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New Events

Power Tool Drag Racing

Event: Silverline Power Tool Drag Racing
At: Haynes International Motor Museaum, Somerset, UK
On: Sunday 10th August 2008
Price: £7.50 per person to spectate, £10 to enter your creation
Tickets sold at door to spectate or to take part download a booking form at www.silverlinetools.co.uk
See you there!

National Space Centre, Robots Event 17-18 May 2008

The National Space Centre in Leicester Uk is currently organising a large scale robots event on the weekend of the 17th and 18th May.

We currently seek interest from anyone who may want to have some form of input into this event.

I Love Robots - Competition

A competition for UK robot builders and UK robot dreamers to show off their robots and their ideas. Two competitions one for real robots and one for robot blueprints. The Robot Idol competition winner will win £500 of credit with nominated UK online robot material retailers, while the Robot Blueprin

Latest posts on RobotBuilder
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Last Refreshed 7/6/2008 3:28:27 AM

robots.net
Recent robots.net articles

Lost Metropolis Film Discovered

A reel of film from Fritz Lang's 1927 Metropolis containing a section thought to be lost was discovered recently at a cinema museum in Buenos Aires. Claiming the title of the most expensive silent film of the time, Metropolis is the story of a futuristic city where the major class division is between laborers and the thinking elite. A gynoid robot is used in a battle of forces to create a just society.

Robots: Robot Soccer

The latest episode of Robots, the podcast for news and views on robotics, takes a look behind the scenes of Robot Soccer. Manuela Veloso, professor at Carnegie Mellon University and President-Elect of the International RoboCup Federation, discusses the state of the art and the future of artificial dribblers. She also shares her thoughts on the daring RoboCup prediction that by the year 2050, "a team of fully autonomous humanoid robots ... can win against the human world soccer champion team". Will it really happen? Listen to the podcast and vote on the forum!

Giant Styrofoam Robots

Some of you may remember those photos I posted recently of a big robot built from styrofoam packing material that turned up at a local art gallery in Dallas. Well, the folks at DVICE have spotted an artist who makes even bigger foam robots. How big? Try 22 feet tall. The artist is Michael Salter of the University of Oregon and he hasn't built just one but quite a few giant robots. For more see the photo gallery of his robots at Comptemorary Art 06 or his exhibit at the Lump Gallery in 2005. He also did an exhibit at the University of Texas at Arlington in which he built a giant robot out of cardboard boxes. So why does he do it? His bio says "he is currently interested in cognitive behavior and its relationship to particular visual stimuli, and the continued construction of styrofoam robots." If your interest in Styrofoam robots follows a more diminutive bent, don't forget RobotGrrl and her Styrobots.

Machines That Think Like People - Bad Idea?

The Guardian published a piece by Charles Arthur titled, "Artificial intelligence: God help us if machines ever think like people", in which he questions the idea that Humans are a good model on which to base machine consciousness. Why? "We don't build skyscrapers based on the same principles as the human spine; if we did, then they'd be constantly falling down or showing signs of significant weakness. We don't build transport systems that work like the human body, using muscle-like elastic bands snapping back and forth to power them." He notes that even the Human body is a mess because "evolution is a terrible designer". His premise is based on a recent book by Gary Marcus, Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind which investigates the conflicts between the millions of years old features of the brain that are now conflicting with the relatively recently acquired features based on language. In the end he suggests that giving a machine a mind as badly designed as ours would be an act of cruelty.

K Core Processors

Intel is hinting at the possibility of a future with processors containing hundreds or even thousands of cores. While graphics applications seem to be driving much of this trend, I see the possibilities for robotics as truly monumental. Software development for real-time response and control of actuators and sensors has always been a bit awkward with asynchronous interrupts bumping into each-other and cumbersome state machine loops. A possible solution to this mess, and to a much-needed advancement in robot performance are multiple processor systems with additional processors providing centralized supervisory control. When that trend takes hold, a programmer will be able to instruct a mobility routine to approach the refrigerator using a group of processors dedicated to that task, and not risk crashing the battery monitoring routines in the process. It seems to me that the trend is more towards a massively parallel array of much simpler processors - something between neural networks of biological systems and the overburdened, highly complex, single-processor systems of today. Processors of the giant array can be simpler, slower and die without bringing down the whole system. The result will be a faster and more fault-tolerant system that is easier to program, and even cheaper to produce.

Last Refreshed 7/6/2008 3:31:15 AM

KurzweilAI.net Accelerating Intelligence News
A collection of news articles and stories relating to the accelerating nature of technology

Wall-E

Pixar's "WALL-E" succeeds at being three things at once: an enthralling animated film, a visual wonderment and a decent science-fiction story, says film critic Roger Ebert.

Seven hundred years in the future, a rusty trash-compacting droid appears to be the last 'bot on earth... See also: WALL-E : Official Site (Source: http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080626/REVIEWS/963071290)

U.S. Lifts Moratorium on New Solar Projects

Under increasing public pressure over its decision to temporarily halt all new solar development on public land, the Bureau of Land Management said Wednesday that it was lifting the freeze, barely a month after it was put into effect. See also: Citing Need for Assessments, U.S. Freezes Solar Energy Projects (Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/03/us/03solar.html?ref=science)

Blood test can monitor cancer spread

Massachusetts General Hospital researchers have build a device that can detect and capture minute numbers of tumor cells circulating in the blood of lung cancer patients and find genetic characteristics of the cells that could determine the best treatment options. The research may one day make monitoring the disease as simple as taking a blood test, without invasive procedures to get samples. Lung tumor biopsies are particularly difficult to obtain, and even a technique in which a fine needle is inserted into the tumor and used to draw off a tiny number of cells comes with risks. Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are living solid-tumor cells found at extremely low levels in the bloodstream, which they can enter during even the earliest stages of cancer. Until the development of the MGH device, it was not possible to get information from CTCs that would be useful for clinical decision-making. (Source: http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080702/full/news.2008.930.html)

New Nanowire-Based Memory Could Beef Up Information Storage

University of Pennsylvania researchers have created a type of nanowire-based information storage device that is capable of storing three bit values rather than the usual two. This ability could lead to a new generation of high-capacity information storage for electronic devices. The phase changes are achieved by subjecting the nanowires to pulsed electric fields. This process heats the nanowires, altering the core and shell structure from crystalline (ordered) to amorphous (disordered). These two states correspond to two different electrical resistances. The third value corresponds to the case where the core is amorphous while the shell is crystalline (or visa versa), resulting in an intermediate resistance. Creating information storage from nanowires can be done via "bottom-up" approaches, using the natural tendency of tiny structures to self-assemble into larger structures, so they may be able to break free of the limitations faced by traditional "top-down" methods, such as patterning a circuit onto a silicon wafer by depositing a nanowire thin film. (Source: http://www.physorg.com/news134214217.html)

Intel's Gelsinger Sees Clear Path To 10nm Chips

Intel sees a "clear way" to manufacturing chips under 10 nanometers, according to Pat Gelsinger, VP of Intel's Digital Enterprise Group. The next die shrink milestone will be the 32nm process, set to kick off next year, followed by 14nm a few years after that and then sub-10nm, he said. (Source: http://www.crn.com/hardware/208801780)

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Last Refreshed 7/6/2008 3:31:33 AM