NEC: R100 Personal Robot
The R100 can remember faces, understand spoken commands and respond verbally.

Sees
With a pair of video-camera eyes, the robot can avoid objects while moving around the home. It can measure distances and recognize the people that it meets.

Hears
The R100 has directional hearing. It will turn and look in the direction of the person who calls it. It will also understand and respond appropriately to a variety of spoken commands.

Talks
The robot can greet you by name and respond when you speak to it. It will also announce incoming e-mail messages.

Walks
The robot navigates around obstacles, while roaming through the house. Equipped with six ultra-sonic sensors, it stops instantly when something is very close or approaches suddenly from any direction.

Feels
If you tap, stroke or press the robot’s head, a built-in sensor accurately gauges the quality of your touch.

Senses the environment
The robot has built-in sensors that measure temperature and ambient light.

External PC for voice and image recognition processing
The robot recognizes images and voices by means of functions off-loaded to a personal computer.

Software
The robot is designed around software modules that can be easily expanded or enhanced. The module, software-based approach makes it easy to modify or add to the functions of sensors and the varieties of movement.

R100 Specifications

height: 440mm
width: 280mm
depth: 280mm
weight: 7.9kg
battery duration: 1.5 – 2 hours
battery charge: 2 – 3 hours
number of commands recognized: about 100 phrases
number of spoken expressions: about 300 phrases

[input]
eyes: 2 CCD cameras
ears: 3 microphones
touch: sensorsenses your tap, stroke or press
ultra-sonic sensors: 6 sensors around its body
environmental sensors: measures temperature and ambient light

[output]
feet:
– 2 drive wheels (front)
– 1 free wheel (rear)
– max. speed : 60cm/s
head: up-down, left-right
sound: 2 speakers
face: LEDs in eyes and mouth for facial expression

iROBOT Here are just a few of the uses of the iRobot-LE™

Home Sentry
Keep an eye on your home while you’re away on business. Outsmart thieves with the iRobot-LE, by leaving a set of eyes at home, even when you’re not there.
Pet Care
The pooch stuck at home? If you’re a pet owner, you can empathize with how difficult it is to leave your pet at home. A couple of times per day, wouldn’t it be nice to check on how your best friend is doing?
Check on Babysitters
Ensure the safety and well being of your children while under the care of another. Use the iRobot-LE to communicate with your babysitter and get visual confirmation that your children are receiving proper care. Or just say “Hi.”
Vacation Home Monitoring
You want to know how your vacation home fared after a big storm ripped through the area. You want to be sure the water pipe didn’t burst during the last cold snap. You want to verify that there are no signs of break-in. You can check on all these things with your iRobot-LE. Save yourself the time of traveling to your vacation home. Feel secure in your knowledge that your remote assets are safe and sound.
Invite Relatives and Friends
At family reunions, there are always a few who can’t make it. With the iRobot-LE, let your far away relatives log in over the web to participate in the festivities.
Monitor Contractors
Contractors like to work independently, but often have questions. It’s not your job to sit around and wait for them to ask. When a contractor has a question, have them communicate through the iRobot-LE.
Elder Care
The iRobot-LE is great way to visit with elderly or house bound relatives. Converse with them and keep them company.

welcome to Korea Herald!!_Infotech
Korean robot pets to hit global markets
Intz.com, a domestic Internet venture, has signed a deal with Tiger Electronics, a global leading toy vendor, to sell its robot pets based on artificial intelligence technology worldwide.
Under the agreement, Tiger will have marketing rights over a pair of digital pets named “DiDi” and “TiTi” outside Korea and Japan, Intz said yesterday.
[…]Modeled after mice, the metallic pals can sing, dance and play games in response to clapping. Users can feed and teach the intelligent palm-sized toys as they grow, and their character and temperament can be changed; just part of an array of features that facilitate interaction between the machines and humans, the company said.
The company hopes Tiger’s worldwide marketing power and networks will help its robot products move into a market pioneered and currently dominated by Sony Corp.’s “Aibo” series.[…]

Collection de printemps pour Aibo Collection de printemps pour Aibo
par Sébastien Gesell
mis en ligne le 26 février 2001
Quelques mois après sa sortie, l’ERS-210, alias Aibo, se décline en deux séries limitées pour fêter le printemps.

SONY
Les fans de la deuxième génération du robot-toutou Aibo, dont 46 000 exemplaires ont été déjà commandés, seront heureux d’apprendre qu’une nouvelle série limitée sera bientôt disponible (au Japon). Seule condition pour acquérir le robot chien de Sony : effectuer sa réservation entre le 1er et le 20 mars 2001. Cette série limitée comprendra une carte Memory Stick sur laquelle figurent de nouveaux comportements programmés. Son nom : “Otanoshimi Soft Spring 2001” (logiciel surprise pour le printemps). Les deux bestiaux se déclineront en deux coloris inédits ; l’un d’eux sera blanc et noir, l’autre de couleur orange. D’autres logiciels développés par des éditeurs tiers devraient également voir le jour au printemps. Aibo est toujours disponible en ligne pour environ 11 000 francs [NDLR : plutôt 14 000frs en comptant une batterie + chargeur + memory stick].

Robots with real muscles
A robotic fish powered by real muscles could boost artifical limbs
When Hugh Herr put his robotic fish into its tank, it swam off looking surprisingly lifelike. But a few minutes later, it was flagging-and eventually came to a complete stop. It wasn’t faulty: it just needed a break. The reason? Herr’s robot is the first one to be powered by real muscles.
Researchers have known for centuries that they can make muscles contract in the lab: in 1786, Luigi Galvani discovered that electricity made a dissected frog’s leg twitch. But until now, no one has ever tried to harness the phenomenon to power a machine.
So Herr and his colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Biomechatronics group built themselves a robotic fish. Inside it, a microprocessor sends electric signals to frog muscles on either side of the fish, making them contract. Tendons on the muscles are sewn to the nose and tail so the “fish” wiggles and swims in response to the signals. The muscles get their energy from the glucose solution the fish is swimming in (see video at www-personal.umich.edu/~bobden/biomechatronic_devices.html).
One of Herr’s aims is to power prosthetic limbs with real muscles. Artificial limbs tend to be much stiffer than real ones and can’t adapt to different surfaces, so they behave the same way whether you are walking on cement or sand. […]

Sega humanoid robot can walk, ‘talk’ Sega humanoid robot can walk, ‘talk’
Sega Corp. subsidiary Sega Toys will begin selling in May a humanoid robot that is able to walk, dance and “communicate” with people through facial expressions, body language and messages that appear on monitors.
The device, to be named BOT, will be the first humanoid toy robot to be marketed commercially, the company said.
BOT will be able to imitate a variety of emotions — including joy, despair, anger and happiness — through facial expressions and body movements.
The robot will also be able to display on a monitor messages that have been sent to the owner over a mobile phone, it said.[…]

Plastique Man
par Benjamin Cherrière
mis en ligne le 16 février 2001
Une équipe de scientifiques américains a mis au point un nouveau plastique capable de se réparer automatiquement. De la peau artificielle aux missions spatiales, les applications s’annoncent nombreuses.
Le plastique est-il un matériau d’avenir ? Oui semble croire l’équipe du professeur White, de l’Université de Delaware (Etats-Unis), qui a mis au point, et partiellement testé, un polymère capable de compenser sa propre usure et de se réparer en cas de fissure ou d’éraflure. Ce tour de force part d’un idée relativement simple (voir animation ci-dessous): l’intégration dans le plastique de capsules remplies d’une part d’agents de renforcement (fibres de carbone, haschisch ou Kevlar), et d’autre part d’une résine (ester de vinyle ou époxyde). Lorsque le plastique est abîmé, les capsules éclatent, libérant ainsi les agents de renforcement et la résine. Ceux-ci colmatent les brèches et réparent alors le matériau endommagé en se polymérisant au contact d’un catalyseur incorporé au plastique.
Un principe applicable au verre et la céramique […]

Geek.com Geek News – Robots that can kill Robots that can kill
posted 5:04pm EST Thu Aug 17 2000
NEWS
The Thailand Research Fund unveiled five robots in Bangkok, including one “roboguard.” The roboguard is equipped with a camera and sensors for movement and heat–it is also armed. The roboguard “can be programmed to shoot automatically or wait for a fire order delivered with a password from anywhere through the Internet.”
Suggested uses for the robot include guarding museums or other places where items of high value are kept.
Read more at the Bangkok Post.

Geek.com Geek News – Flo the robo-nurse Flo the robo-nurse
posted 4:50pm EST Fri Nov 03 2000
NEWS
Robotic nurses could save the U.S. $100 billion dollars in medical and retirement costs caused by incorrectly taken medication. That’s just one of the reasons that Professor Sebastian Thrun, director of the Robot Learning Lab at Carnegie Mellon University, and his students created Flo, a five-foot tall robot that should help improve the lives of elderly or infirm people living at home.
Built with $1.4 million in funding from the National Science Foundation, Flo is designed to help health care personnel (doctors, nurses, etc.), not replace them. The primary purpose of the “nurse-bot” is to remind its “patients” when to take their medicine, but it has many other functions as well. Flo can alert others if the patient falls; it has handles so that it can be used as a movement aid; its built-in TV screen and camera enable remote communication with healthcare providers; and it can send and retrieve e-mail and info from the Web. Flo also has voice-recognition software and “the rudiments of a personality.” […]