Now, I’m totally in favor of a National Robotics Week… I just wish we’d have a National Robotics Year instead. And that it would be an annual event. But until that happens, April 10-18 of this year has been designated National Robotics Week (and a day?) by iRobot along with an “alliance of top industry, academic and non-profit organizations” that includes AUVSI, FIRST, CMU, MIT, Stanford, and a bunch of other people.

There are a number of events scheduled, from competitions to parties to factory tours all around the US. It’s a wonderful idea, having a National Robotics Week full of exciting robot-y things… Just do the industry a favor: if you decide to go to one of these events because you think robots are awesome, bring along someone you know who doesn’t think that robots are awesome, and show them what they’re missing out on. Robotics has an incredible core of devoted people, but part of our job has to be showing everybody else why, and how, robots are going to be an important part of our lives in the future. Not the forever from now flying car jetpack future, but the next few years future. It’s not something anyone needs to be scared of or intimidated by as long as they understand, and hopefully National Robotics Week can take a crack at making that happen.

[ Press Release ]
[ National Robotics Week ]

This Heineken pouring robot from Middlesex University was strutting its stuff at the Kinetica Gallery in London recently, driving around a table and pouring beer (a very little bit of beer) on demand. The bot is equipped with obstacle avoidance sensors as well as a sensor on top that you can wave at to signal the robot to stop and serve you… Plus it has what looks like a giant emergency STOP button just in case it decides to, uh, try and run over someone. Don’t kid yourself, though, there’s (potentially) a lot of energy in a beer keg, so in the event of a battery fire, it would likely be best to panic.

If you’re interested in having a robot serve you a drink, flirt with you, and/or dump a beer all over itself, there’s an event here in San Francisco called BarBot, which is just like, but not exactly the same, as RoboExotica/RoboExoticUS. BarBot will be at DNA Lounge on Feb 17th and 18th… $10 advance, $15 at the door.

VIA [ Engadget ]
[ BarBot ]

I was too busy taking a nap to watch the Super Bowl, but fortunately the important parts of it are now up on YouTube. For what it’s worth, Intel, with the amount of money that this commercial probably cost you, I bet you could have made an actual Jeffrey.

Jeffrey has his own Facebook page, of course, complete with vacation photos and wisecracks in binary. Here’s his bio:

Activities: Beeping, moving around stiffly, applying logic to problems, speaking in monotone, computin’ and figurin’, weightlifting

Interests: Binary Code, Quantum theory, sensory robotics, differential calculus, grilled cheese sandwiches, muscle cars, full contact chess, flight simulator games, number crunching and going for long rolls on the beach.

Favorite Movies: Terminator, Short Circuit, Tron, Star Wars, The Matrix, Iron Giant, A.I, and the Ernest series.

Favorite Music: Daft Punk, Crystal Method, Rush, Moby, Fatboy Slim, Massive Attack, The Zep, Chemical Brothers. Pretty much all electronica. And Crunk.

Favorite Books: I, Robot; 1984; old Commodore 64 user manuals (still hilarious).

Favorite TV Show:
Battlestar Gallactica, Robot Chicken, Star Trek, Lost, Battle Bots, Top Chef, Jeopardy,The Jetsons, America’s Next Top Rocket Scientist and Anderson Cooper 360

Mmm, grilled cheese sandwiches… I like this robot.

[ Jeffrey @ Facebook ] VIA [ HowToWeb on Twitter ]

Participants in DARPA’s ChemBots program are busy producing some pretty cool (and weird) robots. Already, we’ve seen a blob robot from iRobot as well as a creepy looking concept from Boston Dynamics. Video above comes from Virginia Tech’s RoMeLa Lab, and shows their ChIMERA robot, which is an acronym for “Chemically Induced Motion Everting Robotic Amoeba.” Everting is the Word Of The Day, it means “turning inside out.” And that’s just what this robot does: it’s a tube filled with goo that moves forward by continually pulling the outside of its body around and in through the middle of the tube. There are several advantages to this; the entire robot is pliable (allowing it to fit through opening smaller than itself) and it’s also completely sealed with no external moving parts. It can move by placing tension on parts of itself, or by using a system of expanding and contracting plastic rings, or using chemicals (!):

The “do something to something” is probably (this is my best guess, anyway) applying a chemical to the robot that causes the skin to contract. This is some serious outside the box innovation… The chemically induced movement could be powered by a liquid battery, or even perhaps by ambient chemicals in some kind of solution (water? blood? toxic waste? who knows).

The only real issue here is that it’s not entirely clear how a robot like this would interact with its environment. It could push things around and perform passive sensing, but it’s not like you could mount a camera and manipulator arm on one of these… At least, I can’t see how that would work. Still, it’s one of the coolest (and weirdest) robots we’ve seen in a while, and it’s still just a work in progress.

[ RoMeLa ] VIA [ Hizook ]

This badass looking android is Robonaut 2, a joint project of NASA and General Motors. Robonaut 2 is an evolution of Robonaut 1, who was spawned by NASA and DARPA and had an ATV for legs. R2 emulates the upper torso of a human, and is designed to work closely with humans using the same tools that humans use. GM, for its part, is interested in advanced industrial robots:

“For GM, this is about safer cars and safer plants,” said Alan Taub, GM’s vice president for global research and development. “When it comes to future vehicles, the advancements in controls, sensors and vision technology can be used to develop advanced vehicle safety systems. The partnership’s vision is to explore advanced robots working together in harmony with people, building better, higher quality vehicles in a safer, more competitive manufacturing environment.”

You have to wonder, though, whether creating a robot that looks and functions like a human is really the best way to do it. There already is a robot in space: Dextre. Dextre doesn’t look especially human, but he has two 3 meter long arms, each with seven offset joints, which is a couple more than we’ve got last time I counted. I understand that a robot that emulates a human in form and function will likely be more intuitive to control, but there may be some compromise when it comes to capabilities and options.

Now, I’m a huge fan of human spaceflight. I don’t think there’s any substitute for the inspiration afforded by having members of our species leave our planet. That being said, while I don’t know what the exact numbers are, I imagine that the cost and effort of sending a human into space is split something like 5% science, 95% making sure that they don’t die. This isn’t exactly the most efficient path to discovery. Of course, that 5% science may be 100% stuff that only humans can do in person, but I really do think that robots are the practical future of space exploration 95% of the time. I want humans to travel to Mars… Heck, I want to be one of them. But realistically, in the short term, I think our limited resources are better spent on intrepid robots like Spirit, Opportunity, and Cassini.

[ Robonaut 2 ] VIA [ Engadget ]

I’m not entirely sure why this robot is a robot, but it performs a useful purpose and looks fierce while doing so. Built by students from J T Engineering College in Gujarat, India, the robot is connected wirelessly to sensors embedded in the ground and can somehow detect impeding earthquakes about 3 hours before they actually hit… Something about soil and water temperatures and vibrations and stuff that I don’t entirely buy. When it gets a signal of impending doom, it’ll send out warnings over the internet, which is a good thing since I wouldn’t count on it to run around looking for you.

[ Oneindia ] VIA [ Gizmowatch ]

Icosatetraped does, in fact, mean “twenty-four legged.” I’m not sure how to inject “soft” into that word (icostatetrasquishaped?), but this robot does have 24 soft legs. Or rather, 8 legs are soft (and moving) at any one time, while the other 16 are pressurized to carry the weight of the bot. It can move at about 1 meter per minute, which isn’t especially fast, but who cares, look at all of those little legs go! Made from plastic medical tubing, particle board, a bunch of solenoids, a Mac Mini, and some 24 volt rotary vane compressors salvaged from Gulf War nerve gas detecting equipment, this is about as DIY as it gets, and it’s awesome.

VIA [ Boing Boing ]

Last time we heard about robot evolution, the bots were figuring out how to deceive each other. Now, researchers at EPFL in Switzerland have been using the same sort of genetic programming techniques to enable robots to teach themselves how to solve mazes, cooperate on tasks, and hunt each other (we’ll save that one for last).

The way genetic programming works is that the robots are only programmed on a very basic level, with simple information on their sensors and objectives. At first, the robots are clueless as to how to take the information from their sensors and apply it to completing their objectives, but after each test, random variations (mutations) are introduced into the code. Robots that demonstrate the most improvement have their code passed on to the next generation, and the process was repeated a bunch of times. In this experiment, after 100 generations, the robots taught themselves how to navigate a maze without running into a wall, and figured out that having their sensors pointed in the direction that they were going was the best way to be. It gets cooler:

“In another experiment they programmed groups of robots to push tokens along a wall to a marked area to win points. They selected the robots that gained the most points to pass their code on to the next generation. Over time altruistic behaviors were observed, in which robots sacrificed points if the entire group would benefit, and the robots cooperated to push larger tokens together to earn more points. As in nature, the robots followed the biological principle of kin selection, in which they only helped robots having the same code lineage.”

Code-based kin selection. Crazy, huh? It makes sense, though, if you think about it… Robots work together best if they’re using the same code, and robots who aren’t using that code won’t know how to cooperate with the robots that are. So, they’ll end up being less efficient, and won’t be as likely to make it into the next generation.

The predator-prey dynamic is perhaps the most interesting. One group of robots with several sensors were programmed to chase after another group of robots, who had fewer sensors but were faster. At first, the predator robots simply chased after the prey robots, who ran away. After 125 generations of evolution, the predator robots had figured out how to stalk the prey robots, hiding out and then sneaking up on the prey’s blind spots. The prey robots, on the other hand, learned where the predators liked to hide and made sure to keep their sensors facing them.

All this, in just a hundred or so generations in a lab. Kinda makes you wonder why we don’t just set a couple hundred Roombas loose in a dust covered wearhouse, let them fight it out and breed with each other, and after a couple years we’d get the world’s smartest, most efficient, and deadliest robot vacuum.

[ Evolution of Adaptive Behaviour in Robots by Means of Darwinian Selection ] VIA [ Physorg ]

The paper also refers to another robot evolution project called Golem@Home, which used distributed computing to design a moving robot from scratch. Different simulations were raced against each other, and the winners were actually created. We posted about it back in 2007, it’s pretty cool.

We first got wind of this back in October, but now it’s official, with a picture… DARPA’s LS3 (Legged Squad Support System) program has just awarded Boston Dynamics $32 million over 30 months to design and build a prototype for a new, larger walking quadruped platform that will probably not be called HugeDog. Here’s what DARPA specifies in the contract:

The program goal is to develop a walking quadruped platform that will augment squads by carrying traditional and new equipment autonomously. These platforms will be capable of managing complex terrain where tactical vehicles are not able to go, lightening the load of Marines and Soldiers and increasing their combat capability. LS3 will carry 400 pounds or more of payload, and provide 24 hours of self-sustained capability over as much as 20 miles of maneuver. LS3 will weigh no more than 1,250 pounds (including its base weight, fuel and payload of 400 pounds).

Key LS3 program themes are:

-Quadruped platform development: design of a deployable walking platform with sufficient payload capacity, range, endurance, and low noise signature for dismounted squad support, while keeping weight and volume scaled to the squad level.

-Walking control: develop control techniques that allow walking, trotting, and running/ bounding and capabilities to jump obstacles, cross ditches, recover from disturbances, and other discrete mobility features.

-User Interface (to include perception technologies): the ability for the vehicle to perceive and traverse its immediate terrain environment autonomously with simple methods of Marine/Soldier control.

The key differences from the existing hardware are increased range (20 miles from 12), increased payload (400 pounds from 340), and the ability to jump and trot. Oh, and the “low noise signature,” which I guess means that DARPA wants it sounding like something besides a giant swarm of bees. Or one giant bee. If everything stays on schedule, we should be seeing some awesome and hilarious videos sometime around 2012.

[ LS3 (PDF) ] VIA [ IEEE ]