Wired News: Working Remotely, Robots in Place

Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,58961,00.html

PALO ALTO, California — How would you feel about sitting across a conference table from a robot remotely controlled by a colleague who could not make the meeting?

Fears of severe acute respiratory syndrome and terrorism, combined with drastically reduced travel budgets, mean more companies are considering video conferencing as an alternative to face-to-face meetings.

But Hewlett-Packard scientists say the most natural way to “meet” when people are not face to face is to use robots.

The scientists, who work out of HP’s research laboratory in Palo Alto, were recently on hand to prove it, showing off the prototype for a robot that could navigate through the halls of a building, lower itself down to eye level at a conference table and even mix and mingle with associates as if it were a person.

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Sony takes leash off robot dog | CNET News.com

Electronics giant Sony announced new software Monday that will allow Aibo owners to control the robot dog via e-mail commands.

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Wired News: Giving Robots the Gift of Sight

An e-business consultant from the United Kingdom claims to have invented a breakthrough mechanized vision system with a wide range of potential applications, from robotics to handwriting recognition.

Patrick Andrews, managing director of Break-Step Productions, a Cambridge-based consultancy, said he has developed a shape-recognition system called Foveola that closely mimics the human visual system.

A Web-based demonstration of the software, which Andrews says is relatively crude compared to the real thing, already is attracting attention from robotics companies and software developers, although the product has not yet been released to interested parties. (The demo requires visitors to register at the site.)

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In contrast to current shape-recognition systems, Foveola is capable of recognizing a broad range of objects, Andrews said. Most vision systems are designed for specific tasks, such as recognizing text or industrial components.

Andrews declined to give many details, citing pending patent applications, but said the software mimics the processing pathway in humans’ upper visual cortex.

In general, Foveola extracts shapes from a visual scene and assigns them a “mathematical signature.” Like a neural net, the system has to be trained to recognize a shape, and shouldn’t be able to distinguish shapes it hasn’t seen before. It can, however, make a best guess based on the numeric signature it assigns.

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Military robots to get swarm intelligence

A battalion of 120 military robots is to be fitted with swarm intelligence software to enable them to mimic the organised behaviour of insects.

The project, which received funding this week from the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), is aimed at developing ways to perform missions such as minesweeping and search and rescue with minimum intervention from human operators.

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The 120 robots were built for the US military by I-Robot, a company co-founded by robotics pioneer Rodney Brooks.

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“Pathological configurations”

Swarm intelligence describes the way that complex behaviours can arise from large numbers of individual agents each following very simple rules. For example, ants use the approach to find the most efficient route to a food source.

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ABCNEWS.com : What Defines a Machine as a Robot? The Meaning of Robots

April 23 — To you, that boxy thing in your kitchen that sprays soap and water on your dirty dishes and is decorated with plastic buttons may look like a regular old dishwasher. But some say that machine is really a robot.

A dictionary defines “robot” as a mechanical device that sometimes resembles a human, and is capable of performing a variety of often-complex human tasks on command, or by being programmed in advance.

But engineering professor and robotics expert Ken Goldberg of the University of California at Berkeley has a more exact definition.

“It responds to its environment and it can manipulate its environment. It can do things,” he says, in reference to modern dishwashers that can sense how dirty the dishes are and change its own settings accordingly

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Robotory’s Photo Album Update

A lot of new pictures coming from Robodex web sites!

Robots become family friends

AFP – Japanese scientists are trying to make robots part of the family rather than automated servants — by improving their ability to communicate with their human owners, according to exhibitors at the Robodex 2003 robot fair in Japan.

This year’s fair, in the port city of Yokohama, has been dominated more than ever by humanoids — robots based on the human form, some of which can even walk on two legs, like Honda’s ASIMO or Sony’s agile SDR4-X II.

Honda has until now concentrated on perfecting the naturalistic movements of its 1.20-metre-tall and 52-kg android, but is now interested in its capacity to interact with humans, a Honda representative at the fair said.

The latest version of its ASIMO understands about 100 words and can recognise voices and faces.

The robot has already found itself a place in the job market and works as a receptionist, for annual fee of Y20 million ($A280,000), at nine companies including IBM Japan and the Takashimaya department store chain.

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The Register Fujitsu preps Linux-based robot

Fujitsu has launched a humanoid robot – based on a real-time version of the Linux operating system.

The HOAP-2 is driven by an Intel Pentium III running at 700MHz. It is half a metre high and weights 7kg, and is scheduled to ship to Japanese consumers in July (Fujitsu will begin taking orders next month).

We’re not entirely sure what buyers will do with the thing, which lacks the aesthetic appeal of Sony’s robot, also unveiled this week, the DR-4X. HOAP-2 looks like a cruder version of Honda’s Asimo droid.

The metal beastie sports a USB 1.1 port – its internal network operates across USB – through which the user can download code to run on the robot, which ships with a Fujitsu PC. There’s an optional 802.11b link.

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Betterhumans :: News :: Humanoid Robot Can Quickly Learn Movement and Coordination

A new humanoid robot has been unveiled that uses a neural network to quickly learn movement and motor coordination.

Called HOAP-2, the robot is the next-generation of the HOAP line built by Fujitsu.

Looking like a crude version of Honda’s Asimo, HOAP-2 is half a meter tall and weighs seven kilograms.

Fujitsu will start taking orders for the robot next month and plans to ship to Japanese customers in July.

Hardware, software

The robot uses the Linux operating system, an Intel Pentium III processor running at 700MHz and a USB port through which users can download code.

It also relies on a reconfigurable neural network that utilizes Central Pattern Generator and numerical perturbation technology.

The robot combines the neural network with a Fujitsu program called Humanoid Movement-Generation System.

The overall result, says the company, is minimized software code for motional control — less than one-tenth that used in conventional systems, Fujitsu claims.

More details of HOAP-2 will be made public at Robodex 2003, in Yokohama, Japan from April 3 to 6.

The Japan Times Online Kansai robots on march amid Astro Boy hoopla

OSAKA — The Osamu Tezuka Manga Museum in Takarazuka, Hyogo Prefecture, is witnessing a surge in visitors ahead of the April 7 “birthday” of Astro Boy, the humanoid robot for which the late cartoonist is probably best known.

Norihiro Hagita, director of the Intelligent Robotics and Communication Laboratories at Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International, pats the Robovie-IIS, an autonomous communication robot that can respond to various types of touch. ASAKO MURAKAMI PHOTO

The real world has not yet been able to create a robot akin to the futuristic Astro Boy (known as Atom in Japan), incorporating a highly advanced artificial brain, eyes that can see through objects and hearing that is 10,000 times more acute than that of an average human.

But the dream is still alive, not just with children but also among businesses and municipalities in the Kansai region that hope the promotion of robot technologies will help revitalize the local economy.

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