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TABLE OF CONTENTS
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CALENDAR
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| 2002.03.17-21 |
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5th Bi-Annual ASCE Lunar Robotic Construction Contest, Albuquerque, NM
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| 2002.03.20 |
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SF Robotics Society of America Spring Robot Games 2002, San Francisco, CA
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| 2002.03.23 |
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Indonesian Robot Contest, Surabaya, Indonesia
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| 2002.03.23-24 |
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Hobby Show Robot Conflict, Philadelphia, PA
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| 2002.03 |
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BattleBots, San Francisco, CA
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| 2002.04.05-06 |
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2nd Annual Acroname Robotics Expo and Contest, Boulder, CO
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| 2002.04.06 |
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DPRG RoboRama (2002.a), Dallax, TX
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| 2002.04.06-07 |
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7th Annual Manitoba Robot Games, Manitoba, Canada
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| 2002.04.10 |
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15th Annual Tech Museum of Innovation's Tech Challenge, San Jose, CA
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| 2002.04.11-13 |
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6th Annual Micro Air Vehicle Competition, Gainesville, FL
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| 2002.04.19 |
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8th Annual Carnegie Mellon Mobot Races, Pittsburgh, PA
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| 2002.04.19-21 |
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RoboRodentia, San Luis Obispo, CA
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| 2002.04.20 |
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8th Annual UC Davis Picnic Day MicroMouse contest, Davis, CA
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| 2002.04.21 |
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Trinity College Fire Fighting Home Robot Contest, Hartford, CT
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| 2002.04.24 |
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DTU RoboCup, Copenhagen, Denmark
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| 2002.04.24-25 |
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Micro-Rato, Aveiro, Portugal
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| 2002.04.25-26 |
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Alcabot, Madrid, Spain
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| 2002.04.25-27 |
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FIRST Robotics Competition National Championship, Orlando, FL
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| 2002.04.25-27 |
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15th Annual SAE Walking Machine Challenge, Golden, CO
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| 2002.04.26 |
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SPURT (School Projects Using Robot Techniques), Rostock-Warnemunde, Germany
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| 2002.04 |
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Penn State Abington Fire-Fighting Robot Contest, Abington, PA
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| 2002.04 |
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12th Annual Singapore Inter-School Micromouse Competition, Singapore
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| 2002.04 |
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10th Annual Northwest Robot Sumo Tournament, Lynnwood, WA
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| 2002.04 |
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National Festival of Robotics, Guimaraes, Portugal
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| 2002.04 |
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Western Sumo and Tractor Pull Competition, Brandon, Canada
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| 2002.04 |
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LEGO MY EGG-O Robotic Egg Hunt, Cleveland, OH
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| 2002.05.01-05 |
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Robo-Space: First World Robotics Fair and Exhibition, Geneva, Switzerland
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| 2002.05.03-04 |
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Robothon, Seattle, WA
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| 2002.05.04-05 |
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15th Annual RI/SME Student Robotic Engineering Challenge, Pittsurgh, PA
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| 2002.05.10-12 |
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Eurobot, La Ferte Bernard, France
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| 2002.05.10-12 |
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Western Canadian Robot Games (BEAM), Calgary, Canada
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| 2002.05.18-20 |
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Singapore Robotic Games, Republic of Singapore
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| 2002.05.19 |
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3rd Annual PARTS Mini-Sumo Robot Competition, Portland, OR
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| 2002.05.23-29 |
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FIRA Robot World Cup, Seoul, Korea
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| 2002.06.01 |
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UK National Micromouse Competition, London, UK
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| 2002.06.01 |
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TNO Robot Competition, The Hague, Netherlands
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| 2002.06.19-23 |
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RoboCup Robot Soccer World Cup, Fukuoka, Japan
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| 2002.06 |
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Terra Segura, SDRS, and RSSC Mine Clearing Contest, San Diego, CA
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| 2002.06 |
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RoboFesta, Rome, Italy
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| 2002.06 |
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Robattle, Vancouver, Canada
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ABOUT NETSURFER
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COOL TOYS
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IN THE NEWS
Asimo, the Career Bot
Not content with a good job at IBM Japan, Asimo, Honda's 4-foot humanoid
robot, has been making the rounds like a laid-off dot-commer in
search of a gig. Asimo sightings include
ringing the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange on Valentine's Day,
features in 2 Japanese museums, and in 4-color full page ads in the
latest business and science magazines. How does this peripatetic bot get to all
these places walking at 1 mph? There are actually about 20 of
them in Honda's lease-a-bot program. No doubt one will be sent onto the talk show
circuit soon.
Autonomous Bots are Hot
Between AIBO, Asimo, and the swarm of robot creepy crawlies
coming out of last year's Christmas stockings,
robots are becoming increasingly autonomous
and interacting with people in their own environments.
The March 2002 issue of the Communications
of the ACM features "Robots: Intelligence, Versatility, Adaptivity".
Articles include the omnipresent
Rodney Brooks on everyday utilitarian robots and their
need to be (or not to be) humanoid, more on self-configuring modular robots,
simulating interactions between robot and environment,
an update on planning and navigation in imperfect, real world
environments (think trail of dirty laundry and leftover pizza
boxes), and the challenges of multi-robot soccer.
Unfortunately, you have to be a subscriber to read the full text online.
Robo-Bush at Liberty Square
Disney World got a boost when President Bush suggested in the 9/11 aftermath
that Americans live normally and go to Disney World.
Was the Mouse Kingdom returning the favor by unveiling an animatronic version
of the Prez?
As it turns out, one of the all time favorites at Disney is the Hall of
Presidents at Liberty Square. A tribute to the office of the American
president, from George Washington to George W., there is a bot
for each of the 42. With technology, the latest addition is able to
speak as well as move.
Thank the stars (and stripes) for robotic perfection - and
speeches without the slips and faux pas of the original.
POWER TO THE ROBOTS
Nuke Power
Smoke detectors do it, photocopy machines do it, and so do pacemakers:
use small amounts of radioactive materials.
Scientists at University of Wisconsin
are now looking at harnessing nuclear power for
miniature batteries less than a centimeter square.
The radioactive decay of elements such as hydrogen, nickel, and lead
provide a range of radiation types, energy emitted, and half life
for the nuclear battery designer. A little bit of power for a hundred
years may be just the ticket. Or alpha particles may be preferred
over beta for its shorter range. Although
many a space mission has depended on nuclear batteries the size
of a grapefruit,
mass production devices will need to deal with
issues of safe manufacturing and disposal.
ATP Power
For small size nothing beats Mother Nature's own battery, ATP
(adenosine triphosphate). UCLA scientists have been able to
form six ATP molecules into a barrel-shaped structure 11 nanometers
tall and wide, and attach a nickel rotor about 700 nanometers
long. This amazing assemblage acts like a three cylinder motor and
can turn at 8 revolutions a second without falling apart.
Stopping and starting are controlled by dousing the motor with a
solution of zinc and flushing it out. While riding through the
human body with a set of turbocharged ATP motors has a distinct
"Fantastic Journey" feel, bio-powered implants will likely have more
popular appeal than nuclear-powered devices.
Nanotube Fuel Cell
Since its discovery in 1985, buckminsterfullerene, aka buckyballs,
60-carbon graphite sheets wrapped into the shape of a soccer ball,
has been of great interest but no practical applications.
Carbon nanotubes (roll the same sheet of graphite into a tube
and glue its edges together), on the other hand, are the latest hot
stuff in molecular computing. Better still, NEC has built
a fuel cell for mobile devices
based on nanohorns, a nanotube variant with 10x
the power density of lithium batteries.
This uses a polymer film as the electrolyte instead of
hydrogen or methane gas for consumer-friendly packaging.
And the best part? Unlike other bucky compounds,
high purity nanohorns can be prepared in industrial
quantities at a reasonable price.
Tiny Turbines
Another claimant to 10x lithium battery power is Columbia University's
microturbine from its Power MEMS program. Take one laptop battery
and replace with an engine the size of a quarter and the rest of
the space with a hydrogen tank.
Manufactured using semiconductor technology,
the combustion chamber shoots out hot gas
to spin the turbine at over 2 million rpm, or about 300x faster
than the average PC disc drive.
At this small scale, many mechanical problems
like friction, heat, and stress must be overcome
before a product gets out of the lab.
Other devices in the Power MEMS catalog include heat engines,
coolers, and components such as pumps, compressors, turbines, valves,
and heat exchangers.
Coy Power
The Entomopter is a mechanical insect that flies by flapping its
wings rapidly
and is being developed at the Georgia Tech Research Institute.
Powered by something called "Reciprocating Chemical Muscle" (RCM),
a "regenerative device" using a chemical energy source in a
non-combusitve process that produces the wing flapping and small amounts
of electricity and gas useable for system controls.
To date insect weight seems to be the limit to significant flight,
so MEMS-based implementations might be more promising.
Want to know more? Try US Patent #6,082,671 for the
entire entomopter, and wait at the PTO for more about RCM itself.
And by the way,
"RCM" also happens to be the initials of the lead developer.
TECHNOTOYS
Bill G's Industrial-Strength Mindstorms
What if someone built the LEGO™ Mindstorms system for commercial
products?
It would "control the architecture"
à la Wintel for the personal robotics space. In this case,
the visionary Mr. G is not Bill in Redmond, but idealab! founder Bill Gross.
The company, Evolution Robotics, made its media debut in February.
First kits, US$1,495 list for a bundle of industrial hardware and a single-user licence to a cornucopia of control and behavior software
modules and tools, will be available in late March.
Although idealab! has soured with the dot.com demise, Evolution itself
is backed by seasoned money and significant technical horsepower.
Evolution's "open software platform" claims has irked some purists,
but the real challenges of market readiness and execution
are still out there.
Programming on a Shoestring
At the other end of the spectrum, there is David Eckold's "The Ultimate
Robot Kit" for thirty bucks.
Four presdesigned models are largely built out of bright yellow cardboard,
string, and glue, and powered by one AA battery and a generous dollop
of ingenuity. Program Knotbot's navigation with knots in two strings:
the wheels wind up the strings and jerk (and turn) whenever a knot is hit.
Gobblebot opens and closes its bulldozer jaws to devour
small objects in its way. Cardboard and glue contraptions are often flimsy
and difficult to handle and operate, and this kit is
no exception. However, give it a bit of patience and an "A" for its
spirit of invention.
Battlebots Junior
Our childhood friend the top gets a robotic age spin in the form of BeyBlades,
the latest craze to sweep Japanese schoolchildren. Made of five modular parts and sent flying via
special launchers, BeyBlades battle it out in the BeyStadium plastic bowl.
Mix and match parts with a variety of spin, stamina, and destructiveness
create an endless variety
of custom blades and fight strategies - enough to attract
over 6,000 kids to a recent tournament in Japan.
Hasbro imports BeyBlades to the US in 15 standard configurations with names
like Ultimate Frostic Dranzer and Bakushin-Oh at a deceptively inexpensive $7
a pop. Parents of former pog players know better, and Junior can always graduate to the titanium wedge on milspec treads.
BITS & PIECES
From Muscle-Wire to Muscle-Tape
Nitinol (nickel-titanium) muscle wire is moving into
industrial applications with the development of convenient packaging.
But hot on its heels are electroactive
polymers that fold and unfold, accordion-like, just like real muscles.
Recent advances with polypyrroles have produced something that looks like
electrical tape and is just as flexible.
Far stronger by weight than human muscle and inexpensive to mass produce,
polymer actuators may see both medical applications (support hose, and support for
any other weakened muscle that you can imagine) and consumer products.
Research for use in small mobile robots, including micro air vehicles,
and industrial actuators,
are also in progress.
SEE ME, HEAR ME
Mind over Mouse
Relief from carpal tunnel syndrome is one step closer since
three Rhesus monkeys at Brown University have been able to use mind
rather than hand to control a computer cursor in real time.
A tiny array of electrodes, attached to less than 30 cells in the
brain, is programmed to interpret the electrical signals that
normally direct hand motion and use them to drive the cursor.
Right now the implanted unit must be programmed through the performance of
the physical motions themselves.
Can one monkey's program be used by another?
Can we decipher the language of firing neurons?
Tantalizing questions abound.
The practical aspects for individuals with spinal cord injuries
or neurological disease are compelling
even though human use will need much refinement and FDA approval.
ASL to ASCII
Take a golf glove, some sensors and miscellaneous circuitry,
and a bit of innovation, and what do you get? A first place
$103,000 scholarship in the Siemens-Westinghouse Science and
Technology Competition for a device that translate the American
Sign Language fingerspelling alphabet to a remote text display.
Customizing for more ASL signs will make the conversation go faster.
A voice to text component is now in the works to allow two
way communication with the non-signer.
Why not just a keyboard? Think Blackberry, or any SMS cell phone.
Well, it just wouldn't be as much fun to build for one thing, and the
signer would have to learn to type.
MAN vs MAN
Bot Builder's Adventures in Bizland
Mark Tilden is known as the founder of B.E.A.M. robotics,
simple, robust, and usually analog robots that can
reproduce surprisingly complex insect and animal behaviors.
The very successful B.I.O.-Bugs series from toy giant Hasbro
last year was indeed his creation.
The story of Mark Tilden's life and venture
into the commercial world is a cautionary tale of dashed roboticist
idealism. For example, bugs with greater appeal to girls
were dropped from the line of knock'em shock'em insects.
The final insult came
when designs had to be changed to make the Bugs more difficult to
reverse engineer - exactly opposite to his hopes.
To Tilden's credit,
B.I.O.-Bug vivisection has revealed that there is still
lots of room in the Bugs for creative modifications.
MAN vs MACHINE
(A)I am Back
In the mid 80's machine intelligence and
expert systerms were all the rage and startups popped up like mushrooms.
Since then, the term "A.I." has largely faded from the public
view in a cloud of unfulfilled expectations.
Projects moved away from HAL-like consciousness
to real world
applications from robot search and rescue to, well,
Microsoft's Clippy. But the growth of web and email traffic
may yet reinvoragate A.I.'s popular presence.
We need better (read smarter, with
more common sense) tools for searching, filtering, and generally managing
the dataflood.
Cycorp, a survivor from those early days,
claims to bring a base of common sense to applications
with its software system.
Wired's March issue features "The New Face of A.I." and
Tech Review gives an update on the state of the field. Stay tuned.
BRAVE NEW WORLD
A Bot for All Seasons
How do autonomous bots deal with the unpredictable real world?
Just like big brothers on the JIT manufacturing floor:
be modular and reconfigurable.
IEEE Spectrum's February feature reviews the state of modular
robotics and the experimental Polybot at Xerox PARC.
With a nod to cellular automata, robots made up of tens or
hundreds of modules that can
rearrange themselves like a snake or a spider.
Modularity offers versatility, robustness, and low
cost through economies of scale.
Programming complexities, though, can
be daunting and different strategies are being researched.
The molecular robots at Dartmouth simplifies
by allowing module movement with no rearrangement.
For current real world configurability, there are
the marsupial and shapeshifter robots
used to good effect at the WTC site.
IN THE ARTS
The Afghan Explorer
The war correspondent as a solar-powered robot
teleoperated via satellite link is the latest in the
line of techno-performance art.
Coming from MIT's Media Lab, the technology shows a Mars Rover heritage
and interesting possibilities: on-board latptop computer, GPS system,
two-way digital audio and video communications, and
a swath of sensor systems to assess its physical environment.
The goals of the project, freedom of the press, particularly from military censorship,
and outreach to foreign lands and cultures, are laudable.
Put the two together, especially as described on its website,
and what you get is naive and precisely
the blend of American power, technology, and narcissm that does not
make friends and influence other nations.
Self parody or self-centered irrelevance? You be the judge.
Early History of Robots
Aristotle thought of putting machines to work for humans. Golem, the
medieval automaton the Rabbi built to protect its people, finds
its name popularized just like the name "robot".
BBC Interactive shows a short history of robotics From the 4th Century BC
to 1990 in 39 HTML pages. The first large scale industrial application
(the Jacquard loom), the patent for a remote control device (thank you,
Nikola Tesla), Westinghouse's dancing robot smoking (a cigarette, not bad
circuits), and Japan's first robot acquisition from the US are all part
of this bite-sized story. Old photographs and illustrations add visual
interest, but conciseness
makes the coverage sparse by the mid 1980's.
Scratchin' Robot
Creating robots which play music is a fine old tradition
from the first music boxes to later, more elaborate music automatons.
It was inevitable that somebody would apply the idea to one of the more
esoteric modern musical instruments - the turntable.
Before the Afghan Explorer, the folks at MIT's Media Lab
created DJ-I, the Robot Sound System.
The robot works from beats stored in memory and is
also capable of capturing the motion of famous DJs.
"We're trying to make human DJs
obsolete as far as possible..."
quoth one of the creators, tongue firmly in
cheek, "They're expensive, they're unreliable".
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STAR TURN
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Something Fishy
Fishiod is the autonomous fish bot under construction
by Dave Pike. (Real bot, real builder, no April Fools joke.)
With a clear vinyl
head cast from a drum fish and blue LED eyes,
it's an ambitious undertaking with plans for buoyancy
controls, touch sensor whiskers, and a transparent
skin so you can admire its innards at work.
If you wonder about the critter's beautiful smile, Pike
is a certified expert in denture restorations and other
dental implants.
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BOOKS 'N' STUFF
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Flesh and Machines: How Robots Will Change Us
by Rodney Allen Brooks
Pantheon Books
ISBN: 0375420797
02/2002
Brooks, the director of MIT's AI Lab and a bit of a media darling,
begins "Flesh and Machines" with a concise overview of the history of AI and robotics,
and quickly switches to give a panorama of the strange and sometimes
surprisingly human-like devicess created by roboticists.
A second part of the book describes strategies of building AI,
favoring simpler reactive/emergent models rather than the all-knowing
expert systems.
Brooks also ruminates on the robo-human world in five years and beyond.
The latest in recent books about the
coming of intelligent machines, "Flesh and Machines" is
not as deliberately provocative as Hans Moravec's
"Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind",
nor as thoughtful and well-written as
Ray Kurzweil's
"The Age of Spiritual Machines".
For a straightforward but fascinating illustrated survey, there is also
"Robo sapiens".
Service Robots
by Gernot Schmierer, Rolf Dieter Schraft
A K Peters Ltd
ISBN: 1568811098
07/2000
While "Robo sapiens" illustrates the leading edge of research, "Service Robots"
surveys the blue collar realm of robotics worldwide. Including both prototypes and
in-service robots, this book spans industries ranging from housework to healthcare and
hazardous duty, and from plebian (cleaning) to out of this world (space, the final
frontier).
A bit dated and stilted (published in German in 1996), it nevertheless offers
a wealth of information and over 200 color photos and illustrations
on the machines that faithfully do man's bidding.
Building Robots With Lego Mindstorms: The Ultimate Tool for Mindstorms Maniacs
by Mario Ferrari, Giulio Ferrari, Ralph Hempel
Syngress Media Inc
ISBN: 1928994679
12/2001
Itching to create your own brave new robotic world? LEGO™'s
Mindstorms is an easy place to start, and this book lives up to its billing
as the definitive book for Mindstorms builders.
The 600+ pages are packed full of useful information and ideas.
From mechanics and signal processing to construction techniques that make
more complex robots simple and possible, the well-written discussions
start simple and progress to surprising depths.
This is not a book of Mindstorms projects,
but teaches how to systematically build the robots of your dreams
with Mindstorms or without.
If you need help to get those inspirational juices flowing, there is its
equally well regarded companion
Creative Projects with LEGO Mindstorms.
Maelstrom
by Peter Watts
Tor Books
ISBN: 0312878060
10/2001
A woman walks out of the ocean onto a beach of refugees
guarded by walls and robotic flying cameras. She is
hungering for revenge and carrying the germs of a deadly epidemic.
Dregs of human life are
helpless against this ancient organism, as they are against the Maelstrom,
an electronic ecosystem of artificial life evolved from the
Internet. Pre- and post-DNA-based lifeforms combine to create a
world where "good" is on the side of ultimate destruction.
Watts paints a bleak future world collapsing under the domino wave
of the unforeseen consequences of technology.
A fascinating book based on hard science and
issues, Maelstrom's dystopic world was first introduced in
"Starfish", an equally compelling story about the
not-quite human denizens of a deep-sea geothermal power plant.
CYBUG SolarFly Kit
Celebrate the spring and sun-warmed bumblebees with your own flying robo-bug.
The CYBUG SolarFly is a muscular (4 in long, 2 inch high), solar-powered critter
that continually seeks the brightest objects it sees.
Twin feelers help navigate around obstacles, and it has short-term memory
about objects it touches.
The long antennae will also let SolarFly "feed" from the
Sunflower Power Plant.
Build a garden of mechanical delights on your patio and don't worry
about watering and weeding.
No batteries, but assembly using basic tools and soldering required.
A.I. Artificial Intelligence (Widescreen Special Edition)
by Steven Spielberg
2001
Begun by Kubrick
("A Clockwork Orange")
and bequeathed to Spielberg ("E.T."),
"A.I." is the story of David, a cybernetic Pinocchio that
wants to be a real boy with a real mother.
The odyssey begins when David is
cast out by his human parents and wanders the world with
Teddy, a more "robotic" robot toy,
and Gigolo Joe, the cynical android.
Kubrick's dark vision and Spielberg's heartwarming tone make an
unsettling, schizophrenic combination allowing a multitude
of contrasts and questions. Lengthy and sometimes disjoint, "A.I." is a poignant and
provocative work when you are not hungering for action à la
Men in Black.
Excellent shorts on set design and special effects included.
Based on Brian Aldiss's
"Supertoys Last All Summer Long".
For more selections, check out the Netsurfer Library at
http://www.netsurf.com/nsl.
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