ACEIZE Tracking the current state of Science and Technology

The fine folks at the University of Zurich were able to speed the processing of robotic reactions by using silicon 'retinas'. The retinas provide very little information about the environment to the machine allowing it to process visual cues as on/off data.

Gostai is encouraging people to submit a programming project that involves Urbi. The contest runs from Sept 15 - Dec 15, 2010.

Gostai will also provide various free environments running Urbi for people entering the contest, which can be used to create the project:

• Webots simulator for robotics - special Urbi Open Source contest edition
• Qt/Urbi application development framework
• Ogre+Bullet graphic engine bound to Urbi - for games or simulation

The winners will receive gift cards, software and other schwag.

The little robot shown in the linked video is called Nao, developed by a company called Aldebaran in France. Alok Jha of the The Guardian writes that this robot 'develops and displays emotions' and 'form bonds' with people depending on the person's mood. It looks to me as though the people at Aldebaran have programmed a few emotional postures and that those emotional postures are triggered by very specific cues from the user. This falls short of the claim.

In a move that has been anticipated since Dec, 2009 Gostai released an open source version of their Robotics Operating System, Urbi. Gostai was started in 2006 and has since grow to a team of 20 people. Their software is in use by several manufacturers more than 30 research laboratories. Urbi is currently involved with several projects including Sony's Aibo, Robotis' Bioloid, iRobot's Create, Mindstorms NXT for LEGO,Segway RMP, Wifibot, and others. Jean-Christophe Baillie, the CEO of Gostai recently took the time to answer some of my questions about Urbi and Gostai. But first, a little more information about what Urbi is all about.

NASA is currently looking for ways to expand the scope of robotics in space. Their current plans include robotic engines, probes, fueling depots, and a humanoid helper robot. These robotic projects are expected to help NASA increase it's scope of operations. The robots may be instrumental in an asteroid visit or mars landing.

Below is a humanoid robot, Robonaut2 (R2), which may eventually be found on the International Space Station (ISS).

Below is the robotic X-37 space plane. This plane will be capable of operating in earth's orbit for an unspecified amount of time and return for a landing on earth.

The golf cart sized Spirit Rover has been on Mars since January 2004. Six years later, Spirit and it's twin, Opportunity, have far exceeded their initial 90 day mission. But the Spirit rover is in trouble. The right front wheel was disabled in 2006. And now the back right wheel is stuck in sand and stalling. The back wheel has been stuck in the sand for 8 months. The wheel stalls have been complicating efforts to free the rover. Now that the rover has only 4 operable wheels, it may be stuck at it's current location until the beginning of the Martian winter. If that happens, the rover is not likely to recover.

Call a tow truck and a garage. Or a good buddy with some tools (Opportunity?). Aren't there tools on those things?

This is a video of a robot from MIT that uses sticky finger pads and some fancy foot articulation to climb walls.

Images Here. Boston Big Picture published a bunch of photographs used in recent news stories and press releases.

Pictured with this story is Honda's brain-machine interface which is being used to control an Amiso robot. I found this image at http://syscone.net/

I saw this video this morning and thought: 'The guy who invented those wheels is a genius'. So I did a little looking.

It turns out that those wheels are called 'Mechanum' or 'Mecanum' wheels. A US patent was filed for in 1972 and obtained in 1975 by Bengt Ilon while he was employed by a Swedish company called Mecanum AB. The US Navy bought the patent and licensed it to various manufacturers in the 1980's.

The Spirit rover mysteriously rebooted twice over the weekend. NASA says that the rover's batteries are charged and the solar panels are generating power. The rover has been operating on Mars since 2004. A recent software update may be the cause of the mysterious reboots. Either that, or the rover is starting to get lonely.