R2 and Harmony

Obama Speaks with Astronauts from the Discovery Spacecraft

While it may just be another flight back home from space for the Discovery spacecraft, 39 visits to space total, it’s the first for R2. R2 is a state of the art humanoid robot designed to help the ISS crew and was a subject of conversation during an interview between the crew and President Obama.

When they admitted that R2 remained in packing foam Obama joked:

“C’mon, unpack the guy! He flew all that way and you guys aren’t unpacking him?”

CC: NASA.gov

A sentimental point that both the crew of the ISS and President Obama brought up was the literally “out-of-this-world” harmony between nations.

 Able to connect and collaborate without starting another cold war, the United States, Russia, European Space Agency, and Japan were able to build and maintain life on the I.S.S.

President Obama during the interview called the harmony a testimony to the way we need to

 ”live and work together productively in space, and maybe back here on earth.”

Colonel Steven Lindsey concurred, commenting on how

 ”All of these countries put together probably the most complex thing ever built, and built it in space.”  

Not only did they put it all together in space, but as Col. Lindsey observed

 ”everything fit the first time we tried it.”

which makes it just poetic.



UM's foot of fury makes walking more efficient

Amputees wearing prosthetics have to expend almost a quarter more energy than the rest of us, to walk the same distances.

This new, microchipped artificial foot (above) compensates for that.

via PLoS ONE: Recycling Energy to Restore Impaired Ankle Function during Human Walking.

Stupid animatronic trick of the day

Photo: CC/Toni Lucatorto

Photo: CC/Toni Lucatorto

Japan is talking-up yet another bipedal robot (at least officials are not describing this one as a potential sexual partner, yet), to help humans settle-in on the moon, in about ten years.

TOKYO (AP) — Japan hopes to have a two-legged robot walk on the moon by around 2020, with a joint mission involving astronauts and robots to follow, according to a plan laid out Friday by a government group.

Specifics of the plan, including what new technologies will be required and the size of the project’s budget, are to be decided within the next two years, according to Japan’s Strategic Headquarters for Space Development, a Cabinet-level working group.

via The Associated Press: Japan aims for walking robot on the moon by 2020.

Stupid animatronic trick of the day

Yet another do-nothing Japanese robot (part of an ongoing game of one-upsmanship between automakers and electronics companies) that mimics one or more aspects of human behavior…Found on Drudge (www.drudgereport.com), who eats this stuff up.

more about “Stupid animatronics trick of the day“, posted with vodpod

At least the AFP didn’t lead its story with the tired line, “It sounds like science fiction, but…”

The creators of the Child-robot with Biomimetic Body, or CB2, say it’s slowly developing social skills by interacting with humans and watching their facial expressions, mimicking a mother-baby relationship.

A bald, child-like creature dangles its legs from a chair as its shoulders rise and fall with rythmic breathing and its black eyes follow movements across the room.

It’s not human — but it is paying attention.

via Japan child robot mimicks infant learning.

But to say the CB2 is “paying attention,” or “developing social skills,” is a stretch, if you consider these to be functions of a conscious mind.

More to Middle Earth than imagined – The Boston Globe

Mines of Moria, from Westwood, Mass.-based Turbine

Image: LOTR: Mines of Moria, from Westwood, Mass.-based Turbine

In my Boston Globe column today, I embrace the latest Roomba robot vacuum cleaner, and note the growth of a Middle Earth MMO. Both products are from Massachusetts-based companies.

Please take a moment to read the column, and comment at Boston.com!

Just in time for Great Depression 2.0:

Westwood-based Turbine (it’s at www.turbine.com) last week launched a game that will keep you busy for as long as you can keep the lights on.

The Lord of the Rings Online: Mines of Moria is the first expansion pack for Turbine’s massively multiplayer online game about hobbits, wizards, and whatnot.

LOTRO: Mines of Moria shows there is even more to Middle Earth than MMO players could have imagined.

via More to Middle Earth than imagined – The Boston Globe

IBM, DARPA, building "cat brain"

Can killer robocats be far behind?

CC/Arizona Parrot

Photo: CC/Arizona Parrot

IBM has announced it will lead a US government-funded collaboration to make electronic circuits that mimic brains. Part of a field called “cognitive computing”, the research will bring together neurobiologists, computer and materials scientists and psychologists. As a first step in its research the project has been granted $4.9m £3.27m from US defense agency Darpa. The resulting technology could be used for large-scale data analysis, decision making or even image recognition. source: news.bbc.co.uk

via IBM to Build Cat-like Brain

Don’t know why, but this story appears to be a re-report of a story that ran a month ago: Click here for that one.

Singularity watch: New technologies as likely to to enslave as liberate

We might not want to live forever (emphases, below, are mine). Libertarian author David Friedman appears to be arguing in a new book (which I will be reviewing in the coming weeks) that the future will be an adapt-or-die type thing:

David Friedman, author of such books as The Machinery of Freedom and Hidden Order: The Economics of Everyday Life, now looks at a variety of technological revolutions that might happen over the next few decades, their implications, and how to deal with them. Topics range from encryption and surveillance through biotechnology and nanotechnology to life extension, mind drugs, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence. One theme of the book is that the future is radically uncertain. Technological changes already begun could lead to more or less privacy than we have ever known, freedom or slavery, effective immortality or the elimination of our species, and radical changes in life, marriage, law, medicine, work, and play. “If it can be done, it will be done,” David Friedman has said. “So the interesting thing to me is not what should you stop but how do you adapt.” We do not know which future will arrive, but it is unlikely to be much like the past. It is worth starting to think about it now.

via Cato Institute: Future Imperfect: Technology and Freedom in an Uncertain World (Book Forum)

Stanford robots fly "better" than humans

Dvice.com

Smarter than your average carbon-based life form. Photo: Stanford U.

The Sci-Fi Channel blog says that autonomous choppers developed at Standford University are teaching each other to fly better than a human pilot.

The announcement embraces two common subtexts in media coverage of robotic technologies: that robots will soon be our betters, and that they can be trustworthy as they carry out their benign missions overhead.

Stanford says “there is interest in using autonomous helicopters to search for land mines in war-torn areas or to map out the hot spots of California wildfires in real time.”

That kind of language is the military’s way of easing robot killing machines into our consciences. The choppers will follow the Predator into the killing business soon enough.

DVICE: Stanfords robotic helicopters teach each other tricks, fly better than a human
Crazily enough, the helicopters used aren’t fancy at all. They’re just store-bought RC helicopters, with the complex innards added by the Stanford students. The team includes Professor Andrew Ng, graduate students Pieter Abbeel, Adam Coates, Timothy Hunter, Morgan Quigley, and expert remote controller Garett Oku.

Navy likes New England robots

IEEE Spectrum

Fish love company. Photo: IEEE Spectrum

Bedford-based iRobot and E. Falmouth-based Webb Research are among the New England companies making headlines for their work with submersible robots. The Navy is keen on the Spray, a robot “glider” that can slip to depths of 1500 meters.

The technology has been passed around a bit recently, as bigger DoD contractors swallow-up the littler ones.

IEEE Spectrum: Defense Contractors Snap Up Submersible Robot Gliders
In June, iRobot, in Bedford, Mass., best known for its Roomba vacuum cleaner and bomb-disposal PackBot, became the exclusive licensee of Seaglider, developed at the University of Washington, in Seattle. In July, defense industry giant Teledyne Technologies acquired Webb Research, in East Falmouth, Mass., creator of the Slocum glider. General Dynamics had earlier subcontracted Bluefin Robotics, in Cambridge, Mass., a licensee of the Spray, a glider jointly developed by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Behold the "living gel"

<a href=Robots will soon have guts, just like people, thanks to scientists at Waseda University.

The Waseda scientists have produced a gel that contracts like human intestines, and without any need for external stimulus.

If you place a small cylinder atop the gel, If a small cylindrical object is placed on the gel, reads the university’s announcement, “the wave motion of the gel causes it to roll forward—like a miniature conveyor belt.”