Robots could go a long way towards gaining the trust of humans if they were capable of a decent handshake. Ben Gurion University in Israel is hosting a competition for handshaking robots, hoping to spur some innovation into a human-like handshake from an artificial hand. Handshakes are tricky in the same way that facial expressions are tricky: lots of information can be transmitted based on slightly different (and somewhat nebulous) movement characteristics. I mean, can you quantify the differences between a friendly handshake and an evil handshake? Or, a please-hire-me-handshake versus an I-promise-to-have-her-back-by-9-sir handshake? This is what the winning robot will have to be able to do… Good luck. The competition takes place next year.

If you’re in the mood for something a bit more, uh, wantonly destructive, SparkFun (who also host an autonomous vehicle competition) is sponsoring an ‘Antimov’ competition, in the spirit of not being in the spirit of Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics. The objective will be to create a robot that completes a trivial task in an excessively inefficient manner and then destroys itself. While large explosives, untethered rocket engines, and high powered lasers aren’t permitted, the scoring encourages creativity:

-Inefficiency (0-25 points) – the inefficiency of the initial task. The more complicated and inefficient, the higher the score.
-Pointlessness (0-25 points) – the pointlessness of the performed task. The more trivial the task, the higher the score.
-Drama (0-25) points) – the dramatic element to the robot’s self-destruction. The more poetic, creative, and dramatic the death, the higher the score.
-Destruction (0-25 points) – the completeness the robot’s self-destruction. The more in-operable and devastated the robot is at the end of its performance, the higher the score.

If you ask me, this competition is virtually certain to end in tears. Maybe tears of joy, maybe tears of sadness, or maybe explodey robot tears… Or maybe, hopefully, all three. Watch for it on October 16.

[ Jerusalem Post ] VIA [ PopSci ]
[ SparkFun ] VIA [ Suicide Bots ]

Mech Warfare is so awesome that the concept has made the jump across the pacific to Japan. The Trial of Survival Game puts multiple armed robots in combat with each other, and just like Mech Warfare, the bots are controlled strictly via remote camera systems. The Japanese version is a bit less structured… Multi-legged bots aren’t penalized with extra target plates, and wheeled vehicles are allowed. Either way, looks like fun:

The tinfoil hats, by the way, cover the hit sensors for the robots.

Or maybe they’re actually there to keep the government from brain controlling armed robots.

Or aliens.

(It’s aliens).

VIA [ Biped Robot News ]

AUVSI’s Autonomous Surface Vehicle Competition (or, RoboBoats) was held over the weekend. Autonomous robotic boats attempted to navigate around a small pond, avoiding obstacles and completing tasks. The course was pretty complicated, and the tasks weren’t easy either… Here’s an overview of how things were set up:

I’m not sure if spectators in orange shorts or the occasional hapless duck knew what they were in for, but apparently, one or two of the boats decided that they were either part of the course. Or threats. All I can say is, it’s a good thing there were no ducks in orange shorts, or things would have gotten ugly.

First place on Sunday (and $8000 in prize money) went to the University of Michigan, with the University of Central Florida and the University of Rhode Island taking second and third.

[ AUVSI ASVC ]

Thanks Michael!

Human World Cup Soccer (that’s football, to most of you) is fun to watch (even if it is on at 4am here in California), but as far as evolution goes, we humans have pretty much peaked. Really, the only thing about the game that evolves reliably from cup to cup is the ball (and that’s not always a good thing). Robots, on the other hand, have no such limitations. Carnegie Mellon’s CMDragons small-size robotic soccer team have taken another step towards robot domination by teaching their small size soccer bots the physics of ball movement. The demonstration below pits a robot that knows physics against a robot that doesn’t; keep in mind that the robots are entirely autonomous, controlled by a computer that watches the action on an overhead camera:

Without modeling the physics of the ball, the computer just tries to position the robots on the ball without taking the movement of the ball into account. A physical model allows the computer to move the robot predicatively, greatly improving dribbling skill:

Call me crazy, but these robots look to be demonstrating the same basic skills as talented human soccer players: win the ball, keep your body between the ball and your opponent, and then get an angle, get around him, and shoot.

Here’s a video of the CMU team competing in 2008, without the physics based planning software… Two years ago is a long, long time in the world of robots, but even so, the passing and shooting is impressive:

And if soccer’s not your thing, the same basic skills make the robots highly effective at playing minigolf:

I guess now we know what soccer robots do for fun in their spare time.

RoboCup 2010 starts in Singapore on June 19.

[ Stefan Zickler ] AND [ CMU Robot Soccer ] VIA [ Robots.net ]

Alright, before you roll your eyes right out of your head, consider that these robots are pretty much human sized (which creates all kinds of balance and power and control issues) and they’re autonomous. So really, they’re not half bad at soccer. They’re not necessarily half good, either, and they’re certainly not as good as their non-humanoid counterparts, but progress is definitely progress.

For the record, I’m a soccer player myself, which is the only reason I feel entitled to make fun of it… It was either that, or I make fun of American football or baseball, but everybody knows that neither of those sports have any boring moments, so there wouldn’t have been much of a joke there.

::cough::

[ Robonoble ] VIA [ CrunchGear ]

Micromouse competitions have been around for a long, long time. The little guy (or not so little guy) above was named Moonlight Special. He was created by Battelle Pacific Northwest Laboratories, a lab operated (now, at least) by the US Department of Energy. He competed in the Amazing Micromouse Maze Contest in 1979 (sponsored by IEEE Spectrum), with prizes that included an oscilloscope donated by Tektronix and a video computer system donated by Atari (SWEET!). Previously, most micromice had been simple wall followers, relying on the fact that if you hug one wall of a maze, you’ll eventually make it to the end. Eventually. Moonlight Special and its siblings were some of the first robots with actual brains and memories, able to remember turns and intersection and optimize their route after exploring the maze.

The ‘Micromouse’ is an intelligent robot with a microcomputer ‘brain’ and an ability to work out how to traverse a maze after just two trial runs. On the third run it goes from start to finish without bumping into a wall, or making a wrong turn. In this respect it is more intelligent than human beings and robot designers are working on how this type of robot can be used in a more sophisticated way — perhaps domestic robots to vacuum carpets and even run household appliances.

Ooo, those sound like good ideas! More on the mouse, after the jump. (Read more…)

We don’t have one of them fancy-pants high speed cameras, but someone else who was at RoboGames did, and they took some sweet footage. I can’t say I agree with their choice of background music (would have preferred something more blowy-uppy myself), but stick it out until the very end to see Last Rites punch a hole through the quarter inch steel floor of the arena.

That kind of thing makes me think twice about having my nose up against the measly double sheet of plexiglass that surrounds the arena as a spectator… But then I think a third time and decide to stop worrying and just love the bots.

[ MadOverlord ] VIA [ Make ]

It’s that time of year again! The dancing hexapods are back for their annual competition of skill and style in Austria… I’m not sure who won, but my money is on the light-up disco ball, ’cause it’s shiny.

Another video, after the jump. (Read more…)

Last year when SparkFun Electronics hosted their first autonomous vehicle competition, 2 robots (out of 8) managed to compete the course. This year, there were 18 teams, and the competition was fast and furious, with the winning ground vehicle making it around the SparkFun building autonomously in 1 minute 55 seconds. The fastest UAV generated its own wormhole and finished the course in -4 seconds… Either that, or it got 30 seconds free for an autonomous landing. Here’s a highlight video:

[ SparkFun ]

The Indoor Aerial Robot Competition was held at Drexel University last week, featuring a bunch of the chubbiest fully autonomous robots you’re ever likely to see. The bots were tasked with locating and retrieving small boxes, and doing search and destroy on hapless red balloons:

Incidentally, if you like the blimps, you can buy one in a kit for under $100 (with some autonomous capabilities, even) from Make, here.

[ IARC ]