Professor Hiroo Iwata - 'Robot Tiles' is an Artwork

“Robot Tiles” is an artwork by Professor Hiroo Iwata from the University of Tsukuba. The tiles utilize Kuralon EC, a conductive textile developed by Kuraray. Professor Iwata has used Kuralon EC as a carpet-type sensor that communicates the position where a person has trodden. With Robot Tiles, people’s locations do not change even when they are walking. Robot Tiles have wheels that can move back and forth and side to side, with motors and computers to control them. The position of each tile is detected by infrared sensors installed on the floor. Based on this information, the host computer gives instructions to each Robot Tile. In this demo, the tiles are programmed to move straight ahead and at 45 degrees. By changing the program, it is possible to move in any direction throughout 360 degrees. http://mobile123-mobile.blogspot.com/

Zhu Zhu pets Robot : Most Popular Toy of 2009

Who would have suspected that the hot toy of 2009 would be a robotic hamster?

The Zhu Zhu Hamsters are without any doubt the absolute hit of the season among children – what kid doesn’t want a hamster for a pet? This one is a great compromise for the parents, as it’s designed to look just like a hamster, but doesn’t create the mess one usually does.

If you're not under 12, or a parent, the combination of cute, cuddly, and well, robotics might seem a bit alien. But kids have apparently been flocking to Zhu Zhu pets (beware of the music on the site!), a line of $10 robotic hamsters that roam through plastic tunnels, down slides and ramps, and power hamster balls.

The Zhu Zhu pets weren't the top item on a list of top-selling toys Amazon posted on Cyber Monday; the top two were a Lego advent calendar and Scrabble "slam cards". But the pets or related accessories filled out six out of the remaining eight spots on the list.

The hamsters come pre-programmed with about 40 different sounds, which trigger in response to different actions; pet them, for example, and they'll squeak contentedly. Each hamster can apparently be placed in "nurturing mode," where they can be played with and cuddled, and "adventure mode," where they "explore" their environment.

Accessories include the expected hamster beds and hamster wheel, in addition to an "adventure ball" and "sleep dome."

Naturally, the Zhu Zhu hamsters now have their own blog, where the hamsters post in character, without any hints on where to find them in stores, unfortunately. http://mobile123-mobile.blogspot.com/

Robot Builds Brick Wall

A robot is currently building a looping brick wall right in the middle of New York. Over a period of three weeks, passers-by can watch the "Pike Loop" installation in the making on a traffic island. The digitally controlled construction of the sculpture was developed at ETH-Zurich's Professorship of Architecture and Digital Fabrication.

Brick is a dominant feature of New York's cityscape, and Pike Street is no exception: from October 5 -- 27, the citizens of Manhattan can follow in real time how an industrial robot uses innovative technology to transform the traditional material into a complex infinite loop -- the "Pike Loop".

Digital and material realities

The brick loop in New York is no ordinary wall. The two architects, Fabio Gramazio and Matthias Kohler, who both teach and research at ETH Zurich, have breathed a breath of fresh air into popular design patterns with their interdisciplinary approach: "Digital characteristics can enrich a material and thus influence its architectural expression and functionality," say the two assistant professors of architecture and digital fabrication, whose research team designed and implemented "Pike Loop".

Instead of the conventional straight brick wall, you can use shapes and construction principles that have been programmed into the computer and digitally transferred to the material to make a three-dimensional composition. "We marry the digital reality of the computer with the material reality of a building," say the two architects. They call this approach "digital materiality".

Robot in a box

Over 7,000 bricks are in Pike Street waiting to be stacked based on complex calculations -- not by bricklayers, but by a digitally controlled robot called R-O-B, which is kept in a freight container ready to be transported directly to a building site. As R-O-B has a range of 4.5 meters and the installation is to be 22 meters long in total, the robot moves along the construction site on a flat-bed trailer to enable it to work continuously on the construction of the wall.
The bricks are bonded together with quick-drying glue -- also by the industrial robot. The fact that none of the bricks lies exactly on top of the one below creates a three-dimensional effect. And as the wall rises from the ground here and there and crosses over itself at several points, the infinite loop gets a dynamic expression

More precise than by human hand

The installation in New York exemplifies how, by combining digital design and fabrication tools, the architects can now control the production process in every detail. The resulting buildings therefore exhibit shapes and structures that could never be created by hand -- not without an enormous amount of effort, at least. Consequently, the point of Gramazio and Kohler's research is not to put the bricklayer out of a job. Their latest installation is primarily supposed to be for the purposes of architectural research -- a test of the potential and limitations of this production technique with respect to a contemporary design culture, as they put it.

Gramazio and Kohler's research team already used R-O-B to build a oscillating wall at last year's Architecture Biennale in Venice. The wall, however, was erected in front of the exhibition hall and then transported into the premises. Thus, "Pike Loop" is the first installation of its kind to be constructed on its eventual exhibition site.

The initiator of the installation was the renowned New York gallery Storefront for Art and Architecture which is currently holding an exhibition entitled "Digital Materiality" from October 1 -- November 14 that contains selected projects from Gramazio & Kohler's teaching and research activities at ETH Zurich's Department of Architecture. The finished wall is to be inaugurated in the evening of October 27 and will remain on the traffic island until the end of the year. http://mobile123-mobile.blogspot.com/

The Future Of Robots

Computer Scientists Program Robots To Play Soccer, Communicate With Bees
Engineers built humanoid robots that can recognize objects by color by processing information from a camera mounted on the robot's head. The robots are programmed to play soccer, with the intention of creating a team of fully autonomous humanoid robots able to compete against a championship human team by 2050. They have also designed tiny robots to mimic the communicative "waggle dance" of bees.

A world of robots may seem like something out of a movie, but it could be closer to reality than you think. Engineers have created robotic soccer players, bees and even a spider that will send chills up your spine just like the real thing.

They're big ... they're strong ... they're fast! Your favorite big screen robots may become a reality.

Powered by a small battery on her back, humanoid robot Lola is a soccer champion.

"The idea of the robot is that it can walk, it can see things because it has a video camera on top," Raul Rojas, Ph.D., professor of artificial intelligence at Freie University in Berlin, Germany, told Ivanhoe.

Using the camera mounted on her head, Lola recognizes objects by color. The information from the camera is then processed in this microchip, which activates different motors.

"And using this camera it can locate objects on the floor for example a red ball, go after the ball and try to score a goal," Dr. Rojas said. A robot with a few tricks up her sleeve.

German engineers have also created a bee robot. Covered with wax so it's not stung by others, it mimics the 'waggle' dance -- a figure eight pattern for communicating the location of food and water.

"Later what we want to prove is that the robot can send the bees in any decided direction using the waggle dance," Dr. Rojas said.

Robots like this could one day become high-tech surveillance tools that secretly fly and record data ... and a robot you probably won't want to see walking around anytime soon? The spider-bot.

ABOUT ROBOTICS: Robots are made of roughly the same components as human beings: a body structure with moveable joints; a muscle system outfitted with motors and actuators to move that body structure; a sensory system to collect information from the surrounding environment; a power source to activate the body; and a computer "brain" system to process sensory information and tell the muscles what to do. Robots are manmade machines intended to replicate human and animal behavior. Roboticists can combine these basic elements with other technological innovations to create some very complex robotic systems. There are plenty of robots doing manual work on factory assembly lines, but while those machines can manipulate objects, they do the same thing, along the same path, every time. Other robots are designed to play soccer, or to drive vehicles without human input.

ABOUT A.I.: Robots and computer networks are always evolving intelligent consciousness in popular science fiction. But while modern scientists have made great strides in building computers that can mimic logical thought, they still haven't cracked the code of human emotion and consciousness. There are two prevailing schools of thought on artificial intelligence. Proponents of "strong AI" consider that all human thought can be broken down into a set of mathematical operations. They expect that they will one day be able to replicate the human mind and create a robot capable of both thinking and feeling, with a sense of self -- the stuff of classic science fiction. Think of the robot Number Five from the 80s movie Short Circuit, who suddenly realized, frightened, that he could be "disassembled" by the scientists who made him. "Weak AI" proponents expect that human thought and emotion can only be simulated by computers. A computer might seem intelligent, but it is not aware of what it is doing, with no sense of self or consciousness. http://mobile123-mobile.blogspot.com/