Honda Unveils Improved Humanoid Robot

TOKYO (AP) — Honda Motor Co. may have come up with the most attentive and perhaps honest car dealer ever in its child-size walking robot Asimo.

The 1.2-meter (4-foot) tall machine, which first went on sale two years ago, already knew how to walk, climb stairs and recognize voices. The upgraded version also understands human gestures and movement.

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Robots offer engineers room for creativity

San Francisco – Twenty years ago, Tsugio Makimoto, then a Hitachi, Ltd. Semiconductor manager, delivered a keynote speech at the 1982 International Electron Devices Meeting about how robotics would play a role in semiconductor fabs, largely to transport and handle wafers in a futuristic fab. Makimoto, now a technical advisor to Sony Corp.’s semiconductor operations, painted a much livelier picture of robots in a keynote speech today (Monday, Dec. 9) at the 2002 IEDM.

“Twenty years ago I was partly wrong. Humanoid robots are not very useful for practical purposes. Instead, robots hold great promise for entertainment,” said Makimoto. Sony has sold thousands of its “Aibo” robot, which looks like a small dog, since June 1999. The new versions of Aibo are able to go to a charging station to replenish its own battery power, and include Bluetooth interfaces to share information with other Aibo robots, or with human-controlled computers.

But it was a seven-minute video of Sony’s biped robot, the SDR-4X, which wowed the engineers attending the plenary session of IEDM. The video showed the SDR-4X, Sony’s fourth generation biped robot, walking up and down steps, over unlevel terrain, and standing up on its own after being knocked flat on its back.

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Ananova – Dino-robot promises mobile assistance

Sanyo have unveiled a dinosaur-shaped robot home-help.

Banryu can be controlled remotely using a mobile phone.

It possesses infra-red, sonic, temperature and odour sensors to detect problems when the owners are away.

It can also move at speeds of up to 15 metres a minute.

The robot has been co-developed by Sanyo and specialist firn Tmsuk.

They plan to begin selling it in Japan by the end of next year.

tmsuk and Sanyo Electric Reveal New and Improved ‘Banryu’ Home-Robot

Tokyo (JCNN) – tmsuk Co., LTD., (pronounced “temzack”) a small robotics firm from Kitakyushu, Fukuoka Prefecture, and Sanyo Electric (TSE: 6764), have developed an improved version of their home-robot Banryu. The two companies wish to finalize the design and details and to commence the marketing of the first-ever useful home robot to the general public in year 2003.

The new “Banryu”, which means “guard-dragon” in place of “guard-dog”, takes on a look of an ancient reptile with a futuristic twist. The development of the robot was commenced in year 2001. The new Banryu incorporates significant improvements to the earlier prototype shown at the ROBODEX-2002 (Yokohama, Japan) exhibition in March 2002. Its speed has been increased from 3meters/min. to 15meters/min., a velocity more than fast enough for a home robot designed to travel in confined cluttered spaces. It also is able to confidently go over gaps over 10cm, sensing the height with sets of sensors located on its legs.

The robot also holds onboard a completely new “odor-sensor” developed jointly by tmsuk, Kanazawa Institute of Technology (Professor Nanto), and New Cosmos Electric Co., LTD. The developers believe that this is one of the first devices that can sense a particular odor with practical accuracy. With the sensor the robot will be able to detect “burnt scent” which is known to occur in the atmosphere preceding a fire.

The robot is aimed to be used for several purposes including home-security defined loosely. The developers are in talks with the market leader, Sohgo Security Services Co., LTD., regarding provision of related services, technology and know-how.

tmsuk is to “pre-market” the product at the end of this year. (the delivery to customers is likely to take place next Spring) tmsuk plans to market about 50 Banryus to interested customers domestically for this exercise. The details will be posted at the Banryu web site (www.banryu.jp) . A full marketing effort is to follow by the end of 2003, should the result of the pre-marketing be favorable.

tmsuk was responsible for the design and development of the robot and its mechanism. Sanyo provided batteries and power train, voice/sound recognition technology and cosmetic design. Sanyo is also to manufacture the products post pre-marketing stage.

Visit tmsuk robotics at http://www.tmsuk.co.jp/eng/index.html.

News – FUJITSU



MARON-1: Main Specifications

Dimensions: 32 x 36 x 32 cm

Weight:5 kg

Operable parts:2 powered wheels (left, right); 1 rotating arm; 2-way movable camera head (pan, tilt). 5 degrees of freedom

Sensors:1 Infrared sensor/emitter (for operating electronics by remote); 2 cameras, 1 proximity sensor

User interface:1 touchpad; 5 menu keys; 2 function keys; 1 4″ LCD monitor; 1 microphone; 1 speaker

Operating system:WinCE 3.0

Expansion interfaces:1 USB (host); 1 PC card slot; 1 RS-232C port (for maintenance); 1 DC-IN connector

Battery type:NiMH (in main unit)

Run time per charge:12 hours (*2)

Accessory:AC adapter

Cell phone controlled robot unveiled

Japan’s Fujitsu Laboratories has developed a new robot for the home, the MARON-1, which can be remotely controlled by a cell phone to operate home electronic appliances or monitor household security. The ambulatory prototype robot is equipped with a wide range of functions, including telephone, camera, remote control, timer and surveillance equipment. With these features, for example, it is envisioned that MARON-1 could be used for monitoring homes or offices at night or for checking up on persons requiring special care and monitoring. Fujitsu will be presenting details on the new robot at the Japan Robot Conference, opening October 12, 2002 at Osaka University.

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Google Search: robots

NEW tool : it’s now possible to search news sites with Google.

After www.moreover.com, www.daypop.com, or www.newsisfree.com, Google provides quite powerfull tool to search very last news (few minutes).

Have a look!

ElectricNews.net:News:Americans turned off by robots

Americans could turn against robots, after it emerged that the machines designed to be low-cost servants are increasingly taking the place of older workers.

These findings are contained in a new report, by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), which reports a 17 percent fall in robot investment in the United States in 2001. By contrast, British and Spanish investment in robots increased last year by 26 percent and 22 percent respectively.

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ER1

Evolution Robotics announced that the ER1 personal robot system will be available in retail stores in time for the holidays. In connection, Evolution Robotics has planned over 200 demos of ER1 across the U.S., where curious consumers, robot hobbyists and journalists are welcome to get to know ER1 up close and personal.

If you haven’t heard, ER1 is the first in a line of autonomous personal robots that invite users to transform their laptops into mobile robots by assembling the robot’s aluminum frame and loading easy-to-use software.

Users can instruct their robot to respond to voice commands, take photographs of its environment and send them to an email address, play music from a CD it recognizes, read books from pre-recordings and send reminders to its owner.

For a close encounter with ER1, log on to: http://www.evolution.com, and find out when ER1 is coming to a city near you.

[link to press release (rtf)]

Frequently Asked Questions About the Meaning of Life

What is humanity’s place in the cosmos?

The same place held by all the other technology-using species now briefly living on or around the ten billion trillion (1) stars in this Universe: Our role in the cosmos is to become or create our successors. I don’t think anyone would dispute that something smarter (or otherwise higher) than human might evolve, or be created, in a few million years.  So, once you’ve accepted that possibility, you may as well accept that neurohacking, BCI (Brain-Computer Interfaces), Artificial Intelligence, or some other intelligence-enhancement technology will transcend the human condition, almost certainly within your lifetime (unless we blow ourselves to dust first).

“Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended.”
        — Vernor Vinge, 1993

The really interesting part about the creation of smarter-than-human intelligence is the positive-feedback effect.  Technology is the product of intelligence, so when intelligence is enhanced by technology, you’ve got transhumans who are more effective at creating better transhumans, who are more effective at creating even better transhumans.  Cro-Magnons changed faster than Neanderthals, agricultural society changed faster than hunter-gatherer society, printing-press society changed faster than clay-tablet society, and now we have “Internet time”.  And yet all the difference between an Internet CEO and a hunter-gatherer is a matter of knowledge and culture, of “software”.  Our “hardware”, our minds, emotions, our fundamental level of intelligence, are unchanged from fifty thousand years ago.  Within a couple of decades, for the first time in human history, we will have the ability to modify the hardware.

And it won’t stop there.  The first-stage enhanced humans or artificial minds might only be around for months or even days before creating the next step.  Then it happens again.  Then again.  Whatever the ultimate ends of existence, we might live to see them.

To put it another way:  As of 2000, computing power has doubled every two years, like clockwork, for the past fifty-five years.  This is known as “Moore’s Law”.  However, the computer you’re using to read this Web page still has only one-hundred-millionth the raw power of a human brain – i.e., around a hundred million billion (10^17) operations per second (2).  Estimates on when computers will match the power of a human brain vary widely, but IBM has recently announced the Blue Gene project to achieve petaflops (10^15 ops/sec) computing power by 2005, which would take us within a factor of a hundred.

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