The Woz Disses Robots... :( (kind of)

From: chron.com
"Limits to creativity"
"Steve Wozniak has given up on artificial intelligence.
"What is intelligence?" Apple's co-founder asked an audience of about 550 Thursday at the Houston area's first Up Experience conference in Stafford.
His answer? A robot that could get him a cup of coffee.
"You can come into my house and make a cup of coffee and I can go into your house and make a cup of coffee," he said. "Imagine what it would take for a robot to do that."
It would have to negotiate the home, identify the coffee machine and know how it works, he noted.
But that is not something a machine is capable of learning — at least not in his lifetime, added Wozniak, who rolled onto the stage on his ever-present Segway before delivering a rapid-fire speech on robotics, his vision of robots in classrooms and the long haul ahead for artificial intelligence.
Billed as a day of "unique perspectives from unique people," the conference also treated attendees to talks from other notables, such as inventor Ray Kurzweil, filmmaker Dan DeVivo and author Malcolm Gladwell. World traveler Lisa Ling had to cancel at the last minute because of an assignment in Africa, conference organizers said.
For a $1,000 registration fee, about 550 attendees heard talks on subjects ranging from health care and the economy to fine dining and child advocacy delivered by experts in each field.
Earlier in the day, Kurzweil predicted it wouldn't be long before computer intelligence surpassed human intelligence..."
Read the complete article at its source:
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/biz/5524028.html

Students & Dancing Robots

From: The Chronicle of Higher Education - The Wired Campus

Video Report: Students Use Dancing Robots to Show Lighter Side of Computer Science
A robotics team at Spelman College, called the Spelbots, has programmed robot dogs to dance, in hopes of attracting new students to study computer science. The students on the team are clearly enjoying their technology education, as evidenced in our video report about the team.

The team’s coach, Andrew B. Williams, an associate professor of computer science at Spelman College, talked about the importance of attracting more women and minority students to computer science in an interview in this week’s Chronicle. —Jeffrey R. Young

Read this article at its sourece: http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=2725

Here's some more dancing robots:

The Robot as Art Object... Er, The Robot as Performer... Er, The Robot as Artist

From: ZD Net
"This robot snake wants to dance with you"
"According to a short article in The Engineer Online, a two-meter high robotic snake will be shown in April 2008 at the London Science Museum. This vertical snake has been designed as an interactive sculpture. It uses sensors to react to what are doing its viewers and ‘dances’ with them. The manufacturer says the robot has 28 ‘muscles’ and 27 degrees of freedom. It also claims two technology breakthroughs: ‘the muscle actuation mechanism includes built-in air valves which enable far greater control and scope for movement; and its linear sensors are unique in the world of robotics as they are bus addressable and less susceptible to magnetic interference.’ But read more…

Here is the opening paragraph of The Engineer Online article. “A unique robotic snake developed by Plymouth-based Merlin Robotics working alongside Nottingham Trent University is to go on display at the London Science Museum’s DANA Centre. in April 2008. The vertical snake, designed to function as an interactive artwork, includes two technologies which Merlin claims are a world first.”
Here are more details picked from a Merlin Robotics news release, Two world firsts for British ‘Robosnake’ (January 18, 2008). “A ‘world first,’ the muscle actuation mechanism is breakthrough technology — the ‘muscles’ include built-in air valves which enable far greater control and scope for movement. Another world first is the snake’s absolute optical position sensors. These linear sensors are unique in the world of robotics as they are bus addressable and less susceptible to magnetic interference. These two new technologies, combined with the software, enabled the robotics experts and Nottingham Trent University to create this ‘world first’ in compliant robotics. The mechanisms will be able to be implemented into commercial applications..."

Read the full aricle 2 its sources: http://blogs.zdnet.com/emergingtech/?p=822

Check out this video from the developer, Merlin:

A look back to see where we are @ now!

Cover of Time Magazine - December 8, 1980 - 28 years ago+

Cover Story: "The Robot Revolution"
"For good or ill, it is already transforming the way the world works
The new robots do not really look like Frankenstein's monster, or like Artoo Deetoo in Star Wars, but rather like a row of giant birds.

They poke their 9-ft.-long, rubber-sheathed necks toward the row of automobile frames. From their beaks, a blinding shower of sparks streams forth. The escape of compressed air creates a loud hissing sound. This is Chrysler's sprawling 145-acre Jefferson plant in East Detroit, where the trouble-ridden firm is building the new K-cars—the Plymouth Reliant and Dodge Aries—that it hopes will save its future. Once 200 welders with their masks and welding guns used to work on such an assembly line. Here there are no welders in sight; there are only 50 robots craning forward, spitting sparks. They work two shifts, and the assembly line's output has increased by almost 20% since the robots arrived earlier this year.

In a plant outside Turin, the Italian firm of Digital Electronic Automation is trying out its first new Pragma A-3000. The $110,000 robot, which has just been licensed by General Electric, is assembling a compressor valve unit from twelve separate parts. Its two arms can do totally different jobs at once. When it picks up a slightly defective gasket in its gray steel claw, it immediately senses something wrong, flicks the gasket to one side and picks up another. The Pragma produces 320 units an hour, without mistakes, and it can labor tirelessly for 24 hours a day. That makes it roughly the equivalent of ten human workers. Furthermore, it can easily be reprogrammed to assemble TV sets or electric motors or, theoretically, just about anything.
Near Golden, Colo., at the Department of Energy's Rocky Flats plant, a technician pushes a red button marked REQUEST TRANSFER. Behind a 10-in.-thick concrete wall, a pair of claws reaches out to grasp a stainless steel container filled with pink powder, then lifts it into a furnace where it is baked at 950° F until it turns into a nondescript gray button three inches in diameter. Such a button could be worth $100,000, for the job of this robot, which goes into regular operation in a few months, is transporting reprocessed plutonium, one of the most toxic substances known to man. Until now, this dangerous task has been done by men in elaborate space suits. The robot, which knows neither weariness nor boredom, also knows nothing of danger..."
Read the complete article @ its source: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,922173,00.html

LEGO Sumo Robots

From: WIRED Blog Network geekdad
"Report from a hardcore LEGO Sumo contest"
"GeekDad hero Steve Hassenplug, who is perhaps the best LEGO robotics builder in the world, writes in with a guest post, reporting on the Mindstorms contest he hosted at his house near Chicago last week. Over to Steve:
"I have lots of cool stuff that goes on in my basement. Just last weekend, I had an International LEGO Mindstorms Robotic Sumo Competition, with over 100 LEGO robots entered by builders from countries around the world. The judges narrowed the field to about 30 robots, which actually battled on the sumo ring over a couple days, to eventually determine a single winner.
OK, so that doesn't happen every week. But you may wonder how it happens at all. Well, it started a couple years ago when LEGO tapped me and asked if I wanted to be involved in the development of their latest robotic kit, the LEGO Mindstorms NXT. I jumped at the chance, and have been "working" with them ever sense.
Thanks to the web, I've been lucky enough to find four friends in my neighborhood (state) that are as interested (obsessed) with this hobby as I am. To explain the extent of our "interest", when people ask how many Mindstorms NXT kits I have, I usually say "More than most schools." I think between the five of us, we have more than 40 kits. Somewhere along the way, I got e-mail from someone talking about me and my "Robotics Posse". So, we have a group, and our group has a name.
One day, I was looking at the LEGO web site where people can submit their robots, and I realized we could have a contest where people submit their robots on line, and we actually build them at my house and have a "live" competition. Well the rest of the posse, and LEGO all jumped at the idea.
So it began. The challenge was to design & build a LEGO sumo robot who's goal is to push another robot out of a 4 foot circle. Entries would be judged based on the quality of the submission, the best entries would be built and then battle for the championship. The challenge was posted on NXTLog and entries started coming in. A week before the deadline, there were 50 entries. Days before the deadline, the submission rate shot up, and when it was all done, there were over 110 entries.
I enter a lot of competitions, but this contest was a bit different from any I'd seen. In order to enter, you pretty much had show everyone exactly what you've done. There were no secrets. No hidden hardware tricks, or secret software stuff. The better the documentation, the higher the chance of being selected to reach the second round and actually compete.
The hardest part (and least fun for me) was judging the submissions, and trying to select just a few. We had to narrow the field to about 1/4 it's original size, and that eliminated many very good designs. Once we picked out the best submissions, we also picked a couple random entries. These were robots that we knew wouldn't do too well, but we wanted to give a couple lucky builders a chance to participate.
Then, we actually started building. First, we built the "Last Chance" robots, and battled them. Out of that group, one winner advanced to the "Main event" where robots were built and randomly divided into groups (pools). Each robot battled all others in their pool. The top robots advanced to the elimination round, and the losing robots were destroyed. The Robotics Posse built a total of 29 robots over a couple days.
The double-elimination round started with several good robots, and a couple lucky ones (ten robots, in all). The lucky robots were quickly eliminated, and the best rose to the top. In the end, there was one very deserving winner (shown).
My two boys (age 5 & 7) had a great time. They got to run some of the robots, but I'm not sure they really understand the scope of what they were involved in. At one point, they ran a robot designed by a 9 yr old from Italy against a robot designed by an 11 yr old from Singapore. There were robots from Australia, India, Norway, Poland, Romania, and Yugoslavia (not to mention the US and Canada). It was quite the world-class event.
But, for my boys it was just another day in our basement. I love being a geek dad."
Read this article @ its source: http://blog.wired.com/geekdad/2008/01/report-from-a-h.html

A High Tech Teaching Assistant

"Robots Enter the Classroom"
"Some 60 Pittsburgh-area classrooms have a high-tech teaching assistant for the new school year: a robot.
This isn't your father's Roomba. For one thing, it doesn't do floors. For another, it's built of LEGOs. For a third, students build and program the robot themselves working from curricula created by engineers at the Robotics Academy at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). CMU developed the curricula to work with LEGO Education's NXT, the latest model of the MINDSTORM robot. Each robot costs about $250.
As they go step-by-step through the process, students see the real-world applications of math and science, from how geometry relates to the robot's assessing the size of the classroom, to how physical laws govern the way the robot manipulates an object. Tech smarts play a role, too, as students program the robot's actions.
The curricula—one appropriate for middle-school students, the other for high-school students—were developed with the help of Pittsburgh-area teachers, who spent time in the Robotics Academy. (The robot shop is an educational outreach of CMU's Robotics Institute; it also sponsors robotics clubs, camps, and competitions for students, and robotics training for teachers.) Teachers worked with the robots and the lesson plans, and offered their feedback.
Robin Shoop, the academy's director, was himself a public-school teacher for nearly 30 years. Shoop says the in-class use of robots encourages students to get excited about math and science—subjects in which U.S. students' test scores sorely lag behind their counterparts in other industrialized nations.
There are other schools in the U.S. and Canada where robots are used for teaching, but if there was ever a natural home for robots in the classroom, it's "Robo-burgh." So dubbed by the Wall Street Journal in 1999 for its concentration of robotics businesses, the Pittsburgh area is home to some 80 companies in the industry. And CMU is the only university in the world that grants a Ph.D. in robotics.
No word yet on whether the robots can be programmed to reshelve books."

Read this article @ its source: http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6365002.html