Vesti o robotima i vestackoj inteligenciji

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Izgledaju kao ljudi

The ultra-lifelike robot Repliee Q1 made quite an impression at the 2005 World Expo in Japan. Shown below (at left!) with co-creator Hiroshi Ishiguru, the robot is so lifelike that roboticists may want to start working on a Bladerunner-style Voight-Kampff test now.

Repliee Q1 has silicone for skin, rather than hard plastic. It has a number of sensors to allow it to react in a manner that appears natural; it appears to flutter its eyelids, chest movements correspond to breathing, and other tiny shifts in position that mimic unconscious human movement. The android can mimic actions made by a human; this helps the robot's movements appear more lifelike. By facing a person with reflective dots placed at key points (like wrist, elbow, palm), the robot can try to match those points on its own body with those of the person who is "modeling" human movement.

The greatest limit to the lifelike movement of the robot is that it has only 31 actuators in its upper body; a nearby air compressor provides the energy needed for articulation.

In his excellent novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Philip K. Dick explores what happens in a society when android replica humans cannot be physically distinguished from human beings. Only the Voight-Kampff empathy test can make the distinction, when used by a trained officer like Rick Deckard:

"I'm not a peace officer," Rick said. "I'm a bounty hunter." From his opened briefcase he fished out the Voight-Kampff apparatus, seated himself at a nearby rosewood coffee table, and began to assemble the rather simple polygraphic instruments...


San Francisco's Wave magazine recently wondered whether or not candidates for their mayoral elections were humans or androids; they applied an empathy test to make sure. See Is Your Candidate Human?. Read more about Repliee Q1 in Ultra-Lifelike Robot; more materials available at Android Science. Thanks to Andy Gowland for contributing the tip on this story.


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A robotic Hummer set records for speed, distance and duration in a recent test prior to a $2 million Defense Department competition later this year.

Carnegie Mellon University's robotic Sandstorm vehicle, a Hummer converted to operate autonomously, covered 200 miles in seven hours without human help during a July 4 test, team members announced today.

Sandstorm will be one of 40 robots competing in the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge, a 175-mile desert race with a $2 million winner-take-all prize. No vehicle managed to finish the challenging course last year.

The Sandstorm vehicle uses sensors to see and computers to drive. During the test, it covered 131 laps on a 1.5-mile racecourse at the BeaveRun MotorSports Complex 4near Pittsburgh. It averaged 28 mph and hit a top speed of 36 mph.

"That doesn't sound like a big deal for a human-driven car, but it is a very big deal for the pioneering of computer-driven vehicles," said robotics professor William L. "Red" Whittaker, leader of Red Team Racing.

Wittaker said the terrain will be much tougher for the actual race Oct. 8 in the Mojave Desert.

"We are a desert racing team without a desert, so we test on local sites," Whittaker said. "Sandstorm ran a quick pace on this track, but the Mojave will not be so easy or forgiving. On July 4, we learned that our hardware and software are reliable, and that is important. To finish first, you must first finish."

Qualifying races will be held Sept. 26 to Oct. 6 at the California Speedway at Fontana, where 40 vehicles will be whittled to 20.

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Molim sve korisnike, koji pisu o robotima i vestackoj inteligenciji, ovde da kace tekstove.

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Masaza srca,roboti

Life-saving breast examinations could soon be performed by a robotic hand.

New Scientist says the robotic breast examiner combines ultrasound with an artificial sense of touch.

It was devised by researchers at Michigan State University in the US.

They say it will enable a medical specialist to examine women from a remote location, perhaps even from the other side of the world.

"Just because you're located in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan or even Botswana, it doesn't mean you can't have a sophisticated diagnostic or therapeutic procedure," says Carol Slomski who helped design the system.

The robot hand is remotely controlled by means of a haptic 'glove', in which each finger is connected to a motion-sensing device.

The operator's hand movements are then measured and sent via a computer to the artificial hand, which almost instantly mimics the operator's moves.

The arm incorporates an ultrasound sensor as well as three video cameras.

Ranjan Mukherjee, another member of the Michigan team, says the next stage is to conduct clinical trials.

But he believes it could be five years before the system becomes commercially available.

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Roboti kao dzokeji


Qatar has staged the world's first ever camel race with robot jockeys.

Robot jockeys race camels for the first time since the use of child jockeys was banned in Qatar /AP

Seven robot jockeys took part in the race at Al Shahaniyya Camel Racecourse on the outskirts of Doha.

Race officials said it was a successful event. Robot jockeys were developed after child camel jockeys were banned.

Race officials mount robot camel jockeys on to camels before the race at Al Shahaniyya Camel Racecourse on the outskirts of Doha, Qatar /AP

Camel racing is a hugely popular sport in the Gulf countries and children were preferred jockeys because of their light weight.

But the ban was introduced over concerns the children were treated like slaves by their employers.

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Japanci razvili "zenski" android

Japanese scientists have unveiled the most human-looking robot yet devised - a "female" android called Repliee Q1.



She has flexible silicone for skin rather than hard plastic, and a number of sensors and motors to allow her to turn and react in a human-like manner.

She can flutter her eyelids and move her hands like a human. She even appears to breathe.

Professor Hiroshi Ishiguru of Osaka University says one day robots could fool us into believing they are human.

Designed to look human

Repliee Q1 is not like any robot you will have seen before, at least outside of science-fiction movies.

She is designed to look human and although she can only sit at present, she has 31 actuators in her upper body, powered by a nearby air compressor, programmed to allow her to move like a human.

"I have developed many robots before," Repliee Q1's designer, Professor Ishiguru, told the BBC News website, "but I soon realised the importance of its appearance. A human-like appearance gives a robot a strong feeling of presence."

Before Repliee Q1, Professor Ishiguru developed Repliee R1 which had the appearance of a five-year-old Japanese girl.

Its head could move in nine directions and it could gesture with its arm. Four high-sensitivity tactile sensors were placed under the skin of its left arm that made the android react differently to differing pressures.

The follow-up has the appearance of a Japanese woman. To program her motion, a computer analysed the motions of a human and used them as a template for the way Repliee Q1 moves.

She can be designed to follow the movement of a human wearing motion sensors or to act independently.

"Repliee Q1 can interact with people. It can respond to people touching it. It's very satisfying, although we obviously have a long way to go yet."

Professor Ishiguru believes that it may prove possible to build an android that could pass for a human, if only for a brief period.

"An android could get away with it for a short time, 5-10 seconds. However, if we carefully select the situation, we could extend that, to perhaps 10 minutes," he said.

"More importantly, we have found that people forget she is an android while interacting with her. Consciously, it is easy to see that she is an android, but unconsciously, we react to the android as if she were a woman."

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Robot hvata brze projektile




f robots are to inherit the Earth, then they should at least be able to catch. So say the researchers behind a bot that can match the most skilled human baseball player faced with a hurtling ball.

The robotic catcher, developed by scientists at the University of Tokyo, Japan, can comfortably grab a ball careering through the air at 300 kilometres per hour, or 83 metres per second, its creators say. And, of course, the robot never gets tired of doing so.

Akio Namiki and colleagues built the robot to test technologies that could some day make robots useful in situations where they may have to react at high speed.

"The need for a robotic hand that works in the real world is growing," Namiki told New Scientist. "Such a system should be able to adapt to changes in its environment and we think that the concept of high-speed movement with real time visual feedback will become an important issue in robotic research."
Lightning reflexes

The robot does not even need a catching mitt. It resembles a single metallic claw, with just three fingers instead of the human complement of five. An array of 32 by 48 individual photo detectors in its “palm”, tracks a ball's trajectory at high speed. And a series of specialised image processing circuits recognise this movement almost instantly.

An approaching ball triggers the robot's three fingers into action. Actuators embedded in each joint use a burst of high current to move through 180 degrees in less than one tenth of a second. This enables the machine to snatch the ball in the split second it takes to arrive.

The robot can be seen catching balls pitched from various different directions by a human controller, in a short video (9.3MB Windows Media Video) demonstration posted to the researcher's web site.
Industrial robots

"It's an extremely difficult task as the ball is moving so fast," says Ulrich Nehmzow, an expert in mobile robotics at the University of Essex, UK.

He adds that the speed and accuracy of the robot goes well beyond that of ordinary industrial robots. "If you are able to locate a moving object so reliably that you can actually catch it, then picking an object up should be child's play," he says.

However, Nehmzow notes that it is difficult conceive of ways that such a robot could be used today. "It's an engineering feat really," he says.

The system is yet not sturdy enough to catch a real baseball and was only tested with soft balls. But, in other tests, it proved adept at grasping objects of various shapes, including cylinders.

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Citat:"An android could get away with it for a short time, 5-10 seconds. However, if we carefully select the situation, we could extend that, to perhaps 10 minutes," he said.

Ludilo, zbunj na prvi pogled... A tih 10 minuta je dovoljno da se obavi posao
Salim se

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Ljudska koza za robote
TOKYO, Japan (UPI) -- A flexible, electronic skin developed by University of Tokyo researchers may provide robots with a nearly human sense of touch.

Last year, Takao Someya and colleagues reported the development of an artificial skin that could sense pressure. But since the human sense of touch is much more complex, different types of sensors and more flexible material was required for use on three-dimensional surfaces, such as robot fingers.

In the current study, Someya and colleagues embedded organic transistor-based electronic circuits in a thin plastic film. The circuits, along with organic semiconductors, are capable of sensing pressure, as well as temperature.

Someya said the net-like matrix is flexible enough to conform to the surface of an egg and can detect pressure and temperature simultaneously.

Since the organic transistors used were reportedly flexible, inexpensive, and easy to fabricate, they could potentially be used in manufacturing robot skin and other commercial products.

With further refinement, the researchers suggest it might be possible to create an electronic skin with superhuman abilities to sense light, humidity and sound.

The research appears in this week`s online early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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Dopuna: 20 Avg 2005 23:56

Rock ‘n’ roll robot
A humanoid robot with an exceptionally nimble knack for getting back on its feet after a fall has been developed by researchers in Japan.

Named R Daneel, the robot kicks up its legs and rolls back onto its shoulders to gain the momentum it needs to rock up onto its feet and into a crouching position. This might be fairly easy for a human to do, but for the 60-kilogram bot, it requires a relaxed attitude to body control.

"The robot is not controlled all the time through a predefined trajectory - as is typically done in robotics," says Max Lungarella who developed the R Daneel with colleagues at University of Tokyo in Japan. R Daneel – the R is for Robot – takes its name from a humanoid robot that appears in several books by science fiction author Isaac Asimov.

The Japanese bot boasts a sophisticated series of sensors, including gyroscopes, accelerometers, and torque sensors. But unlike most humanoid bots, it is designed to embrace a lack of constant control and instead follow the trajectory determined by the weight and shape of its body during the rocking motion, until it lands square back on its feet.
Flexibility and grace

"At that point control goes back to the robot's brain which is ultimately responsible for integrating the information coming from its various sensors," Lungarella explains.

A video clip of R Daneel in action rolling itself back to its feet can be seen in a video on the researchers' website (13MB Mpeg).

The research project is aimed at exploring more flexible - and graceful - ways for robots to interact with the world around them. "The main idea behind the design of the robot is the exploitation of body dynamics," Lungarella.

The same blend of control and flexibility used in standing up could also be applied to other robot tasks, Lungarella believes. "All kinds of tasks - particularly dynamics-based ones - can be addressed with our framework. We are currently looking at jumping, rolling, walking, trotting, swinging, reaching and grasping."
Ovde

Dopuna: 15 Sep 2005 12:39

USA gubi trku
This Friday more than a dozen robots will get together to spend the day hopping, walking, rolling and flying.

Think of it as a robot carnival. The National Science Foundation invited the automatons and their creators to an exhibition intended to showcase the best advanced robotics technology the U.S. has to offer.
The exhibition in Arlington, VA was planned as a release party for findings from a two-year study evaluating robotics research and development in the United States, Japan, Korea, and Western Europe.

The U.S. leads the way in areas such as robot-assisted surgery and mobile space robots, but is losing ground in other fields. The U.S. once dominated in the development of robots designed for service and industry, but now other countries are catching up and even passing the old golden standard.

The study covered six categories of robotics: robotic vehicles, space robotics, humanoid robots, networked robots, robotics in biology and medicine, and industrial, service, and personal robots.

For the new study, six robotics experts inspected more than 50 research facilities worldwide and wrote up the report. The work was funded by the National Science Foundation, NASA, and the National Institutes of Health.

The federal Bureau of Industry and Security has already recognized the United States' slipping lead in a key area of robotics: artificial intelligence (AI).

"The United States leadership position in AI is eroding as the governments and companies in Japan, and as well as in Western European, working together, have gained ground," the agency states on its web site. "In select areas of AI, Japan and Western Europe now surpass the U.S."

Here’s a sampling of the attendees at Friday's gathering:

* A six-legged bug bot that’s one of the most speedy and mobile robots around.
* A robotic brain surgeon that can deal with an aneurysm or drill a hole in your skull.
* A soda-can sized robot that speeds around on two wheels taking video of everything it sees.
* A humanoid robot head that can learn facial gestures and look at things it finds interesting.
* A full-size replica of a Mars Exploration Rover.
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