Futurist Foresight
MITs Cheetah shows just what robots can do on the track.
MIT’s Cheetah robot runs faster & more efficiently
Robotic Greyhound Races are closer than you think. From Engadget:
At the recent International Conference on Robotics and Automation, the Institute of Technology showed of its newest version, which reached a top speed of 13.7 mph. To accomplish this, the runner still needs parallel support bars to constrain movement in one dimension, reducing any roll, yaw — and the chances of a pretty expensive fall. The team says the new version’s cost of transport (COT is power consumption divided by weight, times velocity) is around 0.52. In comparison, Honda’s Asimo has a hefty COT of 2.
(via emergentfutures)
A wonderful microdrone.
Robotics researchers unveiled an electronic housefly on Thursday, one that can hover in air, flapping its wings to steer in a first demonstration of controlled artificial-insect flight.
Rovers are not just for exploring distant planets. Here is a NASA rover exploring Greenland.
NASA Rover Prototype Set to Explore Greenland Ice Sheet
NASA’s newest scientific rover is set for testing May 3 through June 8 in the highest part of Greenland.The robot known as GROVER, which stands for both Greenland Rover and Goddard Remotely Operated Vehicle for Exploration and Research, will roam the frigid landscape collecting measurements to help scientists better understand changes in the massive ice sheet.
This autonomous, solar-powered robot carries a ground-penetrating radar to study how snow accumulates, adding layer upon layer to the ice sheet over time.Greenland’s surface layer vaulted into the news in summer 2012 when higher than normal temperatures caused surface melting across about 97 percent of the ice sheet. Scientists at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., expect GROVER to detect the layer of the ice sheet that formed in the aftermath of that extreme melt event.
Research with polar rovers costs less than aircraft or satellites, the usual platforms.
“Robots like GROVER will give us a new tool for glaciology studies,” said Lora Koenig, a glaciologist at Goddard and science advisor on the project.
GROVER will be joined on the ice sheet in June by another robot, named Cool Robot, developed at Dartmouth College, Hanover, N.H., with funding from the National Science Foundation. This rover can tow a variety of instrument packages to conduct glaciological and atmospheric sampling studies.
GROVER was developed in 2010 and 2011 by teams of students participating in summer engineering boot camps at Goddard. The students were interested in building a rover and approached Koenig about whether a rover could aid her studies of snow accumulation on ice sheets. This information typically is gathered by radars carried on snowmobiles and airplanes. Koenig suggested putting a radar on a rover for this work.
Koenig, now a science advisor on the GROVER Project, asked Hans-Peter Marshall, a glaciologist at Boise State University to bring in his expertise in small, low-power, autonomous radars that could be mounted on GROVER. Since its inception at the boot camp, GROVER has been fine-tuned, with NASA funding, at Boise State.
The tank-like GROVER prototype stands six feet tall, including its solar panels. It weighs about 800 pounds and traverses the ice on two repurposed snowmobile tracks. The robot is powered entirely by solar energy, so it can operate in pristine polar environments without adding to air pollution. The panels are mounted in an inverted V, allowing them to collect energy from the sun and sunlight reflected off the ice sheet.
A ground-penetrating radar powered by two rechargeable batteries rests on the back of the rover. The radar sends radio wave pulses into the ice sheet, and the waves bounce off buried features, informing researchers about the characteristics of the snow and ice layers.
From a research station operated by the National Science Foundation called Summit Camp, a spot where the ice sheet is about 2 miles thick, GROVER will crawl at an average speed of 1.2 mph (2 kilometers per hour). Because the sun never dips below the horizon during the Arctic summer, GROVER can work at any time during the day and should be able to work longer and gather more data than a human on a snowmobile.
At the beginning of the summit tests, Koenig’s team will keep GROVER close to camp and communicate with it via Wi-Fi within a three-mile (4.8-kilometer) range. GROVER will transmit snippets of data during the trial to ensure it is working properly but the majority of data will be recovered at the end of the season. The researchers eventually will switch to satellite communications, which will allow the robot to roam farther and transmit data in real time. Ideally, researchers will be able to drive the rover from their desks.
“We think it’s really powerful,” said Gabriel Trisca, a Boise State master’s degree student who developed GROVER’s software. “The fact is the robot could be anywhere in the world and we’ll be able to control it from anywhere.”
Michael Comberiate, a retired NASA engineer and manager of Goddard’s Engineering Boot Camp said the Earth-bound Greenland Rover is similar to NASA missions off the planet.
“GROVER is just like a spacecraft but it has to operate on the ground,” Comberiate said. “It has to survive unattended for months in a hostile environment, with just a few commands to interrogate it and find out its status and give it some directions for how to accommodate situations it finds itself in.”
Koenig hopes more radar data will help shed light on Greenland’s snow accumulation. Scientists compare annual accumulation to the volume of ice lost to sea each year to calculate the ice sheet’s overall mass balance and its contribution to sea level rise.
Do you feel empathy for robots? Or does it depend how far into the Uncanny Valley you are?
Humans feel empathy for robots
fMRI scans show similar brain function when robots are treated the same as humans
From the T-101 to Data from Star Trek, humans have been presented with the fictional dilemma of how we empathize with robots. Robots now infiltrate our lives, toys like Furbies or robot vacuum cleaners bring us closer, but how do we really feel about these non-sentient objects on a human level? A recent study by researchers at the University of Duisburg Essen in Germany found that humans have similar brain function when shown images of affection and violence being inflicted on robots and humans.
Astrid Rosenthal-von der Pütten, Nicole Krämer, and Matthias Brand of the University of Duisburg Essen, will present their findings at the 63rd Annual International Communication Association conference in London. Rosenthal-von der Pütten, Krämer and Brand conducted two studies. In the first study, 40 participants watched videos of a small dinosaur-shaped robot that was treated in an affectionate or a violent way and measured their level of physiological arousal and asked for their emotional state directly after the videos. Participants reported to feel more negative watching the robot being abused and showed higher arousal during the negative video.
The second study conducted in collaboration with the Erwin L. Hahn Institute for Magnetic Resonance Imaging in Essen, used functional magnetic-resonance imaging (fMRI), to investigate potential brain correlations of human-robot interaction in contrast to human-human interaction. The 14 participants were presented videos showing a human, a robot and an inanimate object, again being treated in either an affectionate or in a violent way. Affectionate interaction towards both, the robot and the human, resulted in similar neural activation patterns in classic limbic structures, indicating that they elicit similar emotional reactions. However, when comparing only the videos showing abusive behavior differences in neural activity suggested that participants show more negative empathetic concern for the human in the abuse condition.
A great deal of research in the field of human-robot interaction concentrates on the implementation of emotion models in robotic systems. These studies test implementations with regard to their believability and naturalness, their positive influence on participants, or enjoyment of the interaction. But there is little known on how people perceive “robotic” emotion and whether they react emotionally towards robots. People often have problems verbalizing their emotional state or find it strange to report on their emotions in human-robot interactions. Rosenthal-von der Pütten and Krämer’s study utilized more objective measures linked to emotion like physiological arousal and brain activity associated with emotional processing.
“One goal of current robotics research is to develop robotic companions that establish a long-term relationship with a human user, because robot companions can be useful and beneficial tools. They could assist elderly people in daily tasks and enable them to live longer autonomously in their homes, help disabled people in their environments, or keep patients engaged during the rehabilitation process,” said Rosenthal-von der Pütten. “A common problem is that a new technology is exciting at the beginning, but this effect wears off especially when it comes to tasks like boring and repetitive exercise in rehabilitation. The development and implementation of uniquely humanlike abilities in robots like theory of mind, emotion and empathy is considered to have the potential to solve this dilemma.”
“Investigation on Empathy Towards Humans and Robots Using Psychophysiological Measures and fMRI,” by Astrid Rosenthal-von der Pütten and Nicole Krämer; To be presented at the 63rd Annual International Communication Association Conference, London, England 17-21 June
(via engineeringisawesome)
What do you think? Will robots create new jobs or take them?
A new class of smarter robots is being readied for the workplace.
A new class of industrial robot is appearing. These robots are smart, affordable, and safe enough to work alongside humans, and they can do many tasks that human workers perform today (see “This Robot…
A robotic dairy? Cows getting milked when they want to? It seems this system lets the animals have a say in matters too.
Robotics revolutionize dairy farm
“The voluntary milking system automatically milks cows 24 hours a day,” Brian Casey said during a walk though his barn late last week.
Some of the cows are milked four times a day and, if you can believe it, they get milked when they decide they want to be milked.
“With this new system, we are making the same amount of milk with 30 less cows,” Casey said.
The DeLaval robotic system is made in Sweden. Caseydale Farms has two of the modern milking stations and each station is capable of handling 60 to 70 cows.
Full Story: Herald News
An updated look at Boston Dynamics Petman - a walking robot.
Update Petman by Boston Dynamic
The PETMAN robot was developed by Boston Dynamics with funding from the DoD CBD program. It is used to test the performance of protective clothing designed for hazardous environments. The video shows initial testing in a chemical protection suit and gas mask. PETMAN has sensors embedded in its skin that detect any chemicals leaking through the suit. The skin also maintains a micro-climate inside the clothing by sweating and regulating temperature. Partners in developing PETMAN were MRIGlobal, Measurement Technology Northwest, Smith Carter, CUH2A, and HHI.
[via nerdcore]
via: futurescope
An interesting look at swarm robotics.
Robot swarms trained to fetch and carry
Swarms of robots have been trained to cluster together and fetch or carry objects in an experiment which could lead to new medical and military technology.
Full Story: The Telegraph
A look at efforts to help train Robonaut.
NASA Wants You to Train Its Space Robot
Astronauts on board the International Space Station don’t have a lot of free time, which means the last thing they want to do is expend energy on mundane chores like vacuuming. Enter Robonaut 2, the first humanoid robot in space that takes on these everyday tasks.
R2, which has been on the ISS since 2011, has a mission: clean handrails, vacuum air filters and take air-flow measurements. The problem is it doesn’t yet have the ability to learn and complete the work. So NASA is looking for someone to teach the bot. The Robonaut Challenge calls on contestants to write algorithms that allow R2 to interact with a training dashboard the space agency built.
“R2 is meant to contribute back to the ISS by freeing the astronauts up to do more scientific research and the more difficult tasks,” Allison Thackston of the Robonaut team tells Mashable via email. “We measure our cost savings in crew hours saved, which translates into more important scientific and engineering research being done.”
Competitors will start by writing code that enables R2 to “see” and recognize the state and location of LED-illuminated buttons and switches on the dashboard. Building on that successful algorithm, contestants will write control software that manipulates the objects that Robonaut can recognize and locate.
The contest started on Monday morning and will run for three weeks. However, the Robonaut team says it won’t take long for solutions to start trickling in.
“While there is no requirement for contestants to submit their solutions early, we usually begin seeing the first solutions within a week of launch,” says Robonaut’s Julia Badger.
NASA may eventually use the Robonaut 2 to prepare or clean up work sites for astronauts outside the ISS. However, as sophisticated as the technology is, R2 won’t likely replace humans in space.
“Robotics technology has a long way to go,” says Badger. “But having a robotic assistant is a great way to push that technology while still having the benefit of human interaction and supervisory control.”
NASA is hosting its Robonaut Challenge with TopCoder, the world’s largest open platform for the computer science community.
(via niceskynewworld)
