I'm still trying to let my schedule settle back to a more regular pace so I can post my regular insightful articles. Unfotunately today is not that day. But I've got a few links I've been saving.

AP News -- 'Robots take on social tasks', an article about the current hopeful market for robotics; Moving from the Roomba to more advanced household and hospital helpers.

I've been crazy busy lately. Here's a few quick links of things that I want to keep track of.

A Robotic Fish video. From my nemesis nation, The United Kingdom.

Protein synthesis in the race to create for artificial life

Rustum Roy's Burning Salt water?

Robots becoming essential to farming.

Up to date articles on commercial and research robotics.

This year's RoboCup has some very small entrants. The NanoCup was played on Saturday with five competitors from the US, Canada, and Switzerland including ETH Zurich and Canada's Simon Fraser University. They competed in two events; A two-millimeter dash and a challenging slalom, where the robot must reach a goal that is blocked by stationary defenders that look like running men but are about the diameter of two hairs.

The nanobots were placed inside a glass tube, the contents of which were projected onto a screen via two high powered microscopes. Competitors used remote controls to send commands to their robots, or more precisely to send commands to electro-magnets surrounding the glass tubes.

I spent a large part of my weekend reading through some of the information and links from e-panorama. This site is a great resource for learning about the electronics necessary for hooking up motors in electronic circuits.

The BEAR (Battlefield Extraction-Assist Robot) is being developed by the US army's Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center to aid in the removal of injured soldiers from the battlefield. BEAR has two 'arms' that can carry about 300lbs each. It can move up stairs while carrying a load. It also travels on caterpillar treads, these were designed with the ability to hide behind cover while carrying a wounded soldier. BEAR is controlled by a remote user.

According to an article in the Guardian by James Randerson, the round face is designed to provide the 'human touch'.

Link to RobotEducation.org

Robot Education dot org is a group that is looking to evaluate robots for use in teaching kids computer science skills. On their website they have instructions for adaptating of a commercially available robot called Scribbler for use in classrooms. Their adaptations to the robot include adding a bluetooth receiver and a set of programming tools. They call their set of programming tools, MyRO - short for My Robot. The Myro API can be used on top of the Microsoft Robotics Studio software.

The Scribbler Robot is available online.

Vladimir Putin recently participated in an webcast press conference. During the conference he answered the most popular questions sent in by Russian internet users. The fourth most popular question? Will Cthulhu awake from the depths of the Pacific? According to Putin's response, Russia does not appear to be preparing for the impending awakening of Cthulhu. He merely replied, "Read the Bible, Koran, or other religious Books" Your mistake Vladimir.

Another popular question during the conference (which Russian internet users did not appear to take seriously) was the possibility of deploying 'gigantic, humanoid robots to defend itself'.

In a project reminiscent of the Chinese microchip controlled pigeon, DARPA has a program called Hybrid Insect Micro Electro-Mechanical Systems (HI-MEMS). The HI-MEMS project is designed to implant a MEMS device inside a moth pupae. The MEMS device would be used to control the locomotion of the insect once it reaches adulthood. This information comes to us from the UK's Register. BoingBoing also posted a similar article.

The technology will probably not be long in coming. According to the University of Washington website, they have already implanted MEMS in moths. They used a species of moth called Tritonia diomedea, that grows up to 20cm in length. The experiments listed on the website were undertaken prior to 2004. The purpose of the project was to:

DEPTHX is the underwater, untethered robot that was going to explore the depths of a sinkhole in Mexico. In the first of the trial runs for NASA the bright orange DEPTHX robot was apparently lost underwater. One of the sonar sensors went bad during the robot's ascent and it was trapped under a rock overhang. The test crew was able to find the robot quickly during a scuba dive, and dislodge it. It's a good thing they gave it a bright orange shell!

At least this cockroach won't be able to sneak up my pipes. This little ditty is being called a cockroach controlled robot. But it's not really a robot since the machine is exagerating the movements of a free agent inside the robot. Still it's a pretty neat idea - the roach is sitting on top of a ping-pong ball and the movements of the ball are sensed by a computer, sort of like a mouseball.

The Java Robotics User Group. Sorry, this is more of a personal bookmark than anything else. The group appears to be defunct (at least they haven't updated their website in a few years). During their operation they were working on developing software packages that would make it easier to program robots in java.

On second look, it appears as though the project moved to here.