Festo's AirJelly and AquaJelly wow crowds in Germany

Two new robots are proving to be a hit with the masses attending Germany’s Hannover Fair. Designed and developed by automobile manufacturer Festo, the AquaJelly and its sibling the AirJelly have been wowing the crowds with their biological approach to motorization.

The Jellys use a 3 volt electric coreless motor and get their energy from lithium-ion batteries. The sea-faring robots are about the size of a basketball while the air Jelly is considerably larger; the helium balloon at this Jelly’s center (which gives it the lift) is 1.35 meters across. Their tentacles are a series of ribbed frames covered with a plastic surface. Movement is done by having the tentacles undulate, just as a real sea jellyfish does, and the robots are then able to traverse the air or water as a sequence of controlled weight shifts are done internally, changing the Jelly’s center of gravity. “The pendulum shifts their weight, and they move in a new direction,” says Markus Fischer, Festo’s head of corporate design.

As for the AquaJelly, this robot can guide itself through its watery environment by itself. Using pre-programmed software based on swarm intelligence, input from its sensor array and a light communications system to keep tabs on any brothers floating around it, the AquaJelly glides through the water with the grace of its real-world counterpart. The AquaJelly’s sensors and programming are also smart enough to change their rate of propulsion depending on the depth they are at. They can even tell when they are running low on battery power. When they get low on juice they will head over to their charging dock and check to see if it’s currently occupied by another Jelly via wireless transmission.

The applications for smart robots that can work in aquatic or aerial environments under little or no human supervision can open the door for cheaper and more efficient productivity in these environments.

Here is the AirJelly in operation:

ckBot: Modular robot assembles itself after high-energy encounter

One of the many projects at the University of Pennsylvania's Modular Robotics Laboratory (ModLab) is the construction of ckBot which is capable of autonomously assembling itself after destruction from a high-energy event. For the record (and as you can see from the video below,) high-energy event is the scientific term for kicking a robot. More specifically, the researchers describe their work as follows,

The Self-reassembly After Explosion (SAE ) problem involves a system putting itself back together after being exploded. Explosion in this context is defined as the rapid, randomized disassembly of a system from a high-energy event. Vision-based guided localization is used here for self-reassembly. Integration of various communication schemes (CAN-BUS, local IR) are incorporated at the various states of the reassembly sequence (e.g., localization, docking, walking)

I don't know much about modular robotics but I like the idea of a machine that doesn't become useless after an (even small) accident like it happens to most robots today. Not that ModLab's researchers have created such a machines but are making a few small steps in that direction. But talk is cheap so enjoy the following video showing ModLab's ckBot putting itself together after a scientist lacking an emotional attachment to the robot (most likely a graduate student) kicks it.



New Scientist has a long article on modular robotics titled "Shape-shifting robots take form" but you will need to be a subscriber to read it.

A.I. work by Daphne Koller wins inaugural ACM-Infosys award

Professor Daphne Koller at the University of Stanford has won the first-ever ACM-Infosys Foundation Award in Computing Sciences. The $150,000 prize was given to the 39-year-old for her work in approaching new solutions toward designing artificial intelligence in computers.

At her young age Koller, who was also named a MacArthur Fellow in 2004, has already worked in robotics and biology. Her groundbreaking work in the field of AI took an 18th century probability theorem and applied it toward modern day problems like the spread of cancer cells in the human body or why traffic jams occur the way that they do. Her research application was used by a team of medical scientists who were able to develop a new approach to understanding how breast tumors reach out and infiltrate bone.

"The world is noisy and messy," Koller said recently to “The New York Times”. "You need to deal with the noise and uncertainty.”

“Professor Koller's advances have been productive not only for computer science, but in a wide variety of applications that use computing to advance society in numerous ways," said Stuart I. Feldman, the President of ACM when presenting Koller with her award. "Her research has been used as a framework to solve problems in such diverse fields as computational biology and epidemiology; language processing systems; robotics; and computer perception in understanding images. By using her models and algorithms to integrate small bits and pieces of data in systematic ways that produce stronger conclusions, her work offers a powerful way to think about the world. She is an ideal choice for the first recipient of this award, so generously donated by Infosys."

Koller’s wide-reaching work may also be used to design tomorrow’s search engines that crawl the internet. By making smarter thinking software, online content could be sorted faster and with better search criteria.

Visual object recognition for your iPhone

Evolution Robotics will soon bring visual object recognition to your iPhone. The company has said that they will launch the new application in June. Using the ViPR visual object recognition technology, iPhone owners will be able to snap a photo of a book or CD cover and then mail it to the Evolution servers for image processing. If the object is properly identified, then a reply email will be issued with additional information. The demo video below shows how this technology can be used to find information about the Nemo DVD and movie soundtrack; the software allows users to purchase songs directly from iTunes. This e-commerce component is probably how the company plans to make money from their mobile phone version of their object recognition technology. More of my thoughts about this system and possible future applications after Evolution's demo video of the iPhone visual object recognition system.

Just a few months ago, we reported on a similar system for mobile phones available in Japan (by KDDI and Bandai Networks) that also utilizes Evolution's ViPR technology. In the past, the same object recognition algorithm powered the visual capabilities of SONY's AIBO robot dog. Evolution also has partnered with WowWee Robotics to bring the visual recognition software to their line of entertainment robots.

I have said in the past that Evolution's business model is in danger because of Microsoft's entry in the robot control software. The object recognition technology that Evolution utilizes in their products, however, is state-of-the-art and has withstood the test of time for nearly a decade. So far, no other recognition system can do much better than ViPR's underlining visual recognition algorithm so Evolution still has something very valuable in its procession.

So, if this visual recognition technology has been around for nearly a decade, why are we only seeing it becoming available to consumers today? There are a few reasons for that. Fist, the fact that the cameras attached to mobile devices such as phones and PDAs have become so much better makes the usage of these computer vision algorithms possible under difficult, everyday conditions. Moreover, cheap bandwidth is allowing companies such as Evolution to move complex visual processing far from the mobile device with its limited computational resources and to remote servers that can execute the computer vision algorithms in real-time and store the large amounts of image data necessary to make them work.

I expect to see more applications such as this one becoming a reality in the next few years. Soon, we will be able to snap a photo of a downtown corner in any city, send it to a remote server and then get back information about our precise location, a kind of visual GPS. Similar systems will automatically process the enormous amount of video posted online daily and automatically link the videos together in a meaningful way or even embed advertising in the videos without the need for a human editor similar to how Google's AdSense works for text-based content today.

The Bum Bot patrols Atlanta's streets

Atlanta pub owner Rufus Terrill is getting huge news headlines for taking a high-tech approach to keeping the streets surrounding his neighborhood safe. The 57-year-old former Marine created a four-foot-tall, 300-pound robot patrol unit that serves as mobile security camera, security guard and neighborhood watch. His opponents are claiming that Terrill is adding to the city’s problems but for some of his neighbors and customers, Terrill is a hero for drawing a line in the sand.

The idea for the robot, which some are dubbing the “Bum Bot”, came from Terrill’s wife. After hearing complains from her hubby about how street vagrants, drug dealers and criminals were breaking into shops and cars in countless petty thefts she suggested to Terrill that he put his engineering hobby to use and make a mechanical extension of himself so he could patrol the streets surrounding his bar, O’Terrill’s, but also remain at a safe distance. The solution was a garage-built robot that is powered by four car batteries, uses a three-wheel scooter as its frame and is protected by plywood and black rubber gym pads. A spotlight is centered on the top of its ‘head’ along with an infrared camera that sends back the imagery to Terrill. There is also a speaker that Terrill can flip on to tell potential troublemakers to move along as well as a water cannon that can send a blast of cold water at any would-be attacker. So far Terrill hasn’t had to use the water spray to get his message across.

While the Bum Bot isn’t as futuristic looking as RoboCop the point that Terrill is making is that robots can be used by average citizens to safeguard their property. However, not everyone is a fan of the ex-Marine’s approach to home protection. "We have a Hollywood picture that [robots are] going to run amok, kill people and do bad things,” says Henrik Christensen, the director of Georgia Tech's Robotics and Intelligent Machines Center. “This Bum Bot plays on that stereotype. For the rest of us who want to use technology to assist people in their daily lives, it's an obstacle."

But that isn’t stopping Terrill from continuing to use the Bum But. He and his mechanical creation just appeared on “The Colbert Report” and Terrill is considering a run for the mayor’s office. “[The Bum Bot will] be my chief of staff,” says the bar owner. “He'll be parked in front of my office.”

The Broad Area Maritime Surveillance unmanned aircarft

The Navy has made its biggest investment yet in the field of robotic aircraft. The seafaring force of the United States military has placed a $1.16 billion dollar order with Northrop Grumman to develop the BAMS (Broad Area Maritime Surveillance) aircraft, an unmanned drone. Northrop Grumman will construct the BAMS fleet from the design of its Global Hawk drone craft but it’s expected that the BAMS aircraft will be larger than the Hawks. The cost of each BAMS drone will be $55 million including the price of the communications module for ground personnel.

The BAMS will step in to partially replace the Navy’s P-3 Orion aircraft fleet which have served the force for decades. Orions have been used primarily to monitor the airspace above oceans and were used extensively during the Cold War to monitor the positions of Russian ships and submarines. When the Orions are retired they will be replaced by a new manned aircraft, the P-8 Poseidon, and the BAMS will be used to provide support and both cost less to manufacturer and maintain than a Poseidon.

This initial order will provide the Navy with approximately 44 robot BAMS (which make up five squadrons) drone by approximately 2014. When they are operational the drones will be able to remain in the air for up to 24 hours, be able to perform surveillance from high and low altitudes over a 2,000 mile radius and be smart enough to conduct battle-damage assessments should it be damaged in combat.

Other countries have been awaiting the Navy’s decision. Already Australia has invested $15 million into R&D of the BAMS aircraft and they are expected to buy some units of the next gen drone shortly. Canada, Japan, Singapore and the United Kingdom have also expressed interest in purchasing their own BAMS fleets.

Robot tweezers work at cellular level

Scientists at the University of Toronto have developed a robotic pair of tweezers that can grasp a cell without damaging it and that are smart enough to know how hard to grab their target. This medical breakthrough means that medical and engineering nanotechnology applications could be right around the corner.

Looking a little bit like a razor blade, the robotic gripper uses a pair of arms three millimeters long. The grips can clamp around cells no longer than 10 micrometers across and apply as little as 20 nanoNewtons of force. The average cell won’t start to deform until the pressure is above 100 nanoNewtons.

The grippers are designed from a silicon wafer and cost about $50 each to make a set of 100. Yu Sun, the university professor that was involved in the development of the robot, said that the cost per unit could be lowered to around $10 each if the device becomes mass produced.

The software that runs the gripper robot is also revolutionary. When left on their own the device can recognize the difference between the shape of a cell (or whatever other design they have been programmed to recognize) and that of other bodies. They can also recognize their own grip strength and increase or decrease it to ensure a safe but secure grip. In tests with cells the tweezers could recognize cells, grab them and then place them in a row faster than a human could do. The potential to mass produce these kinds of small-scale robots to assist in delicate medical and engineering tasks on such a small scale could prove to be a major stepping stone for the field of nanotechnology. “They can grasp silicon parts, and they can put things together," said Sun about the complexity of the device. "So it's really a flexible and dexterous hand."

Rise of the robots on your t-shirt

If you want an easy way to show the world your love of robots then we have the t-shirt made just for you. What you are looking at is a shirt design made available at ChopShopStore.com that incorporates the silhouettes of 51 robots from science fiction movies and television shows over the decades. Test your memory skills and see if you can name them all. There is a Dalek from “Doctor Who”, the Martian War Machines from H.G. Wells’ “War of the Worlds”, the ED-209 law enforcement robot from “RoboCop”, two of the robots from Disney’s 1979 movie “The Black Hole”, two different designs of Marvin the Paranoid Android from “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”, Muffy the Daggit from the old school “Battlestar Galactica” and that still leaves over four dozen left for you to CSI.


A mens t-shirt will set you back $25 while a women’s t goes for two bucks more. They are available in either charcoal or black and come in a pretty decent range of sizes. Hit the website to place your order now before the robot rebellion hits and you may be counted as one of the lucky humans spared to serve our new robot masters.

FIRST Robotics Championship: Let the games begin

Beginning tomorrow the 17th annual FIRST Championship will test the engineering ingenuity of more than 10,000 students from around the world. The young minds are gathering in Atlanta, Georgia to see how their robotic creations perform in a series of three competitions.


Created by the legendary inventor Dean Kamen back in 1989, FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) challenges children as young as six years of age to take part in creating their own cutting edge science and technology solutions. For the last two months more than 1,500 teams representing 37,500 high school students took part in the robotic competitions to earn their invite to Atlanta’s Georgia Dome and the Championship contests. Now that the final teams have been selected they will see which group can take top honors in each of the three competitions.


The FIRST LEGO League will see 81 teams (comprised of over 800 middle-school students) build and program a LEGO Mindstorms robot. Tasks that will need to be completed with the kids’ robot include planting trees and working with sustainable energy technologies like solar panels, wind turbines and hydro-electric dams. In the FIRST Tech Challenge that is open to 1,000 high school students the teams will place their robot in a “quad challenge” where their constructs have to move three-inch rings on a board to score points. Finally in the FIRST Robotics Competition 344 robotics teams will compete against each other in a series of tests designed to whittle the strong from the weak. Their robots will take part in a race to move 40-inch inflated balls around a track as well as over and under a 6-foot, 6-inch overpass.


So what do the kids get for their hard work and effort (besides the opportunity to miss a couple of days of school?) Well for starters the FIRST students are eligible for $10 million dollars in scholarships to some of the country’s best engineering and science schools. As well the students will be able to take part in the 2008 FIRST Robotics Conference that is happening today and tomorrow, allowing the young minds to directly ask questions to the top professors and scientists working in robotics today.


For more info about the Championship, or to see photographs from the events, visit www.usfirst.org.

Robots in IRAQ turn into a PR headache for everyone!

I don't know if you have been following this story but it is quite interesting. To recap, last week a Popular Mechanics article informed us that during the RoboBusiness conference participants were told how robotics went 20 years back after the Talon SWORDS malfunctioned in IRAQ and Foster-Miller had to pull them out of service. Clearly, robotics technology is not at the point that we can trust an autonomous machine with a gun. That said, SWORDS is teleoperated and it could never shoot anyone on its own.

Here is a quote from an April 9th, 2008, Popular Mechanics article explaining the situation,

This is how fragile the robotics industry is: Last year, three armed ground bots were deployed to Iraq. But the remote-operated SWORDS units were almost immediately pulled off the battlefield, before firing a single shot at the enemy. Here at the conference, the Army’s Program Executive Officer for Ground Forces, Kevin Fahey, was asked what happened to SWORDS. After all, no specific reason for the 11th-hour withdrawal ever came from the military or its contractors at Foster-Miller. Fahey’s answer was vague, but he confirmed that the robots never opened fire when they weren’t supposed to.

It turns out that the whole thing was blown out of proportion. Foster-Miller tried to straighten things out by declaring that the above rumors of the robots' failure never put to danger the lives of American troops. In fact, the company says the problems were normal hardware malfunctions and no soldier's life was ever threatened. The robots have also not been removed from IRAQ but simply put on ice until the problems are worked out. Wired has all the details about this here.

So, now what? Not much really. Anyone with a basic knowledge of robotics knows that the technology is not to the point that a fully autonomous machine can be given a gun and nothing bad happens. Armed robots have only recently been introduced in war zones and one should expect with a high probability that things won't go smoothly right away. Robotics did not go back 20 years because a robot's motor failed while going downhill.

Designing the robots of the future

Engineering advancements in robotics are pushing open new doors in their functionality, bringing the day when a true multipurpose household robot ever closer. But before that day comes another important avenue of design that needs more research is the psychological aspects of humans interacting with smart machines. After all, a robot that lives with a family will have to interact with different kinds of humans, from small children to seniors, and each kind of person will want to have a different experience. So how do the scientists begin thinking about what kind of personalities they want the robots of tomorrow to have?

Beginning April 17 that future starts to be worked on as 10 universities from seven different European countries embark on the Lirec project. Lirec – Living with Robots and Interactive Companions – is a four-year, $12 million dollar endeavor that will look to how humans anthropomorphosize their experience with robots and what sort of interactions work best (and worst) for a broad spectrum of people. For example, the interaction between a robot that delivers a home security report to the head of the household should be different than the interaction given to a toddler. “What we're looking at here is long-term interactions between people and robots in real situations," said Peter McOwan, the coordinator of Lirec. "The big question is: what sort of properties does a synthetic companion need to have so that you feel you want to engage in a relationship with it over an extended period of time?"

The look of the robot of the future will also be of extreme importance. Kerstin Dautenhahn, a professor of robotics at the University of Hertfordshire, has analyzed the longterm social interactions between Kaspar, a robot designed to look like a two-year-old boy, and a group of volunteers. "People who are more extroverted say they enjoy interacting with a humanoid robot," said Dautenhahn. "People who are more introverted are more comfortable with a more mechanical robot.”

See Kaspar in action by watching the video below.

Kaspar
Uploaded by KadicK

The Woz talks about creating the computer of his dreams

It is always a pleasure to hear Steve Wozniak talk about the early days of Apple and the PC industry all together. Check out the 5-minute interview below of him talking about the first Apple computers and how he designed them in search of creating the computer of his dreams.

Paro therapeutic service robot coming to the USA and Canada

It was announced today that a new company called Paro Robot U.S. will be responsible for distributing the Paro therapeutic robot in the United States and Canada. The Japanese robot that looks like a baby seal has already been demonstrated to have useful therapeutic functionality. We have written about Paro before when it was announced as the winner of Japan's first ever Robot Awards in 2006. According to the company's Press Release, the robot's hardware, functionality, and design are a technological marvel.

Covered in pure white fur, it features a hard inner skeleton under which are dual processors that control proprietary software behavior generation and voice recognition systems, and an array of sensors that working together, enable Paro to respond in a lifelike manner. The Paro robot can “see,” “hear,” and move proactively as well as reactively. The sophisticated technology is cleverly concealed in an elegant animatron that displays the intelligence and provides the companionship of a cherished pet.

Paro has been shown to help people who suffer from Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia. The company says that nearly 1000 robots are in use today. In 2006, we reported about Paro's use by autistic and handicapped children. The robot is expected to be as much a success in North America as it has been in Japan even though its cost is rather high. Paro will be sold for $5000 dollars which might be out of reach for many people who can truly benefit from having one. However, this is is another step towards making more widely available useful robots and so these new are definitely very good.

Emotional robots

New Scientist has posted an interesting article and accompanying video on the rise of the emotional robot. The article starts by noting the researchers' observation that owners of personal robots often grow an emotional attachment to the machines. The results is having people name their robots or treat them as if they have emotions. The popular robotic vacuum cleaner Roomba seems to hold a special place in the hearts of those who own one; recent studies have shown that many Roomba owners name, dress, and assign a gender to their robotic vacuum cleaners.

Kathy Morgan, an engineer based in Atlanta, said that her robot wore a sticker saying "Our Baby", indicating that she viewed it almost as part of the family. "We just love it. It frees up our lives from so much cleaning drudgery," she says.

I find the article's title a bit misleading because the article talks about people projecting their emotional state to the machines and not the machines displaying emotion themselves (or having been programmed to try and display emotion in order to ease the interaction with their human owners.) I better title would have been "The rise of the emotionally treated robot."

That said, the following video describes some of the work on human-robot interaction that was recently presented in the annual HRI conference held in Amsterdam. Being able to extract the emotional state of the user from observing his/her body language and facial expressions can go a long way in improving human-robot interaction interfaces.

Nexi: A robot designed for social interaction

Nexi is MIT's new mobile robot designed for studies in human-robot interaction and more. The team responsible for this social robot is the Personal Robot Group from MIT's media lab. Nexi is built over the uBot mobile platform and has two hands allowing for dexterous manipulation; an expressive face with multiple cameras completes the robot. Nexi has enough on-board circuitry to handle low level control tasks. Wireless networking allows the researchers to use remote workstations for high-level control (including cognition,) and audio/visual data processing. This is what the team has to say about their social robot project on the official web site,

We are developing a team of 4 small mobile humanoid robots that possess a novel combination of mobility, moderate dexterity, and human-centric communication and interaction abilities. Our collaborators include Xitome Design and UMASS Amherst. We refer to this class of robots as "MDS" for Mobile/Dexterous/Social.

But talk is cheap so below is a video that explains Nexi's design and capabilities.



Other robots from the same group that you might have heard about include Huggable, Leonardo, AUR (a robotic desk lamp,) and RoCo.

Photos and video are copyright MIT and the Personal Robots Group.

Yellow Drum Machine: a music playing toy robot

If you haven't seen this one yet, check out the video below of the Yellow Drum Machine music playing autonomous mobile robot toy. This little robot took its creator fritsl from letsmakerobots.com about 20 hours to built and only cost him $120. Here is some information (Yellow Drum Machine website here) about how the robot works,

Underneath is a speaker and a microphone.

The speaker is used for beeps from the microcontroller, and to make click-sounds to the beat. The click-sounds are simply made by setting a pin high and then low straight after each other. This way I can have the Microcontroller make sound to the music it is also playing, without using any time / causing delay.

The microphone (located on the stick between the two motors) is used to sample sounds and take input, measuring if the sticks are hitting anything or not.

Also it can be used to detect a foot stumping on the floor or someone clapping, and so the robot can find the speed of this after four beats, and play along / fall in to your clapping or stumping.

And.. It can be used when there are kids playing with the robot; Signals "Record", the kids shout, and the robot then plays music / a beat with their shouting as a part of "the music" :)

He is trying to get the attention of a toy manufacturer in order to mass market his robot toy. Seems like a nice toy for little kids who are certainly going to enjoy it for longer than the far more expensive Pleo (are these guys still around?)