4.30.2005

 

Robots and global warming

Robots 'confirm' global warming

From the article:

 

Robotic stroke rehabilitation

Robotic Arm Could Help Stroke Survivors Regain Range Of Motion

From the article:Also:Physical therapists would seem to be one group of employees who, like travel agents were a couple years ago, are looking at the end of their profession. It probably will not happen as quickly or suddenly as it did for travel agents, and there will probably remain a niche for the therapists to do the initial assessment, but it seems like simple robots will be doing the actual repetitive therapy sessions fairly quickly. See also Robots and Physical Therapists.

4.29.2005

 

Next grand challenge

Carnegie Mellon Robot Will Run Time Trials to Prove It's Got What It Takes to Enter $2 Million Desert Race

From the article:See also: Robot drivers

 

Robots in teams

Now, robots turn team players

From the article:The robots are developed by Frontline Robotics.



From the web site:So these are 300 pound insects.

See also Robotic police

 

Japan and robots

A note from a faithful reader:

4.28.2005

 

Robot band

Captured by robots, he learns to live with 'em, takes them on the road

From the article:Photos of the band are available here.

See also: Mingling With Metal Men

4.26.2005

 

Open Robotics Peripheral Platform

The Open Robotics Peripheral Platform is an effort to standardize robotics platforms and help people to share their innovations in an open way. According to the site, ORPP provides "a versatile platform for many different robotic applications. Until now the basic platforms for robots have been either toys with little practical application or expensive, overly customized components. The goal of this project is to provide modular components that are easily outfitted with various hardware and software features in the same manner as the modern-day personal computer. Any novice computer technician could control, outfit, and maintain a O.R.P.P."

4.25.2005

 

What can change in 25 years?

I gave a presentation on robots this weekend, and in the presentation I used one of my favorite slides. The point of the slide is to say, "look at how much can change in just 25 years."

The slide has on it two images. Here is image #1:



Here is image #2:



The first image is from the game Pacman, released in 1980. At the time it was considered to be an innovative video game.

The second image is Half-Life 2, released just a few months ago. It too is considered to be an innovative video game.

These two games are separated by only 25 years, yet they look like they are from completely different planets. One is a flat, pixelated, handful-of-colors-on-a-mostly-black-screen game. The other is a photo-realistic real-time romp through an artifical world of incredible depth and detail. The two games cannot be compared. It would be like comparing a backhoe to a spoon.

Here is another example -- from a book called How It Works - The Computer. This is a typical image from the 1979 edition:



This disk drive, which is as big as a washing machine, has a removable disc pack made up of six 14-inch discs. The disc pack holds 7.25 megabytes. Today we can buy 400 gigabyte drives for $300 that, very nearly, fit in your pocket. An iPod does fit in your pocket and holds 40 GB.

Here is another example - an article called The Birth of the Notebook.

The point is, we have seen amazing change in the last 25 years. We can expect the same levels of innovation, if not more, in the next 25 years. Imagine what video games, disc drives and laptops will look like by then.

I imagine we will be beginning to see the first installations of Vertebrane. and video games will be becoming completely immersive environments. I also imagine that the robots that we are interacting with in 25 years will blow Roomba away, in the same way that Half Life 2 blows Pacman away. See Robotic Nation for details.

4.24.2005

 

Cameras in cabs

CAMERAS IN TAXIS: Surveillance equipment likely in cabs

From the article:This same logic can be used in every situation -- protection of innocent people makes cameras and other surveillance techniques necessary. As the cameras become cheaper and better every year, cameras of every type will proliferate.

What this means is that, in time, there will be cameras everywhere and nothing will happen with anonymity anymore. A situation like the OJ case, where Nicole and friend are murdered and no one knows who did it, will be impossible in 20 years.

See also

 

More robot teachers

Face-making robot debuts in Shenzhen (with a nice photo)

From the article:See also Robots and teachers.

 

Robot plays golf

Robot plays golf

From the article:

 

Robot Chairs

Robot Technology Creates Easy Chair

From the article:The "elder"? Is this new vocabulary?

That's a lot of technology for a chair...

4.21.2005

 

Robot dentist

Robotic dentist's drill

From the article:This engadget post has a picture.

 

Red light cameras

Smile. You're on candid cop camera.

From the article:See also: Red light cameras spreading rapidly

 

Tracking cars

Satellites to track cars in 80p a mile toll

From the article:

4.19.2005

 

Holographic Storage starts at 300 GB per disc

InPhase To Demo Holographic Storage

From the article:See also: Much, much faster transistors and Moore's Law for details.

 

Tracking robot

Secom's RFID-kid tracking now enforced by the Secom Robot X

4.18.2005

 

A robot replaces people in the shuttle

NASA studying options for landing unmanned shuttle

From the article:

 

Robot sex dolls

Robot sex dolls

This was inevitable. From the article:

 

Software Company and Trading Web Site Build 'Auto-Trading Robot'

Software Company and Trading Web Site Build 'Auto-Trading Robot':

From the article:

 

Robotic needle

Arutz Sheva - Israel National News:

From thje artilce:

 

A system straight out of Manna

Big brother will watch you in the office

From the article:The article hypothesizes other uses. For example, if two people seem to spend a lot of time near each other, they may be having an office tryst. If too many people get together for an "unscheduled meeting", it may indicate a huge waste of time or potential mutiny. And so on.

If you want to see where systems like this lead us, read the book Manna.

4.17.2005

 

Much, much faster transistors

Illinois researchers create world's fastest transistor ... again

From the article:Also:This paper is interesting in light of this report from Intel dated 2001:

Intel Researchers Build World's Fastest Silicon Transistors

From that article: This article claims that Intel's transisitors can "turn on and off more than a trillion times per second", meaning they are twice as fast as the Illinois transistors.

Either way, what you can see is that microprocessors have a lot of room for speed improvements. One problem with faster chips will be heat generation, so research is intensifying in this area:

Researchers propose center to develop future chip-cooling technologies

From the article:See also 1 terabyte hard disks.

 

'Minority Report' interface created for US military

'Minority Report' interface created for US militaryFrom the article:

4.16.2005

 

Nano robot

China Builds Nano-operated Robot

From the article:

 

Bomb squad robot

Update: Anthony SWAT Situation

This article is interesting for this one quote: I suppose the next step would be a robotic bulldozer that simply crushes the house and everything in it.

4.15.2005

 

Robot airplanes fly 24x7

Robot plane to 'airlift' cellphone signals

From the article:

 

Autonomous robot spacecraft

DART to rendezvous with Pentagon satellite

From the article:Also:Update: The mission did not go completely according to plan (and they actually changed the MSNBC story after the fact), but the point is easy to see. We will have completely autonomous spacecraft flying around in not too long. See Robotic Nation for details.

4.14.2005

 

Self-steering tractor add-on

Trimble - AgGPS EZ-Steer

From the article:This allows you to take an existing tractor and start turning it into a robot. It steers itself. Other add-ons in the future will let the tractor set its speed, avoid obstacles, etc.

 

Climbing Robot for construction

Climbing Robot Builds Planes

From the article:

4.13.2005

 

Home robots you can buy

The ZMP Nuvo was announced last year and is now available, although the price is steep:This got me thinking -- what other real "home robots" can you actually buy today? I'm not talking about toys -- I am talking about useful products that you can buy today for the home. Here is my list:All four have videos if you poke around in each site -- they are pretty interesting

What other "real" robots are out there for the home? If you can think of others, add them in the comments or mail them in.

 

Robot companions in Japan

Japan's hi-tech carers

From the article:Substitute boyfriend? It's bad enough that robots will be pushing everyone out of their jobs, but taking over the dating scene as well... that's harsh.

 

Laptop-controlled mine system

Laptop-controlled mine system headed for Iraq

From the article:

4.12.2005

 

Robots and NASA

Why robots will take over just about every job in the economy:

3 alternate visions for NASA's future

From the article:In not too long, say 30 or 40 years, the statement will be, "Robots can do just about everything better and cheaper." See Robotic Nation and Robots taking jobs for details.

 

Robots in the Middle East

Hizbollah Flies Drone Over Northern Israel

From the article:Also:

4.11.2005

 

Robots on the subway

NYC Subway Gets Computer Facelift

From the article:Also:See Robots taking jobs and Robotic Nation for details.

 

Robot helicopters

Robot choppers on the horizon

From the article:

 

Robots will replace child camel jockeys in UAE

Robots will replace child camel jockeys in UAE

From the article:Also:

 

One robot doing the work of two

Single Robot Packs and Palletizes



From the article:

 

Using ultrasound to trigger the senses

Sony aims to beam sights, sounds into brain

From the article:Personally I think that Vertebrane and Vite Racks will be the path we ultimately follow, but stuff like this would be an intermediate step.

4.10.2005

 

Wet bio-transistors


A Single-Protein Wet Biotransistor

Image

 

Robots grading tests

This is another one covered last year in Robots grading essay questions and getting renewed attention now:

Essays marked by computer program

From the article: Once again we have an activity that the conventional wisdom considers to be "impossible to automate." Yet robots do it as well as humans at a far lower cost. Combine this capability with robotic and computer-based instruction and millions of teachers will be out of work before too long. See also:

 

Robots building houses

This topic was covered last year in the post Robots and the construction industry, but Discover magazine has just published a new article on the process that provides more details:

The whole-house machine

From the article:As mentioned in my previous post:The new robot being described here totally changes the house-building paradigm. However, it is just as easy to imagine the development of shingle-laying robots, painting robots, sheetrock-hanging-robots, framing robots and so on, so that traditional construction undergoes the same price reductions. It should be very interesting to watch these developments unfold.

 

Managing a baseball team with a robot

The robot as manager; it does not compute

The article is discussing the idea that a computer could manage a baseball team. From the article:The author comes to the conclusion that this would not work because of the need to handle "human emotions." But you can codify the emotional factors just as easily and let the computer handle them as well (see Robots interviewing job applicants and robots and the right brain).

Need to directly connect with the plater's emotions to motivate them? The traditional way is a screaming manager. Instead, slap a headset on each player as in Manna. Have the computer manager whisper in the players' ears using words and phrases that have been found -- through extensive psychological testing -- to cause the greatest degree of human motivation in high-performance athletes.

The majority of humans will be managed by robots much sooner than we think. See Manna for details.

 

Invasion of the Robo-DJs

Invasion of the Robo-DJs

From the article:also:

4.08.2005

 

A tiny robot swarm

A tiny robot swarm - fiction no longer

From the article:

 

Killer robots on the S. Korean border

Robot to Take Over Border Guard Mission

From the article:Also:S. Korea considers using robot guards

From the article:See also Israel to build robotic borders.

4.07.2005

 

Robot suit to help walk, lift on horizon

Robot suit to help walk, lift on horizon

From the article:See also Human exoskeletons.

4.06.2005

 

Robot news roundup

There's lots of stuff going on in the world of robots today:

 

Robots interviewing job applicants

According to this article in the Washington Post, we are already at the point where robots are making a significant number of hiring decisions in the U.S. economy:

Employers Relying On Personality Tests To Screen Applicants

From the article: The conventional wisdom would think that humans are irreplaceable in the interviewing process. "Interviewing human beings" would be, one would think, a job tailor made for other human beings and immune to robotic replacement. The conventional wisdom is wrong. Robots do this job better than human beings. The fact is that robots will be taking nearly all the jobs in the economy. See also Robots and the right brain and Robotic Nation.

Of course, we can also expect to see a book in the next six months entitled: "How to get a perfect score on a personality test."

4.05.2005

 

Hundreds of robotic airplanes

U.S. Drones Crowd Iraq's Skies to Fight Insurgents

From the article:Also:If the number can go from "a handful" to "700" in 4 years, that would imply that four years from now the number will be in the thousands. And four years after that, the number of these robots will start to approach the number of human soldiers. See Robotic Nation for a timeline.

4.04.2005

 

Moore's law and 1 Terabyte hard disks

PCWorld.com - Hitachi Eyes 1TB Desktop Drives

From the article: See also 100-core chips.

4.01.2005

 

Pilots on the way out

Apparently pilots will be a vanishing breed within 5 years:

Robotic aircraft kill enemies without endangering pilots

From the article:See also Robots replacing pilots

 

Humanoid robots

Robots reveal their human side

From the article:See Robotic Nation for details.

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