Terminator

year of the robot in japan

2005-03-14T19:52:00.000-08:00

Japan Declares 2005 "Year of the Robot"

The Japanese fondness for robots is no secret. Now, scientists and government authorities have informally delcared 2005 the "year of the robot." This coincides with a major robot expo opening in Nagoya later this month, as well as a new generation of humanoid robots that can converse with humans in multiple languages.

"Ms. Saya" is a humanoid robot who has worked as a receptionist for Tokyo Univiersity of Science for two years. Says professor Hiroshi Kobayashi, her inventor, "I almost feel like she's a real person," but that, "She has a temper . . . and she sometimes makes mistakes, especially when she has low energy."

While people in the US would find the presence of such a robot unsettling to say the least, Ms. Saya and her counterparts are becoming so common in Japan that the government is drawing up safety guidelines for keeping robots in homes. Indeed, robotics experts predict that every Japanese household will own at least one robot by 2015.

Among the other robots under development in Japan: a babysitter that can recognize childrens' faces and call parents in case of emergency, a "robo-cop" security guard that can detect and thwart intruders (using non-lethal means), robot pets that provide therapy for the elderly, a robotic wheelchair that can can navigate traffic via GPS, and robotic servants that can serve food from a refrigerator upon request.

The Japanese government is investing billions in robot R&D. But why such intense interest in robots there? Japan's low birthrate and aging population, for one, are creating a need for nonhuman workers. Japan also has a tradition of creating robot-like mechanical toys that goes back well over a century (baby boomers will recall that it was Japan that brought us Astro Boy). Interests in robotics is even connected to Japanese religion. Says Norihiro Hagita, director of the ATR Intelligent Robotics and Communication Laboratories, "In Japanese [Shinto] religion, we believe that all things have gods within them. But in Western countries, most people believe in only one God. For us, however, a robot can have an energy all its own."

artifical muscles

2005-03-09T20:06:00.000-08:00

AN DIEGO -- Six years ago, Jet Propulsion Laboratory researcher Yoseph Bar-Cohen challenged scientists to create an artificial arm that could beat a human in an arm-wrestling match. The catch: The arm must be made of a pliable plastic material controlled by electrical impulses. In other words, no motors allowed.

Monday, in front of a battalion of TV cameras and an audience of hundreds, three groups of scientists took on Bar-Cohen's challenge -- and failed. One of the robot arms seemed to flop helplessly, while the other two quickly fell to a 17-year-old high-school student.

Even if they had worked, the devices wouldn't have been ready for arm-wrestling competitions on ESPN: One relied on a potentially dangerous hydrochloric acid reaction, while another was powered by a strong electric current.

Nonetheless, Bar-Cohen still looked ecstatic after most of the media had left the International Society for Optical Engineering's Smart Structures/NDE conference. He hadn't expected anyone to take up his arm-wrestling dare for 20 years, and now one of the artificial arms managed to hold off the teenager for nearly a half-minute. "This is a major step," he said. "But it's a tough challenge."

It could mean the transformation of robots from large, clunky, motor-driven devices -- think of the robot arm that helped put together your car -- into sleek, sturdy, self-contained machines. You know, like humans.

"There could be some point where you can have a robot dog, not walking like a machine, but walking like a dog," said Bar-Cohen, a tireless advocate for the technology. "Or maybe a cheetah robot running on Mars instead of slowly rolling, climbing a mountain like we climb a mountain."

Humans and animals, after all, don't come with drive shafts and gears and wheels. Bar-Cohen and others expect that the artificial muscles will revolutionize prosthetics, allowing disabled people to more easily move their limbs.

For now, though, Ben-Cohen's dream muscles -- all made from plastics known as electroactive polymers -- are fairly primitive. The challenge is making the plastics bend and move with only a nudge from an electronic impulse, just like human muscles. Giving them the powerful strength of a live person is even harder.

Among other things, scientists have used the polymer technology to create a robotic fish and several traditional machines, but humanlike parts are still on the drawing board.

In the highly publicized arm-wrestling matches held Monday, each of the entrants tried to produce a "very simple arm that bends against the human hand," Ben-Cohen said. "There's no fancy capabilities to it, but with time we will increase the requirements."

The best-performing arm, created by a New Mexico company called Environmental Robots, was white and tapered toward the top, a bit like a bowling pin. Panna Felsen, a San Diego-area high-school student, took 24 seconds to push down the arm, which was controlled through power leads connected to two artificial muscles.

Felsen needed even less time to vanquish the second "arm" -- actually a small, polelike device with a round ball on the end designed by a Swiss laboratory. The arm was part of a 44-pound contraption powered by heavy voltage; Felsen had to wear a protective glove.

The final team, engineering students from Virginia Tech, used fishing lines to connect a fiberglass arm to several tubes holding gel fibers. The fibers were supposed to react with hydrochloric acid, pulling the fibers and moving the arm. It didn't work, apparently because the reaction took place too slowly.

Steven Deso, a senior, acknowledged that the arm had never beaten anyone before: "We had very little time for testing. We were focusing on safety." (Felsen wore safety goggles during the brief match.) But the students were still happy to have completed their project in just six months. "We met our goal," Deso said.

In many ways, of course, the arm-wrestling matches weren't fair fights.

The artificial arms hardly have the flexibility of the real thing, and a professional arm-wrestler pointed out that there's more to the sport than simple arm and shoulder power. "Arm-wrestling is your whole body," involving muscles from the

legs to the back, along with the pectorals and others, said Allen Fisher, who has won 21 titles.

Fisher said he was impressed by the robot arms, however, and predicted that once perfected, "they'll help a lot of people."

Artificial muscles may prove a boon for filmmakers. Richard Landon, who helped create the special effects for AI and the Jurassic Park movies, said technological advances could revolutionize his industry, allowing fake human characters -- or, say, velociraptors -- to free themselves from motors and look more natural.

For now though, Landon said, "it looks like we're not quite there yet."

robots and japan

2005-03-01T19:15:00.000-08:00

Mobile Robots: The Here and How
By Steve Wallage, Tue Mar 01 08:45:00 GMT 2005

Mobile robots conjure up a sci-fi view of the future; but they are increasingly becoming a reality, with entertainment, rather than robotic servitude, leading the way.

Mark Frauenfelder's intriguing recent article talked about some of the developments in mobile robotics, as well as opening the debate about how and where such robots should be used. While this debate goes on, a new wave of robots are being launched, unsurprisingly in the Japanese market, with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth playing a key role.

The three main sectors for mobile robots have been entertainment, tasks around the house and business or military applications. While doing the mundane tasks have often been behind early successes -- such as iRobot's Roomba, a self-navigating vacuum cleaner, which sells for just $200 and has shipped over 500,000 units since its launch in 2002 -- the key driver is now entertainment. Japan's Emerging Technology Fair, part of the Future Creation Fair, in August 2004, highlighted this trend, but the launch of the sexily named W21T (more appropriately known as the Bluetooth robot) now reinforces it.

It is difficult to quite describe the Bluetooth robot. It's officially described as a bipedal robot, but looks like a cross between a toy and a 1950s writer's vision of an apocalyptic future. Looks notwithstanding, it can do such things as walk, jump, kick and wave its hands, all controlled by Bluetooth from a mobile handset. The self-assembly robot is operated by downloading instructions from the Internet to the mobile device, which are then stored, using a BREW application on KDDI's network. The $1900 robot was developed by I Bee in Japan, and it has its own servo motors and gyro sensors. For those with an interest in the history of robotics, it is based on the work of the Japanese godfather of robotics, Jin Sato, and his C1 model.

Entertainment With Practical Applications

But even in Japan, entertainment is not enough. To bolster sales, KDDI and I Bee have plans for the Bluetooth robot including turning it into a roving home security camera. Other practical applications will be based on the fact that Bluetooth provides bi-directional communication.?
This has already been used by the iconic and quirky Aibo from Sony, which aims to replicate the emotional as well as physical benefits of a pet. Using its on-board camera, AIBO can send pictures to your mobile phone. Rather than something as unimaginative as home security, Sony's marketing team have dreamed up the killer app as AIBO taking pictures of your kids which you can see and store on your mobile phone.

Another Japanese company that has done a lot of robotic work, Epson, has launched its FR-II micro-flying robot, a Bluetooth-controlled helicopter. However, apparently there have been attempts to use the device for transporting messages and small objects, given it can fly for around three minutes. The hope is that it can, within the next two years, be used by the emergency services in rescue missions.

A more practical model is the Ifbot, from Dream Supply, an early example of what the Japanese can look forward to at home. Aimed at the elderly population, it supposedly and rather patronizingly aims to battle "age-driven senility". Having the conversational abilities of a typical Japanese five-year-old, it neatly fits the linguistic restrictions of the robot and supposedly the capabilities of the older Japanese. It is on sale for around $5,500.

However, future versions show the more interesting capabilities of the Ifbot. These include an English-speaking version to help Japanese schoolchildren learn the language, and for the older user, the next version is planned to allow the reading of news, the monitoring of health functions and the ability to alert doctors in the case of medical emergency.

Not to miss out on the party, businesses are a major target for the mobile robot manufacturers. A good example of a current model is PatrolBot, which uses Wi-fi for "environmental" testing. It can also be used for remote surveillance. Although details are unsurprisingly limited, it seems mobile robots also played a part in collecting information in Iraq. The Sony iRobot was used in areas considered too dangerous for humans, including exploring potentially hostile buildings or terrain and sending images back to the military operations center.

Onto The Future

The future for mobile robots is far from clear. The Japanese version of this future shows increasing emotional intelligence, as well as a rather unsettling similarity to humans -- see, for example, the Honda ASIMO "humanoid robot". They also have the rather quaint notion of self-dependency for the robots. Future versions of the Sony iRobot, for example, will be able to dock themselves to recharge, and clean themselves. This is a more serious issue in the business market, where concern over maintenance and servicing costs have been a key obstacle to the take up of mobile robots.

As for today, it is clear that Bluetooth is the key short-range technology and the basis of remote control of the mobile robots. It also shows the potential of machine to machine mobile communications, a vision of the mobile future long championed by the Japanese.

talking dolls for old japanese

2005-02-27T19:00:00.000-08:00

As Japan goes grey, toymakers design dolls for the elderly

Wed Feb 23,11:29 AM ET

TOKYO (AFP) - As Japan produces fewer children and more retirees, toymakers are designing new dolls designed not for the young but for the lonely elderly -- companions which can sleep next to them and offer caring words they may never hear otherwise.

AFP/File Photo

Talking toys have become such a hit that some elderly people have embraced them as substitutes for the children who have grown old and deserted entire neighborhoods in the rapidly greying country.

The Yumel doll, which looks like a baby boy and has a vocabulary of 1,200 phrases, is billed as a "healing partner" for the elderly and goes on the market Thursday at a price of 8,500 yen (80 dollars).

About 8,000 Yumel dolls, designed by toymaker Tomy with pillows and bedding maker Lofty, have already been sold in less than three months in limited marketing in sleeping sections of department stores.

"Toymakers are targeting senior citizens as the number of children is falling. We are also striving to attract them," said Osamu Kiriseko, who headed the Yumel project.

Another toymaker, Bandai, in November 1999 launched the Primopuel doll which is meant to resemble a five-year-old boy who needs the same sort of attention, asking to be hugged and entertained.

The toy has proved a hit not only with children but with the elderly and more than one million dollars have been sold over the past five years.

On November 13, Bandai went to a Tokyo amusement park to celebrate the fifth "birthday" of Primopuel, inviting doll owners to pay homage at a nearby shrine in a ritual just like parents of real Japanese five-year-olds do that month.

"There has been demand for dolls which can 'heal' you but toys available on the market were mostly for daytime," said Kiriseko.

"I thought that you need to enjoy the night together if you really hope to live with a doll."

The 37-centimeter (15-inch) Yumel -- deriving from the Japanese word "yume", or "dream" -- looks like a sleepy baby boy but is equipped with six sensors and an IC chip which keep track of the owner's sleeping time.

The doll can be programmed to "sleep" or "wake up" in accordance with the owner's pattern, saying "good morning" with open eyes at due time or inviting the elderly to sleep with the doll's eyelids drooping.

"I feel so good, g-o-o-d n-i-g-h-t," the doll says before falling asleep if the owner pats it on the chest gently.

Or Yumel may ask, "Aren't you pushing yourself too hard?" when it judges the owner has been going to bed too irregularly or not spending enough time playing with it.

"If you lead an orderly life, Yumel will be in a good mood, singing songs or pleading with you to do something like buying him toys," Kiriseko said.

He said the doll could serve as a more suitable companion for the elderly than man's best friend.

"The market for this doll overlaps with a market of dogs, cats and other pets," he said. "But some older people worry about the possibility of dying and leaving their loved pets behind."

Some 500 customers have sent in comments since October, many of them hailing the changes to their lives since Yumel entered the picture, with a 95-year-old woman the oldest respondent.

"Thank you for giving me a heart-warming baby. I'm no longer alone," an 82-year-old woman wrote while another senior woman said she was raising the doll "as my own child".

Some customers are so much in love with the doll that they are troubled by casual questions it asks.

"Some say they cannot give Yumel good answers when it asks questions such as 'Why do elephants have long noses?'" Kiriseko said.

"You may think they don't have to answer as it's just a doll who's asking, but they are truly perplexed," Kiriseko said.

The toymaker found a solution in the new-version Yumel: The doll's statement has been modified from a question to the statement, "It's interesting elephants have long noses."

Japan is a country with one of the world's lowest birth rates and oldest populations. The nation's birth rate hit an all-time low of 1.29 children per woman in 2003.

The government said Monday that Japan's population rose a mere 0.05 percent in the year to October 2004 and could decline this year for the first time since records began in 1950.

Traditionally, the eldest son was expected to live with their parents as they grew older and many young Japanese still stay at home for financial reasons as Japan has some of the world's highest rents.

But the custom is fading out in the younger generation as more Japanese singles choose to live independently and favor careers and lifestyles over the pressures of having children and taking care of their parents.

The Japanese are also famous for their longevity, with more than 23,000 people aged 100 or over.

In December, a software firm released on the market a 45-centimeter (18-inch) robot for the elderly named Snuggling Ifbot, who is dressed in an astronaut suit with a glowing face.

If a person tells Snuggling Ifbot, "I'm bored today," the 576,000 yen (5,600-dollar) robot might respond, "Are you bored? What do you want to do?"

To a statement, "Isn't it nice today?", the robot could say, "It is a fine autumn day," by detecting the season from its internal clock.

The robot's maker Dream Supply said the Snuggling Ifbot had the conversation ability of a five-year-old -- considered just enough for small talk to keep the elderly from going senile.

robots buidling cities on mars

2005-02-17T08:40:00.000-08:00

IEW|sterling

François Roche is a French architect whose firm, R&Sie, is aptly pronounced "heresy." Among his brainchildren is Dusty Relief, an edifice under construction in Bangkok which is surrounded by electrically charged wire that "grows fur" by statically attracting airborne filth. He has also conceived stealth habitats, hypothetical communities hidden from regulators and critics by vast sheets of camo netting. Architects are supposed to draw up plans, erect structures, and finish on time and under budget. Roche is exploring what happens when the usual constraints are allowed to fall away and things get wild and loose.

As a master of conceptual architecture, Roche likes to collaborate with installation artists. This tactic allows him to avoid hidebound European safety regulations when he proposes, for instance, a steel footbridge whose design, sketched using industry-standard CAD software, has been radically distorted by a computer virus. Ask Europeans to cross a buggy footbridge and they'll balk, quail, and consult the 80,000 regulatory pages of the EU's acquis communautaire. Tell them it's art, and they'll flock to it in droves, sit on it, and drink Beaujolais nouveau.

Roche's latest project will appear in museums in Paris and Antwerp over the next three years. Titled I've Heard About Node 1, it's as audacious as architecture's peaks of weirdness in the '60s; say, the Suitaloon, a combination garment and dwelling proposed by Michael Webb of the London hipster firm Archigram. And yet Roche's scheme is not just fun to think about, but eerily plausible. He's exploiting ideas that make perfect sense in computer-driven fabrication but have never been applied to architecture. Imagine a building where the needs and desires of its inhabitants are hot-wired to the shapes of walls and floors, which can be extended and updated ad hoc, ad infinitum.

That's Node 1. It's an idea for a building, yes, but it lacks most of the usual architectural accoutrements: blueprints, material suppliers, subcontractors. Instead, Roche imagines a programmable assembly device dubbed the "viab," a construction robot capable of improvising as it assembles walls, ducts, cables, and pipes.

A viab would produce structures that are not set and specific, but impermanent and malleable - merely viable - made of a uniform, recyclable substance like adobe. The automaton's output would have no innate design, boundaries, or service life. It would take whatever form was called for at the moment - a great rotting blooming stony bubble of a building that, unlike all previous forms of human habitation, would be unplanned, responsive, densely monitored, massively customized, and rock-solid, with all modern conveniences.

The closest thing to a viab today is a small, modest mud-working robot invented by Behrokh Khoshnevis, a professor of engineering at the University of Southern California. Khoshnevis' "contour crafter" works more or less like a 3-D printer, but it's meant to assemble whole buildings. Its nozzle spits wet cement while a programmable trowel smoothes the goo into place. Roche encountered Khoshnevis, and his agile imagination immediately started pushing the idea toward its limits.

The concept isn't as alien as it may seem; nature has been doing something similar for eons. Termites build skyscrapers by spitting and smoothing mud, then removing the structure if it gets in the way. A mound is shaped by the activity of the society within it. Roche imagines his viab as a busy termite with a body full of wet cement. It crawls ceaselessly across the structure, spewing new form and gnawing out old form, obeying an algorithm directly linked to the needs of the people inside.

It can also work without people entirely. The moon or Mars would be a natural venue for the concept, a place too hostile for mankind, where viabs could work around the clock: Let robots spit out a city, then settle in when it's ready.

It might be a long time before a scheme this weird is realized. But suppose it is. Churchill once said, "We shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us." He was thinking about how nations evolve over generations, but in Node 1, those processes would play out once a week. The old brick-and-mortar rules would be gone, as though the crowded playa at Burning Man were to raise up mud castles rivaling the Transamerica Pyramid.

Do we need a capacity like that? It's impossible to say, because the notion is genuinely heretical. It's not every day that an age-old discipline like architecture coughs up an anomaly that's unthinkable. This is one of those fine moments.

Email Bruce Sterling at bruces@well.com.

skins for robots

2005-02-07T11:20:00.000-08:00

Korean Researchers Develop Skin-Like Tactile Sensor

A South Korean scientific research center said Sunday that it has developed a tactile sensor capable of functioning like human skin.

The left picture shows the letters of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) caught through a tactile sensor functioning like human skin and the right picture is its enlarged image. Scientists from KAIST developed the precision tactile sensor with 1-millimeter spatial resolution.

The tactile sensor is made of polydimethylsiloxane, a synthetic rubber, and has a 1-millimeter spatial resolution capability, the Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology (KAIST) said.

``Many tactile sensors have been developed so far, but ours has the highest spatial resolution capability, flexibility, softness and extensibility,’’ said Lee Hyung-kyu, who led the development project.

Late last year, the University of Tokyo unveiled a tactile sensor with a spatial resolution capability of 2 millimeters.

Lee said his team will announce the results of their research at an international conference on micro-electro-mechanical systems, to be held early next month in the U.S. city of Miami.

The new sensor is widely expected to lay the foundation for coating humanoids such as South Korea's HUBO or Japan's ASIMO with artificial skin.

HUBO is a humanoid robot recently developed by KAIST. It is capable of moving its fingers independently, dancing and shaking hands with people by using its 41 joints.

Japan's ASIMO, an acronym for Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility, was unveiled in 2000 as the world's most advanced bi-pedal robot.

Through several upgrades, it is now able to spin in the air, bend or twist its torso and maneuver around obstacles in its path.

Hans Moravec in SciAm

2005-01-09T13:47:00.000-08:00

December 20, 2004

You, Robot

He says humans will download their minds into computers one day. With a new robotics firm, Hans Moravec begins the journey from warehouse drones to robo sapiens

By Chip Walter

When word got around that Hans Moravec had founded an honest-to-goodness robotics firm, more than a few eyebrows were raised. Wasn't this the same Carnegie Mellon University scientist who had predicted that we would someday routinely download our minds into robots? And that exponential advances in computing power would cause the human race to invent itself out of a job as robots supplanted us as the planet's most adept and adaptive species? Somehow, creating a company seemed ... uncharacteristically pragmatic.
But Moravec doesn't see it that way. He says he didn't start Seegrid Corporation because he was backing off his predictions. He founded the company because he was planning to help fulfill them. "It was time," he says, slowly rubbing his hand across his bristle-short hair. "The computing power is here."
The 56-year-old Moravec should know. Born in Kautzen, Austria, and raised in Montreal, he has been pushing the envelope on robotics theory and experimentation for the past 35 years, first as the graduate student at Stanford University who created the "Stanford Cart," the first mobile robot capable of seeing and autonomously navigating the world around it (albeit very slowly), and later as a central force in Car-negie Mellon's vaunted Robotics Institute. His iconoclastic theories and inventive work in machine vision have both shocked his colleagues and jump-started research; Seegrid is just the next logical step.
Moravec pulls an image up onto one of the two massive monitors that sit side by side on his desk, like great unblinking eyes. It's six o'clock in the evening, but an inveterate night owl, he's just starting his "day." "I have been drawing these graphs for years about what will be possible," he comments. His mouse roams along dots and images that plot and compare the processing power of old top-of-the-line computers with their biological equivalents. There is the ENIAC, for example, that in 1946 possessed the processing capacity of a bacterium and then a 1990 model IBM PS/2 90 that once harnessed the digital horsepower of a worm. Only recently have desktop computers arrived that can deliver the raw processing muscle of a spider or a guppy (about one billion instructions per second). "At guppy-level intelligence," he explains, "I thought we could manage 3-D mapping and create a robot that could get around pretty well without any special preparation of its environment."
But no one was creating that robot, so in the late 1990s Moravec says he began to grow "very antsy" about getting one built. In 1998 he wrote an ambitious grant proposal that outlined software for a robotic vision system. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency quickly funded the proposal, and three and a half years and $970,000 later, with PCs just reaching guppy smarts, a working demonstration was complete.
"It proved the principle," Moravec says. "We really could map with stereo vision, if we did things just right." But doing things just right required more than prototype software. Robotic evolution, he adds, "has to be driven forward by a lot of trial and error, and the only way to get enough is if you have an industry where one company is trying to outdo another." To help things along, he and Pittsburgh physician and entrepreneur Scott Friedman founded Seegrid in 2003. Their focus: the unglamorous but potentially huge "product handling" market.
Industrial robots already flourish in tightly constrained environments such as assembly lines. Where they fail is in locations loaded with unpredictability. So Seegrid concentrated on creating vision systems that enable simple machines to move supplies around warehouses without any human direction.
Not exactly the stuff of science fiction, Moravec agrees, and a long way from superintelligent robots, but he says you have to start somewhere. Nearly everything sold has to be warehoused at some point, and at some point it also has to be rerouted and shipped. Right now human workers move millions of tons of supplies and products using dollies, pallet jacks and forklifts. Seegrid's first prototype devices automate that work, turning wheeled carts into seeing-eye machines that can be loaded and then walked through various routes to teach them how to navigate on their own. The technology is built on Moravec's bedrock belief that if robots are going to succeed, the world cannot be adapted to them; they have to adapt to the world, just like the rest of us.
Other approaches can guide robots, but they typically rely on costly, precision hardware such as laser range finders or on extravagant arrangements that prewire and preprogram the machines to move through controlled spaces. Seegrid's system uses off-the-shelf CCD cameras and simple sonar and infrared sensors. Although these components gather imprecise information, the software compensates. It statistically compares the gathered data to develop a clean, accurate 3-D map. "If the same information keeps coming up, then the program decides that it's probably really there," Moravec explains. The robot then knows to stop or roll around it. This approach is how you might make your way through a dark room with a flashlight, in which you slowly build up a mental picture of what is around.
Creating warehouse drones as a first step toward the startling robotic world Moravec foresees might seem an unlikely concession to reality. But those who know Moravec say it is no surprise: he is an unusual mix of whimsy, wild vision and rigorous pragmatism. He has been known to be so lost in thought during his daily walks to his office that he bumps into mailboxes, yet none of that eccentricity has tarnished his reputation as a first-rate engineer and programmer.
"Some of Hans's ideas are pretty outrageous," admits Raj Reddy, who as director of the Robotics Institute brought Moravec to Carnegie Mellon in 1980, "but his work has always been very practical." Seegrid co-founder Friedman says it is exactly Moravec's vision and dogged persistence that separates him from the pack: "He's a genius, and he works hard."
The same themes run through his view of the future of robotics. Evolution moves in tiny steps, Moravec notes, but accomplishes amazing things. Machine evolution will do the same as it incrementally nudges robots from their clumsy beginnings to the heights of human-level intelligence and mobility. "We don't need a lot of Einsteins to do this; we need a lot of engineers working diligently to make little improvements and then test them out in the marketplace," Moravec insists. And that, he says, will ultimately lead to robots becoming vastly more intelligent and adaptable than we are.
That seems to leave us only one destination: the endangered species list. "Something like 99 percent of all species go extinct," Moravec observes. Why, he asks, should we be any different? Not that he sees us being destroyed by what he calls our "mind children" exactly. "It's not going to be like Terminator," he reassures. But children do often exceed the accomplishments of their parents. And in our evolutionary dotage, he is sure they will take good care of us, as parents' children often do. "They will create the perfect welfare state," he says.
At least, we hope so.

Toyota and robots

2005-01-09T13:34:00.000-08:00

Toyota Uses Robots to Solve Labor Shortage ProblemsPosted on Friday, January 07 @ 00:38:13 CST

Toyota Motor will introduce robots which can work as well or better than humans at all 12 of its factories in Japan to cut costs and deal with a looming labour shortage as the country ages, a report said on Thursday.

The robots would be able to carry out multiple tasks simultaneously with their two arms, achieving efficiency unseen in human workers and matching the cheap wages of Chinese labourers, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun said.

Japan's top automaker currently uses 3 000 to 4 000 less advanced robots at its domestic factories but their use has been confined mostly to welding, painting and other potentially hazardous tasks, the economic daily said.

The new robots would also be used in finishing work, such as installation of seats and car interior fixtures, that have been too complex for conventional robots up to now, the daily said.

Toyota plans to become the first in the automobile industry to use the advanced robots in all production processes in the future, it said without giving the timeframe.

"We aim to reduce production costs to the levels in China," the daily quoted an unnamed company official as saying.

Toyota also took into account the looming labour shortage in Japan due to a declining birthrate, the report said.

Japan's population is forecast to peak by 2006 with the average number of children a woman has during her lifetime standing at a post-World War II low of 1.29, according to the latest government data.

Japan has so far rejected calls to open up to large numbers of unskilled immigrants, fearing the effects on the country's social framework.

Toyota has been increasingly turning to robot development and plans to welcome visitors to its pavillion at the World Expo in Japan in March with humanoid robots jamming in a brass ensemble and performing hip-hop.

Robotics and Outsourcing

2005-01-03T19:25:00.000-08:00

PORTLAND, Ore. -- Three years ago, Epson Portland laid off 850 employees -- three-quarters of its work force -- as printer assembly moved to Asia. The Hillsboro company put its newest building up for sale, succumbing to the powerful riptide carrying manufacturing jobs to countries with cheap labor.

Epson appeared poised to vanish from Oregon like other big Japanese manufacturers. Its payroll plunged from 2,400 in 1998, when the state's manufacturing employment peaked, to 250.

But the factory is back, defying outsourcing's centrifugal force. Its payroll has ballooned to 600. It churns out record numbers of printer cartridges. Productivity is up. Defects are down. The factory spits out five times as many cartridges per worker as a sister plant in China.

"The trend to outsource to other countries is coming under question now," says Epson Portland President Dave Graham, a manufacturing veteran who led the comeback. "Companies are realizing that there are hidden costs."

Epson's success story shows that manufacturing needn't always take a one-way trip offshore. While consultants and business professors largely dismiss Epson's turnaround as an anomaly, the plant is not alone. Factories are switching to "lean" manufacturing, the art of making products efficiently, as global competition intensifies.

To Mike Doyle, Oregon Economic and Community Development Department international trade manager, Epson's rebound shows that "the bus marked Southeast Asia" won't necessarily mow down everything in its path. "If you don't see those headlights, that bus is going to hit you," Doyle says. "But you don't have to step on the bus. You can step to the side and still get where you're going, using a different strategy."

As the branch of a Japanese company, Epson Portland was an outsourcing venture when it opened in 1986. The parent firm, Seiko Epson Corp., is a giant that makes everything from watches to computer chips.

The Hillsboro plant, which led a wave of Japanese companies into Oregon, grew into a manufacturing mainstay. But in spring 2001, Seiko Epson moved labor-intensive printer manufacturing from Oregon to Indonesia and China.

Graham, 54, came from the financial side of the operation as Epson Portland's former comptroller. A mechanical engineer, he had spent years troubleshooting factories for Paccar, maker of Kenworth and Peterbilt trucks. He looked on the bright side, saying Epson's layoffs left him with his best employees. He told them the truth: If the plant didn't astronomically improve, they weren't going to be around.

"My mantra was, `If you guys want a future,"' Graham says, "`you're going to have to create it yourselves."'

The workers didn't need convincing, he says. They were hungry for direction.

Graham knew they would have to cut costs, reduce defects, master automation and boost productivity. The assembly-line workers, who make an average of $15 an hour, including benefits, would have to take all these steps at once to compete with Chinese workers, who earn one-sixth as much.

They would survive by boosting the number of cartridges made per worker, ultimately doubling the factory's production. "More throughput -- that's how we compete with the developing countries," Graham says. "I needed to teach the workers that if a line goes down, it changes from adding to your bank account to depleting it. Getting the line back up and running should be a very high priority."

The other big challenge was quality. In 2001, defects forced the plant to scrap 12,000 of every 1 million cartridges produced. Under Graham, the defect rate plunged to 250 per 1 million, astonishing Seiko Epson managers. He credits the increased technical prowess of his workers.

Graham constantly challenges his employees to devise improvements. He shares business results with his workers, who come from about 30 countries. "That way," he says, "I've got 600 more brains working on the same problem."

Case in point: Workers used to pack cartridges into boxes as they came off the assembly line, then remove and inspect them. Two workers automated the counting and sorting process. The $40,000 innovation saves more than $500,000 a year in labor costs.

Graham automated the plant and made it more efficient. Robotic arms emerge from injection-molding machines to place plastic parts in annealing ovens. Pairs of injection machines now share one oven, saving energy and space.

Epson workers traded visits and ideas with other factories, such as a Tillamook Cheese plant. They studied Toyota's famed manufacturing culture.

Hillsboro managers have grown closer to their parent company. Graham traveled repeatedly to Seiko Epson headquarters in Suwa, Japan. "He did a lot of relationship-building," says David Lawrence, Hillsboro deputy city manager. Lawrence, who visited Suwa, saw direct, comfortable communication between the Japanese and the manager of their only U.S. plant.

As a result, the Hillsboro plant more closely resembles a typical Seiko Epson factory.

Instead of expanding their offices to fill space in a large room vacated by printer makers, office workers follow a more Japanese approach, grouping cubicles at one end. Graham wants Seiko Epson executives to see that the 180,000-square-foot factory has room for more work. He also wants the Japanese managers to feel at home. He prominently displays framed photographs of the Japanese with their American colleagues.

Graham says Epson and other companies that outsource abroad encounter unexpected costs moving raw materials around. Firms can save money and time, he says, by manufacturing close to markets.

Global companies make those calculations constantly, says John Mosier, director of worldwide operations for material and logistics at FEI Co. The maker of nanotechnology tools distributes manufacturing among its plants at Hillsboro headquarters and in Massachusetts, Germany, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic.

Tariffs, currency fluctuations, freight charges and other costs can wipe out labor savings abroad, Mosier says. "Those considerations are always in play," he adds. "We look at total delivered cost."

Seiko Epson managers have asked Graham to write a case study explaining how the factory turned itself around. But Graham feels pressure to improve further. Sister plants in England, Mexico, China and Japan are already taking pages from Hillsboro's book, learning to share ovens between injection machines, for example.

"It never lets up," Graham says. "Continuous improvement is our constant mantra, because everyone else is trying to do the same thing, whatever the country."

Dec. 27, 2004

(Richard Read covers international affairs for The Oregonian of Portland, Ore. He can be contacted at richread@aol.com.)

Robocoptes and other developments

2004-12-23T18:07:00.000-08:00

http://www.news.com/

Robocopters dodge obstacles, each other

By Michael Kanellos
http://news.com.com/Robocopters+dodge+obstacles%2C+each+other/2100-7337_3-5502481.html

Story last modified Thu Dec 23 11:49:00 PST 2004

University of California researchers are tinkering with technology that will, ideally, let helicopters fly themselves.

The Berkeley Aerial Robot (BEAR) project passed a significant milestone earlier this month, when a 130-pound model of a helicopter successfully guided itself through a course that included random obstacles that weren't on its internal map--a first, according to the university.

The project, funded in part by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), is part of a larger effort to create robots that can get to places too dangerous or difficult for humans to go.

John Deere and iRobot, for instance, are working on an autonomous ground vehicle that will be able to bring supplies to soldiers at the front lines. Next year, the U.S. Army will deploy a robot car with a machine gun that will drive itself--but a human will be in control of the gun.

While the military is sponsoring much of the research, advocates assert that these vehicles will also be used to deliver medical supplies, phones or food to individuals stranded by an environmental disaster or trapped in a mine shaft.

The recently conducted test was performed to test the system's laser obstacle avoidance system and see how well it would perform at low altitudes in an "urban canyon" environment. In one run, the helicopter guided itself through a grid of 10-foot-high tents. The tents were on the helicopter's internal map, but the machine had to figure out how to avoid them.

In a second run, the location of the tents was not included on the flight path. The laser system feeds information on the new structures to the helicopter's navigation system, which then takes actions to avoid the problem.

Last year, BEAR researchers flew two helicopters at each other in a game of chicken. "They flew toward each other, sensed each other and adjusted their course," said a UC Berkeley spokeswoman.

Experiments are being conducted at various institutions with autonomous fixed-wing planes and helicopters. Each has their advantages and disadvantages. Helicopters can take off from a stationary position. However, because of the environments in which they would be used, the navigation systems need to be more precise.

"Fixed-wing UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) can tolerate less precision in control algorithms because they can glide for a time if something goes wrong," Shankar Sastry, UC Berkeley professor of electrical engineering, said in a prepared statement. "In contrast, helicopters are inherently unstable, so the control inputs need to be exact, and they need to come quickly to keep the helicopter from falling from the sky."

While the obstacle avoidance system tested this month relies on lasers, researchers will start to dedicate more energy to computer vision systems. In these, sensors feed digital images to onboard computers, which then, through probability and artificial intelligence, try to chart a safe course. Computer vision, while more difficult to achieve, potentially will work better because it can provide information about the structure or character of a landing surface.

The BEAR project was founded in 1996 and began to obtain DARPA funding a few years later.

Moravc on robots (SciAm)

2004-12-22T20:32:00.000-08:00

December 20, 2004

You, Robot

He says humans will download their minds into computers one day. With a new robotics firm, Hans Moravec begins the journey from warehouse drones to robo sapiens

By Chip Walter

When word got around that Hans Moravec had founded an honest-to-goodness robotics firm, more than a few eyebrows were raised. Wasn't this the same Carnegie Mellon University scientist who had predicted that we would someday routinely download our minds into robots? And that exponential advances in computing power would cause the human race to invent itself out of a job as robots supplanted us as the planet's most adept and adaptive species? Somehow, creating a company seemed ... uncharacteristically pragmatic.

But Moravec doesn't see it that way. He says he didn't start Seegrid Corporation because he was backing off his predictions. He founded the company because he was planning to help fulfill them. "It was time," he says, slowly rubbing his hand across his bristle-short hair. "The computing power is here."

The 56-year-old Moravec should know. Born in Kautzen, Austria, and raised in Montreal, he has been pushing the envelope on robotics theory and experimentation for the past 35 years, first as the graduate student at Stanford University who created the "Stanford Cart," the first mobile robot capable of seeing and autonomously navigating the world around it (albeit very slowly), and later as a central force in Car-negie Mellon's vaunted Robotics Institute. His iconoclastic theories and inventive work in machine vision have both shocked his colleagues and jump-started research; Seegrid is just the next logical step.

Moravec pulls an image up onto one of the two massive monitors that sit side by side on his desk, like great unblinking eyes. It's six o'clock in the evening, but an inveterate night owl, he's just starting his "day." "I have been drawing these graphs for years about what will be possible," he comments. His mouse roams along dots and images that plot and compare the processing power of old top-of-the-line computers with their biological equivalents. There is the ENIAC, for example, that in 1946 possessed the processing capacity of a bacterium and then a 1990 model IBM PS/2 90 that once harnessed the digital horsepower of a worm. Only recently have desktop computers arrived that can deliver the raw processing muscle of a spider or a guppy (about one billion instructions per second). "At guppy-level intelligence," he explains, "I thought we could manage 3-D mapping and create a robot that could get around pretty well without any special preparation of its environment."

But no one was creating that robot, so in the late 1990s Moravec says he began to grow "very antsy" about getting one built. In 1998 he wrote an ambitious grant proposal that outlined software for a robotic vision system. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency quickly funded the proposal, and three and a half years and $970,000 later, with PCs just reaching guppy smarts, a working demonstration was complete.

"It proved the principle," Moravec says. "We really could map with stereo vision, if we did things just right." But doing things just right required more than prototype software. Robotic evolution, he adds, "has to be driven forward by a lot of trial and error, and the only way to get enough is if you have an industry where one company is trying to outdo another." To help things along, he and Pittsburgh physician and entrepreneur Scott Friedman founded Seegrid in 2003. Their focus: the unglamorous but potentially huge "product handling" market.

Industrial robots already flourish in tightly constrained environments such as assembly lines. Where they fail is in locations loaded with unpredictability. So Seegrid concentrated on creating vision systems that enable simple machines to move supplies around warehouses without any human direction.

Not exactly the stuff of science fiction, Moravec agrees, and a long way from superintelligent robots, but he says you have to start somewhere. Nearly everything sold has to be warehoused at some point, and at some point it also has to be rerouted and shipped. Right now human workers move millions of tons of supplies and products using dollies, pallet jacks and forklifts. Seegrid's first prototype devices automate that work, turning wheeled carts into seeing-eye machines that can be loaded and then walked through various routes to teach them how to navigate on their own. The technology is built on Moravec's bedrock belief that if robots are going to succeed, the world cannot be adapted to them; they have to adapt to the world, just like the rest of us.

Other approaches can guide robots, but they typically rely on costly, precision hardware such as laser range finders or on extravagant arrangements that prewire and preprogram the machines to move through controlled spaces. Seegrid's system uses off-the-shelf CCD cameras and simple sonar and infrared sensors. Although these components gather imprecise information, the software compensates. It statistically compares the gathered data to develop a clean, accurate 3-D map. "If the same information keeps coming up, then the program decides that it's probably really there," Moravec explains. The robot then knows to stop or roll around it. This approach is how you might make your way through a dark room with a flashlight, in which you slowly build up a mental picture of what is around.

Creating warehouse drones as a first step toward the startling robotic world Moravec foresees might seem an unlikely concession to reality. But those who know Moravec say it is no surprise: he is an unusual mix of whimsy, wild vision and rigorous pragmatism. He has been known to be so lost in thought during his daily walks to his office that he bumps into mailboxes, yet none of that eccentricity has tarnished his reputation as a first-rate engineer and programmer.

"Some of Hans's ideas are pretty outrageous," admits Raj Reddy, who as director of the Robotics Institute brought Moravec to Carnegie Mellon in 1980, "but his work has always been very practical." Seegrid co-founder Friedman says it is exactly Moravec's vision and dogged persistence that separates him from the pack: "He's a genius, and he works hard."

The same themes run through his view of the future of robotics. Evolution moves in tiny steps, Moravec notes, but accomplishes amazing things. Machine evolution will do the same as it incrementally nudges robots from their clumsy beginnings to the heights of human-level intelligence and mobility. "We don't need a lot of Einsteins to do this; we need a lot of engineers working diligently to make little improvements and then test them out in the marketplace," Moravec insists. And that, he says, will ultimately lead to robots becoming vastly more intelligent and adaptable than we are.

That seems to leave us only one destination: the endangered species list. "Something like 99 percent of all species go extinct," Moravec observes. Why, he asks, should we be any different? Not that he sees us being destroyed by what he calls our "mind children" exactly. "It's not going to be like Terminator," he reassures. But children do often exceed the accomplishments of their parents. And in our evolutionary dotage, he is sure they will take good care of us, as parents' children often do. "They will create the perfect welfare state," he says.

At least, we hope so.

Home brew exoskeleton

2004-12-22T18:10:00.000-08:00

In the back of Carlos Owens' southern Alaska yard, an 18-foot-tall steel robot is taking shape in the dim light of the winter afternoons.

The 26-year-old Owens is an Anchorage-area steelworker by day. In his own time, he's hoping to become the creator of a true "mecha"--not a robot, exactly, but a gigantic exoskeleton that can transform its wearer's motions into eight-foot strides and the devastating sweep of a steel fist.

Sure, it sounds like a cartoon or sci-fi fantasy--but so were moon landings 50 years ago. Owens' mecha project is well on its way to completion, its horned red head and pincher hands towering above its creator under a few inches of snow. He's hoping to finish it in time for a test spin at the local drag racetrack next summer, demolishing a few cars to show off its capabilities.

"This is a concept that's been around for a long time," Owens said in a telephone interview. "But I'm not going to wait for the other guy to come out and make it when I've got the capability to do it myself."

The project is a tinkerer's dream, a homegrown technological mania in the same better-judgment-be-damned spirit as the Homebrew Computer Club that ultimately gave birth to Apple Computer and Silicon Valley's microcomputer industry. In Owens' case, the scale simply happens to be more macro than micro.

He's drawing from an imaginative well that has inspired big corporations and the U.S. military, as well as innumerable video game developers and Hollywood directors over the years. A Japanese manga, or comic book, called "Tetsujin 28-go" was published in the late 1950s featuring the adventures of a giant robot, and was ultimately animated and released in the United States as "Gigantor." Hundreds of Japanese anime cartoons such as "Robotech" or "Mobile Suit Gundam" later featured giant robots, often controlled by human pilots.

"I'm not going to wait for the other guy to come out and make it when I've got the capability to do it myself."

--Carlos Owens, steelworker and mecha creator

It's been a common theme in U.S. science fiction, too, although typically on a more human scale. Robert Heinlein's 1959 novel "Starship Troopers," and the 1997 film made from the book, featured soldiers with powerful exoskeletal armor that dramatically augmented their strength. Sigourney Weaver's character in "Aliens" fights wearing something a little like what Owens is trying to build, and powered armor made a prominent appearance in last year's "Matrix Revolutions."

Efforts to replicate these tools in the real world have been less than successful, however. The U.S. Navy and General Electric collaborated on an exoskeleton project in the late 1960s, coming up with the cumbersome Hardiman prototype, a massive steel frame intended to be strapped onto its users' arms and legs to help them lift up to 1,500 pounds.

The GE project operators never got more than one arm working, however, and the project died in the early 1970s.

Backyard builder
Owens is a soft-spoken former Army heavy equipment mechanic who describes his improbable project in a matter-of-fact voice, as though talking about putting a new transmission into a used pickup truck. The son of an Air Force officer, he was born in the Philippines and moved around for years as a child before winding up outside Anchorage.

He's always had an eye for huge projects, and an inventor's itch. He built a 35-foot wooden version of his mecha when he was 19, he said, as a sculpture project because he couldn't afford the materials to make it function. The latest project, drawing on his experience in the Army and as a steelworker, is more ambitious.

"With the mecha I wanted to do something different than what everyone else was doing. It's hard to invent something new."

--Carlos Owens

"I've always been building things," he said. "But with the mecha I wanted to do something different than what everyone else was doing. It's hard to invent something new."

When completed, the idea is for the pilot to be able to strap himself into a central, padded compartment, and then control the mecha with the motions of his own body. When the pilot walks, the mecha walks. Raise an arm and open a hand, and the mecha does the same, with 46 possible movements planned.

Owens said he can't afford top-of-the line equipment, like infrared sensors and electronics that would govern the motion. Instead he's using a hydraulic system to transfer the motion of his limbs to the larger structure, and a gas engine mounted on the back to generate the power needed. In all, the system can exert about 3,500 pounds per square inch, or more than enough to set his ton and a half creation in motion, he said.

One of the trickiest problems is balance. Lying in a giant, potentially lethal robot that can't get up after falling down would be no good to anyone, and so he's made sure the lower half weighs far more than the upper, along with other design modifications, he said.

In all, the materials for the project have cost him $15,000 so far. Not bad for a killing (or at least potentially flame-throwing, car-mashing) machine.

That's a lot less than the $50 million that the U.S. military, through its Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) division, has devoted to research into a smaller, lighter exoskeleton that can be used on the battlefield.

DARPA has been pursuing the idea of a "Starship Troopers"-inspired soldier at least since 2000, when it started its Exoskeletons for Human Performance Augmentation program.

"This technology will extend the mission payload and/or mission range of the soldier and increase the lethality and survivability of ground troops for short-range missions and special operations," the agency says on its Web site. The project's director did not return a call for comment.

Early this year, a University of California, Berkeley, team unveiled the first fruit of the DARPA research with its BLEEX (Berkeley Lower Extremity Exoskeleton) system, which resembles a set of leg braces and a big backpack. The system allows users to carry extremely heavy packs without abnormal exertion, or could help people with atrophied or poor muscles to walk normally.

In the short term, Owens is more interested in the entertainment value of an 18-foot monster crushing cars, or fighting others like it. Assuming he can make it work--still a big assumption--he wants funding to build more and to develop the project using top-of-the-line materials instead of backyard shortcuts.

"The racetrack is never quite enough. The die-hards will always come, but everyone else is looking for something new and different. I think this qualifies."

--Karen Lackey, racetrack owner

Karen Lackey, who co-owns the local racetrack with her husband (and was once Owens' English teacher), said she's eager to let Owens show off his project when it's ready. An 18-foot-tall steel figure stalking around the circle, shooting flames from its fists and crushing cars would certainly sell tickets, she said.

"I think it would have a lot of public appeal," Lackey said. "The racetrack is never quite enough. The die-hards will always come, but everyone else is looking for something new and different. I think this qualifies."

Owens foresees a day when tools like his might be used on the battlefield instead of tanks, or dropped into the middle of a raging forest fire to help firefighters. But for now, the trick is to simply make the mecha take its first few steps with him inside, a crucial test he's hoping to pull off in a few months.

"It's like trying to invent the wheel from scratch," he said. "I want everything to go smoothly. When I take it out on the track, there are going to be about 3,000 or more people out there, and I'm just trying to avoid any embarrassing moments."

What's new in robotics (VG!)

2004-12-22T18:02:00.000-08:00

Recent Exciting Advances in Robotics

Robotics news are dominated these days by the $100 Robosapien toy or by the latest version of Honda's ASIMO, that you will never been able to buy, even if you put a cool US$1 million on the table. But other recent news are worth mentioning. In Florida, according to the Miami Herald (free subscription), a small company is developing a robotic arm for surgeons which could save the healthcare industry $15 billion a year. And did you know that solar-powered autonomous underwater robots are now monitoring the waters of Lake George, N.Y.? On the other coast, PARC's pliable 'polybots' will reconfigure themselves to act independently on earthquake scenes or in space. And in New Zealand, robot experts are creating servants of the future able to serve us the drink we want. Elsewhere, in Korea, the government wants to deploy two-legged networked robots in post offices later this year. In a long interview to the Korea Times, Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) professor Raj Reddy says the network-based robot is a great idea. Read more...

Please read all the articles linked above for more informatio. Below are only essential excerpts and pictures.

Let's start with the robotic arm from Z-KAT.

The new firm is using technology licensed from Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Artificial Intelligence Lab. ''This is what they call haptic robotics,'' says Ferre. ''It is a human interactive tool,'' so that the surgeon holding the arm has the touch and feel just as if her own fingers were holding the instrument.

The key is that the small arm can do a knee replacement with an inch-long incision, compared with cuts of 7 to 12 inches for traditional surgery.

The arm, trademarked as Tactical Guidance System, must be approved by the Food and Drug Administration, which Ferre expects to happen fairly quickly because the FDA has already given approval to a more basic version of the arm.

The robotic arm, which is held by Z-KAT CEO, Maurice R. Ferre, should hit the market in early 2006 and be used first for knee and hip work. (Credit: J. Albert Diaz, Miami Herald)

Now, let's look at what Rensselaer researchers are doing with solar underwater robots.

A collaborative group of researchers are conducting experiments with underwater robots at Rensselaer's Darrin Fresh Water Institute (DFWI) on Lake George, N.Y., as part of the RiverNet project, an NSF-funded initiative. The group is working to develop a network of distributed sensing devices and water-monitoring robots, including solar-powered autonomous underwater vehicles (SAUVs), for detection of chemical and biological trends that may guide the management and improvement of water quality.

Here is a picture of this solar-powered robot (Credits: Art Sanderson, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and D. Richard Blidberg, Autonomous Undersea Systems Institute)

[Additional note: you'll find all the details about the experiments done between October 17 and 22, 2004 here.]

In particular, watch how an intrepid researcher was catching the robot at the end of its mission on October 20, 2004 (Credit: Autonomous Undersea Systems Institute)

PARC's modular reconfigurable robots, or polybots are an entirely different story. Sometimes, they're called morphing or mutating robots, but why would you use these reconfigurable robots?

"The problem with a conventional robot is you spend a lot of money building this one robot that does one task very well," says Craig Eldershaw, [a research engineer at PARC (Palo Alto Research Center).] "A modular robot can change its shape to adapt to a particular job. To wash dishes, it needs small delicate arms and fingers. For gardening, it could have a couple big strong arms to hold a shovel and big treads to move through mud."

That kind of robotic domestic help is as much as three decades away, he acknowledges. But experimental search-and-rescue bots could be deployed in earthquake- or bomb-racked buildings within the next few years, he says.

Morphing robots also could become space explorers.

PARC recently took on a long-term NASA contract to develop a robotic arm that could move around the outside of a next-generation space shuttle freely and convert itself into several arms or a claw if the need arises. "Think in-space construction or assembly," Mr. Eldershaw says. "Any time you can prevent someone having to go out into space in a suit you've won a lot of friends at NASA."

Mark Yim, a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania who set up the modular robotics research group at PARC after completing his doctorate at Stanford, is leading a team that has taken on a NASA contract to build a morphing Mars explorer. To demonstrate the robot's ability to assist with human life support, the experimental robot will be given the task of growing and nurturing a small plant inside a sealed environmental chamber.

It's time to move to another continent, and to robots willing to serve us our favorite cocktails -- maybe not this year -- but in a foreseenable future.

"(In) 15 years' time, I'd estimate something like this would serve drinks," says Australian Tribotix robotics and electronics company engineering manager Steve Mitchell, putting a humanoid-shaped robot through its paces, literally. They'll be that common."

He remote-controls the 30cm-tallrobot and fascinated conference-goers cluster, watching it walk, bend forward and backward and move its arms, legs, torso and head independently. It can also slide skiing-style and perform acrobatics such as headstands.

Here, Tribotix engineering manager Steve Mitchell shows robots like this will be serving drinks in 30-years time. (Credit: Murrary Wilson, Manawatu Standard, New Zealand)

Meanwhile, Korea is introducing a competitor with Honda's Asimo. The 1.2-meter-tall KHR-3, which weighs roughly 55 kilograms, can walk by using 41 built-in motors and numerous joints and can also shake hands or lift objects with its five-fingered hands.

The 1.2-meter-tall KHR-3 will soon welcome you at Korea post offices (Credit: The Korea Times)

Korea's officials also think they're fast catching Japanese in robotics.

"In order to understand the humanoid development, we must split two facets of the mechanics and intelligence. Mechanically, we lag behind Japan 2-3 years, but we are almost on par with the country in intelligence," a project manager said.

These robots will be introduced next year in five different projects, three for home usage and two for post offices.

To conclude this long post, I just want to say I was disappointed by the Korea Times's interview of Raj Reddy, a person I really respect. His interview looks like a press release, very different from what you can read in a recent effort he made for promoting $250 computing devices for developing countries.

Sources: John Dorschner, The Miami Herald, December 6, 2004; Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, December 6, 2004; Janet Rae-Dupree, Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal, December 10, 2004; Lee Matthews, Manawatu Standard, New Zealand, December 10, 2004; Kim Tae-gyu, The Korea Times, November 23 and December 19, 2004; Byron Spice, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, September 20, 2004

Related stories can be found in the following categories.

AI
Environment
Medicine
Robotics

10:29:09 PM Permalink Comments [0] Trackback [1]

Robots with genes

2004-12-21T18:14:00.000-08:00

Professor Kim Jong-Hwan believes people will one day keep robots as pets. Picture / Mark Mitchell

14.12.04
By SIMON COLLINS

Korean scientists have created the world's first "artificial species" - a robot with genes that it can pass on to other robots.

Professor Kim Jong-Hwan, already known as the creator of "robot football", has developed 14 artificial chromosomes that he says will determine robots' "personality".

He believes that within 20 years lonely people will use their personal robots to keep them company, replacing cats and dogs.

"If you come back to your home after work, the robot will greet you and you can talk to him like a friend," he said.

"For example, a senior person who is living alone might feel loneliness. If they use their pet robot, they will feel more comfortable."

Dr Kim is in New Zealand as the keynote speaker at the second international conference on "autonomous robots and agents".

He believes that robots are on the brink of the kind of takeoff that transformed computing with the invention of the personal computer 22 years ago.

Robots costing less than US$200 ($283) are already available to vacuum your house, the Americans are using robots to search buildings for terrorists in Iraq, and Dr Kim believes New Zealand will soon use robots to pick kiwifruit.

"In the very near future, personal robots will be in our houses like personal computers," he said.

He has used sports to help robots capture the public imagination, and believes the next step is to give them the ability to pass on their "genes".

"The artificial chromosome is a software system. It means that the information - their 'genes' - can be easily sent to other robots," he said.

"So if I send the chromosomes to another robot, that robot can then reproduce by itself. In that sense the robots will be created by the 'genes'. The personality of robots will be created by artificial genes."

Dr Kim believes there is no danger that such self-reproducing robots will take over the world as portrayed in movies such as this year's blockbuster I, Robot.

"If we design the chromosomes quite safely, then we can avoid such a bad situation," he said.

* Prof Kim gives a public lecture at 7pm on Thursday, Room QA1, Quadrangle Building A, Gate 1, Massey University, Albany.

New version of Asimo

2004-12-15T13:54:00.000-08:00

Wednesday December 15, 3:06 PM

Walking, talking Honda robot learns new trick: Jogging

The walking, talking child-size robot from Honda Motor Co. now manages an easy, although comical, jog _ the latest in the Japanese automaker's quest to imitate human movement.

The 130-centimeter-tall (51-inch-tall), bubble-headed robot added a couple of infrared cameras and a sensor to better absorb shock and keep its balance for a steady, mechanical-looking run at a slow pace of 3 kilometers (1.86 miles) an hour in a demonstration Wednesday at a Honda facility.

The robot called Asimo, a take on the Japanese word for "leg" or "ashi," debuted four years ago and has undergone several upgrades.

The latest has a rotating hip that counters the impact of landing on the ground when running _ an activity that's different from walking in that both feet must be off the ground in a hop at a given point in time.

The new Asimo is a bit smarter, loaded with a CPU equivalent of about five personal computers, and can dodge people and other obstacles in its path when moving to an instructed destination, forming its own route according to a map program inside its brain.

Although Asimo has already climbed up and down stairs and carried on simple conversations with voice-recognition capability, it still can't step over things in its way or run up and down slopes, Honda officials said.

The new machine moves about twice as fast as the previous model, which walked at a speed of 1.6 kilometers (1 mile) per hour.

The upgrade also has a sensor in its wrist so it can be led by the hand with a pull and walks backward if it's slightly nudged with a push.

Honda engineer Masato Hirose said the key feature is its ability to kick while keeping its balance, a trick it accomplishes by tilting and swerving its hips to prevent slipping and sliding _ a critical skill in running.

Hirose said Asimo's run was more human than what was achieved by a smaller robot from Japanese electronics and entertainment giant Sony Corp.

Reporters watched Sony's robot Qrio run for the first time last year. But its jog resembled a series of jiggling jumps.

Japan is one of the leading nations in the world in robotics. Besides Sony, other companies and universities have created companions or security robots for the home. Robots that look less human are used extensively in manufacturing plants.

The new Asimo also gained a moving thumb and is smart enough to reach toward an extended hand, delivering a more realistic handshake _ an asset for its job as ambassador for Honda. In the past, a person had to find Asimo's mechanical hand.

Asimo has rung the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange, accompanied the prime minister on an overseas trip and shaken hands with dignitaries. It's not for sale.

What Honda really wants is a robot that can help with tasks.

Honda is hoping Asimo will be running errands, delivering relatively light things such as in-office mail, working side by side with Honda employees perhaps by 2010, said Takanobu Ito, a managing director.

But Asimo is not about to replace auto workers at Honda plants any time soon.

Robotic Limbs

2004-12-14T14:40:00.000-08:00

Monday, December 13, 2004

Bionic limbs
Researchers from MIT, Brown University, and the Providence Veterans Affair Medical Center are launching a $7.2 million, five-year effort to develop bionic limbs:

"At the end of the project, the scientists hope to have created "biohybrid" limbs that will use regenerated tissue, lengthened bone, titanium prosthetics and implantable sensors that allow an amputee to use nerves and brain signals to move the arm or leg."

Link

Personal Mobility Robots

2004-12-13T13:09:00.000-08:00

From the Beeb:

Robotic pods take on car design

By Lakshmi Sandhana

The i-unit can move upright at low speeds

A new breed of wearable robotic vehicles that envelop drivers are being developed by Japanese car giant Toyota.

The company's vision for the single passenger in the 21st Century involves the driver cruising by in a four-wheeled leaf-like device or strolling along encased in an egg-shaped cocoon that walks upright on two feet.

Both these prototypes will be demonstrated, along with other concept vehicles and helper robots, at the Toyota stand at the Expo 2005 in Aichi, Japan, in March 2005.

The models are being positioned as so-called personal mobility devices, which have few limits.

The open leaf-like "i-unit" vehicle is the latest version of the concept which the company introduced last year.

Built using environmentally friendly plant-based materials, the single passenger unit is equipped with intelligent transport system technologies that allow for safe autopilot driving in specially equipped lanes.

The model allows the user to make tight on-the-spot turns, move upright amongst other people at low speeds and can be easily switched into a reclining position at higher speeds.

Body colours can be customized to suit individual preferences and a personal recognition system offers both information and music.

'Innovative ideas'

December 20, 2004

You, Robot

He says humans will download their minds into computers one day. With a new robotics firm, Hans Moravec begins the journey from warehouse drones to robo sapiens

By Chip Walter

When word got around that Hans Moravec had founded an honest-to-goodness robotics firm, more than a few eyebrows were raised. Wasn't this the same Carnegie Mellon University scientist who had predicted that we would someday routinely download our minds into robots? And that exponential advances in computing power would cause the human race to invent itself out of a job as robots supplanted us as the planet's most adept and adaptive species? Somehow, creating a company seemed ... uncharacteristically pragmatic. But Moravec doesn't see it that way. He says he didn't start Seegrid Corporation because he was backing off his predictions. He founded the company because he was planning to help fulfill them. "It was time," he says, slowly rubbing his hand across his bristle-short hair. "The computing power is here." The 56-year-old Moravec should know. Born in Kautzen, Austria, and raised in Montreal, he has been pushing the envelope on robotics theory and experimentation for the past 35 years, first as the graduate student at Stanford University who created the "Stanford Cart," the first mobile robot capable of seeing and autonomously navigating the world around it (albeit very slowly), and later as a central force in Car-negie Mellon's vaunted Robotics Institute. His iconoclastic theories and inventive work in machine vision have both shocked his colleagues and jump-started research; Seegrid is just the next logical step. Moravec pulls an image up onto one of the two massive monitors that sit side by side on his desk, like great unblinking eyes. It's six o'clock in the evening, but an inveterate night owl, he's just starting his "day." "I have been drawing these graphs for years about what will be possible," he comments. His mouse roams along dots and images that plot and compare the processing power of old top-of-the-line computers with their biological equivalents. There is the ENIAC, for example, that in 1946 possessed the processing capacity of a bacterium and then a 1990 model IBM PS/2 90 that once harnessed the digital horsepower of a worm. Only recently have desktop computers arrived that can deliver the raw processing muscle of a spider or a guppy (about one billion instructions per second). "At guppy-level intelligence," he explains, "I thought we could manage 3-D mapping and create a robot that could get around pretty well without any special preparation of its environment." But no one was creating that robot, so in the late 1990s Moravec says he began to grow "very antsy" about getting one built. In 1998 he wrote an ambitious grant proposal that outlined software for a robotic vision system. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency quickly funded the proposal, and three and a half years and $970,000 later, with PCs just reaching guppy smarts, a working demonstration was complete. "It proved the principle," Moravec says. "We really could map with stereo vision, if we did things just right." But doing things just right required more than prototype software. Robotic evolution, he adds, "has to be driven forward by a lot of trial and error, and the only way to get enough is if you have an industry where one company is trying to outdo another." To help things along, he and Pittsburgh physician and entrepreneur Scott Friedman founded Seegrid in 2003. Their focus: the unglamorous but potentially huge "product handling" market. Industrial robots already flourish in tightly constrained environments such as assembly lines. Where they fail is in locations loaded with unpredictability. So Seegrid concentrated on creating vision systems that enable simple machines to move supplies around warehouses without any human direction. Not exactly the stuff of science fiction, Moravec agrees, and a long way from superintelligent robots, but he says you have to start somewhere. Nearly everything sold has to be warehoused at some point, and at some point it also has to be rerouted and shipped. Right now human workers move millions of tons of supplies and products using dollies, pallet jacks and forklifts. Seegrid's first prototype devices automate that work, turning wheeled carts into seeing-eye machines that can be loaded and then walked through various routes to teach them how to navigate on their own. The technology is built on Moravec's bedrock belief that if robots are going to succeed, the world cannot be adapted to them; they have to adapt to the world, just like the rest of us. Other approaches can guide robots, but they typically rely on costly, precision hardware such as laser range finders or on extravagant arrangements that prewire and preprogram the machines to move through controlled spaces. Seegrid's system uses off-the-shelf CCD cameras and simple sonar and infrared sensors. Although these components gather imprecise information, the software compensates. It statistically compares the gathered data to develop a clean, accurate 3-D map. "If the same information keeps coming up, then the program decides that it's probably really there," Moravec explains. The robot then knows to stop or roll around it. This approach is how you might make your way through a dark room with a flashlight, in which you slowly build up a mental picture of what is around. Creating warehouse drones as a first step toward the startling robotic world Moravec foresees might seem an unlikely concession to reality. But those who know Moravec say it is no surprise: he is an unusual mix of whimsy, wild vision and rigorous pragmatism. He has been known to be so lost in thought during his daily walks to his office that he bumps into mailboxes, yet none of that eccentricity has tarnished his reputation as a first-rate engineer and programmer. "Some of Hans's ideas are pretty outrageous," admits Raj Reddy, who as director of the Robotics Institute brought Moravec to Carnegie Mellon in 1980, "but his work has always been very practical." Seegrid co-founder Friedman says it is exactly Moravec's vision and dogged persistence that separates him from the pack: "He's a genius, and he works hard." The same themes run through his view of the future of robotics. Evolution moves in tiny steps, Moravec notes, but accomplishes amazing things. Machine evolution will do the same as it incrementally nudges robots from their clumsy beginnings to the heights of human-level intelligence and mobility. "We don't need a lot of Einsteins to do this; we need a lot of engineers working diligently to make little improvements and then test them out in the marketplace," Moravec insists. And that, he says, will ultimately lead to robots becoming vastly more intelligent and adaptable than we are. That seems to leave us only one destination: the endangered species list. "Something like 99 percent of all species go extinct," Moravec observes. Why, he asks, should we be any different? Not that he sees us being destroyed by what he calls our "mind children" exactly. "It's not going to be like Terminator," he reassures. But children do often exceed the accomplishments of their parents. And in our evolutionary dotage, he is sure they will take good care of us, as parents' children often do. "They will create the perfect welfare state," he says. At least, we hope so.