Droid Builders Net

In light of the news of Robonaut 2 soon to depart for International Space Station (ISS) we have come up with some possible outcomes of this mission.

Robot wrecks havoc on the international space station. It refuses to cooperate, and wants to be able to reproduce, or it will cut life support

Female astronaut being held captive in storage unit by mad R2 droid unit in love

R2 unit on ISS refuses to work after discovering Facebook

Robot feeling utterly depressed by space and refuses to do spacewalks

R2 unit has left for The Moon

R2 unit has joined Star Wars fan page on Facebook

R2 unit wants to play SWTOR and refuses to work

R2 refuses to work until its restraining bolts are removed

R2 unit is asking who am I, and refuses to work before being answered; “Why do I have no legs?”

R2 was quoted saying: “I promise i’ll work after watching complete series of Friends”

Read the rest of this entry →

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

“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

An ethical code to prevent humans abusing robots, and vice versa, is being drawn up by South Korea.

The Robot Ethics Charter will cover standards for users and manufacturers and will be released later in 2007. It is being put together by a five member team of experts that includes futurists and a science fiction writer.The South Korean government has identified robotics as a key economic driver and is pumping millions of dollars into research. “The government plans to set ethical guidelines concerning the roles and functions of robots as robots are expected to develop strong intelligence in the near future,” the ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy said.

• BBC NEWS | Technology | Robotic age poses ethical dilemma

“Jeff Hawkins is best known for founding Palm Computing and Handspring, but for the last eighteen months he’s been working on his third company, Numenta. In his 2005 book, On Intelligence, Hawkins laid out a theoretical framework describing how the neocortex processes sensory inputs and provides outputs back to the body. Numenta’s goal is to build a software model of the human brain capable of face recognition, object identification, driving, and other tasks currently best undertaken by humans. For an overview see Hawkins’ 2005 presentation at UC Berkeley. It includes a demonstration of an early version of the software that can recognize handwritten letters and distinguish between stick figure dogs and cats. White papers are available at Numenta’s website. Numenta wisely decided to build a community of developers rather than trying to make everything proprietary. Yesterday they released the first version of their free development platform and the source code for their algorithms to anyone who wants to download it.”

• Slashdot | Jeff Hawkins’ Cortex Sim Platform Available

If you are building big bots, why not just go all the way? Win DARPA Urban Challenge and score $2 Million cash prize!

December 8, 2006. DARPA Finalizes 2007 Urban Challenge Cash Prize Levels Top Three Finishers to Receive $2 Million, $1 Million and $500,000 Prizes The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) will give $2 million, $1 million and $500,000 awards to the top three finishers that complete the course within the sixhour time limit in the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge for autonomous robotic ground vehicles, competition organizers announced today.

DARPA’s original cash prize authority for the first two Grand Challenges expired with the passage of the John Warner National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007. DARPA had planned to award trophies to the top three finishers in the Urban Challenge, but Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Kenneth J. Krieg approved $2 million, $1 million, and $500,000 cash prizes for the first, second and third teams to complete the Urban Challenge’s 60 miles within six hours.

• Darpa Grand Challenge