, senior technology correspondent MQ-8B Fire Scout Helicopter, a US ship-based UAV (Image: Martin Lee/Rex Features) Chinese navy researchers have revealed how they plan to hunt submarines using ship-launched uncrewed air vehicles (UAVs). The plan, developed by the naval academy in Dalian, China, is to choose the best hunting pattern for a drone using the power of the genetic algorithm - a search engine that evolves an optimum solution by discarding feeble offspring and breeding the best to make ever stronger ones. The route evolved would make the best use of fuel, cater for air and sea threats and work with dropped sonar buoys.
One Per Cent: Genetic algorithms let Chinese drones hunt submarines
New Robot Crawls Like an Earthworm
Dubbed the "Meshworm," a new bio-inspired robot stretches and contracts to crawl across the ground like an earthworm. But unlike its living, breathing counterpart, this artificial creature is durable enough to survive being bludgeoned by a hammer. "You can throw it, and it won't collapse. Most mechanical parts are rigid and fragile at small scale, but the parts in Meshworms are all fibrous and flexible," said mechanical engineering researcher Sangbae Kim in a statement from MIT.
Rock, paper, scissors robot can't be beaten | Crave - CNET
It's only got three fingers to your five, but it'll still beat you every time. (Credit: Video screenshot by Tim Hornyak/CNET) In case you were in any doubt about the superiority of robots to humans, Japanese researchers have unleashed a machine that's unbeatable at that timeless human test of wills, rock, paper, scissors. The boffins at the Ishikawa Oku Lab in the University of Tokyo call it a "human-machine cooperation system," but this robot hand doesn't seem interested in cooperating at all. It's only interested in winning, and it does that by cheating, in a sense. A high-speed camera captures its human opponent's choice of the three weapons, and it takes only a millisecond for the robot to form the winning hand shape.
Cyborg
Translated by Karl F. MacDorman and Norri Kageki Editor's note: More than 40 years ago, Masahiro Mori, then a robotics professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, wrote an essay on how he envisioned people's reactions to robots that looked and acted almost human. In particular, he hypothesized that a person's response to a humanlike robot would abruptly shift from empathy to revulsion as it approached, but failed to attain, a lifelike appearance.
The Uncanny Valley
Uncanny valley
The uncanny valley is a hypothesis in the field of robotics [ 1 ] and 3D computer animation , [ 2 ] [ 3 ] which holds that when human replicas look and act almost, but not perfectly, like actual human beings, it can cause a response of revulsion among human observers.
Enlarge Uli Benz / Technical University of Munich MORE IMAGES Most people now have computers and phones that can talk to them. From straightforward, voice-activated commands to the strangely poetic responses of the iPhone 4S's Siri, computers and humans are getting closer. But what if your computer had a face?
Facial Scare? Robots Get Human Faces: Scientific American Gallery
Robot builds its own body from sprayable foam - tech - 19 October 2011
Video: Watch foambot in action as it sprays on its own body LIKE a sculpture that springs to life, a new type of robot makes its own body parts using spray-on foam. Such a design could one day be useful in situations in which the exact type of robot needed is not known beforehand, such as space exploration or reconnaissance. Created by Shai Revzen and colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania Foambot consists of a wheeled "mothership" platform along with several simple joint modules capable of powered bending and flexing.
Screen-spy program can read texts and emails - tech - 02 November 2011
Video: Software spies on smartphone users NEXT time you're tapping off a private text message or sensitive email in a public place, consider this: someone could be reading every letter you type from up to 60 metres away. "We can be in the second floor of a building and read a phone on the ground," says computer vision researcher Jan-Michael Frahm , of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.Lo que vemos sobre las imágenes es el último "invento" que le ha sacado un ingeniero a Kinect . Una actividad que podríamos tildar de "doméstica" donde el hombre consigue a través de Kinect y de la ayuda de los mandos de la Wii, controlar un robot Nao para el cepillado diario de su gato . Y es que Kinect es mucho más que un periférico.
Robot cepillando a un gato con la ayuda de Kinect
Nao Next Gen, el robot que a muchos nos gustaría tener
Existen muchas clases de robots atendiendo a sus funciones o a sus formas pero, entre todos ellos, creo que los que más llaman la atención son los que presentan formas que nos recuerdan a animales (como el inquietante Alpha-Dog ) o tienen forma antropomórfica, es decir, tienen forma humana . De entre todos estos robots con forma humana hay uno en especial que muchos quisiéramos poder tener, Nao , un robot desarrollado por la empresa francesa Aldebaran Robotics , que acaba de ser actualizado con alguna que otra mejora. ¿Y qué es Nao? Nao es un robot programable con forma antropomórfica que está orientado a desarrolladores e investigadores.Science fiction often envisions worlds populated by humanoid robots. In reality, insects, reptiles and non-human animals often serve as a more practical template for automatons . The more legs a robot has, the more easily it can navigate tough terrain.
Robot Uses Lizard Tail to Leap [Video]
Lasers power Pentagon’s next-gen artificial limbs
This gives me a strange sort of comfort. Hands are precious things to a writer, whether for the typing, writing old style with a pen, or hoisting the coffee that fuels said writing. I hope never to need such a prosthetic, but it's nice to know they're working on these things. Sad that war and soldiers being hurt is how we'll get there. But war has always been a driver for tech that improves the world, so at least good can come from the bad. 11/05/11 11:21am<img class="size-large wp-image-27824 alignright" style="margin: 10px;" title="OK" src="http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/dangerroom/2010/07/OK-660x749.jpg" alt="" width="450" /> Pentagon-backed scientists are getting ready to test thought-controlled prosthetic arms on human subjects, by rewiring their brains to fully integrate the artificial limbs. Already in recent years, we’ve seen very lifelike artificial arms , monkeys nibbling bananas with mind-controlled robotic limbs and even humans whose muscle fibers have been wired to prosthetic devices . But this is the first time human brains will be opened up, implanted with a neural interface and then used to operate an artificial limb. It’s a giant step that’ll transform the devices, which were little more than hooks and cables only 50 years ago.