Robots That Jump – Historical Jun 10 2004

Thursday, June 10, 2004 DARPA announces 2005 Grand Challenge, Slashdot whines DARPA has just announced the 2005 Grand Challenge to develop driverless cars that can cross a challenging desert environment on their own without human help. Check http://www.grandchallenge.org for details. There a a preliminary meeting for teams making robo-cars (the “Essential Informational Meeting”) Set for

Robots That Jump – Historical May 17, 2004

Monday, May 17, 2004 Why cellphones are hastening the arrival of robots that jump One of the so-called ‘next big things’ that keeps coming up is wireless technology – computers and phones. Cellphones have indeed become smaller, lighter, and more capable – some Japanese systems now have 2-megapixel cameras attached. Tech pundits celebrate the arrival

Robots That Jump – Historical May 13, 2004

Thursday, May 13, 2004 Multicores and Sensors – which will make robots that jump? There are two ways to look at solving the problems in robotics. One way is to imagine that robots need really good processing of data. In this form, a robot has a few sensors and a huge back-end processing system to

Robots That Jump – Historical May 3-5, 2004

Wednesday, May 05, 2004 Robots and the unbearable blindness of the computer industry A few interesting articles and then onto the continued, almost comical blindness of the computer/internet industry regarding robots. First, from Government Computer News, a comment that DOD is expanding its investment in robotics: http://gcn.com/vol1_no1/daily-updates/25774-1.html This article describes recent acquistions of UGVs (Unmanned

Robots That Jump – Historical Apr 27, 2004

Tuesday, April 27, 2004 The guy making I, Robot can’t read so good There is a video “featurette” on the website for the movie “I, Robot” with director Alex Proyas. In the video he describes the movie “I, Robot” as a “documentary of the future.” Certainly, some aspects of the movie are likely to show

Robots That Jump – Historical Apr 20, 2004

Tuesday, April 20, 2004 The convergence patterns for robotics During the dotcom hype of the 1990s, a frequently touted future involved “convergence” – the integration of radio, television, telephone and the Internet into one meta-network. As it stands in 2004, this integration is proceeding more slowly than expected. Cellphones using 3G technology (so we can

Robots That Jump – Historical – Apr 13, 2004

Tuesday, April 13, 2004 The real vs. the unreal Two interesting movies of humanoid robots are available on the web today. The first is of Sony’s QRIO robot conducting a symphony orchestra to Beethoven’s 5th Symphony, 1st movement. The movement and fluidity of the robot are amazing. Most importantly, it is a real robot. Currently,

Robots That Jump – Historical Apr 4-8, 2004

Thursday, April 08, 2004 Sensors, sensors I was thinking about the fate of CMU’s Sandstorm in the 2004 DARPA Grand Challenge. After hanging up on an embankment, the robot car continued to spin its wheels, causing the rubber to burn off in a cloud of smoke and flame. Hmmmm…for all the speed and power of

Robots That Jump – Historical Mar 24, 2004

Wednesday, March 24, 2004 Sony’s Intelligent, Remote-Control QURO An article on asahi.com describes Sony’s new project for its running and ball-throwing QURO. Sony Executive Vice President Toshitada Doi (who headed the Aibo project) will be running the Life Dynamics Laboratory with 10-20 researchers who will be allowed to test the latest theories in artificial intelligence.

Robots That Jump – Historical Mar 16, 2004

Tuesday, March 16, 2004 “I, Robot” trailer is up – and it stinks A recent article on Slashdot notes that the movie trailer for “I, Robot” is up at this link. Well, I’ve seen it, and it confirms my worst fears – this robot movie will be a stinker! Here’s a few of the howlers: