LittleDog video – 2010

The size of the bot compared to a human hand is shown near the end of the video. Sign me up for a robotic-pet version. The summarized specs of LittleDog as described on Boston Dynamics’ site:

LittleDog has four legs, each powered by three electric motors. The legs have a large range of motion. The robot is strong enough for climbing and dynamic locomotion gaits. The onboard PC-level computer does sensing, actuator control and communications. LittleDog’s sensors measure joint angles, motor currents, body orientation and foot/ground contact. Control programs access the robot through the Boston Dynamics Robot API. Onboard lithium polymer batteries allow for 30 minutes of continuous operation without recharging. Wireless communications and data logging support remote operation and data analysis. LittleDog development is funded by the DARPA Information Processing Technology Office.

For detailed specifications check out CLMC’s paper on LittleDog research (PDF), published at the 2010 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (one of four Best Paper Award finalists).

It’s worth mentioning that USC was the only team to outperform the government program’s guidelines on 5 out of 6 tests, achieving an average speed of 8.7 cm per second. (Congratulations to the team—Mrinal Kalakrishnan, Peter Pastor, Michael Mistry and Jonas Buchli).

Cry ‘havoc’ and let slip the dogs of war

The research is funded by DARPA and carried out in collaboration with MIT, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, USC, Univ. of Pennsylvania and IHMC.

While the scientists working at Boston Dynamics and collaborating institutes envision the ‘bots being used for various purposes, DARPA’s point of view is to use them to haul equipment and luggage wherever needed on a battlefield. The first versions for fieldwork are called Legged Squad Support Systems (LS3); a type of completely autonomous robots, very similar to BigDog, that will be able to follow a human leader through rough terrain using computer vision and GPS systems. The LS3 program is jointly funded by the US Marine Corps.

The first “walk out” for LS3s is scheduled for 2012.

Automatic recommendations:

1. Boston Dynamics Unveil BigDog Progress
2. Modular Snake Robots From CMU’s Biorobotics Lab [Video]

Read on for videos and specs.

Video and specs

The video (see below) shows the precision and awesome dexterity of Motoman as he puts together a dismantled camera, much to the dismay of a tired and confused Japanese actor put there to emphasize how awesome the robot really is. Chefs and musicians beware: Motoman can also play drums and cook.

The robot is being developed by Yaskawa Electric Corporation and is pending commercialization. They began taking orders on December 1st 2008 and expect to sell 1,200 units in 2008, 2,400 units/year for 2009, 3,000 units/year for 2010 and after.

Motoman is 135 centimeters (4.5 ft) tall and weighs 220 kilograms (480 lb). It has 15 joints: 7 in each arm (similar to humans, I believe) and 1 at the center of its torso.

Links & references

• Yaskawa Press Release
• Motoman Humanoid Robot Cooks Okonomiyaki With Manual Precision (Bornrich.org)

Automatic recommendations:

1. Machine Interpretes Your Dreams, Robot Enacts Them [Art]

[Subscribers, visit the site if you can't see the video]

Automatic recommendations:

1. Modular Snake Robots From CMU’s Biorobotics Lab [Video]
2. Boston Dynamics Unveil BigDog Progress

According to the BBC article on the launch, the Skynet 5C satellite adds data transmission potential. At least judging by the comments of an officer in the military who says “So, computers can talk directly to computers, as well giving us pictures and real-time video images.” [sic]

The MQ-9 Reaper is the successor of the MQ-1 Predator system, a UAV (and aerial support system) that has reportedly been used in Iraq for reconnaissance and killing with its onboard missiles.

The crew for the MQ-9 is a pilot and a sensor operator, who operate the aircraft from a remotely located GCS. To meet combatant commanders’ requirements, the MQ-9 delivers tailored capabilities using mission kits that may contain various weapons and sensor payload combinations.

The MQ-9 baseline system has a robust sensor suite for targeting. Imagery is provided by an infrared sensor, a color/monochrome daylight TV and an image-intensified TV. The video from each of the imaging sensors can be viewed as separate video streams or fused with the IR sensor video. The laser rangefinder/designator provides the capability to precisely designate targets for laser-guided munitions. Synthetic aperture radar will enable Joint Direct Attack Munitions targeting. The aircraft is also equipped with a color nose camera, generally used by the pilot for flight control.

Each MQ-9 aircraft can be disassembled into main components and loaded into a container for air deployment worldwide in Air Force airlift assets such as the C-130. The MQ-9 air vehicle operates from standard U.S. airfields. [Af.mil]

The Skynet project is the most expensive space project in the history of the UK according to BBC News, carrying the cost of £3.6b. This goes to further exemplify how we are moving into an automated, information|communication age of warfare. Perhaps an even more potent example of that is the brewing idea that the US should command and control Af.mil botnets.

You can read more and view a short introductory video of the MQ-9 system operation and use in the BBC news article. The video also shows a recording of a missile attack on someone on a motorcycle and reports that the Reaper is frequently used in assaults on enemy targets.

No related posts.

The New BigDog Video

Loving the Machine

It’s so interesting how most people I’ve talked to (and me myself) feel an emotional response when BigDog is slipping or being kicked. I felt like giving it a hand to balance on the ice — although on second thought I’m sure he’d crush me with his frantic maneuvers. The version of BigDog in the video weighs 106Kg (235 lbs).

The speed and agility of the feet give the fellow such natural (“messy instincts”) appearance that it’s hard to keep in mind it’s a machine. Unbelievable.

The control system depends heavily on internal state, awareness of joint positions, acceleration et cetera — which enables intelligent, real-time control. I hope the technologies spread to consumer markets, rather than being exclusively used for military purposes (this is what the AIBO should’ve looked like).

BigDog has an on-board computer that controls locomotion, servos the legs and handles a wide variety of sensors. BigDog’s control system manages the dynamics of its behavior to keep it balanced, steer, navigate, and regulate energetics as conditions vary. Sensors for locomotion include joint position, joint force, ground contact, ground load, a laser gyroscope, and a stereo vision system. Other sensors focus on the internal state of BigDog, monitoring the hydraulic pressure, oil temperature, engine temperature, rpm, battery charge and others. [BostonDynamics]

Boston Dynamics are also the creators of RiSE — an insect-like hexapod robot that climbs; and whose video demo ranked 10th in the most popular robot videos. A hat tip to the Boston Dynamics team for their achievements.

Links & References

• Boston Dynamics’ official site
• Hat tip for infosharing to Think Artificial reader Alebotta.

Automatic recommendations:

1. Modular Snake Robots From CMU’s Biorobotics Lab [Video]

The Absolut Machines

By visiting Absolut Machines you’ll eventually find yourself on a page with two live videofeeds, presented in an old-school, gray window system. One of the machines is placed in Stockholm, Sweden and the other in New York City. The machines at these locations are music-composing AI systems you can interact with to augment the music they generate.

The interaction sessions are recorded and you can get a compressed quicktime video of your visit sent via email or download it from the “Gallery” tab which lists all recent videos.

Think Artificial VIP Access
Dearly devoted Think Artificial readers have been allotted VIP codes that allow cutting to the front of the line to interact with the machines. Leave a comment on this entry and I’ll mail it to the address you enter in the comment form. Alternatively you can contact me directly. Note that there’s a limited supply of codes and they’ll be distributed on a first come first served basis.

Obligatory disclaimer: To participate in this giveaway you must be at least 21 years of age.

Absolut Choir

The Absolut Choir is a system composed of speech synthesizers implemented in the physical form of 10 robotic characters. Each of the machines, or choir members, has a unique voice ranging from women, to tenors and sopranos. A “mother character” virtually conducts by synchronizing and distributing sounds to the other members, each of which contains a Linux box for processing and a speaker.

As the Choir starts singing, the user may input words to the machine. As the machine receives the words, it immediately uses them to generate a musical composition and lyrics. The robotic choir follows the lead of its human partner, and with the help of generative algorithms, the machine engenders a melody, tempo, dynamics, timbre and lyrics inspired by the user-generated input. The composition is also infused with the machine’s current mood and from the most recently analyzed words input by previous users. A lot of short words with many consonants may result in a fast arpeggio-like song, while softer words may result in a slower composition. [Absolut Press Kit]

The sound feed was suffering from some technical difficulties when I tried the choir. But the video worked, and the choir was receiving my lyrics glorifying Think Artificial (I figured I’d attempt to create a themesong for us).

The video compilation I received afterwards was okay. But I discovered that the lyrics were (intentionally) rendered hieroglyphic by the choir, so it sadly doesn’t make the cut as our themesong.

Absolut Quartet

The Quartet is quite different from the Choir. The machines are three; the main one is a marimba which the system plays by shooting rubber balls into the air, aimed at the marimba keys it wants to hit — or multiple balls if the objective is to play a chord. It’s quite fun to look at.

The marimba rubber ball blaster implementation and design.

Overview of the Quartet under construction.

The second machine is a series of glasses which basically replicate the “finger on a wine glass trick”. The glasses are spun, each tuned to a various pitches, and small robotic fingers touch them to produce sounds. The third part of the installation is an automated percussion instrument.

And then there’s the fourth part, us – the users. At the beginning of a session the human user plays notes on a miniature piano. The melody played dictates what kind of music the Quartet will produce, or in other words, your input is the machines inspiration for a following 3 minute song.

The machines are brainchilds of Dan Paluska and Jeff Lieberman. Both of which attend at MIT and have many cool projects in their backpack that combine aesthetics, artificial intelligence, kinetic sculpting and robotics.

Looking Closer at Robotics in the Media

This project is not an academic foray into the realms of creative AI, but rather a project intended to be looked at in terms of aesthetics. That being said: The artificial creativity of the machines is very primitive. If we take for example how the Quartet works; the software takes the melody played by a human user and compares it to a pre-existing collection of songs. Once a similar match has been found the machine mixes the two together producing the ultimate outcome. What interested me more than the software implementation of creativity was the overall aesthetic appeal of the project. In addition to Jeff and Dan’s artwork, the media related to this campaign was superb (partly handled by Noise Marketing, creators of the Appleseed website).

When exploring how we are creating our world; augmenting our environment — it’s intriguing to zoom out of AI context: How we (humans) advertise and perceive products is environmental augmentation. The ultimate sentiment is to be aware of the augmentations. To study them. Be aware of their effect and purpose; and to adapt and further develop whatever it is we want to achieve.

When I saw AI-colored advertisements from a major company (a company that essentially has nothing to do with machines) I immediately wondered whether it gave an indication of the public appeal of robots in Western societies. Certainly, machines in general play a larger role in everyone’s lives than ever before; and the same can be said about robotics even though we’re still in very early stages of that development. When we note that Puma has been sporting robotic-prosthetic cyberpunk campaigns as well, I think we can at least safely venture that robotics are on the rise in terms of public interest.

Automatic recommendations:

1. Robot Uprising 2008-2015, Market to Reach $15B
2. The 5th International Workshop on Computational Creativity

Creators and Project Origins

The snakes are a project of CMUs Biorobotics lab, named Modular Snake Robots (or Modsnake for short). See also the list of project members.

Snake robots can use their many internal degrees of freedom to thread through tightly packed volumes and access locations that people and machinery otherwise cannot. These highly articulated devices can coordinate their internal degrees of freedom to perform a variety of locomotive gaits that go beyond the capabilities of conventional wheeled and legged robots. The true power of these devices is their versatility; they can crawl, climb, swim, and scale flights of stairs. [Official description from CMU]

Project Goals and Design

The issues tackled in the project are twofold, according to the information provided on the project’s site. The first is to achieve snake-like locomotion and the second is to have the artificial being’s design modular. The robots are a chain of modules, each of which have one degree of freedom. They’re powered by low-cost hobby servos (named SuperServos by CMU, or more recently SuperServo2), and an encapsulating mechanism designed to optimize efficiency and robustness.

Each robot is currently controlled by a tethered cable and are embedded with a camera on the snakes’ edge module.

[[Subscribers, please visit the site if you can't see the video above]]

Speed of Locomotion in Complex Environments

I’m very impressed by the speed of the robots, and you can see that CMUs team is proud as well, sporting the “real time” tag in the video. Lack of speed is one of the things I’ve touched on regarding modern robotics. It’s hard to deal with complexities of normal, or even catastrophic environments (for rescue-type, or military robots). If a robot moves fast its intelligence must be capable of making good judgement calls in real time, fast and efficiently.

Our (humanity’s) physical machinery is advancing rapidly and hopefully these superb platforms will help us excel development of systems that endow them with higher intelligence.

Related AI Projects & Commentary

From what I gathered on CMUs information I believe an emphasis is currently being put on engineering and physical versatility. But there are of course several projects focused on AI, specifically regarding path planning and the snakes’ ability to coordinate each of its joints by itself. As noted on the CMUs Snake Motion Planning Page (see also more of the snakes’ Control Theory projects):

Snake robots have many applications, but are hard to control. A person cannot simply operate each joint of a snake individually because there are too many. These robots require a motion planning algorithm. Motion planning for snake robots is difficult because the robots have many internal degrees of freedom that have to be coordinated to achieve purposeful motion. In motion planning jargon, this means the snake robots exist in large dimensional configuration spaces. Our work will make it possible for the robots to operate in several different modes from fully autonomous to human-guided. The robot will be able to optimize its own path based on a range of cost functions from power consumption to safety or even stealth.

[...]

We are working on two approaches for snake motion planning right now. The first introduces a new topological decomposition of space called WAFT (WAve Front Topology) This decomposition is well suited to tethered robots, like a snake that is fixed to the ground at one end. This decomposition of space allows for path planning that is path-dependent, meaning that veering left around the first obstacle encountered will change the options that are available in the future as compared to the options had the path to the right of the first obstacle been chosen. This WAFT planner can be implemented in a sensor based way and can be used to guarantee complete coverage of the work space. This is important for exploring unknown spaces when searching for survivors in collapsed building or when doing surveillance operations.

Very interesting and impressive work and I personally look forward to seeing how the projects progress.

Links & References

• The video and images are Copyright 2008 Biorobotics Lab, Carnegie Mellon University. All Rights Reserved.
• See the list and specifications of the Modsnake robots that have been created
• See links to the BioRobotics lab, Modsnakes and relevant AI projects in the article

Automatic recommendations:

1. Anthill Metropolis Filled With Cement and Excavated (Video)
2. Machine Interpretes Your Dreams, Robot Enacts Them [Art]

Live Science reports on the project:

The use of the EEG data is a bit more complex [than the use of rapid eye movements]. Running it through a machine learning algorithm, we identified several patterns from a sample of the data set (both REM and non-REM events). We then associated preprogrammed robot behaviors to these patterns. Using the patterns like filters, we process the entire data set, letting the robot act out each behavior as each pattern surfaces in the signal. Periods of high activity (REM) where [sic] associated with dynamic behaviors (flying, scared, etc.) and low activity with more subtle ones (gesturing, looking around, etc.). The “behaviors” the robot demonstrates are some of the actions I might do (along with everyone else) in a dream.” [LiveScience]

And here’s a video of it, dancing away [Alt].

A robot dancing your dreams. Can’t help but feel inspired by that quip.

Automatic recommendations:

1. Monkey Brain Makes Robot Walk
2. Robot Uprising 2008-2015, Market to Reach $15B

Making a Robot Walk by Thinking

Nicolelis’ latest advances are an excellent step forward and a great continuation of our last featured article on entwining biological tissue with machines.

With implanted electrodes monitoring brain activity (as opposed to a non-invasive BCI), a rhesus monkey named Idoya was able to make a humanoid robot move its legs in a walking pattern for 3 whole minutes! The monkey had independent control of each leg, and the exact controllable parameters were the stride length and the speed of movement. However, the legs did not touch the ground, but were suspended a few centimeters in the air. (You probably won’t find that emphasized in many other articles. Leaving it at ‘made it walk’ sells a lot better). In order to make it really walk, they’ll need to stimulate the monkey’s brain to feel force from the legs — which is something that they’re currently working on. This step, however, having the monkey control each leg’s force and stride length independently, is a great achievement that brings us a lot closer to remote controlled exoskeletons, super prosthetics and general technologies that help us decipher brain activity.

The research is a collaboration between Nicolelis’ team at Duke University and Gordon Cheng’s at the ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories in Kyoto, Japan. The robot is called Computational Brain (CB) and according to the NY Times it was chosen due to accurate mimicking of human locomotion (strangely, I’ve never heard of this robot). It’s noteworthy that the monkey was stationed in North Carolina and the robot in Japan — connected via our beloved internet.

When Idoya’s brain signals made the robot walk, some neurons in her brain controlled her own legs, whereas others controlled the robot’s legs. The latter set of neurons had basically become attuned to the robot’s legs after about an hour of practice and visual feedback.

Idoya cannot talk but her brain signals revealed that after the treadmill stopped, she was able to make CB walk for three full minutes by attending to its legs and not her own.

Vision is a powerful, dominant signal in the brain, Dr. Nicolelis said. Idoya’s motor cortex, where the electrodes were implanted, had started to absorb the representation of the robot’s legs — as if they belonged to Idoya herself. [via NYTimes]

Predicting Movements

The mechanism that predicts or translates Idoya’s movements is AI software (a cocktail of artificial neural networks and other software, if I remember correctly). The software analyzes firing patterns of neuronal groups and associates them with the generated, physical motion. Current technology only enables us to monitor 250-300 neurons in real time (a human brain has an estimated one hundred billion). Yet despite the relatively low number, the software can predict movements with 90% accuracy 3-4 seconds before they actually happen.

Practical Use, Human Prosthetics

Nicolelis hopes that his research will prove useful for human prosthetics, where we’ll be able to control artificial limbs using only our minds. They estimate that, within the next year, they’ll start work on robotic leg-brace prototypes intended to help people suffering from paralysis.

Duke’s press release video below leads me to ask you an intriguing question: Why do you think they show a 3D simulation rather than the actual monkey?

Previous Research and Online Media

Nicolelis’ work is fascinating and I’m sorry to report that my suggestion to record the lecture he held back here was delivered too late to execute. But thankfully I found a similar one, albeit a few months older, titled Actions from Thoughts held in Aspen in July 2007. You can also check out the brief video coverage in an older Think Artificial post, showing a monkey control a robotic arm.

Links & References

• Nicolelis’ Faculty Page at Duke
• DukeMedNews Press Release
• The feature image is a Duke high density array with 128 microwires in a monkey’s motor cortex. Copyright Nicolelislab.net

Automatic recommendations:

1. Robot Uprising 2008-2015, Market to Reach $15B
2. Living Tissue to Power Your Computer?

Rovio & Spykee for telepresence

I have a thing for robots in the home that allow you to control them via web. Last year I wrote about Spyke from Meccano; which has been renamed Spykee for reasons unknown. They’ve now showcased some new versions that look a bit better than the original one and have bluetooth and voice-control. Is it just me, or do those gaudy, plastic tubes make them seem to have an organic component?

I might as well mention that the new Spykee bots have garnered a few jokes due to their crotch-positioned iPod docks.

Then there’s the new Rovio from WowWee that really takes the cake. It looks a bit like a crossbreed of an AIBO and a cockroach (in a very good way!). This little guy is in my opinion the best product from WowWee yet. It has streaming video capabilities and a micro-GPS system to track its position.

The video and web-based controls speak for themselves, but the positioning system allows you to give it shortcut commands like “go to the kitchen” plus it can navigate to its charging station. The expected retail price is around $300.

I quite like the design and all in all, the Rovio has reached the top of my list for telepresence bots for the home. Here are a couple of others talking about Rovio and Spykee:

• BotJunkie discusses Rovio
• Pocket-Lint has a few paragraphs on the three new Spykees

The flying BladeStar

I’m glad to see that WowWee is introducing some more advanced, less toy-like robots like the Rovio, but they’re still making stuff for kids as well. The new flying oddity of WowWee looks fun and I imagine I would’ve gone bonkers for it when I was younger. The employee doesn’t seem to afraid of having it scrape the wall, which hopefully means that it’s not extremely fragile.

I’m not going to discuss the several other toys from WowWee. Frankly they don’t interest me enough. But if you’re intrigued, here are a couple of sites that discuss them at length:

• Gear Diary gives a rundown of WowWee bot photos, prices and expected release dates
• Popular Science Blog at Typepad has a nice robot roundup for CES’08

Automatic recommendations:

1. Robot Uprising 2008-2015, Market to Reach $15B
2. My Robot is Your Congressman

The new report, made by ABI Research, examines the consumer market for robots. It is not at my disposal, but GizMag has the rundown: the market will reach $15 billion by 2015. Baring in mind that the number only refers to personal robotics, this is indeed a monstrous increase, explained in part in the introduction to their report:

Today there is a wider range of single-function task robots on the market and in development, and entertainment robots have increased in complexity and sophistication while becoming much more affordable than Sony’s expensive Aibo product lines of the past.

Standardized efforts around several integral operating systems are starting to replace proprietary efforts in the commercial robotics space, and these should trickle down to personal robots. The personal robotics market will continue to see major advances at affordable consumer prices. This presents additional revenue opportunities for a wide variety companies, including small robotics-focused software companies, microcontroller vendors, as well as larger semiconductor vendors, behemoths like Intel and Microsoft, and giant automotive manufacturers.

Although there are some discrepancies in specific focus and methodologies — previous predictions echo that a massive growth is to be expected. The Japan Robotics Association predicted, for example, that the personal robotics market would reach $20B by 2010. The United Nations Economics Commission (UNEC) and International Federation of Robotics (IFR) predicted a bit less in 2004, putting the market for personal- and service robots at around $17.1B by 2010.

As Big as the Digital Music Market?

To get a better idea of what all these numbers really mean (for people like me who do not keep constant taps on market values), it might be handy to have a look at something more familar: The MP3/digital audio player market was at around $5 billion in 2007 according to an estimate released by the CEA (word doc). The overall digital music market is expected to reach $14.9 billion in 2010. (Digital music and digital audio players are practically omnipresent as it is).

So does that mean robots will be as present by 2015 as MP3 players are today? Well, that would be difficult to answer. But we can certainly expect our weekend visits to the neighbor to include greeting a robotic vacuum cleaner more often, saying hello to a household security bot or even saying hello to a human abroad through one — like the recently announced Rovio teleconferencing robot pictured above. Presumably they won’t be as evident on the streets; it’s hard to envision a person jogging with a Robosapien attached to his arm … although, a flying MP3 player might be something worth considering.

Do you have a wish-list for robots you’d like to see made in 2008-2009?

Links & References

• Image Credit: WowWee’s Rovio via Slashgear

No related posts.

The company demonstrated a 5ft robot with 17 joints in each hand and arm performing a full rendition of Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance. [...]

Toyota also showed off Robina, a wheeled robot with a human torso which has been working as a guide at Toyota’s showroom in Tokyo for the past year, answering questions and signing autographs.

A third design, dubbed Mobina, is a two-wheeled 4mph motorised wheelchair that can navigate a variety of surfaces for 13 miles between charges. The company also plans a version that acts as a porter. [From VNUNet news, see link below]

[[Feed subscribers: Visit the site if you can't see the video]]

Links and References

• Violinist debut at VNUnet news

No related posts.

This blatant promotional video totally sold me on the retro introduction (and they show off iSobot’s abilities nicely):

[[Subscribers, visit the site if you can't see the video]]

The i-SOBOT can be directly controlled via the included remote to walk and perform dozens of complex motions. He can balance on one leg, do a handstand and get up from almost any position. String commands together to record more complex performances, or you can use the “Special Action Mode” to be wowed by one of i-SOBOTS intricate built in motion routines. i-SOBOT can also understand 10 different voice commands and speaks using over 200 words and phrases. [product page]

Technically I think GeStream’s humanoid is the smallest (he’s 15cm tall versus iSobot who’s 16cm), but he’s not in production yet. Thus, by being officially recognized by the Guiness Book of Records, iSobot swoops the title.

Tim Hornyak discusses iSobot with some more details, mentioning Tomy’s history in robotics. They’ve been building robots for quite some time, iSobot being the latest in their Omnibot line (official name being Omnibot 17μ: i-SOBOT). Frankly, while I’m geeked out by iSobot, I wish they would’ve kept the awesome design of their Omnibot 2000!

Links and References

• Omnibots on Wikipedia

No related posts.

The Gibson Robot Guitar has been making (not sound)waves online, being hailed as the first guitar with robotic technologies. The guitar has a bit of smarts enabling him to maintain itself. Their tagline is “All you have to do is play it“.

Since the dawn of the instrument, musicians have come to accept the guitar’s imperfections and lack of tonal precision as necessary evils. Onstage and off, guitarists have fought to stay in tune.

Unfortunately I don’t have a clue when it comes to playing instruments, so I really don’t feel comfortable explaining in my own words what the guitar does or to what extent it can help musicians. I’ve only been privy to a single piano lesson in my life, when I was about 8, after which I refused going back because I felt the teacher treated me too much like a child. I’ve been heartily regretting that childhood stubbornness for a few years now.

With that said I’ll mindlessly quote Harmony Central on its benefits and features:

1. The Gibson Robot Guitar eliminates tuning problems for guitarists. It automatically tunes to standard A440 tuning.
2. It also allows players to access six commonly used altered tuning presets at the push of a button. These tunings were used on many well-known hit songs, giving players easy access for the very first time.
3. The Gibson Robot Guitar allows the guitar to be intonated in seconds after string changes, truss rod adjustments or change in weather conditions.
4. Finally, with the locking tuner, single string changes or changing the entire set of strings are an automated breeze.

The guitar will go on sale on December 7th with a first-run limited addition (10 guitars per store, see the list of stores), and a regular model scheduled for late 2008. If you play an instrument, I’d definitely like to hear your take on the guitar and the potential impact it could have. Could you see the automation of physical instruments catching on?

Links and References

• Watch a video of the guitar (YouTube)

No related posts.

Imagine you’re out camping in the woods. The sun is up, rays breaking through the thick treetops, racing to highlight the stray leaves blowing on the ground. Life is good. The squirrels agree, jumping from branch to branch. So do the artificial creatures — robots you can spot high up in the trees, keeping an eye out for fires and recording weather condititons. The occasional whirr of a motor has you turning your head to try and spot the Jumpers, a particular breed of artificial creatures used for observing the wildlife. Like natural animals, they feed on insects, and even heal after suffering damage.

My descriptions don’t do the concept justice; when artificial beings stop having to depend on constant human maintenance, thousands of practical applications open up. Nature would become twice as interesting from my perspective. Nature 2.0.

Modern Applications and Ideas

Let me take my head from the clouds and talk about something closer to reality. The Offroad Löscheinheit (OLE) beetle is a robot being developed by the German University of Magdeburg-Stendal, intended to monitor and exstinguish forest fires. Having these around would make camping a lot more interesting (and safer!).

The OLE is biologically inspired, like so many other robots, modeled after the pill millipede — beetles with several body segments that make them capable of rolling into a ball. Similarly, when the OLE detects danger — such as too much heat — it can roll into a ball. Its shell then protects the delicate electronic innards from heat ranging to 1,300 degrees celsius. When it’s not balled up, it’s six legs can move it at around 10-20km per hour, depending on environmental conditions. And according to its makers, 30 OLE robots could patrol a 7,000 square kilometer area.

According to staff at the University of Magdeburg, the cost of an OLE unit is between 100,000 and 250,000 euros; but annual forest fire damage in Europe alone is around 2.5 billion euros.

Semi-wild Robots are Viable

Robots in the wild aren’t just conceptually appealing for the AI & science-fiction enthusiasts like myself. They’re on the verge of being practical and commercially viable. It doesn’t take much browsing to find several ideas in addition to wildfire patrol that are only a few years away from being deployed. Even if the OLE’s sole function would be reporting to base that they’ve detected a fire (there’s no mention of how much fire-extinguishing liquid they can currently haul), it’d probably still be cheaper than keeping human patrol.

So the future is bright for artificial creature lovers. I’ve had several ideas that I’d love to implement one day. They’re artistically focused; ie. have no immediate practical value except to extend people’s horizon on what the future holds. One revolves around having a robot wildlife area in the lava-ridden outskirts of Reykjavik. A pack of robots, say 10-20 would “live” there, hiding in shadowy places, but regularly come out to absorb energy from the sun, explore and be seen.

Of course, this idea poses a barrel full of problems. The sun wouldn’t be enough to propel them and lava is extremely difficult terrain to traverse. Not to mention that they’d probably get stolen (did somebody say ‘embedded taser’?). Still, the idea of driving into the countryside at nighttime and suddenly seeing the glowing eyes of a “wild robot” hopping, running or flying around autonomously is a fascinating one.

Links and References

• Flensburg-online (Main OLE source, translated from German)
• Coolest Gadgets OLE coverage
• Slipperybrick OLE coverage
• Pill millipede on the Wikipedia
• Icelandic Lava picture (CC)Blue Eyes (Flickr)
• Fly-Eating Robot Powers Itself, CNN article
• Robot Crossing, Drive Carefully – A roadsign like that doesn’t sound too far off now, does it?

No related posts.