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IN THE NEWS
It's B-a-a-a-c-k!
24 robots will duke it out in TLC's new Robotica Championships
December 12 through January 26. With six qualifying competitions
and one grand Finale, combatants take on not only each other, but
treacherous challenges such as sand pits, hydraulic
flip ramps, and buzz-saw wielding robotic rats.
Often over 200 lb, these robots may
have pneumatic arms capable of 1,000 lb lift and top speeds of up to
30 mph. Weaponry include razor sharp skewers and circular sawblades with
teethspeed in excess of 100 mph
mixed with decidely low-tech cow-catcher wedges or even an AM/FM stereo.
Only serious hardware need apply, but how do they get through airport
security?
The AIBO Car
Some cars have personalities. Some of us talk to our car and treat
it like a member of our family. What if your car can actually learn
your preferences and habits and anticipate your needs? Music to
suit your moods, alerting you to your favorite restaurant ahead,
waking you up when you start to doze. What if it develops a personality
over time like an AIBO puppy? Entertainment giant Sony and Toyota
are working on this. While early features will be evolutionary and
safety-oriented, watch out for the Doberman-Porsche tearing up the
freeway.
Robo-Rack'em-Park-em
The Autosafe robotic carpark in Ediburgh is turning heads.
Drivers park in designated input
slots, and sensors determine the cars size and weight - and that it's
really empty - before robotic turntables and shuttles rack them in
storage bays. To exit, cars are automatically delivered to the waiting area.
No wandering around trying to find your vehicle
in a maze of floors and bays, and
security is improved as well.
Actually, roboparks have long been available in Japan. With land
at a premium, robot parking can pack 'em in like a sardine can
without fear of dings and scratches.
GOING AFTER BIN LADEN
Unmanned Ground Vehicles
Unmanned air vehicles were a rip-roaring success, and arming the Predator with
missiles proved a bonus win for the industry. With the action moving to
the ground to the rugged mountains and caves of Afghanistan, is it now the
turn of the unmanned ground combat vehicles (UGCV) to prove their stuff?
Unfortunately, while mobile bomb disposal or search and rescue units
abound in the urban environment, the demands
of all terrain combat exceed current capabilities. After all, horses seem
the transportation system of choice in certain areas of this theater.
Research on ground-based locomotion and combat continues.
Lying in Wait
Where confrontation doesn't work, stealth and surveillance might. A network
of small unmanned ground sensors (UGSs) deployed across Tora Bora could
detect sound, vibration, and
heat patterns and upload this information realtime via a satellite link.
Rapid intelligence would enable the military to track down
small and highly mobile targets before they can get away.
Networks of UGSs are airdropped into an area or buried by ground
forces. While camouflaged, some of these will invariably be discovered.
Not a problem though,
this just bolsters a psychological edge: the enemy IS watching.
Smart Dust: the Next Generation
For true stealth, how about sensors the size of a pebble, or even a grain of
sand? Lest you believe someone's been sprinkling fairy dust in the eyes of the
military brass, egg-sized, ruggedized microelectromechanical system (MEMS),
packages of sensors and transmitters, have already
been field tested. Air-dropped from UAVs or projected missile-like
over the next hill or perhaps even carried by GPS-guided microrobots into specific
locations, deployment is easy because of the small payload size. And
the civilian applications will keep the innovations rolling.
Want to keep tabs on the house, the
kids or the neighbours? Prototype kits are commercially available.
TECHNOTOYS
Hasbro B.I.O. Bugs
Santa's elves are pounding out plenty of moving, talking, interactive toys this
season. For those with no taste for cute (Hello, Furby!), Hasbro offers
the B.I.O. Bugs, foot-long insects with brightly colored, hard plastic shells.
Based on neural net technology, these creatures navigate sofas and piles of
dirty laundry alike in search of food (infrared light, say from the TV remote
control), do battle, and scare the arthro-phobic with its realism and
seeming intelligence. You will have to wait to get yours though, these critters
scamper off the shelves and many retailers have been out of stock for a while.
BITS & PIECES
Tiny Motors
Piezoelectric materials change shape slightly when an electrical charge
is applied. First used in sonars in World War I, it has spread to consumer
electronics, particularly where precise small movement is required. How small?
A few cents of piezoelectric ceramic makes a motor 2 mm in diameter,
and pack enough oomph to power the flight of the UC Berkeley
MicroFly for about a foot. The potential for further miniaturization and
power density exceeds that of conventional motors, so applications
abound in the medical and micromechanical fields. On the entertainment side,
will mini-motor athletics be the next demo event at the Robotic Olympics?
SEE ME, HEAR ME
Low Cost Color Vision
A robot with vision is a whole new kettle of spare parts above
the vision-deprived. The Mindstorm folks have always had the advantage
of the near plug-and-play
Vision Command. Now there is the CMUcam,
a low-cost, low-power kit that makes it easier for the rest.
Running 17 FPS at 80x143 resolution with a serial interface, CMUcam
costs about $100 and comes with detailed user documentation, schematics,
parts lists, HEX code, and best of all, Open Source test programs that let
you grab images, analyze them, and track objects.
For a higher end system capable of dual-camera
stereoscopic vision, there is always Cognachrome for beaucoup more bucks.
MAN vs MACHINE
Unemployment Gets Worse - Asimo for Hire
Asimo, Honda's four foot tall android, is going to work - for about
$160,000 a year as a receptionist for IBM Japan. (Temp
assignments cost over $10,000 per day.) Able to walk freely for long distances,
climb stairs, and recognize voice input and respond in preconfigured ways,
it is competitive with certain human candidates functionally if not economically.
While Asimo is but a beachhead in the rise of service robots, industrial robots
continue their relentless march. Even low labor-cost nations such as Brazil
are increasingly replacing their workforce with sophisticated automation.
The Biz of Bots
Robots working in dangerous situations or hostile environments got a lot
of press in the aftermath of September 11. But the robotics industry
was growing quickly even before that.
The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (ECE) has just
published its annual study, "World Robotics 2001".
A record 100,000 robots were installed last year, up 25
percent from 1999. At least 750,000 robots now work in sectors
ranging from the auto industry to farming and health care. Most notable
amoung the plethora
of statistics, demand for robots in home and professional service
and for security/surveillance is projected to grow between 20- and 30- fold
by the year 2004.
MACHINE vs MACHINE
LEGO VS Rubik
One good toy deserves another: J.P. Brown brings a new twist to
LEGO Mindstorm cool by using its set of colorful bricks
to manipulate and solve another, the Rubik's Cube puzzle.
The whackiness factor probably kept him
going through challenges of gripper control and strength (and getting the
Rubik bricks to spin smoothly), color recognition,
and finally the solution algorithm.
From the carnage of spare parts spread over the floor rises a
beautiful little device that cracks the puzzle in about 15 minutes.
Elapsed time on solving the solver took about a year.
The Tower of Hanoi solver was lots easier.
BRAVE NEW WORLD
Dawgstar
What's better than building your own singing, dancing robot in an
undergrad class project?
Building your own nanosatellite to be launched from the Space Shuttle,
by maybe a lightyear.
Instead of wheels or tracks, how about eight plasma thrusters for
maneuverability in precision formation
flying with similar small crafts? No audiovideo I/O is required, but Dawgstar
is slated to conduct scientific studies on the earth's ionosphere where
future fleets of these nanosatellites will roam.
IN THE ARTS
Thrown Out in Berkeley
Clayton Bailey's robot sculptures are life size assemblies of found objects
and spare parts that often reenact their past lives as clocks, radios,
and jukeboxes. Whimsical, retro, sometimes intriguing as they blink, boing,
and sing, the collection is an innocent kaffeeklatsch in the 1950's tin-can
style of androids and animals. Yet it claims a certain reverse cachet
for having been thrown out of an exhibit in left-of-left, live-and-let-live
Berkeley, California. The offense? A Marilyn Monrobot with coffeepot
breasts and blinking rubber nipples.
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STAR TURN
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Slugbot
Spotting its prey as a bright white blob, the Slugbot reaches
out its elegant arm, grabs it (most of the time), and drops it
into the collection bin to the cheers of home gardeners everywhere.
But wait, there'll be more: once it has collected a full load,
the Slugbot rolls over to a fermentation station where the
slugs will be digested and turned into energy to feed
the 'bot itself. The wicked wheeled predator is part of the
Energy Automony research at
the Intelligent Autonomous Systems Lab at the University of
the West of England.
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BOOKS 'N' STUFF
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Robocup 2000: Robot Soccer World Cup 4
by Peter Stone, Tucker Balch, Gerhard K. Kraetzschmar (Editors)
Springer
ISBN: 3540421858
The goal of Robocup is a team of robotic soccer players to beat a human
championship team. The proceedings from the 4th competition
is chock full of information. A complete account of the competition
and its participating teams are bolstered with technical papers from
match winners, special scientific award winners, and other enthusiastic
participants. The 800 pages of juicy details reveal progress
in diverse areas such as distributed AI, multiagent systems, and robotic
vision since
Robocup 97,
98, and
99.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
by Philip K. Dick
Random House
ISBN: 0345404475
When world war destroys most living things, the survivors build simulacrae to
supplement them, including androids that are almost indistinguishable from humans.
The new world with its inevitable conflict between man and creation provides the foundation for the story of a middle-aged android bounty hunter trying
to get by, weaving in themes of race and discrimination, religion and humanity
and love in subtle twists and details. The film version,
The Blade Runner, brings visually stunning noir glamour to a more emotional interpretation that stands in its own right.
Butterflies and Dragonflies
Interested in muscle wire technology but need some motivation to get
started? The quick gratification from the Kinetic Butterflies and
Dragonflies kits may do the trick. 5-inch, full color replicas flutter
gracefully in your home jungle as soon as you assemble them
and plug in the AC adapter. Each kit contains one butterfly or
two dragonflies and comes with details of each insect and its
natural habitat. Just make sure you install them out of reach of your kitty.
Forbidden Planet
by Fred M. Wilcox (Director)
Warner Studios DVD: B00004RF9B
One of the first big-budget sci-fi movies, "Forbidden Planet" is often remembered
for the debut of Robby the Robot in a space age retelling of Shakespeare's
"The Tempest". Robby is a cuddly manifestation of Asimov's Laws of Robotics,
but Forbidden Planet can also be enjoyed for its imaginative interpretation (a
monster made of 2000+ thermonuclear reactors!), then state-of-the-art special
effects, a compelling electronic score, and the 50's-styled characters
that eventually morphed into Captain Kirk and Dr. McCoy.
For the meat of the timeless story, you may also want to try the Bards'
original version.
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