/ News
Retro Robots, Mobile Manipulation, and Mario
I have to imagine that when you work at an industrial robotics company, it must be a lot of fun to come up with trade show demos. You can throw practicality and efficiency entirely out the window, and instead try and come up with the most entertaining thing that you possibly can, whether it's fighting with light sabers or battling humans with Wiimotes. So here's to you, Industrial Robot Demo Maker Person. We salute you, and your latest idea involving robots, slot cars, and Mario. And there's more, of course, because it's Video Friday.
Seriously, whoever at Denso Robotics had this idea needs a raise. And a promotion. And a medal.
Out at Sandia National Labs last June, military robots took part in a Robot Rodeo, "a lively and challenging competition that draws civilian and military bomb squad teams from across the country to see who can most effectively defuse dangerous situations with the help of robots."
Via [ Sandia ]
We haven't heard a lot from Hanson Robotics recently, but they did just post this short video showing a montage of some of their past projects.
[ Hanson Robotics ]
3D Robotics recently released Iris, an easy to fly quadcopter with impressive autonomy and lots of camera options. Here's a teaser video showing the robot in flight:
Not bad for $730.
[ 3DR Iris ]
The Technical Committee on Mobile Manipulation (there is one of those) has an update on what's new in the mobile manipulation world:
Thanks Dejan!
Meet the least comfortable sofa ever, an art project by Jacob Tonski:
Tonski says that it's "a meditation on the nature of human relations, and the things we build to support them." In the opinion of this blogger, it's instead obviously a metaphor for the way sofas (even robotic ones) eventually fall over and smash into little bits when you try to balance them on one leg.
[ Creative Applications Network ] via [ PopSci ]
Teaching a robot to see (especially a robot that you've built yourself) is a tricky thing to do. CMUcam5 is an integrated vision system and processor that does a huge amount of the hard work for you. You can hook it up to an Arduino, and it'll simply send along the information that you care about, like the coordinates of an object of a given color.
It's been successfully funded on Kickstarter, and you can snag one for the next two weeks for $60.
[ Pixy ]
When we head to the DARPA Robotics Challenge in December, this is exactly what we're hoping to see:
[ OSRF ]
A ton of dirt is a ton of dirt. Astrobotics' Polaris rover prototype is not intimidated, however, and it proved it at NASA Glenn by autonomously excavating over 1000 kg of material in under an hour.
This rover (or rovers like it) may one day head to the Moon to start preparing it for human habitation.
RoboCup team B-Human shows us what it's like to play Standard Platform soccer, from the robot's point of view:
[ B-Human ]
We'll wrap up the week with a quartet of retro robot videos emailed to us by Melonee Wise of Unbounded Robotics, who is working on a robot that we now know can grasp "grasping cans" and may possess some sort of anti-gravity functionality. Anyway, until we meet Unbounded's robot of the future, we'll have to content ourselves with robots of the past.
Mr. Wizard vs. Hero 1:
Robart the Robot:
It's Omnibot!
How far we've come. And how far we haven't.
Source: http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/industrial-robots/video-friday-retro-robots-mobile-manipulators-mario
/ About us
Founded by Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov in February 2011 with the participation of leading Russian specialists in the field of neural interfaces, robotics, artificial organs and systems.
The main goals of the 2045 Initiative: the creation and realization of a new strategy for the development of humanity which meets global civilization challenges; the creation of optimale conditions promoting the spiritual enlightenment of humanity; and the realization of a new futuristic reality based on 5 principles: high spirituality, high culture, high ethics, high science and high technologies.
The main science mega-project of the 2045 Initiative aims to create technologies enabling the transfer of a individual’s personality to a more advanced non-biological carrier, and extending life, including to the point of immortality. We devote particular attention to enabling the fullest possible dialogue between the world’s major spiritual traditions, science and society.
A large-scale transformation of humanity, comparable to some of the major spiritual and sci-tech revolutions in history, will require a new strategy. We believe this to be necessary to overcome existing crises, which threaten our planetary habitat and the continued existence of humanity as a species. With the 2045 Initiative, we hope to realize a new strategy for humanity's development, and in so doing, create a more productive, fulfilling, and satisfying future.
The "2045" team is working towards creating an international research center where leading scientists will be engaged in research and development in the fields of anthropomorphic robotics, living systems modeling and brain and consciousness modeling with the goal of transferring one’s individual consciousness to an artificial carrier and achieving cybernetic immortality.
An annual congress "The Global Future 2045" is organized by the Initiative to give platform for discussing mankind's evolutionary strategy based on technologies of cybernetic immortality as well as the possible impact of such technologies on global society, politics and economies of the future.
Future prospects of "2045" Initiative for society
2015-2020
The emergence and widespread use of affordable android "avatars" controlled by a "brain-computer" interface. Coupled with related technologies “avatars’ will give people a number of new features: ability to work in dangerous environments, perform rescue operations, travel in extreme situations etc.
Avatar components will be used in medicine for the rehabilitation of fully or partially disabled patients giving them prosthetic limbs or recover lost senses.
2020-2025
Creation of an autonomous life-support system for the human brain linked to a robot, ‘avatar’, will save people whose body is completely worn out or irreversibly damaged. Any patient with an intact brain will be able to return to a fully functioning bodily life. Such technologies will greatly enlarge the possibility of hybrid bio-electronic devices, thus creating a new IT revolution and will make all kinds of superimpositions of electronic and biological systems possible.
2030-2035
Creation of a computer model of the brain and human consciousness with the subsequent development of means to transfer individual consciousness onto an artificial carrier. This development will profoundly change the world, it will not only give everyone the possibility of cybernetic immortality but will also create a friendly artificial intelligence, expand human capabilities and provide opportunities for ordinary people to restore or modify their own brain multiple times. The final result at this stage can be a real revolution in the understanding of human nature that will completely change the human and technical prospects for humanity.
2045
This is the time when substance-independent minds will receive new bodies with capacities far exceeding those of ordinary humans. A new era for humanity will arrive! Changes will occur in all spheres of human activity – energy generation, transportation, politics, medicine, psychology, sciences, and so on.
Today it is hard to imagine a future when bodies consisting of nanorobots will become affordable and capable of taking any form. It is also hard to imagine body holograms featuring controlled matter. One thing is clear however: humanity, for the first time in its history, will make a fully managed evolutionary transition and eventually become a new species. Moreover, prerequisites for a large-scale expansion into outer space will be created as well.
Key elements of the project in the future
• International social movement
• social network immortal.me
• charitable foundation "Global Future 2045" (Foundation 2045)
• scientific research centre "Immortality"
• business incubator
• University of "Immortality"
• annual award for contribution to the realization of the project of "Immortality”.
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