Acetio | Blogma

This is Mars Rovers Spirit and Opportunity's grandfather, of sorts:

"In November 1970, more than a year after the United States' Apollo 11 mission, Soviet engineers sent Lunokhod 1 to the moon aboard a probe named Luna 17. Powered by solar cells and equipped with radio antennas, cameras, and a dust-sampling scooper, Lunokhod 1 had the appearance of an otherworldly creature."

It was the first robot on another celestial body.

And it's still there.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/robotic-exploration/forgotten-soviet-...

This is one of those things that sounds more like a discarded Dharma Initiative plot line from Lost than reality, yet it's real. The Burlington (VT) Free Press recently profiled the Teresem Movement Foundation, based in Bristol, VT, which calls itself a "a transreligion for technological times".

They are working on promoting "exponential life" - essentially getting to the point where we can download our consciousnesses into robotic bodies. The idea has been explored recently in shows such as Dollhouse and Caprica and does seem to be the ultimate target of a lot of scientific research.

Teresem has two journals: The Journal of Geoethical Nanotechnology and The Journal of Personal Cyberconsciousness.

The NYTimes profiled one of the automatons, Bina48, which, along with tripping the "uncanny valley" alarm, is a good demonstration of how AI hasn't changed much since the days of the Alice chatbot

Heady stuff. Cool and unnerving.

- from Mike C.

I think it's more about the vision system than the servos controlling the hand, but either way this is a very accurate robotic hand that can throw and catch and perform other similar tasks, very quickly. It makes me think that just as the day Deep Blue finally beat Kasparov ten years ago, at some point in the future we'll have robots beating us at darts - although they'll have to do it after 3 or 4 pints of beer.

More at the Sensor Fusion Project

This is similar to something I tried to sketch out once. My drawings also had a rubber tongue and lips so that the thing could create vowels and consonants. Of course, I never even tried to build it. This thing not only works, but the stainless-steel frame is quite beautiful.

Little Wheel is a very cute game that is more like interactive fiction than a real game since the puzzles aren't difficult at all. Great "2.5-D" animation and robots.

I don't have any idea what the Japanese text says, but this is a model of a robot, I'm guessing about a foot tall.
It comes in at least two sizes. 1/12 scale and 1/20 scale

The rust and dirt are what make it cool.

http://moderhythm.blog26.fc2.com/blog-entry-1145.html



Read about the mesicopter, or look at images. It's a wee helicopter.

I don't keep with robotics as much as I used to, back in the day when my main hobby was soldering transistors and little capacitors on BEAM-style solar-powered robots.

According to Mitsubishi, Wakamaru was designed by Mr. Toshiyuki Kita, who patterned the robot after a growing child. The name "wakamaru" derives from the childhood nickname of Minamoto Yoshitsune, a twelfth-century Japanese Samurai who engineered military victories that enabled his brother Yoritomo to gain control of Japan. The name is associated with "growth" and "development," the company says.

Wakamaru uses face recognition to identify up to ten people, including two that considers "owners." It uses speech recognition technology to identify 10,000 Japanese words. Speech synthesis capabilities include voice modulation and using gestures when speaking. It recognizes names given it by users, Mitsubishi says.

A panoramic top-of-head camera enables Wakamaru to identify its position in the house according to the ceiling. This camera also allows the robot to face others when speaking to them or being spoken to.

Wakamaru's claimed battery life is two hours, after which the robot returns to its charging station before power fails completely. It maintains Internet access and communications capabilities while charging, Mitsubishi says.