Today's Cyborgs Get An Eyeful
elcom.co.uk - 7/4/01
Thad Starner is lying flat on his back on his office couch, staring at the ceiling. Don't bother him. He's working.
A fascinating article giving a view of the future from USA Today.
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e-Newspaper: Record Searchlight - Redding.com News SHNS Science & Technology
Me and my robot ...
Tom Kisken
Scripps Howard News Service
Adonis dances the Macarena to show how robots can simulate human movement.
Goggle-eyed Kismet is programmed to express lip-clenching anger and eyebrows-arched surprise.
And University of Southern California researchers work on teaching robots teamwork so they can cooperatively build a shelter to house astronauts on Mars.
Some academicians predict the day when machines evolve into feeling, intelligent, decision-making humanoids is still a century away. But others suggest that within 20 years robots could be built as companions for special-needs children or as caretakers that remind home-bound seniors to take medication.
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PINO the Humanoid Robot
Reasons for Designing the Humanoid Robot
What reasons are there for designing the humanoid a robot? Existing humanoid robot research centers on either the development of a humanoid machine from a mechanical engineering approach or, conversely, an analytic machine by which the mechanisms of thought ? or intelligence can be simulated and put into effect by a freely moving body reacting to diverse sensory information.
However disparate the means by which humanoid robot research has evolved, both are concerned with the human form as representative of its mechanical features. Aesthetics, we believe, will play an even larger role in the design requirements of the robot in order to grow as an industry the way automobiles and computers have evolved ? the aesthetic element playing a pivotal role in establishing harmonious co-existence between the consumer and the product. Accordingly, research that employs an element of aesthetics was considered also as a technological issue and inseparable from the robot’s primary mechanical functions.
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Expert urges people to think differently about our robot allies
By SACHIKO HIRAO
Staff writer

While the robot craze that has gripped Japan may give the impression that our future mechanical friends will resemble humans or animals, Takeo Kanade thinks otherwise.

Director of the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Kanade predicts that robots will increasingly become a feature in ordinary people's lives.
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Dances with Robots: Science News Online, June 30, 2001
The military is betting millions that technology can turn soldiers into superhumans
Peter Weiss
The legs of an aluminum skeleton hang from Homayoon Kazerooni's backpack, its feet bolted to his boots. The lanky metal framework is part of an experimental robot, powered by a chain saw engine, that rides piggyback on Kazerooni, a mechanical engineering professor at the University of California, Berkeley. He's trying to walk with the contraption, which weighs as much as a grown man. As long as the engine is on, the robot walks with him, and he doesn't even feel the extra weight.
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TORNADO-INSIDER.COM - News - Giotto, The Human-eyed Robot
29 June 2001 9:01
By Luca Fornovo
Robots will see with human eyes and on mobile phones will display live, high-definition images, at a low cost. The promise of these revolutions in the world of robotics and mobile communications is made by Giotto, a special sensor conceived and designed in such a way as to resemble the retina of the human eye.
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Expert: Robots may not be able to feel emotions, but some can show them
By Byron Spice
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Reid Simmons has created a robot that negotiates campus hallways, and a spacefaring robot that charted its own course to a distant asteroid. He has designed robots to operate autonomously. He has taught robots to work in teams.
But he has never programmed a robot to love. To fake love, maybe, but never to experience emotion.
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The Seattle Times: Arts & Entertainment: Kubrick wanted real robot as star of 'A.I.'
By Mike Szymanski
Zap2it.com
HOLLYWOOD - The late Stanley Kubrick wanted to build an actual robotic mechanical boy in order to make the movie "A.I. Artificial Intelligence."
The reason? The ultra-meticulous director feared a real boy would grow up too fast before he finished the picture.
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