Droid Builders Net

Nice video of various animal inspired robots, the last one is not so much animal as it is collective mind inspired.

Check out this cool and rather funny demonstration of a modular robot reassembling itself upon being kicked by an evil human.

A BBC News crew went to Germany to try ‘s Baggers, the robotized, fully automated restaurant in which there’s not a single waiter in sight and plates float over your head on steel rails to reach your seat, Futurama-style. And apparently, they loved it.

• Fully Automated Robo-Restaurant Tested (Verdict: Delicious, Fun, No Bloody Tips)

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Astronauts bound for orbit this week will dabble in science fiction, assembling a “monstrous” two-armed space station robot that will rise like Frankenstein from its transport bed.

Putting together Dextre, the robot, will be one of the main jobs for the seven Endeavour astronauts, who are scheduled to blast off in the wee hours of Tuesday, less than three weeks after the last shuttle flight.

They’re also delivering the first piece of Japan’s massive Kibo space station lab, a float-in closet for storing tools, experiments and spare parts. For the first time, each of the five major international space station partners will own a piece of the real estate.

• Wired News: Astronauts Will Assemble Robot in Space

“The 2007 installment of RoboCup has begun; individual events opened to the public today. RoboCup is an international robotics symposium and competition whose goal is to advance the fields of robotics and artificial intelligence to the point that in 2050 a robot soccer team can defeat the human world champions. This year, RoboCup is located on the Georgia Tech campus in Atlanta, GA, marking the first time a university is hosting it and only the second time since it began in 1993 that it is located in the United States.”

• Slashdot | RoboCup 2007 Opens At Georgia Tech

I am extremely excited to break even more good news today; Pleo pre-orders started today!!

After quickly converting the dollar price to danish kroner (DKK) I immediate went to order it, BAM!!! I was hit by a brick in the head, when reading this:

We ship to addresses in the United States.

Oh no!! Pleo is hatching but he can’t swim yet, thus it would not be safe to make him swim that long way across the ocean to Europe. Now once again, ill go to sleep crying for six months.. But stay put Pleo, I’ll be waiting by the beach when you finally arrive!

UPDATE: I got this response from Ugobe support, not much — but something;

“At this time, UGOBE is only taking pre-orders for addresses in the United States. UGOBE’s distributor for Denmark is Top Toy. Please contact them for information on ordering Pleo in your country.”

• PleoWorld

Good news robotics freaks! Today NASA JPL released a version of their robotics framework for the public.

CLARAty is the Coupled Layer Architecture for Robotic Autonomy. The first release of its software, version 0.10-beta, is now available publicly at http://claraty.jpl.nasa.gov.

CLARAty is an integrated framework for reusable robotic software. It defines interfaces for common robotic functionality and integrates multiple implementations of any given functionality. Examples of such capabilities include pose estimation, navigation, locomotion and planning. In addition to supporting multiple algorithms, it provides adaptations to multiple robotic platforms. CLARAty development was primarily funded by the Mars Technology Program and it serves as the integration environment for the program’s rover technology developments.

With this release, a total of 44 CLARAty modules (~100K lines of code) are now available under the JPL Open Source License. This release is intended to share with the robotics community some of the core robotic modules which were jointly developed with NASA Ames Research Center, Carnegie Mellon, and University of Minnesota. This first release represents about 10% of all CLARAty modules and 30% of the generic modules planned for future release.

Primary functionality in these modules includes math infrastructure, rotation matrices with Euler angles, quaternions, and coordinate transformations (interoperable homogeneous and quaternion transforms). It also includes the coordinate frame infrastructure that connect transformations and mechanisms with moving parts. Additionally, you will find mechanism models for wheeled, legged and hybrid vehicles. Other modules include device and device group infrastructure with support for generic digital and analog I/O, cameras, and motors. Several modules in this release provide vision infrastructure for images, color images, camera models, 3D point cloud, and surface normal image representations.

• CLARAty  Website
• NASA JPL Press Release

“The New York Times is running an interesting article about how human memory works and the theorized adaptive nature of forgetfulness”.

From the article,

“Whether drawing a mental blank on a new A.T.M. password, a favorite recipe or an old boyfriend, people have ample opportunity every day to curse their own forgetfulness. But forgetting is also a blessing, and researchers reported on Sunday that the ability to block certain memories reduces the demands on the brain when it is trying to recall something important. The study, appearing in the journal Nature Neuroscience, is the first to record visual images of people’s brains as they suppress distracting memories. The more efficiently that study participants were tuning out irrelevant words during a word-memorization test, the sharper the drop in activity in areas of their brains involved in recollection. Accurate remembering became easier, in terms of the energy required.”

• Slashdot | Forgetting May be Part of the Remembering Process

“Computer scientists at the University of Southern California USC have developed DEFACTO, a training program which uses artificial intelligence AI to help firefighters practice simulated emergency situations. The system is currently used by the Los Angeles Fire Department. DEFACTO has committees of AI agents which can create disaster scenarios with images and maps seen in 3-D by the trainees. The software agents also evaluate the trainees answers and help them to take better decisions. As said one LAFD captain, You can see if youre heading toward a mistake much more quickly. Read more for additional details about this AI project and a photo of a LAFD Fire Captain using the system.”

• Slashdot | Using AI to Train Firefighters