Cogmation Robotics has released a 3D Robot Simulator and Graphical Robotic Development Environment that looks to be on first impressions much easier to use than other currently competing products. Looks like it might actually be fun too.
I think that’s over-inflating the title of your speech if you ask me. Still Hod Lipson’s TED conference talk on emergent order pertaining to robot locomotion was interesting. The concepts stray a little into the realm of self-indulgent pursuit of curiosity and novelty, however more the ideas could provide a base for more practical applications.
I guess in the future, when you turn on the lights in a gas station washroom, tiny robots will scurry away. A new paper studies the effects of robots exhibiting roach-like behaviour on real cockroaches. What’s also an interesting corollary is that the robots were in some instances influenced by the roaches.
The full robot article at Scientific American
And apparently, even writers at SA aren’t above making puns.
It’s been inevitable that a branch of artificial intelligence would go down a biological path and many have speculated about the emergence of an organic based processor for years. Now it seems, that one of the leaps down the path of merging bio and mech elements is happening via the brain of a moth.
“The robot’s motion is guided by a tiny electrode implanted in the moth’s brain, Higgins said, specifically to a single neuron that is responsible for keeping the moth’s vision steady during flight. The neuron transmits electrical signals which are then amplified in the robot’s base and through a mathematical formula, a computer translates the signals into action, making the robot move. “
The experiment claims to be striving to advance the field of neuro-science.
Read more about the experiment.
And please, someone leave them a comment that’s not a pun.
Sometimes the unusual actually works. The HRex Robot doesn’t use wheels or legs, but rather a combination of the two. And it works surprisingly well.
“The adorable Boston Dynamics RHex robot uses a combo of legs, wheels and paddles to cover pretty much any terrain, water included. It looks like some sort of frantic animal as it thrashes around in the grass and the sand, but it manages to make it through every time.”
That’s trusting your motion control systems.
Organic components may seem the stuff of science fiction novels, but cultured brain cells grown inVitro may be the key to a new realm of AI.
“In an Atlanta lab, minibrains in dishes can control robots and computer-simulated animals. They may provide a simple model to study how the brain changes as it learns. Georgia Tech researcher Steve Potter calls his biological-mechanical hybrids Neurally Controlled Animats. Each Animat’s “brain” consists of cultured rat neurons growing on a plate of electrodes. This live culture is linked to an artificial body—either a robotic animal or a computer-simulated one.”
Read more:
http://discovermagazine.com/2006/nov/minibrains-dishes/
Also check out the biotech driven drawings.
A new study is breaking new ground by examining the way children interact with robots. While this may seem to have more to do with psychology than software development, it does serve as an indicator of how far we are progressing towards integrating robotic technology.
“The children also treated QRIO with more care and attention than a similar-looking but inanimate robot that the researchers called Robby, which acted as a control in the experiment. Once they had grown accustomed to QRIO, they hugged it much more than Robby, who also received far more rough treatment.”
More about Javier Movellan’s research:
