Tech Fest

Swarming Nano Quadrotors from GRASP Lab

Using hardware developed by KMel Robotics, Alex Kushleyev and Daniel Mellinger, of UPenn's GRASP Lab, working under the direction of Professor Vijay Kumar, and with assistance from Associate Professor Daniel Lee, have demonstrated coordinated flight of as many as twenty nano quadrotors.

David Anderson on Subsumption-based Robots

David Anderson, a long time member of the Dallas Personal Robotics Group, did an interesting presentation recently in which he distills down what he's learned about building subsumption based mobile robots over the years. The video is a bit long but well-worth your time if you're interested in intelligent robots. David provides some additional notes that link to video of specific examples. And don't forget to check out David's "my robots" webpage for more photos and details on his robots.

Political Pundits Discover the Uncanny Valley

The Uncanny Valley has been called upon to explain why Mitt Romney's persona disturbs so many people despite general agreement that he's a "successful, good-looking family man". Like Democrat Al Gore in previous races, Republican Mitt Romney creates a strange unease even among his supporters. A recent essay in the Atlantic provides an explanation for this phenomenon based on the Uncanny Valley theory that we are repulsed by slight imperfections in human-like action. The author argues that Romney's personality exhibits traits which put him into an "uncanny valley" for politicians.

"Most politicians tend to be ordinary-looking people who spend their time convincing voters they're office-quality material. Romney is rushing the other way: he's the politician from central casting who is stumbling through an audition for a role of regular human."

There were lots of jokes and comments about Al Gore being a "robot" in earlier races. But here we've got a more detailed attempt at explaining what makes people uncomfortable about this type of politician. This raises interesting questions: 1) is this just an amusing analogy or could there be any real psychology behind claims of a political uncanny valley? 2) does a reference to the uncanny valley by a political pundit mean even relatively obscure robotics and AI science is going mainstream? 3) if even some humans fall into the uncanny valley, is it more important that robots climb the other side or that we adjust our expectations of intelligent behavior?
Diagram based on Mori Uncanny Valley

Robots Podcast: Advances in Bipedal Locomotion

In the new episode of Robots Podcast we talk to Subramanian Ramamoorthy from the University of Edinburgh about the recent progress in walking robotics. We then speak with Felipe Brandão Cavalcanti, an Electrical Engineering student working on bipedal walking at the LARA lab at the University of Brasilia with Professor Geovany Borges. Ramamoorthy tells us about the recent advances in humanoid bipedal walking illustrated by Petman and the latest version of Asimo. In particular, we look at the history of the field with work from Mark Raibert, Russ Tedrake andDaniel Koditschek and how different areas, such as machine leaning and motion capture, come together to accelerate progress. Felipe Brandão Cavalcanti's project focuses on the study and implementation of gait generation and stabilization algorithms for small humanoid robots. He tells us how they hacked a humanoid toy to improve its balance and the importance of math in his work.To learn more about walking robotics read on or tune in!

"My robot is better than your robot."

Inspriational video from iamFIRST.com.
(Via Nikolaus Correll)

Last Refreshed 2/5/2012 6:04:34 AM