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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Category Archives: Uncategorized
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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Could it be?
Will robots ever evolve to the point of possessing human emotions, like the one in Spielberg’s “A.I.”? Some experts say it’s more a question of when rather than if.
By Peter Mucha
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
This weekend, when Steven Spielberg’s A.I.: Artificial Intelligence opens, moviegoers may wonder when scientists are likely to create a smart, emotional robot like the one played by Haley Joel Osment.
That day may be surprisingly near.
By the middle of this century, some experts predict, androids could be our mental equals – and on their way to becoming the planet’s dominant creatures.
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And robots are becoming more and more adept at human behavior.
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Last fall Hasbro introduced a $100 doll called My Real Baby that senses touch and motion, changes its facial expressions, and seems to learn. It was developed by iRobot, a Massachusetts company founded by MIT’s Brooks.
In February, two Japanese companies, Kokoro Co. and CAI, demonstrated that their S DOLL robot could hold a conversation; it understands speech and talks back, complete with gestures.
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Mobile Robots Start Rolling In 2001!
Peterborough, NH – ActivMedia Research LLC www.ActivMediaResearch.com –
Today Mobile Robotics are where personal computers were in the early 1980s, poised for proliferation, with more than 3,500% projected growth in units and nearly 2,500% projected growth in dollars over the next five years. Mobile robot sales are expected to soar from $665 million in the year 2000 to more than $17 billion by 2005 according to a recent study by ActivMedia Research, LLC. Unlike their fixed-in-place industrial forebears, mobile `bots are free-ranging devices capable of an increasing range of tasks.
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Robots march forward – both on screen and off
June 24, 2001
By Jim Krane, Associated Press technology writer
NEW YORK – In the new science fiction movie “A.I.,” humans build robots in their own image, using them for companionship, sex and as surrogate children.
Disturbingly, the robots begin to express human emotions, to love, to dream.
Outrageously far fetched? Maybe not.
Some prominent real-world researchers who work in the field believe the film’s robots – played by human actors with special-effects help – are a reasonable approximation of where robotics is headed.
But it’s anybody’s guess when robots might encompass human intelligence.
Currently, scientists working on humanoid robots – that is, robots designed in the form of a human – are focused on building machines that can understand and obey voice commands, not issue them.
“If the movie showed the level we’re working on today, it wouldn’t be a good movie,” said Maja Mataric, a robotics researcher at the University of Southern California.
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Japanese firms Honda and Sony have already built humanoids that can walk, wave and make some rudimentary dance steps. Within a decade, the robots ought to begin handling their design purpose: caring for Japan’s burgeoning elderly population.
When Honda unveiled its P-3 humanoid, a plastic-sheathed robot that looks like a slimmed-down Michelin Man, U.S. government agencies began funding humanoid robot researchers like Mataric, whose robot Adonis is learning to dance the Macarena.
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The real-life future for A.I. robots
By Jim Krane
ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW YORK, June 21 — In Steven Spielberg’s new science fiction movie “A.I.,” humans build robots in their own image, using them for companionship, sex and as surrogate children. Disturbingly, the robots begin to express human emotions, to love, to dream. Outrageously far fetched? Maybe not.
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Android World
By Ian Stokell, Newsbytes
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA, U.S.A.,
13 Jun 2001, 10:48 AM CST
There’s something strangely fascinating about Android World! An android is a robot that looks like a human being, and there’s plenty of interesting pictures on this site, along with lots of information about androids and projects trying to make one-time science-fiction fodder. According to the site there are 31 major android projects around the world – 17 in Japan, five in the U.S., three in Germany, one in the U.K., two in Korea, one in Sweden, one in China and one in Thailand – and there are photos and links to them here.
World Wide Web: http://www.androidworld.com/.
Reported by y Newsbytes.com