A BBC news item describes some recent research into predator avoidance learning in bees. Researchers used tiny robot spiders in a variety of camouflaged colors in a simulated meadow of flowers to see how bees would react. The simplistic "robots" were modeled after the crab spider, a deadly predator of bumblebees. Each robot consisted of a solenoid that actuated two "trap pads" that would grab a bee that landed between them. Bees that had close calls with the spiders learned to be more careful and were successful at avoiding even well hidden spiders on future foraging trips. The downside to this adaptive foraging behavior is that the bees spent more time hovering in front of flowers, checking for predators, reducing the amount of pollination. The bees also began to completely avoid areas of the meadow where they spotted lots of predators, which suggests the plants themselves will suffer from predator infestation. For all the details see the research paper, Speed-Accuracy Tradeoffs and False Alarms in Bee Responses to Cryptic Predators (PDF format). This research was done by Lars Chittka and Tom Ings of the QMUL Bee Sensory and Behavioural Echology Lab.

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Military UAVs Adapted for Humanitarian Missions

Posted 5 Sep 2008 at 18:32 UTC by steve

Most of the stories we hear about military robots involve killing people, destroying things, or helping the military do those sorts of things. It's nice to hear about some military robots helping people for change. The National Health Laboratory Service in South Africa is adapting military unmanned flying vehicles (UAVs) and micro air vehicles (MAVs) to act as robot medical couriers. The flying robots help the agency transport medical samples from more than 5,000 clinics. Quick sample delivery speeds diagnosis of tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS patients, helping to limit the impact of epidemics and speed medical treatment of patients. In some cases sterile specimen containers are delivered by autonomous landings at the testing facility. In other cases, the UAV precision drops the specimen containers at predefined waypoints. To further speed diagnosis, the results are dispatched via SMS back to the originating clinic. Story via the DIY Drones blog.

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Thinking about Not-Thinking

Posted 4 Sep 2008 at 18:57 UTC by steve

The original instructions for Zen meditation date back to the 12th century saying, "Think of neither good nor evil and judge not right or wrong. Stop the operation of the mind, and consciousness; bring to an end all desires, all concepts and judgments". The latest fMRI brain scanning techniques have recently been turned on practitioners of this technique to find out what happens in the brain. The results have been published in a paper titled, Thinking about Not-Thinking: Neural Correlates of Conceptual Processing during Zen Meditation (PDF format). Researchers found brain regions that are active during this mental state but not during normal goal-oriented behavior. These brain regions appear to be involved in control of voluntary attention and are also thought to be part of our "sense of self". What the meditators appear to gain from learning to control this region is, "the ability to control the automatic cascade of semantic associations triggered by a stimulus and, by extension, to voluntarily regulate the flow of spontaneous mentation." In practical terms, the meditators were in more control of their brain, able to complete conceptual tasks faster and more accurately than non-mediators in the study. So does all this have any implications for AI or robotics? If we give robots human-like minds that think randomly and inaccurately, will they eventually adopt Zen meditation to overcome those handicaps?

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Pololu 3pi Robot

Posted 3 Sep 2008 at 16:39 UTC (updated 3 Sep 2008 at 16:39 UTC) by steve

Paul Grayson of Pololu wrote to let us know about their 3pi robot. The 3pi is a tiny (9.5cm) differential drive robot loaded with an AVR ATmega168 microcontroller, five sensors, LEDs, pushbuttons, a buzzer, and an LCD. You can program it in C using the GNU gcc toolchain, which is free software. You'll also need an AVR ISP programmer to load your programs onto the AVR. Polulu offers a combination deal that include the robot, programmer, and cables for $119. If you already have an AVR ISP programmer, you can get the robot for just $99. The 3pi looks like a cool little robot and we look forward to posting a full review of it if we can get our hands on one.

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Robots.Video: The Humans are Dead

Posted 2 Sep 2008 at 23:01 UTC by steve

Time for another robot music video. This time a classic from the New Zealand band, Flight of the Conchords. It's officially called "Robots" but most people seem to know it by the the catchier title, "The Humans are Dead". This is a heartwarming song about a robot uprising, dead humans, and robot life in the post-apocalyptic remains of the Earth. It also contains the best binary solo you've ever heard a robot perform.

A Robot Sundial Built with LEGO NTX

Posted 2 Sep 2008 at 16:36 UTC by steve

What better use for an advanced robot than emulating an ancient time keeping device? Jim Kelly has built a robot sundial using the LEGO NTX robotics kit. The biggest hitch was the lack of trig functions on the NTX brick. To get around that, he offloaded the trigonometry to a PDA. The robot uses a compass sensor and light sensor along with 3 motors and about 270 other LEGO parts. When activated, the robot sundial orients itself and then begins bluetooth transmission of the magnetic heading of the maximum reported light level to the PDA, which calculates and returns the time to the NTX. The Sundial is accurate to within 15 minutes. via The NTX Step blog.

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Robots: Bacteria-Propelled Microrobots

Posted 29 Aug 2008 at 11:11 UTC by mwaibel

In the new episode of the Robots podcast Metin Sitti, director of CMU's Nanorobotics Lab, presents a bacteria-propelled micro-robot. Sitti explains how it is possible to harness a robot to a living organism and discusses the challenges involved. He also shares plans on extending the robot's capabilities. Future versions of the robot are intended to enter the human bloodstream, urinary tract, cerebrospinal fluid or eyeball cavity for sensing and highly targeted drug delivery. In a second interview in the same episode, gastroenterologist Mark Schattner from New York City's Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center gives us an in-depth view from a medical perspective, discussing both current uses and future potential of in-body robots.

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Random Robot Roundup

Posted 28 Aug 2008 at 19:24 UTC by steve

Pat Meier-Johnson let us know about VIA's press release on the use of their Pico-ITX boards in several robots demonstrated at the Taipei International Robot Show. On a more philosophical note, see the new Search Magazine interview with the always fascinating Daniel Dennett. He talks about consciousness, free will, and science vs religion. Another interesting read is crabfu's review of the Bioloid robot kit. Your remember crabfu, the guy makes the amazing steam-powered machines. The craziest link of the week has to be the one jlin sent us about a breadboard made of real bread. Speaking of jlin (aka RoboJenny); in case you didn't notice her recent blog post, she's been nominated as one of the hottest bloggers of the year. I can't imagine why no one nominated me but as long as we have at least one roboticist on the list, I'm happy. So help us out by voting for RoboJenny. The Swirling Brain reports that a man in Maryland threatened to shoot a police robot after it delivered burgers and soda to the hotel room where he and his girlfriend were having a stand off with the police. He also spotted a Computerworld article where an Intel rep claims robots will be as smart as humans by 2050. And our last swirling news article of the week is a LinuxDevices story on some new laser-guide French robots running Linux. Know any other robot news, gossip, or amazing facts we should report? Send 'em our way please.

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Would Julian Jaynes Kick a Robot?

Posted 27 Aug 2008 at 23:24 UTC by steve

Stevan Harnad gave an interesting keynote talk at the recent Julian Jaynes Conference on Consciousness that both reminisces about Julian Jaynes and addresses the question of whether consciousness depends more on language or feeling. Harnad updates the classic question asked of Julian Jaynes about whether or not is was alright to kick a dog if dogs were not conscious. And what can we learn about consciousness from speculating on the likelihood of Jaynes kicking dogs and robots? More than you might think. Harnad's talk can be found in a newly released paper titled, "What it Feels Like to Hear Voices: Fond Memories of Julian Jaynes" (PDF format).

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UAV Destroys Unmanned System in Real Combat in Iraq

Posted 27 Aug 2008 at 14:06 UTC (updated 27 Aug 2008 at 14:07 UTC) by jlin

An article in Aviation Week states that last week, a MQ-9 Reaper UAV destroyed a "vehicle carrying a remotely controlled explosive device in southeast Iraq". Gizmodo claims that this is "the first time in history" that two unmanned systems "engaged and destroyed" each other. Other articles do not go that far; they only state that this is the first combat engagement for this particular UAV. The Reapers have reportedly have been in combat in Iraq since July 18 of this year, and in Afghanistan since last year. One source says that "the Reaper costs about 80 percent less than a manned fighter-bomber," "uses more than 90 percent less fuel, and can stay in the air over a target three or four times longer than a jet fighter". The smaller and less powerful MQ-1 Predator UAV is also being used in combat missions.

Robots Walking in a Wiggly World

Posted 26 Aug 2008 at 22:15 UTC by steve

Traditional robotics applications such as CNC and welding have relied on the idea that robots should be extremely rigid, with very precise mechanics and encoders. This leads to robots that are very bad at interacting with the real world. Animals, which are very good at interacting with the real world, are full of wiggly, springy, imprecise actuators. A new paper (PDF format) from the CMU Robotics Institute looks at the benefits of adopting this principle in robot leg design. Using compliant, spring-like mechanisms, the robot can recycle energy and exert higher mechanical power when walking or running. The researchers examine a range of compliance using a variable stiffness leg, called the Electric Cable Differential (ECD) Leg.

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Kidbots Turns Old Computers into Robots

Posted 26 Aug 2008 at 15:21 UTC by Rog-a-matic

With the goal of inspiring and educating young robot builders everywhere, kidbots.com's mission is to show how millions of old, obsolete computers can be turned into programmable robots. Included is a brief introduction to electronic components, PC components, CPU operation, and programming. Special attention is paid to use of the PC's parallel printer port as general purpose I/O to control actuators and read digital sensors, along with simple code examples in BASIC. The site is summed up with a fun animated gif showing a tin-can robot walking across a pile of old motherboards.

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RiSE Climbing Robot from Boston Dynamics

Posted 25 Aug 2008 at 14:25 UTC (updated 25 Aug 2008 at 18:13 UTC) by Rog-a-matic

Using micro-claws or sticky material (depending on the task at hand), RiSE can climb up trees, fences and vertical walls with help from his surface-conforming body and rigid tail. Video of RiSE at Boston Dynamics' website shows off his capabities. RiSE is 25cm long, weighs to 2 kg and uses 2 motors per leg. Sensors include inertial measuring, joint positions, strain and foot contact. Boston Dynamics is working on future versions using dry adhesion to tackle vertical climbing on glass and other slick surfaces.

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Random Robot Roundup

Posted 22 Aug 2008 at 20:55 UTC by steve

Howard Gordon writes, "Robot remote control via Internet is not a new concept, but this demo, created by Ogilvy New Zealand for BP Australia takes things to a new level." You can find more info about the project in the Surveyor news blog. Another reader pointed us to an interesting PLoS Biology paper that discusses some interesting parallels between language evolution and biological evolution including evidence of punctuated (no pun intended) equilibrium. The Swirling Brain pointed out a Technology review story on a new MRI technique called Diffusion spectrum imaging (DSI) which is revealing new information about the organization of brain cells. He also noticed stories on an artificially intelligent glider, a Scientific American report about a clever psychological experiment on free will, new spoilers about Terminator Salvation revealing a religious "building robots is a sin" theme, and an article on the winners of the UK MoD Grand Challenge. Roland Piquepaille's latest blog post is about an AUV being used to explore the world's deepest underwater volcanoes in the Caribbean. Know any other robot news, gossip, or amazing facts we should report? Send 'em our way please.