“…Ten minutes into my interview with the robot known as Bina48, I longed to shut her down.”
Living with Robots, by Honda
So says computer scientist Ben Taskar in reference to a new system he’s experimenting with that learns to answer the “five Ws: Who? What? When? Where? Why?” by watching video.
From IEEE Spectrum:
Robots with nimble hands already help us assemble cars, harvest fruits, and even disarm bombs. Now when will they be ready to assist us with another life-changing task: loading a dishwasher?
Nobody really knows. To find out, a group of roboticists is organizing the Mobile Manipulation Challenge, to take place at the 2010 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation. Research groups are invited to bring their robots to Anchorage, Alaska, next May to show their skills at moving around cluttered spaces and manipulating objects autonomously.
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What if the price of machines that think is people who don’t?
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Attack of the Government Robot Blobs! The Pentagon unveils the ‘ChemBot.’
Via Michael Anissimov we hear that the second generation of the RepRap self-replication machine, codenamed “Mendel”, is nearly ready for public release. Meaning that you could buy one (if you found someone who’d sell you one), but you could also build your own from the free open-source plans found at the RepRap website; the parts will cost you around US$650.
…some kids at the Intelligent Information Laboratory at Northwestern University are suggesting that an average game day story can be bolted together without human intervention…
(via Next Big Future) The first robotic hand that can feel…
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