Robotic ‘William’ and ‘Mary’ cruise campus

Both Mary and William are taken across campus as the robotic researchers teach the devices to recognize various objects.

WILLIAMSBURG – It might be a bit surprising the first time you encounter ‘William’ and ‘Mary,’ who have spent their summer months learning the lay of the land at the College of William and Mary.

Just about a year old each, both are little creatures about 2 feet wide and 26 inches long that spend most summer days navigating the campus and soaking up each peculiar sound.

To visitors, they may look like souped-up remote-control vehicles. To a group of researchers, students and professors at the college, they are part of cutting-edge robotic technology.

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A Learning Robot: Adam in Eden

More correctly, this is Adam (ADAptive Mobile robot) in Eden (EDucational ENvironment). Adam is a learning robot developed at Monash University in Australia. The Melbourne Herald Sun tells us more in ‘Current research gives Adam a charge.’

In an attempt to further the development of home robots, Associate Professor Andy Russell has put Adam (ADAptive Mobile robot) in his own garden named Eden (EDucational ENvironment) where the dish-shaped robot learns how to travel in the most energy-efficient way and feed himself from flowers when his charge dies.

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Herald Sun: Japan to market ‘robot suit’ [21aug03]

JAPANESE companies are preparing for the commercial launch of a “robot suit” that helps aged or physically disabled people walk, get up the stairs or seat themselves to relax without a chair.

Trading house Mitsui and Co. and some 30 other Tokyo firms plan to set up a joint venture in April or May next year to market the powered suit developed by Yoshiyuki Sankai, professor and engineer at Tsukuba University, officials said Thursday.

“This is neither a robot in machine factories nor a one for amusement like a pet robot. This is a brand-new proposal projecting a future image of relations between people and robots,” Sanaki said.

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Ananova – Talking robot will be special guest at state reception

A talking robot will be the special guest when the prime ministers of the Czech republic and Japan sit down to dinner at a state reception in Prague.

The robot – named Asimo – will join the two leaders in the city’s Hrzansky Palace, Czech Government.

Asimo is said to speak both Czech and Japanese, as well as being able to walk, shake hands and recognise voices.

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MORPH 3

MORPH 3, a 38-cm-tall humanoid robot, tries to stand after being laid on its back during an experiment at the Chiba Institute of Technology in Narashino, Chiba Prefecture.

ERATO Kitano Project

Takayuki Furuta, Masaharu Shimizu, Tetsuo Tawara, Yu Okumura, Masaki

Shimomura and Hiroaki Kitano1

1 ERATO Kitano Symbiotic Systems Project

Registration information:

Data about the team

Team name: ERATO Kitano Project

Team leader Name: Hiroaki Kitano

Affiliation: ERATO Kitano Symbiotic Systems Project

E-mail address: kitano@symbio.jst.go.jp

URL: http://www.symbio.jst.go.jp/

Names of other team members:

Takayuki Furuta, Masaharu Shimizu,

Tetsuo Tawara, Yu Okumura,

Masaki Shimomura

Data about the robot

Mechanical construction

Overall height: 38 cm

Overall weight: 2.4 kg

The Japan Times Online :: 30-year robot project pitched

Researchers see tech windfalls in costly humanoid quest

Japanese researchers in robot technology are advocating a grand project, under which the government would spend 50 billion yen a year over three decades to develop a humanoid robot with the mental, physical and emotional capacity of a 5-year-old human.

The researchers believe the Atom Project, inspired by the popular robot animation series ‘Tetsuwan Atom’ by the late cartoonist Osamu Tezuka, would help promote scientific and technological advances in Japan, just like the U.S. Apollo Project, which not only succeeded in landing men on the moon but contributed to a broad range of technological breakthroughs.

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TCS: Tech – Robot Economics

Will robots steal all our jobs? Although today’s robots may lack the intelligence God gave ants, robots of the future might perform many ‘human’ tasks. Economics shows, however, that humans needn’t fret over robot-induced redundancies.

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Robots can’t steal all jobs, but to prove this I must, alas, behave like an economist and develop a simple model. Let’s assume that our economy produces only two goods: wine and cake. Each human makes one of these goods and trades it for the other.

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Daily Yomiuri On-LineReport from Silicon Valley / Robots set to invade the household

Some people call opera the grandest of the performing arts. According to these people, opera has it all: music, singing, theatrical performance, and occasionally even some dance.

In the world of technology, the equivalent has to be robotics. Robotics combines the best of mechanical design, sensors, microminiaturization, computer science and artificial intelligence. Robotics too has it all.

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Linux on a mission / SRI teaches robots how to communicate

It took two robots five minutes, more or less, to locate a penguin at Moscone Center on Wednesday.

Granted, any idiot — human or animatronic — could have found a penguin there pretty easily this week, since the bird is a ubiquitous icon featured in the logo of the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo. Conference-goers carry wires with foam penguins bobbing at the ends, inflated and stuffed penguins are piled on most flat surfaces, and two-dimensional penguins adorn shirts and bags all over the trade show.

But these robots are no idiots. They’re part of a government-funded Silicon Valley research project aiming to create a 100-robot swarm that could help rescue hostages, detect chemical attacks or remove people from burning buildings.

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Russia Joins Humanoid Robot Race

A St. Petersburg company last week unveiled ARNE and ARNEA, the only Russian humanoid robots in existence.

The robots are male and female. Each is 123 centimeters tall and weighs 61 kilograms. They are capable of walking independently and avoiding obstacles, can distinguish and remember objects and colors, can follow up to 40 separate commands, and can even talk. The androids run on electrical power, using wireless accumulators, allowing them to work independently for up to one hour.

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