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TABLE OF CONTENTS
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CALENDAR
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| 2002.09.01 |
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Southern Assault, Hendersonville, NC
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| 2002.09.02 |
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DragonCon Robot Battles, Atlanta, GA
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| 2002.09.13-15 |
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BotBash, Tempe, AZ
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| 2002.09.21 |
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DPRG RoboRama, Dallas, TX
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| 2002.09.22 |
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Bay Area Robotics Society Robot Races, San Francisco, CA
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| 2002.09.30-10.04 |
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IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, Lausanne, Switzerland |
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| 2002.10.01-03 |
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Cleaning Robot Contest, Lausanne, Switzerland
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| 2002.10.10-13 |
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Central Jersey Robot Conflict, Cherry Hill, NJ
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| 2002.10.12-13 |
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RoboMaxx, OR
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| 2002.10.18-20 |
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Critter Crunch, Denver, CO
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| 2002.10.21-24 |
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National Robot Safety Conference, Ypsilanti, MI
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| 2002.10 |
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METU Robot Games, Ankara, Turkey
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| 2002.11.02 |
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PAReX Autonomous Robotics Competition, Phoenix, AZ
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| 2002.11.02-03 |
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Olimpiada Robotica, Colombia
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| 2002.11.06-08 |
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Robotics Industry Forum, Orlando, FL
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| 2002.11.06 |
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Robotics User Discovery Day, Orlando, FL
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| 2002.11.09 |
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Third Annual CIRC Autonomous Sumo Robot Competition, Peoria, IL
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| 2002.11 |
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Texas BEST competition, College Station, TX
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| 2002.11 |
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23rd All Japan MicroMouse Contest, Yokohama, Japan
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ABOUT NETSURFER
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COOL TOYS
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IN THE NEWS
The Geometry is the Glue
Geckos scamper up windows with abandon, leading researchers to
hope for a compound that's as strong as barnacle glue and as
reversible as Post-Its.
It turns out that velcro might be a better model: the trick is tiny hairs on
the gecko's toes.
Each hair has about a thousand miniscule tips that
attach to any surface through Van der Waals forces, weak electrodynamic
forces acting between atoms and molecules. A small percentage of these hairs are in
use at any time: full deployment would provide over 250 pounds of adhesion.
Synthetic versions of
gecko-feet are in development; applications
in space, where suction and other forms of adhesion cannot work,
are particularly intriguing.
FIDO Still On Track
The Mars Exploration Rover Mission will send two remote controlled vehicles
to Mars next summer, landing on the red planet in January 2004. To make sure
that all systems are go, stripped down prototype FIDO (Field Integrated Design & Operations)
Rovers just successfully completed its final 10-day field test in the wilds
of the JPL "Mars Yard". Scientists rehearsed the sol-by-sol (Martian "day")
activities of the Rovers, including traveling away from the landing site, taking
numerous measurements, and like their canine namesake, using a
front wheel to dig a hole. JPL has put together
a detailed scientific journal of
the test, including images, instrument measurements, and scientific analyses of
what FIDO found. The surprise? A photo of earthlings in FIDO's rear view mirror.
VICARIOUS ROBOTICS
September is back-to-school and battening down the hatches
in preparation for the winter ahead.
After lounging the summer away in the hammock, those of us who
don't want to break a nail - or lose a finger messing with
gears and hyraulics and blowtorches, or who just like to watch,
can look forward to a new season of robotic high jinks
from the ever-reliable boob-tube.
Battlebots Update
The Battlebots camp continues to build its franchise with a
new season of nuts, bolts, and thrills.
The Battlebots 5.0 tournament premiered
August 20th on Comedy Central. The new battles take the Tuesday
night slot with reruns Saturday morning. Since the spring
an official guide has been published, and a video game debut on the
Nintendo Gameboy is scheduled for later in the year. Even the previously
spartan
web site is showing more life and features, including a couple of
behind-the-scenes videos.
Unfortunately, dark clouds loom. The 6.0 tournament, originally scheduled
for November, had to be put on hold when Comedy Central declined
to fund the next season.
Robotica III
If you prefer your robots a little less combative, or if you just
like all sorts of robots, there is Season III of The Learning
Channel's Robotica series. Competitors must overcome environmental
challenges like
suspension bridges, brick walls, hydraulic flip ramps, and roborats to earn
the right to slug it out with each other. The TV season starts
September 19, airing Thursday nights and rerunning several times
during the day on Fridays. Is it the sand trap that inspired
a wood robot this season named "Tiger Wood"?
Robot Wars
Nickelodeon's Robot Wars lays claim to being the show
that started it all on British television in the early 90's
and maintains its international hit status showing in 16 countries.
While early competitions included varioius obstacle courses and
challenges, it has evolved into a series of one-on-one and team
matches. Robot Wars distinguishes itself from the pack with
its own team of aesthetic and deadly house robots, the smallest of
which is able to tow a Hummer. Check them out in the "House Stars"
sidebar, or watch them in action on Sunday evenings.
The new season started August 25.
Junkyard Wars
For spectators who enjoy the building process as much as the
competition, The Learning Channel offers "Junkyard Wars" on
Wednesday evenings to round out the week's hardware fix.
Self described as a
"contest of harebrained schemes, incredible tools,
and lots and lots of duct tape...to see who can create the biggest,
fastest or strongest whatever with parts they scrounge out of
a junkyard", this series portrays the thrills and spills
of creative engineering even though
the end product is not usually robotic.
In its 8th season, Junkyard Wars obviously has appeal and
staying power. Its website demonstrates this with a significant collection
of science and other trivia as well as photos and videos galore, toys, and
goodies.
TECHNOTOYS
Fifty Ways to Boost Your Numbers
With the economy kind of drifting along and tech in a funk, it may be tough to be
the purveyor of expensive geek toys. But you can't fault the
folks at Evolution - creator of the nifty ER1 kit, for not trying.
They've come up with "50 Things To Do With Your ER1".
While it's not exactly a scintillating list of ideas, it covers
the basics, and there is even an odd gem or two tucked away.
Our favourite? "Stand outside your door and tell anyone who
knocks you are in a meeting." (Maybe keeping the persistent visitor out
gets you bonus points.)
Whether you have an ER1 or some other kit, it's a good way to get
those creative juices flowing for your next project.
BITS & PIECES
No Beating Mother Nature
Build a pair of balsa wood wings covered in light plastic film, with
small motors to provide up, down, and twisting motions. Measure the
lift generated from multiple series of small motions. Apply evolutionary algorithms -
take pairs that generate the most lift and create "offsprings" by
random swapping of component motions. Repeat. Lo and behold, after three hours the twitches and jerks
have become an effective flapping technique. The delightful experiment - where the
wings even tried to cheat - comes from researchers at Chalmers
University in Sweden, home also of statuesque Priscilla,
the life-sized soccer bot.
Offered an evolutionary computing scientist, "..this kind of evolution is
capable of coming up with flying motion". Duh.
Onwards to wake capture.
Run, RoboRoach, Run
The garden variety, American cockroach is a speed demon that can move up to 50 body
lengths in a single second. Researchers in legged robots have decided to take
a lesson from Mother Nature and the result is a dynasty of "Sprawls", fast, stable
hexapods that have achieved speeds of 5 bodylengths a second running on compressed
air. Palm sized and smaller, these benefit from SDM (Shape Deposition
Manufacturing) techniques, where servos and wiring are embedded in the structural
plastic in an integrated process. The alternative? Lots of
fasteners and fittings which dominate the bulk of a smaller robot and which
can fall apart more easily.
The Sprawls site is a 5-generation family album with many photos, home movies,
and other juicy details.
Berkeley's Other Flier
Taking a very different approach than getting a robotic fly to lift off,
BEAR, the Berkeley Aerobot, is an autonomous robot helicopter project
focusing on sensors and control systems. Using remote controlled helicopters as the airframe,
the Aerobot is guided by GPS to within 2 centimeters
of its destination, whereupon sophisticated vision technology kick in to guide
the landing - on a simulated aircraft carrier deck that pitches, rolls, and moves.
Vision and control technologies also enable Aerobot to participate in pursuit and
evasion type maneuvers, and path planning and obstacle avoidance are in the works.
Freeway chases, firefighting, and mine-detection are just some of the potential
applications in the long run.
SEE ME, HEAR ME
What a Cyborg Sees
The field of artifical vision advances daily.
The quest for artificial retinas is a race between credible competitors.
And low res/low framerate systems are already finding their way into human subjects.
Wired tells the story of one patient who received brain
implants. The system starts with an eyeglass-mounted mini-camera hooked into portable
computers, and leads to dual implants on the visual cortex.
The surgery, illegal in the US, took
place in Portugal. For a mere $115,000, sufficient sight is restored to allow
driving - at least in a parking lot. The developments hold much promise, at
least for those who lose their sight. Seeing is learned, and some who are
blind from birth but later regain their sight cannot form a coherent
picture from visual signals.
Wireless Vision
Enterprising gamers have married shooter games like Doom to geographic databases
of their environment (usually a college campus), GPS receivers,
and VR goggles to play out their fantasies in real 3-D space.
But there is a more practical and useful application. The University of Florida's
DRISHTI system is a wearable computing solution packaging some of these technologies
into a navigation system for the blind. While the project as envisioned requires
far more detailed geographic databases than is generally available, merely the
information about where you are, where you want to be and the direction you are
going can prove to be very valuable - for people and robots.
PROOF OF THE PUDDING
Robot Mine-Mapping
The Quecreek Mine accident and its dramatic rescue story had its
15 minutes of fame recently. In the aftermath, roboticists have
proposed not one but two reasons to use robots in similar situations:
search and rescue, and mapping abandoned mines. It turns out CMU
had built a six-wheeler mine-mapping robot using laser beams in the mid 80s.
Since relegated to a museum, the Terregator demonstrated
extremely precise mapping abilities.
Critics argue against the expense of robotic
mapping techniques, although the researchers at CMU
are pressing ahead with prototypes. After all, the same techniques can be
used in mapping other planets and moons, and searching for signs
of life beneath their surfaces. And the Moore's Law kind of declining
prices applies equally in robotics.
Robot Tomb-Mapping
In 1992-1993, long before robotics got its current cool,
German engineer and pyramid aficionado Rudolf Gantenbrink
built a series of robots - that would not look out of
place with their colleagues today - to explore the two "air shafts" of
Cheops, the Great Pyramid. The result was the discovery of
a door-like slab at the end of the south shaft and
Gantenbrink being barred from returning for further work.
Almost ten years later, a new effort between Egypt's Supreme Council
of Antiquities and the Giza Plateau Mapping Project at Chicago University
is returning with a robot from Boston's iRobot. Force gauges, ground
penetrating radar, and a fiber optic camera will all be deployed
in an attempt to figure out what is behind the stone slab. ETA September 17.
Doing Windows
Almost as good as the gecko, Advaced Robotic Vehicles' remotely operated
crawlers can move about on vertical and horizontal surfaces of many shapes
and textures using a vacuum track system. Designed originally for aircraft
maintenance tasks such as crack inspection or sanding, the crawler has recently found
a starring role at the Louvre. Armed with squeegees and rotating brushes,
a pair of the LL1 model will entertain visitors as they wash the 69-foot I.M. Pei-designed
glass pyramid at the entrance to the Louvre. Challenges include producing enough
suction to stay attached to the glass structure
without damage it, and clambering over the maze of
3-inch wide rain gutters coverng its surface
MAN vs MACHINE
Shades of Clippy
How will we interact with the intelligent homes of the future?
Researchers at the Technical University of Eindhoven envision
a speech-based interface with a twist: a character embodiment to
provide more natural social dialogue. No walking into a room
and just saying "Computer, do this". Instead of the archetypical
Jeeves type with the stiff upper lip,
the persona will be eMuu, a colorful
plastic robot a cross between an onion and Cyclops and possessing a full
range of emotive capabilities. Research papers cover topics
such as "Social Bonding in Talking with Social Autonomous Creatures"
and "Toward Realization of Empathic Interaction with
Artificial Creature". Someone should have told them about
Microsoft's Clippy.
Cheaper Robotics
A quick perusal of website for the Robotics Industries Association or manufacturers
such as Fanuc or Epson shows the diversity and reach of industrial robotics.
In addition to welding, painting and other tasks we associate with the
auto and heavy manufacturing industries, compact models take the drudgery out of
materials handling, packaging, and sundry tasks. Nevertheless, the profit equation
is constantly at work: witness the migration of manufacturing to the People's Republic of
China where a highly educated labor force can cost one tenth or less as in the US.
One manufacturer quoted in Forbes Magazine 'says without a hint of irony that the workers are cheaper than robots: "They respond to voice commands and are fully programmable artificial intelligence." They get $145 a month plus lunch.'
MACHINE vs MACHINE
For Bipeds Only
Humanoid robots made quite a splash at the robotic soccer games this past summer, but
Robo-One is a mecca of bipeds-only competition. Held biannually in Japan,
remote-controlled and semi-autonomous units
slug it out with each other in timed bouts.
Metallic Fighter, a robot just over a foot tall and
under 5 pounds, defeated HSWR-01, an opponent almost twice its height,
to win the 1M Yen first prize. New to the competition was a stairclimbing
event where STEP1 beat out a smaller field to clinch the victory.
The Third Robo-One contest will be held in February, 2003
at the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation in Tokyo.
Rockin 'n' Rollin Out of the Box
MIT's course 2.007, Design & Manufacturing I, is basically a robot building contest
that claims parentage to competitions such as Battlebots and Robot Wars. One
of its other offsprings is the International Design Contest where participants
from different universities are shuffled into teams that have 2 weeks to build
a robot from a kit of parts. IDC 2002, the "Rock & Roll Table", featured
swinging pendulums dispensing balls that contestants harvest to score. Ingenious,
out-of-the-box thinking by contestants (step hard on the scales
and fence in your opponent) forced the rules to be amended
not once, but twice. This is a contest has has a
"Naked Phone Booth" rule. Go figure.
IN THE ARTS
Viridian BioFuture Robot Dog
Science fiction author Bruce Sterling woke up one morning
and smelled the CO2. More precisely, it was the smoke from
massive fires in Chiapas. A leap of insight led him to found the
Viridian Design Movement, aimed to make environmental sensitivities
as fashionable and influential as Art Deco or Expressionism in
its day. The movement's latest competition, sponsored by clubby futurist group
Global Business Network, is the design of a robotic dog according
to Viridian principles (designed evanescence, seek the biomorphic
and the transorganic)
and preferred technologies (enzymatic manufacturing, biomaterials).
The ironic part? The prize, a Sony Aibo, entirely brown, with nary
a hint of Viridian green.
BRAVE NEW WORLD
A Little Controversy is Good for More Press
The yardstick in AI is the Turing Test: human intelligence is exhibited
when a human can't tell it's a machine. Now Luc Steels of Sony's Computer
Science Laboratories in Paris is advocating advancing machine intelligence
by letting robots interact and form their own concepts and cultures instead
of being straitjacketed into a human model. Critics, even pillars of the
"emergent" school such as Rodney Brooks of MIT, argue that intelligent
behaviour does not need internal models and concepts.
Others toss out canards such as it's impractical for robots to
develop real interaction with the world given today's vision technology.
While stimulating, the debate does clearly flunk the Engelberg Test for
Intelligent Robotics Research.
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ROBOT WARS HOUSE STARS
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Able to tow a Hummer or cleave it in two with its
diamond-edged axe, Shunt is reminsicent of a bulldozer
with its rear-mounted scoop.
Armed with pneumatic pincers and a 3000+ rpm circular saw, speedy (12 mph)
Dead Metal's strategy is as obvious and ugly as its punk-style armour.
Competitors find Matilda to be more fearsome than a Tasmanian Devil.
Besides dual tusks and a steel chainsaw tail (alternating with a flywheel
weapon), her fibreglass matting shell also resists just about any attack.
Looking like a cross between a tank and an oversized beetle,
Sergeant Bash carries the military metaphor with a propane-fuelled
flame thrower on a 360 degree turret. A pair of surgical pincers
keeps enemies from getting in close below the turret.
Refbot resembles C3PO in appearance and mission. Its job is to help
smooth the interactions at Robot Wars events. Its weapons, er tools?
A bulldozer blade to separate combatants, a carbon dioxide extinguisher system,
and the old soccer standby, yellow and red warning cards.
A medieval knight on tank treads, Sir Killalot lumbers along with an armoury that
includes a high speed drill and deadly cutting claws derived from the 'jaws of life'
used to pry open traffic wrecks.
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BOOKS 'N' STUFF
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Edison's Eve: A Magical History of the Quest for Mechanical Life
by Gaby Wood
Knopf
ISBN: 0679451129
This is an entertaining tour of our historical obsession with creating the mechanical equivalents of living things from 18th-century automatons to lifelike dolls - one being the Thomas Alva Edison's titular Eve complete with embedded phonograph - to midgets masquerading as dolls in the Ringling Brothers Circus. It seems that humans try to be gods, always seeking to create life, ultimately life resembling ourselves. Anecdotally diverting, but not particularly deep.
Cyborg Citizen: Politics in the Posthuman Age
by Chris Hables Gray
Routledge
ISBN: 0415919789
02/2001
The fact that you are reading this on the web or in email
makes you, by definition, a cyborg. While Brooks and Moravec
look at robots becoming sentient, Gray comes from the "post-human"
side of convergence where the line between pre- and post is
sometimes drawn a tad earlier than you expect. While vaccination
or computer use as a post-human enhancement might seem extreme,
medical implants, particularly those in the brain, are clear
candidates. Gray marches us through a panoply of possibilities
available now or in the foreseeable future
from space exploration to genetic engineering and cloning.
Changing views about citizenship, civil liberties,
and politics are discussed in the context of
our evolving relationship with tools and technology.
Fahrenheit 451
by Ray Bradbury
Ballantine Books
ISBN: 0345342968
Brave New World
by Aldous Huxley
Harper Perennial
ISBN: 0060929871
1932
How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics
by Katherine Hayles
University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226321460
02/1999
As we contemplate our post-humanhood, we bring back
two classic visions of plausible human and post-human futures.
Cybernetics and the role of information figures heavily
in the modern vision (e.g., Katherine Hayles's
How We Became Posthuman).
Bradbury's 50s masterpiece describes a world where fireman start
fires to burn books - to destroy knowledge and ideas - and where the trivial
and the mindless "TV walls" lead to happiness.
(Do you have a friend lusting after a projection HDTV?)
Aldous Huxley's 1932
Brave New World
projects a world going
down the road of drug use, mindless sex, biochemical programming,
and test tube babies. (Here comes Ecstasy, Prozac, and Dolly.)
Extreme Mindstorms: an Advanced Guide to Lego Mindstorms
by Dave Baum, Michael Gasperi, Ralph Hempel, Luis Villa
APress
ISBN: 1893115844
10/2000
This is a very accessible book of advanced LEGO MINDSTORMS projects.
On the other hand, you may expect more and truly obsessive, whacky,
devious, beyond-your-imagination undertakings promised by the
"Extreme" billing. Get over the marketing hype and you will find
meaty sections on advanced techniques including NQC and constructing
custom MINDSTORMS sensors written by some of the leading lights
in the field. Quality illustrations and coverage of different
system platforms are also significant pluses.
Star Wars Episode II Attack Of The Clones R2D2 Droid
Hasbro
$99.99
The epitome of a robot pal, R2D2 from Star Wars, is now in the stores as
an 18-inch tall toy robot packed with
voice recognition, sonar, IR sensors, a utility arm and
other features. For those who are not content with its 40 voice
commands, secret features, and sound effects - including
Princess Leia's distress call - the bundle of hardware
is also an inexpensive platform for some serious
robot projects. In the traditional vein, Hasbro also
offers a superior
X-Wing model with its own R2D2 and
favourite Star Wars II
action figures.
Nadia, Secret of Blue Water - The Adventure Begins
by Hideaki Anno
Last issue's reference to the anime origins of Disney's
Atlantis - The Lost Empire provoked a certain amount of interest.
"Nadia", first produced in 1989, shares many details from storyline -
including a mystical blue necklace - to setting, characters, and design
with Disney's oeuvre. The difference? Nadia is a long, engaging,
adventure epic spanning 39 episodes, the first 4 of which are
included here. The series will draw you in
with its rich character development and gripping plot twists
through all 10 volumes (despite some choppy episodes in the middle)
to the ultimate grand finale.
Anime fanatics may find its
style a bit too 80s-bright but it's particularly suitable
for younger audiences with its sense of
faith and optimism.
For more selections, check out the Netsurfer Library at
http://www.netsurf.com/nsl.
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