/ News
Japan is building a robot that can play baseball
A baseball player needs to be able to do quite a few things: throwing the ball, batting, fielding, even running really fast. A human can do all of these things, because we're pretty great, but a robot? Well, getting a robot to do all of these things would be a little more tricky.
However, that's exactly the work of the Ishikawa Watanabe Laboratory at the University of Tokyo. Over the last several years, a team of researchers has been working on perfecting a range of separate robots, each able to perform individual tasks -- with the end goal of combining them into a single, humanoid robot that can play baseball.
"We have been developing robotic systems that individually achieve fundamental actions of baseball, such as throwing, tracking of the ball, batting, running, and catching," the team wrote on its website. "We achieved these tasks by controlling high-speed robots based on real-time visual feedback from high-speed cameras."
Each robotic system completes one task. A throwing robot uses fingers similar to how humans use them to throw a ball with precision, throwing into the strike zone with an accuracy of 90 percent. A tracking system uses pan and tilt axes to achieve a wide field of view, using high-speed actuators and high-speed visual feedback to track a target moving at high velocity. The batting robot uses high-speed stereo vision to track the ball, adjusting to its position every 1ms to calculate the ball's trajectory and hit it from anywhere in the strike zone. The bipedal running robot uses high-speed visual feedback to note the position of the robot and adjust its balance in real-time. Finally, the two catching robots use a hand that can open and close at a rate of 10 times per second, measuring the balls flight using high-speed tracking.
The team has uploaded a video to YouTube, showing these robots in action -- compared with players at the University of Tokyo Baseball Club, clearly showing the robots' advantages. However, while a robotic baseball game might be more accurate, we suspect it would be a bit more choreographed -- and that there would still be a lot of room for a human match.
Or perhaps we'd see the baseball robots mingled with humans -- and then we'd get to see just how well robots can adjust to the disordered, non-mechanical element.
First, however, the team at the Ishikawa Watanabe Laboratory needs to figure out how to put their robot technologies together. As impressive as they are individually, combining them in a humanoid form factor will pose quite the challenge.
Source: http://www.cnet.com/news/japan-is-building-a-robot-that-can-play-baseball/
/ 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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