Love robots? Now they can love you back!

Welcome to Hooman Samani’s Lovotics – an area of research dealing with human-to-robot relations.

Across 11 research papers, Samani has outlined — and begun to develop — an extremely complex artificial intelligence that simulates psychological and biological systems behind human love. To do this, Samani’s robots are equipped with artificial versions of the human “love” hormones — Oxytocin, Dopamine, Seratonin, and Endorphin — that can increase or decrease, depending on their state of love. On a psychological level, by using MRI scans of human brains to mirror the psychology of love, the robots are also equipped with an artificial intelligence that tracks their “affective state”; their level of affection for their human lover.

Observe as this lovely combination of R2D2 and Roomba strives for your affection:

After reading this article I immediately visited this tv-tropes piece, knowing all-well that I could suffer a similar fate as this fellow.

I came to the conclusion that one of my favorite responses to “What is this thing you call love?” was from a jolly assassin droid by the name of HK-47:

“Definition: ‘Love’ is making a shot to the knees of a target 120 kilometers away using an Aratech sniper rifle with a tri-light scope. Statement: This definition, I am told, is subject to interpretation. Obviously, love is a matter of odds. Not many meatbags could make such a shot, and fewer would derive love from it. Yet for me, love is knowing your target, putting them in your targeting reticle, and together, achieving a singular purpose, against statistically long odds.“

Now please, stop asking us about pleasure bots.

I blame the Svedka robot.

Just look at it. Then go out and build your own.

*Apologies to BoingBoing

Too lazy to learn how to play an instrument? Then let the good ol’ folks at the University of Tokyo and Sony Computer Science Labs do it for you!

The project’s name is PossessedHand and it allows control over someone’s hand via electrical muscle stimuli!

As well as helping would-be musicians, PossessedHand could be used to rehabilitate people who have suffered a stroke or other injury that impairs muscle control. Therapists already use electrical muscle stimulation to help these people, but existing non-invasive devices can only achieve crude movements such as contracting the entire arm.

From the always superlative Robots-Dreams comes a great English-language summary of this month’s RoboCon Magazine, for we pathetic non-Japanese speaking English speakers.

Among the juicy delights afforded us by the always well-done RoboCon robotics journal is a fab, huge article covering RoboGames 2011, at which we were very honored to have an enthusiastic contingent of competitors from Robot Japan.

Robot Japan is a collection of robotics enthusiasts that holds meetings, maintain a blog, and serves as a relatively informal organizing body for robotics events around Japan.

We were excited that several members were planning on attending RoboGames 2011, and that was even before a little thing like one of the biggest earthquakes in recorded history, and a horrendous, devastating tsunami occurred right in their back yard.

To recap: DEVASTATING EARTHQUAKE AND TSUNAMI, and they made it to the competition anyway.

We’ve had competitors from other countries (including the USA) whinge about having to get up before ten and how the hotel sheets weren’t the right thread count, so needless to say, we were impressed.

After everything they had been through and after overcoming some technical glitches, we were extremely pleased to see this:

It’s obvious that the Japan contingent had a wonderful time, made lots of new friends, and is committed to participating in strength next Spring at RoboGames 2012.

Along with articles on Taylor Veltrop‘s awesome Kinect/ROS/Wii Frankensteinian humanoid action, there’s loads more about Robot Japan 1st and all the other great things which makes RoboCon reason enough in itself for us over her to run out and learn Japanese posthaste.

[Thanks a millions, Lem!]

Fighting an autocratic regime? Have a few things lying around in your machine shop? Why not create a rebel war robot to kill time while you fight vociferously for your cause? The whole world is watching!

All kidding aside, this piece from Al-Jazeera English shows rebel engineers building, among other things, armed power wheels, an ROV ammo resupply machine, and your basic shoulder mounted rocket launcher.

Notable quotes from ass-kicking Libyan engineering students:

“We want to use our weapons in a systematic way against those who take up arms against us. We hope they will not use their arms against civilians.”

“It’s strange going from being an engineering students to designing weapons, but we’ve seen many bad things in this war and I have to help the fighters and my people any way I can.”

“We don’t carry guns but we want to help save our people, budding ways which reduce loss of life, even against Gaddafi’s forces. Because we are against killing unless there is no choice, we don’t want to be like him and kill everyone.”

DIY shit just got real.

[Thanks Singularity Hub!]

Is the Rise of Wearable Electronics Finally Here?

Check out this article by Phillip Torrone chronicling the development of wearable electronic tech -  Ranging from music and video players/recording devices, to a huge variety of USB devices, and much much more!

I’ve always wanted to utilize my wrist real estate to my shoes for electronics of some kind. Many of the “wearables” I’m going to share are from my project archives, some are now “real,” and others are products that are out now. I think we’re finally entering an era where wearable electronics can look good and work well.

Mentioned in an earlier post dissecting Hero Jr., Jeri Ellsworth spotted in the depths of this article, this time with her Nintendo Purse!

Special thanks to Make Magazine.

A nice and brief little article in Forbes about winkle wee swarming robots thought up and done by the Harvard Self Organizing Systems Research Group

Each tiny bot has two degrees of movement, and can communicate by bouncing infrared signals off the floor at each other, like a tiny, liquid-free game of robot beer pong.

Apropos of very little, my cockles are warmed by the fact that Forbes has a blog called “Robot Overlords”.

Image Courtesy The Sonic Alchemists

Our pal Patrick Flanagan at Jazari Music has a nice piece up about Jazari Music over at Hack A Day about his music and how his robot band is evolving, and by “evolving” I mean “kicking ass and being awesome”:

As Patrick describes it, Jazari “fuses African rhythms,
algorithmic composition, computer music, and electro-mechanics into
beat-driven steamfunk.” The controls are quite unique as well. Originally, the controller was simply a Wiimote. This was limited, since one needs three fingers to hold on to it, so a new “springbok” device was born allowing all five fingers to be used to play music. The vocal part of the music is created using an Android program called “voloco”.

We were lucky enough to have Patrick come be a part of our excellent speaker symposium at RoboGames 2011 this year, thanks again Patrick, and thanks Heather Knight for putting our symposium together!

Autonomous chorus line of precision Busby Berkeley-style tap dancing robots that don’t appear to have much personality on an individual basis, but boy can they flock.

The Tiller Girls are the work of Louis-Phillippe Demers, A robotic artist that creates works and wins prestige under the name The Processing Plant.

The excessively intelligent and infuriatingly productive Jeri Ellsworth goes over her new-to-her Heathkit Hero Jr., lovingly extracted from here in the depths of the Robunker (We have five more. Get ‘em while they’re cutely obsolete!).

Lose a hand? No problem!
Yet another step closer to The Six Million Dollar Man, as an Austrian had his amputated hand replaced with a bionic limb!

“The patient, called “Milo”, aged 26, lost the use of his right hand in a motorcycle accident a decade ago.

After his stump heals in several weeks’ time, he will be fitted with a bionic hand which will be controlled by nerve signals in his own arm.”

The initial horror over an elective amputation was quickly overcome by intrigue over the mechanical new appendage:

“Such bionic hands, manufactured by the German prosthetics company Otto Bock, can pinch and grasp in response to signals from the brain that are picked up by two sensors placed over the skin above nerves in the forearm.”

Watching the video of another case in the article amazes me with how far the technology has come.

Previously, I was concerned with the plausibility of my USB-Hand that would allow high-fiving, fist bumps, and slapping people through the internet.

My dream yet lives.

-The Intern

As promised, we have news on the RoboGames 2011 TV special!
The show premieres on May 30th, 9PM on the SCIENCE channel!

Discovery Press has also published an excellent article going over the television show – Read Me!

Lastly, the awesome commercial, in all its robotty splendor:

(Thank you Robot Marketplace for the Youtube vid)

-The Intern

All new and shiny in time for ICRA comes the Robotad all-volunteer blog for the discussion of the use of robots during disasters such as the Great East Japan Earthquake and the Fukushima crisis.

Do you read and speak Japanese well? They need volunteers to translate articles! Hone your anime-watching skills and put them to good use:

The Robotics Task Force for Anti-Disaster (ROBOTAD) is a community of volunteers in Japan who gather to exchange and discuss the issues of technology, application, and management to utilize robotics toward
recovery from the Great East Japan Earthquake and the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant Disaster. The ROBOTAD is a hyper-academic organization and tightly liaises with academic societies, the Science Council of Japan, and the industry. The ROBOTAD is chaired by Professor Hajime Asama, the University of Tokyo.

The Robotics Task Force

The sound of hundreds of pounds of metal slamming into each other, and the smell of burning rubber and fried electronics finally fades.
It’s been three weeks since the annual International RoboGames took place, and I think my hearing is finally back.

This year’s annual RoboGames was a huge success, and we’d like to thank everyone for coming down to the San Mateo Event Center and hope to see you again in October for The ComBots Cup!

For those not familiar, RoboGames is the world’s largest robotics competition! The 3-day extravaganza featured 239 teams from 17 countries competing in 59 separate events; including soccer, hockey, sumo, fire-fighting, kung-fu, and the ever popular (and dangerous) combat robots!

I’d like to send out a special thanks to the crazy Brazilian teams that showed up, as well as the Japanese teams that made the long trek out despite the obvious complications at home.

As an added bonus we were joined by Grant Imahara (of Mythbusters fame) and The Science Channel. They were filming a TV special that is set to air on Memorial Day Weekend, more news as we get it!

For those that want to check out what they missed (or relive what they saw), YouTube is overflowing with RoboGames videos:

Make sure to check out the combat, as well as humanoid events!

(Credit to Lem Fugitt and robots-dreams.com for the footage)

Lastly, a quick thank-you to our sponsors:

Google, Jameco, TechShop, The Robot MarketPlace, Neato Robotics, Willow Garage, Servo Magazine, Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories, Innovati, Robots-Dreams and FingerTech Robotics!

Check out more RoboGames coverage!
Jameco RoboGames Update
Wired RoboGames Coverage
IEEE – Humanoids at RoboGames
nerdsinbabeland.com

-The Intern

Are you an artist? Do you schlep and hurp and derp and sit at tables and sell things after working long lonely hours on your robot art?

Well then, we have something in which you might be interested.

Image courtesy 2011 Artist Table holder Josh Ellingson and our lovely sponsor Willow Garage

RoboGames for the very first time ever, in the tradition of APE, WonderCon and Comicon, is having an Artist’s section where makers of fine robot-themed art can peddle their wares in safety and comfort.

Interested? Oh yes you are. Contact Simone at RoboGames dot net for details and extremely reasonable pricing.