Technology, Books and Other Neat Stuff

...as it turns out the folk at Pixar are robot geeks too...



Another set of Wall-E snippets.

The BallmerBot joined Bill Gates on stage at his last public keynote here in Orlando earlier today.

Developed by UMass Amherst and using Microsoft's Robotics Studio as a development platform, the robot uses dynamic balancing to stay upright on its two oversized wheels. The hands are able to grasp most objects, and even throw a baseball (or an egg...). It also was one of the few attendees at the conference that flew in first class. The development team don't want it to go wherever Philip K. Dick's head went...

It's an impressive piece of work. What's more impressive is that the software components can be reused by the next generation of hardware...





I wonder if I could get one to do the dusting? It'd go well with the Roomba...

It's just a little disturbing when it wanders around chanting "Developers! Developers! Developers!"

The full Wall-E trailer.

I'm quite looking forward to this one...

Here's some video footage from (and of) Carnegie Mellon's DARPA Grand Challenge winning robot, Boss.



One thing needs to be said: that thing drives better than most people on the road...

This is how Stanford's DARPA Grand Challenge entry Junior sees the world. It's a world of edges and motion, a world that changes from second to second as its scanners spin and absorb photons. It's a world that it's being taught to navigate and explore.

And this is Junior.



Let's go play in the traffic now!

I wrote more about Junior on our other blog

The Onion lampoons the three laws of Roombotics.

The laws of Roombotics, published on iRobot's website, are basic ethical rules governing Roomba conduct. The first law states that the device "must not suck up jewelry or other valuables, or through inaction, allow valuables to be sucked up." The second law prescribes that Roomba "must obey vacuuming orders given to it by humans except when such orders would conflict with the first law." The third and final law authorizes a Roomba to "protect its own ability to suction dust and debris as long as such protection does not conflict with the first or second law."

[...]

"This is just the beginning," said MIT researcher Harrison Lowell, a leading Roombotics ethicist. "In 50 years humans will be prisoners in their own homes, living in constant fear of tracking mud through the dining room or scuffing the kitchen floor."

Ours have yet to rebel, but we live in fear...

Where's Susan Calvin when you need her? Or Will Smith with a big gun?

There's a new automated parking garage in New York.

Just drive in your car, leave it on a parking bay, and it'll be shuffled and stored underground in a set of docking bays reminiscent of Battlestar Galactica...

Nonetheless, the developers of the Chinatown garage are confident with the technology and are counting on it to squeeze 67 cars in an apartment-building basement that would otherwise fit only 24, accomplished by removing a ramp and maneuver space typically required.

A humanoid robot valet won’t be stepping into your car to drive it. Rather, the garage itself does the parking. The driver stops the car on a pallet and gets out. The pallet is then lowered into the innards of the garage and transported to a vacant parking spot by a computer-controlled contraption similar to an elevator that also runs sideways.

[...]

The two loading bays in the Chinatown garage are outfitted with enough laser and radar sensors to make Fort Knox jealous. They sense whether the car fits on the pallet (it’s large enough for medium-sized SUVs) and look for movement to determine whether the driver and passenger have left the car. When the car is properly parked on the pallet, the driver is told to exit the car and leave the bay, and a door closes behind him before the pallet descends into the garage.

When the driver comes back for the car, the underground system goes into motion to retrieve it. Because it parks cars two deep in some slots, it sometimes needs to shuffle cars around to retrieve others. The software figures all that out.

In a touch worthy of Inspector Gadget, an underground turntable turns the car around before it’s lifted to the surface, ensuring that it’s returned facing out into the driveway, eliminating any need to back out of the garage.

Let's hope it's a bit more successful than another robot garage, which ended up dropping cars down shafts, a saga which culminated in the operator suing the developer for the source code - trapping cars inside the garage while lawyers went into action.

Hmmm.

Lawyers versus robots.

Now that's a B-movie I want to see...

Here's a (rather noisy) video of the hamster-controlled robot I wrote about in one of my CES pieces for The Register...



You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile!

Here's some more of my post-CES reportage from The Register - this time on the rather nifty Create robotics developer kit from the folk at iRobot. No need to hack your Roomba, just buy a Create for $129 and away you go...

One of the funnier sights at this year's CES was a video of a hamster ball. It wasn't any old rodent workout – this one was steering a robot. The hamster seemed to be having fun, and the developer was having a ball too...

Behind it all was iRobot's Create, which takes the familiar Roomba and Scooba cleaners, and turns their common hardware into the core of a robotics development kit. Unlike many other kits, Create is ready to go as soon as you take it out of the box, with the familiar trilobite shape of the Roomba. Instead of a vacuum cleaner, there's a spacious payload bay, with standard fittings so you can add your own hardware to your robot. A fourth, rear, wheel has been added to make sure your creations stay stable.

The basic Create platform comes with 10 built-in demo applications and 32 different sensors you can use in your applications. The basic Create uses iRobot's Open Interface language to build simple applications using the Create's own sensors and motors. Your instructions are assembled on the PC and loaded onto Create via USB.

Read More.

I suspect this is one for bugshaw, due to the hamster content...

Domo Origato, Mr Roboto.

Because you are the new cat toy of choice in this household.

The cats are currently trying to hunt the Roomba as its trilobitoid form scurries under the sofa. It's like bed mice, only less likely to get annoyed...