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Robotic climber: The climbing robot RiSE 3.
Boston Dynamics
Another project that involves robots navigating around busy city streets will be demoed by researchers from Boston University. They have created a miniature city--complete with robotic cars--to test different approaches to control and navigation. The researchers' Robotic Urban-Like Environment (RULE) system lets the cars understand a simple, high-level command by a human, such as "Take me to the grocery store"; demonstrations show that the robotic cars can not only reach their destination safely, but can also move into the correct lane, stop at red lights, and even park on their own (watch a video). Automated vehicle systems, such as the ones being built in Masdar and Heathrow, currently require some kind of track or magnetic guiding strip for navigation. "We wanted to give the robots the freedom to make choices by themselves as long as they are safe and accomplish whatever the human operator specified as a task," says Calin Belta, a professor and lead researcher of the work.
Robotic cars will of course need to be able to spot, and respond to, unexpected dangers, and another system that will be presented at ICRA 2009 is designed to do this. It was developed by researchers at ETH Zurich, and others and can quickly identify pedestrians and other obstacles and predict their paths in order to avoid them. When mounted atop a car, the system can rapidly outline pedestrians even in areas full of traffic and clutter (watch a video). "The idea is to equip cars with vision systems that can oversee the traffic situation around the car and that can give an early warning for dangerous situations," says Luc Van Gool, a professor at the Computer Vision Laboratory at ETH Zurich, who developed the system with his colleague Andreas Ess.
Making robots safer will be important if they are to find use in everyday life. Researcher at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) will describe experiments involving crash-test dummies designed to explore robot-human accidents. The researchers designed a robot that pulls itself back when it starts to detect an impact to the dummy's chest or head (see a video of robot crash testing). "In order to provide really suitable methodologies for making robots safe, we need to understand what the relevant threats are by physical means," says Sami Haddadin, a research engineer at DLR. "We aim to establish a testing protocol for robots which qualify them for use in human proximity. This would bring us to a point at which everyday human-robot collaboration becomes reality."
Of course, no robotics conference would be complete without a few oddball robots and machines, and ICRA is no exception. Take, for example, a robot that mimics how a human spins pizza and another that picks up empty coffee cups from around an office. Researchers at McGill University, in Montreal, Canada, have even made a robot that can create ice sculptures on its own (watch a video). To do this, they modified a device called the Cobra, typically used for repetitive tasks like picking up objects from a conveyer belt, to lay down deposits of ice. The researchers say that this technique could eventually be used for rapid prototyping of other materials as well.
A robot recently helped a quadriplegic shave himself for the first time in 10 years—but even the best mechanical helpers still need supervision.
Robots that stand in for remote workers could force people to learn how to tolerate a new breed of social failings.
Researchers think the solar-powered device could survey aging electrical lines.
I think we are heading either to Paradise or Death.
For Paradise we need to "give" artificial intelligence a soul and a religion. Buddhism would do fine because robots will try not to hurt or kill anybody, not even animals. Also suitable are the Ten Commandments.
Then we need to reform the economy. It has already started. For people it gets more and more difficult to find a job, because robots and artificial intelligence will do our work. It is a big joke that on the whole there is enough wealth for everybody and it is growing fast. But wealth will be concentrated on less and less people.
A solution: The taxation system needs to be modified: Small scale self-employ businesses and private people do not have to pay taxes. Big companies pay a tax proportional to the wealth they provide to people (employees, share-holders and CEOs).
And finally we must change the people as well. They must learn to occupy with themselves correctly if they aren't employed. All people -- regardless of age, sex, race, wealth -- get a social dividend. That's nice but what to do with the free time? Get drunk and randalize is not a good idea.
This is a fair task!
What's so special about robots?
People seem to be overly enamored with the idea of robots to the point of losing a grip on reality here. Robots are not magical man-made creatures created to solve (or cause) all the world's problems. Robots are what happens when you cross-breed a calculator with a power drill. They are complex electromechanical devices used for scientific inquiry or dull, dirty and dangerous tasks. These are amazing pieces of technology, but that is all they are.
Re: What's so special about robots?
Well, look at the bright side. Now you can simply "scare" a cat out of a tree, as opposed to calling the Fire Department to effect rescue.
Major advancement in feline "behavior modification" to be sure.
These advances are truly amazing to watch happen. From the physical movement (the wall climber and the tumbler) to the social information gathering, to the dynamic human detection systems. When we begin to put these all together with a few more advances we could start to see robotics as a household item.
An easy example currently is the Roomba vacume, but it works off of trial and error, with no real learning or mapping. Add in even a few of the technologies here, and it can move around the self-mapped out house avoiding collisions with unexpected people/objects, picking up recognizable objects (empty coffee cups) while doing basic chores at voice command.
As stated above as well, it may not be too much longer until we have a lot more of the manual labor taken over by robots, it happened with the auto-motive industry, what next?
Hi Guys
reading your comments about world automation and jobs losses for humans. What do you think about this www.thevenusproject.com I read one comment about killing people of on the forums earlier but hey... I thought automation was supposed to make human beings lives easier not kill people off? The major problem with capitalism at the moment is that it seems to be making people suffer who lose jobs due to automation. Surely evolution would be speed up if the economic system actually provided an incentive for people automating their jobs. How on earth this will be done though ????
Manufacturing in the United States is in trouble. That's bad news not just for the country's economy but for the future of innovation.
This document is part of the “How-To Guide for Most Common Measurements” centralized resource portal. This tutorial provides a detailed guide for measurement and device considerations to take temperature measurements using thermocouples. Get an introduction to thermocouples, which are inexpensive sensing devices widely used with PC-based data acquisition systems. Also review some specific thermocouple examples and learn how thermocouples work and ways to integrate them into a data acquisition measurement system.
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jojo99
12 Comments
Robots
The rapid advances being made in robotics are fascinating!
I think that within 10-20 years, robots will be doing much of the blue-collar work that is currently being done by humans.
Forget about the offshoring of jobs to cheaper economies - robots will be able to do any work cheaper, faster and more efficiently than humans. There will be robots that repair other robots. Robots that build and maintain roads, paint walls, do janitorial work, stock store shelves, grow food, build houses, answer the telephone and provide intelligent responses, etc. In 50 years or less, robots may even be capable of performing much of the white-collar work that is done by humans today.
On the plus side, we humans will then be able to spend much more time thinking of "innovations", writing original books, creating art and so forth. We'll finally have all that free time that technology was promised to bring to us years ago.
But on the negative side, many won't have jobs to occupy their days and won't be productive in terms of work. So it is difficult to envision how our capitalist system will continue, at least in its present form. But perhaps robots will provide us with everything [they think] we need (suggested reading: Jack Williamson's classic 1949 SF book titled "The Humanoids").
With a scarcity of jobs, it seems to me that we will have an excess of dependent population and must therefore find some way to reduce it. Why have children when they will have little chance of ever finding a job or being productive? Perhaps we'll let the old folks die out (or dump them into the Soylent Green tank) while new birth will be only be allowed for those who have the very best genetics and the highest intelligent proclivity.
Or maybe robots will turn the world into a copy of a Terminator movie.
In either case, the rapid development of robots may not bode well for the human race as a whole.
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trueheartnow
1 Comment
Re: Robots
We will have technologies that can make anything...foods...products...large or small...out of compounds, elements, putting two H's with an O together and getting water...going apeshit with carbon and more. We will transcend money. What will be next? I would have to think about it some more. But there is more than enough good to counteract the potential negatives. Optimism is as real as rain.
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erbium
338 Comments
The Humanoids
- great book, he has another one same subject.
robots trying to take over and 'protect' us from ourselves. similar to irobot.
But these guys look suspiciously like the 'replicators' from stargate. All they're lacking is programming as a self learning weapon, which has gone amok and sentient; and a free power source by collecting quantum energy at the subatomic level.
We are working on denser circuits with quantum dots, etc but the 2nd may have to wait a bit.
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