For her PhD thesis, Edurne Barrenechea Tartas developed a new twist on artificial vision: add fuzzy sets or noise. This is somewhat akin to the edge detection used in the Leaf Project, described by Robin Hewitt in Servo a few months back. The noise is used to dither the image, thereby increasi…
Korea's Center for Intelligent Robots is creating a 40 member panel to discuss the feasiblilty of creating robotic security forces for the nation. ``If the robots prove to be viable technically and commercially, we will be able to begin developing them late next year,'' said Lee Ho-gil, head of …
Hospitals in Pennsylvania have purchased several Tug robots. These haul carts to and fro, saving the nurse's time and the administration's dime. The robots are expected to save the hospital "$240,000 over five years."Technically, the Tug is impressive. It hauls up to 500 pounds. It runs …
FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) has announced its 2006 competition: Aim High. Papers all over the country have coverage. Like a strange combination of basketball and soccer, robots score points in Aim High by shooting nerf balls into hoops or rolling them thru goa…
If you, like me, were too busy hob-knobbing with the elite to visit CES2006 this year, have no fear! Google Video has your hook-up for checking out Honda's presentation of Asimo. Close to ten minutes of cheesy dialog and music give you a pretty good idea of how amazing this robot is. He maint…
I just can't get over how much power you can get out of something this small. They call it the "worlds tiniest 12V DC-DC power supply." It plugs directly into the ATX power supply plug on a standard mini-ATX motherboard. It was unveiled at CES and looks amazing. It can supply 120 Watts and is compl…
As artificial intelligence begins celebrating its 50th birthday (thanks Simon and Newell!), word comes in on the British Computer Society's Annual Prize for Progress towards Machine Intelligence. The winner is David Bell’s team from Queen's University Belfast. Their robot, IFOMIND, navigates…
It just seems just yesterday that WowWee was talking about the RoboRaptor, RoboPet, and RoboSapien V2, but now they're talking about the 2006 RoboSapien product line. PC Magazine and Pocket-Lint both have lots of pictures. ... the Robosapien RS2 Media introduces a USB port, LCD display on the che…
The popular educational and hobbiest company, Parallax is finally offering kits with USB support! The long-standing support of serial control in robotics and microcontrollers continues to be a problem, so it's good to see some of the larger players begin to make the change. It also looks like Para…
Brendan I. Koerner has an excellent article up on WIRED about the development of the LEGO Mindstorms NXT kit. It's a sneek peek at the February issue of WIRED, that will feature Mindstorms NXT. The article tells the story of how John Barnes, David Schilling, Steve Hassenplug and Ralph Hempel becam…
The other exciting news from CES, relating to LEGO's big announcement, is that they also want you, the Mindstorms fans, to help develop the product further. They announced, ... a call for entries to secure one of 100 seats on the newly expanded LEGO® MINDSTORMS™ Users Panel (MUP), an ex…
How do you improve something that's almost perfect? That remains to be seen, but LEGO is going to try with it's New Version of LEGO Mindstorms, the LEGO Mindstorms NXT! Tom Atwood, at Robot Magazine, was lucky enough to spend some time with Soren Lund and asking him about the new NXT (pictures and …
Continuing from the link in the last post about making your own LEGO bricks, it looks like Derek is at it again. This time he's creating his own LEGO Mindstorms RCX like brick, but this one is powered by a GumStix computer. He's machining the housing out of Delrin and details the process on his bl…
Have you visited The Robot Directory lately? It's a great place to post your robot projects. Myself and the most excellent Chris Jorgenson created the site. Unfortunately, Chris had to leave the project, so, I'm looking for someone interested in helping out bringing The Robot Directory into the We…
MachineDesign has an article on DARPA's foray into the world of exoskeletons, specifically the Bleex exoskeleton's created at Berkeley. DARPA has invested over $50 million dollars in exoskeleton research. One of the more successful groups working on them is at Berkeley. Their suite, called the Blee…
Last week Honda announced the new and improved version of the Asimo. What's the main improvement? It's actually useful now. Well, at least Honda says so. Asimo, can now interact with human beings by delivering objects, or holding someone's hand. Asimo can also locate and track said human provided …
