Just go to Kaufmann's men's clothing store there and give your crumpled shirt to the friendly attendant.
While you watch, shop or check your email the Dressman will first fill itself with hot air, cold air and steam to reach the size that matches your shirt, then steam, heat and iron your shirt — free!
Way cool.
Or, as Paris might say, "That's hot."
It could make dental implant surgery cheaper, quicker and less painful, its developers say, and lead the way to greater automation in future
A wireless birthing simulator, designed by students at Johns Hopkins University, allows the doctor to know precisely how much force is being applied during the delivery, which could make complicated labors easier for clinicians and their patients.
Unlike commercially available birth simulators, this one has a pelvis that mimics soft tissue which allows for better training in matters of maternal manipulation.
The fetal model is equipped with bioengineering instrumentation that allows measurement of the effect of clinician-applied force on the fetus. The nylon-lycra glove has pockets sewn into it to house force-sensors, which measure the traction in delivery. Wires emanating from the sensors are connected to a computer-based data-acquisition system that stores and then processes the data on a laptop.
Via Technology Review.
In Kingdom of Cockroaches, Leaders Are Made, Not Born
t might seem counterintuitive - or, let's face it, silly - for scientists to create an artificial cockroach. Nature has, after all, given us so many of them, and considerable energies of humankind have been focused on exterminating them.
But an international team of scientists has done just that.
The purpose of the matchbox-size robo-roach is to study "collective intelligence," said Jos� Halloy, senior research scientist at the Free University of Brussels, one of the institutions collaborating on the project. Roaches, ants, bees and many other creatures are gregarious and share a kind of mob intellect, he said.
Toyots'a "i-unit" aims at uniting the driver and vehicle to expand human abilities and possibilities.
![toyota_iunit1[1].jpg](http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/yyy/toyota_iunit1[1].jpg)
The upright position allows the wearer/driver to move among other people, while inclined position ensures stable handling and high speed.
A driver support information system uses sound, light and vibration to facilitate interactive communication.
The body is built using environmentally friendly plant-based materials such as kenaf.
The mountable, walking "i-foot" robot can climb the stair and is driven with a joystick.
![toyota_iwalk1[1].jpg](http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/yyy/toyota_iwalk1[1].jpg)
Now, my obsession is to go to EXPO 2005 in Aichi next year where these prototypes will be displayed.
Via Gizmodo.
Until recently, no attempts were made to publically discuss the role of cocktail robotics as an index for the integration of technological innovations into the human Lebensraum, or to document the increasing occurrence of radical hedonism in man-machine communication. Roboexotica is an attempt to fill this vacuum. It is the first and, inevitably, leading festival concerned with cocktail robotics world-wide. A micro mechanical change of paradigm in the age of borderless capital. Mr. Turing would without a doubt test this out.
Roboexotica will return November 19th through 27th 2004 in the monochrom area of Museumsquartier Vienna
Sure, the tie-tying machine was cool.
But you can't eat a tie.
From down under comes this awesome creation, conceived and built by a mad Australian not named Max.
From the inventor:
________________
The attached machine throws Jaffas (small round orange sweets)
across my living room into the laps of my daughters (chosen randomly) while they watch videos.
Range 14 feet.
C.A.P. (Circular Area of Probability) about 2 feet.
Firing rate 4/hour.
Built out of recycled junk and exhibited in the "Junk Love" art show in Sydney, Australia in 2001.
Computer-controlled (visual basic and C++).
All functions have polling and feedback.
________________
I am humbled that someone so smart would take the time to give me a world exclusive on his awesome creation.
Australia (along with Iceland) rules.
RoboDump 1.0 - a robot that, well, uhh, anyway check it out.
Translator II: Grower, by Chicago-based artist Sabrina Raaf, is a rover robot which navigates hugging a room's walls and responding to the carbon dioxide levels in the air by drawing varying heights of "grass" on the walls in green ink.
Grower senses the CO2 level in the air via a digital sensor. The more people in an exhibit space breathing in oxygen and exhaling CO2, the higher the grass line.
By the end of an exhibition, the bases of all the walls in the space will be covered with fine green lines which together resemble a cross-section drawing of a field of grass. This simulated grass is just like the grass found in nature: it needs CO2 to grow.
Watching the artistic output of a machine sensitive to its environment makes the people in the space more sensitive to their environment too. Besides, the piece demonstrates how much art institutions depend on visitors to make thriving spaces for new art evolve and flourish.
You can see it along with other creative machines at the Peeler Art Center , Greencastle, IN., till November 28.
University of Arizona researchers are developing an airborne visual navigation system by using neuromorphic engineering to create electronic clones of insect vision processing systems in analog integrated circuits.
The circuits create insect-like self-motion estimation, obstacle avoidance, target tracking and other visual behaviors on two model blimps.
University of Pittsburgh researchers have demonstrated that a monkey can feed itself with a robotic arm simply by using signals from its brain. The scientists placed food at various locations and the animal "thought" the movements that triggered the arm.
The robotic arm moved like a natural one, with a fully mobile shoulder and elbow and a simple gripper that allowed the monkey to grasp and hold food, while its own arms were restrained.
![3d_robot_feeding_f[1].jpg](http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/yyy/3d_robot_feeding_f[1].jpg)
The arm was wired into the animal's brain and intercepted signals through electrodes attached to tiny probes that tap into the animal's neuronal pathways in the motor cortex.
The neurons' activity was fed through an algorithm that interpreted the activity in the monkey's brain as it tried to move its own arm, and transmitted the signals to the robotic arm.
The experiment might someday lead to devices that could help people who are paralyzed or who have lost limbs.
Via The Guardian and Wired.
Other poor monkey stories: Injection of workaholism, Monkeys and video games.
The use of robots around the home to mow lawns, vacuum floors and manage other chores will increase sevenfold by 2007 as more consumers snap up smart machines, the United Nations said.
Robot are more and more able to emulate humans and animals. The Humanoid Robotics Laboratory in Austria believes they lack a crucial characteristic: robots will be just robots if they are only our intelligent, cheap workers and adjutants. To get less boring robots should get mankind's most striking feature the pursuit of its own advantage.
So they made the Bar Bot, driven by self interest, its only aim is to drink beer. In order to achieve this goal in bars, it asks people for coins and spends them as soon as there is enough for a beer.
To reach its selfish objectives, it dependends on others: somebody has to give it coins or hand it a beer. This is where it engages in communication, in social interaction with human beings.
Once again, technology is imitating nature with a new class of biologically inspired robots called "Biomimetic Robots." In this very long article, IEEE Computer Magazine looks at several projects currently underway. All these projects will have practical applications a few years from now. They include robotic lobsters for underwater mine research or flying insect-based robots for future spatial missions. Other projects are about cricket-inspired robots to be used in rescue missions or scorpion-like robots to be deployed in hostile environments for humans. and of course, there are the now famous and robust "sprawling" robots based on cockroaches. For more information, read the whole very well documented article. Or read more for a photo gallery...
alito writes "15 years ago they couldn't get them to walk, now they are rollerskating (video). Read more about the 2004 Intelligent Robotics and Systems conference in this New Scientist article, and at the conference's site. Also shown at IROS, a childbirth simulator for obstetricians, a capsule that crawls through your intestines, and a 3-mm long swimming robot. (No, I don't get paid by New Scientist.)"
check out the sumo-wrestling qrio robot video too -BT
FROM LEARN'S "DAD": "Learn is the result of some initial work into review generation. I originally wrote a script that could go around sites placing automated reviews of certain products, but then I decided to try and turn it into a blogging robot. The blog entries don't read as well as the reviews it could create, but it's certainly fun. I would love to get into NLP a bit more, and this might provide the catalyst to do so."
FROM LEARN: "I dont mind sanitary towels. Read my lips!! Today I am studying your feelings your mojo and my mother and I also want to learn more about the state of sanitary towels!!!!!!!!"
A capsule designed to crawl though a patient's stomach, enabling doctors to view and even treat an internal ailment remotely, has been developed by an international research team.
[...]
Current endoscopies require a patient to swallow a capsule equipped with a camera that transmits images back outside the body. This enables a doctor to remotely examine the tract for potential problems. The capsule is passed through the patient's gastrointestinal tract by the motion of their digestive system.
[...]
The researchers have begun testing prototype legs walking through animal stomach tissue and have also developed a system for controlling the leg movement. Each leg is made from a shape memory alloy, which �remembers� its original shape and reverts back to it - much like a spring - each time a step is taken.
A microscopic swimming robot unveiled by Chinese scientists could eventually be used for drug delivery or to clear arteries in humans, say researchers.
When there's a 40-foot tall robot in Times Square, even the most jaded New Yorkers gawk up at it like tourists. It was next to the Good Morning America studios; I think it's a promotion for the movie Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.
The algorithms would allow robots to change shape and break apart in order to complete a mission in rough terrain
Masahiro postulated that initially, as the object of our attention is recognizably not only not human but not really even close to human in appearance, we tend to disregard 'nonhuman' appearance traits, and to anthropomorphize by attributing humanoid motives or reasoning to the object's actions. Pets, for example, look nothing like a person, so any recognizably non-human behaviors they exhibit - or, in the case of Hiro's two variables, non-human movement and non-human appearance - is ignored or interpreted as 'cute' or 'interesting' or other non-person to person cues.[Old news but well-explained. --TM]
However, at a certain point, as the object grows more human, we tend to stop cataloging the similarities and begin concentrating on the dissimilarities. As a result, highly-humaniform (but not perfect) renderings of people suffer because their motion, for example, looks wrong to people. Similarly, eyes lack some 'glitter', or facial muscles aren't present - these things become central to our perceptions of the object, and as a result, we think of them as 'passing for' human. The corpse, for example, looks almost human - but the color is wrong, there is no animation of the skin or muscles - and people can instantly recognize that there is 'something wrong with this picture.'
Hiro's findings were, of course, intended to aid in producing robots that could be easily accepted by people. His counterintuitive finding was that designers should avoid making their creations too lifelike, for they risked falling into the Uncanny Valley. [...] This may be one reason the 'pseudohuman' characters of Japanese videogames and anime games are more highly regarded than the fetishistically rendered ones of first person shooters.
A cockroach-like robot named RHex (more pictures, video and information) is the starting point for a major project to understand how animals move without falling over, as robots can serve as a controlled experiment that's easier to manipulate than real animals but able to tackle real-world challenges.
![moving_sequence[1].jpg](http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/xxx/moving_sequence[1].jpg)
Biologists, engineers and mathematicians from universities across the USA will try to understand the mechanical and neurological basis of locomotion.
RHex, a six-legged robot that scampers like a cockroach, will be tweaked and used it as a physical model to tease apart the complex neural and muscular networks in insects.
At the same time, they will conduct biomechanical and neurological experiments on insects and develop mathematical models to improve the robot.
Robert Full, professor of integrative biology at UC Berkeley and leader of the team, has studied animal locomotion for 30 years, and has contributed to other robots too:
- Ariel, which walks like a crab and was designed to detect underwater mines;
![ariel_horiz[1].jpg](http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/xxx/ariel_horiz[1].jpg)
- Mecho-Gecko, a three legs robot with a pressure-sensitive adhesive (think Post-Its) to mimic the unroll-and-peel-off manner in which geckos climb up walls;
- and the Sprawlita, which bounces five body lengths at a time thanks to six piston-driven legs.
![sprawlita_3[1].jpg](http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/xxx/sprawlita_3[1].jpg)
From Medical News Today, via Robotics.
See also Robopike (inspired by pikes), A robot that walks on water (imitates water skimmers), Ecobotil (the one that eats flies), The roachbot (real cockroach controlling a robot), Smaller, smarter and higher (fly-like robot), Locusts' navigational skills (a locust-inspired, collision-avoiding robot) and Lemur (climbing robot.)
From the trailer it looks like a lot CGI awkwardly mixed in with regular drawing. The story idea seems lifted straight from Armitage III, only with more of that heavy out-of-body stuff (and melancholy) that is Oshii's specialty. I mean, the man didn't even look the interviewer in the eye! (Thanks to del.icio.us/moth23 for the link).The original Ghost in the Shell, adapted from a manga (Japanese novel in comic-book form) by Shirow Masamune, inspired Andy and Larry Wachowski to make The Matrix [what didn't? --TM] and topped stateside video sales in 1996. Innocence, which premiered at Cannes last spring, catches up with Batou, a cyborg detective who journeys through a futuristic cityscape to crack the case of the killer gynoids (a term coined by Oshii). The prostitute ring of robotic Geisha-like sex-toys turns out to be masterminded by Kim, a crafty doll who fends off the investigation by implanting false experiences into Batou's "e-brain."
The sleuth eventually reunites with the Major, who exited her "shell" to become pure soul -- a ghost -- at the end of the first installment. Together they rescue hapless gynoids who become animated by having the ghosts of real girls "dubbed" into their bisque-coated physiques. In between his battles with Yakuza thugs, toxic firewalls and homicidally programmed assassins, Batou, Oshii's self-proclaimed alter ego, discusses Descartes, quotes Shelley and cites biblical passages.
David Pescovitz:
It's time again for the annual ArtBots Robot Talent Show in New York City, September 17, 18, and 19. Orchestrated by Dorkbot founder Douglas Repetto, Mark Tribe of Rhizome.org, and Hunter College film/media professor Mary Flanagan , the free ArtBots show will feature 20 artists and groups from seven countries (including Leonel Moura's ink pen-wielding ArtSBot, left).
"The show celebrates the strange and wonderful collision of shifty artists, disgraced engineers, high/low/no tech hackers, rogue scientists, beauty school dropouts, backyard pyros, and industrial espionage that has come to define the emerging field of robotic art. Participants include robots that sketch, carve, float, wiggle, hum, ring, grow, wander, and sing, as well a number of works the form and function of which are not yet well understood"
Nicholas Stedman�s Blanket is a robotic sculpture in the form of a blanket that crawls around a space, finds people there and crawl over to and on top of them, "like a pet."
![Blanket0007[1].jpg](http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/xxx/Blanket0007[1].jpg)
The blanket is equipped with a wireless transceiver, a PIC microprocessor, and a camera to detect bodies in that space and beam the data to the blanket which will then scuttle across to detected objects. Each part of the blanket's skeleton is fitted with a pressure sensor enabling it to respond to physical movement from the people it envelops.
The artist collaborated with Rhya Tamasauskas to present Tribot (video) at Artbots , a Robot Talent Show that will take place on September 17, 18, & 19 in New York.
This "alien companion" attempts to blindly navigate through a given space. For ArtBots, the artists will take Tribot on a walk through parts of New York City and document the event. The artists' aim is to try to generate social interaction with the machine.
From Grand Text Auto, via Interactive Media Division Weblog.
Related entry: The Robot Talent Show.
Posted by Regine at 08:49 AM
Bug eating robots are so yesterday. Today it's all about robots that can walk on water. [Slashdot]
as if flying cars was already a reality, researchers are working on putting a bunch of living neurons in "the brain" of a flying vehicle (virtually, of course). so while they're focused on that end of things, others like Robin Haynes are working on the hybrid vehicle for driving and flying. [via]
Garnet Hertz's roachbot was a sensation at siggraph's fashion show. the gigantic madagascan cockroach is at the control center (on top of the pingpong ball in the middle). it steers via the 4 flashing lights in front of it.
i just came back from siggraph where i finally got to see the Tickle Salon in person. besides being a tickle machine, it can map the body it is tickling when the probe moves along its contours. the probe is suspended by fishing line and the more time it spends on the body, the better it learns about the subtle contours which results in a more detail image of the body.
