Maker Open Source Robotics - Underwater Exploration Robots

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Robots to the Rescue of Great Barrier Reef, Searching and Destroying Star Fish

A Starfish-Killing, Artificially Intelligent Robot Is Set to Patrol the Great Barrier Reef

Crown of thorns starfish are destroying the reef. Bots that wield poison could dampen the invasion

The Great Barrier Reef will have a robotic protector beginning this winter. The underwater autonomous vehicle is programmed to patrol the massive living structure in search of destructive crown-of-thorns starfish (COTS), which it then kills by lethal injection. These starfish prey on coral polyps, and although they are native to the reef, their population has exploded in the past few years, possibly because of overfishing of their natural predators. The latest report from Australia's Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority places the venomous invertebrates alongside climate change and human activity as a significant threat to the reef, which lost half its coral cover between 1985 and 2012.


COTSbot, developed by robotics researchers at Queensland University of Technology in Australia, could help slow the starfish's invasion. Artificially intelligent, it correctly identified its target 99.4 percent of the time in laboratory tests. “It's now so good it even ignores our 3-D-printed decoys and targets only live starfish,” Queensland's Matthew Dunbabin says. A fleet of COTSbots could supplement the efforts of human divers who currently remove or poison the sea stars by hand and could operate during bad weather or high currents. They could also be useful at night when starfish are more active but swimming is prohibited..."

Read the full story at its source:  http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-starfish-killing-artificially-intelligent-robot-is-set-to-patrol-the-great-barrier-reef/ 

First Lego League - FLL Schedule 2015/16

from  http://www.first-lego-league.org/en/2015.html  ...

"TRASH TREK CHALLENGE

In the 2015/16 FIRST^® LEGO^® League TRASH TREK^SM Challenge FLL teams will explore the fascinating world of trash.  From collection, to sorting, to smart production and reuse, there is more to your trash than meets the eye.  Join FIRST^® LEGO^® League teams on a Trash Trek to discover the hidden (or not so hidden) world of trash!

FLL Schedule 2015/16

March 7th & 8th 2015	FLL Final 2014/15 and closing of current FLL Season
March 10th 2015 - 4 p.m.	start of FLL Registration for new season
End of August 2015	Shipping of FLL Challenge Sets
August 25th, 2015	FLL Missions are published - official kickoff (deadline for age limit: 10 to 16 years)
October 11th, 2015	Closing of registration
November 14th, 2015 - January 17th, 2016	FLL Regional Tournaments
Late January - early February 2015	FLL Semi Final Tournaments
Spring 2016	FLL Final and closing of FLL Season"

The Robot Will Guide You to Your Departure Gate... Soon!

Spencer the Robot Guides Lost Airline Passengers

"Meet Spencer. This armless automaton will begin a test run in Schiphol Amsterdam Airport at the end of the month, greeting and guiding harried travellers through the transport hub's famously confusing terminal system. Navigating it is so challenging, in fact, that KLM airlines donated a large part of the project's funding because so many of its customers were getting lost and missing flights. To ensure that doesn't happen anymore, Spencer is equipped with laser range-finding eyes and detailed maps of the airport's interior.

"Navigating an airport is challenging, there is a lot of glass and a constantly changing environment in terms of temporary obstructions, such as parked luggage trolleys and people everywhere," Achim Lilienthal, project leader at Örebro University which contributed to the research, said in a statement. "Objects that are temporarily permanent so to speak, are the most difficult to work around. We do not know, for instance, how long that luggage trolley will be parked in a particular spot, which makes it harder for the robot to determine its own location. We are working on a general map representation that includes and allows the robot to handle temporarily permanent objects."

Read the full article at its source: http://www.engadget.com/2015/11/26/spencer-the-robot-is-here-to-help-guide-lost-airline-passenger/

STEM Learning and Jobs??? Some Straight Talk...

Here's an insightful piece from The Conversation...

"More STEM education won’t protect our jobs from robots"


"Care to guess what is the world’s fastest growing industry? Health care? Biotech? Energy? Nope. According to a recent report, it’s robotics.

And those robots are slowly but surely putting people out of work. Recent research at the University of Oxford suggests that nearly half of all jobs are at risk from automation.

Ironically this research used some advanced machine learning techniques to estimate which professions were most at risk of being automated in the next 20 years. Even the task of estimating which jobs are most at risk is being automated!

So what are the jobs most at risk? One was telemarketer. Now this might sound like a great thing. Fewer people will interrupt your dinner trying to sell you cable TV. Unfortunately robotic telemarketers will make it even easier and cheaper for organisations with something to sell to call you.

Another job at risk was tax agent. Again, who will be sad that they no longer have to see their tax agent once a year? Rather, we’ll have our computer file our tax automatically.

A third job at risk was cook. Cook! Sure, robots will make great chefs. Even in a fancy restaurant, the challenge is to turn out the same dish repeatedly. And robots are great at repetition.
A fourth job identified by the report at risk is real estate broker. Again, few of us are probably going to be too sad about this.

The STEM solution

Of course, historically, whenever jobs get destroyed by new technology, other jobs get created. Computer typesetting has put a lot of printers out of work. But we now have loads of new jobs enabled by computer typesetting like web designer and ebook publisher.

In the past, new technologies have tended to create more jobs than they have destroyed. As a consequence, despite populations increasing across the world, most of us still manage to find employment. But it’s much less certain that this will be true for the information revolution currently underway..."

Read the full article at its source: https://theconversation.com/more-stem-education-wont-protect-our-jobs-from-robots-41365

It's NEWS: Students Learn STEM from Robotics!

Well, maybe this 'news' isn't so new, after all. LEGO Robotics is actually a very well established approach to STEM Education. See the book Getting Started with LEGO Robotics for everything anyone who works with kids needs to know in order to begin. And watch this video, these newscasters may be almost clueless, but the kids get it... big time!