So it’s no surprise to find all sorts of creations providing shade and solar power more efficiently through the study of sunflowers. The “Sunflower” umbrella by Shadecraft is just the latest object to follow the sun as it arcs across the sky each day. Extending the “internet of things” smart home system to the outdoors, this umbrella does a lot more than you might imagine. For starters, the shade it provides moves to keep you cool all day long, so you’ll never have to get up and move yourself.

In addition to tracking the sun, the Sunflower harvests solar energy via photovoltaic panels and stores it to power itself. It fully charges within two hours, and thanks to its incredible battery capacity, it can function for 72 hours without sunlight. The Sunflower connects to Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and cellular data to offer users a strong internet connection outdoors.

You can use the Sunflower as a charging hub for your devices, and it’s got built-in lighting and speakers, too. That’s definitely a bonus for those of us who tend to lug a lot of stuff outside when we want to spend some time reading and relaxing. An integrated 360-degree high-definition camera captures security footage in the form of video and still images, so you can connect it to indoor security systems and keep an eye on your yard when no one’s home.

An accompanying app allows you to control all of the Sunflower’s functions right from your smartphone, or you can use voice control to deliver verbal commands. Talk directly to the Sunflower to control its movement, lighting, speakers, and other features. You can even use it to video chat with friends or livestream your activity. To top it all off, the Sunflower also functions as a weather station. Embedded sensors and motion detectors allow it to monitor weather conditions like humidity, wind, and even air pollution levels, sending alerts to your phone to keep you updated.

“Through the SmartShade app and integrated Wi-Fi, Cellular, or Bluetooth connectivity, you can play your iTunes library or jump to your favorite music app and stream directly through your SUNFLOWER,” explains Shadecraft. “Audio books, podcasts, live events, all at the touch of a button or via simple voice commands. SmartShade also controls SUNFLOWER’s lighting system. Four powerful LEDs with intensity settings you can control and schedule for optimum outdoor experiences.”

“With SmartShade, you can access insights into your outdoor world, and set up notifications & alerts — so you’ll know when to seek shade or ‘step outside’ and experience a perfect day.”

Winner of the IDA Gold Award 2017 and nominee of the Twice VIP Awards in outdoor automated devices, the Shadecraft Sunflower made its public debut at CES 2017. The company has already raised $2 million from private investors to fund production, and the Sunflower is set to be available for pre-order this fall for around $2,700, with orders expected to start shipping sometime next year.

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In her new book The Sounds of Life: How Digital Technology is Bringing Us Closer to the Worlds of Animals and Plants, University of British Columbia professor Karen Bakker outlines some of the most ground-breaking experiments in animal and plant communication.

“Digital technologies, so often associated with our alienation from nature, are offering us an opportunity to listen to nonhumans in powerful ways, reviving our connection to the natural world,” writes Bakker, a director at the UBC Institute for Resources, Environment, and Sustainability.

She points out that digital listening posts are now being used to continuously record the sounds of ecosystems around the planet, from rainforests to the bottom of the ocean. Developments in miniaturization have even enabled scientists to place microphones on tiny animals like honeybees.

“Combined, these digital devices function like a planetary-scale hearing aid: enabling humans to observe and study nature’s sounds beyond the limits of our sensory capabilities,” Bakker writes. The next step for many scientists is harnessing the power of artificial intelligence to sift through these sounds and enable robots to “speak animal languages and essentially breach the barrier of interspecies communication.”

She cites a team of researchers in Germany that have taught tiny robots how to do the honeybee waggle dance. Using these dancing machines, the scientists were able to command the honeybees to stop moving, and to communicate where to fly to collect a specific nectar. The researchers plan to experiment with implanting robots into the hives so that the honeybees accept them as members of their community.

Bakker also writes about bioacoustics scientist Katie Payne and her discoveries regarding elephant communication. Payne was the first to find that elephants make infrasound signals, sounds below the human hearing range. The vibrations of these signals allow elephants to send messages across long distances through soil and stones. Scientists have since found that elephants have different signals for “honeybee” and “human,” as well as distinguishable signals for “threatening human” versus “nonthreatening human.” If the power of AI could be harnessed to send messages to elephant herds, we might be able to help protect their dwindling populations without removing them from their natural habitats.

Coral reefs also get attention in Bakker’s book. “A healthy coral reef sounds a little bit like an underwater symphony,” she explains. “There are cracks and burbles and hisses and clicks from the reef and its inhabitants and even whales dozens of miles away. If you could hear in the ultrasonic, you might hear the coral itself.” With the use of AI, scientists might eventually be able to get coral to repopulate certain areas by broadcasting “healthy coral reef” sounds to coral larvae.

While the idea of someday having “a zoological version of Google Translate” sounds overwhelmingly positive, there is the fear is that unscrupulous humans might use the technology to control animal populations for their own gain. Bakker warns that the possibility of exploiting animals “raises a lot of alarm bells” and that our “newfound powers” should never be used “to assert our domination over animals and plants.”

The post New AI Tech Allows Humans to Talk to Animals first appeared on Dornob.

The robot’s self-led evolution is part of what makes it so fascinating. It isn’t improving its speed and dexterity thanks to new lines of code in its programming or some kind of robot bootcamp. It’s learning on its own by running through facilities full of obstacles that mimic conditions in the real world.

A lot of robot developers train their creations to navigate rough terrain by essentially running them at full capacity at all times, anticipating the most challenging obstacles like ice on a path. But that makes the robot inefficient, and keeps it from learning through experience. MIT puts the Mini Cheetah and other robots through physical agility courses, but they’ve also found a much faster way to get the results they want: through artificial intelligence.

The Mini Cheetah robot project is led by researchers from the Institute of AI and Fundamental Interactions (IAIFI) and MIT’s Improbable AI Lab, which is part of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) directed by MIT Assistant Professor Pulkit Agrawal. MIT PhD student Gabriel Margolas and IAIFI postdoc Ge Yang explained the process in an interview with MIT.

“Programming how a robot should act in every possible situation is simply very hard,” Margolas and Yang explain. “The process is tedious, because if a robot were to fail on a particular terrain, a human engineer would need to identify the cause and failure and manually adapt the robot controller, and this process can require substantial human time. Learning by trial and error removes the need for a human to specify precisely how the robot should behave in every situation. This would work if (1) the robot can experience an extremely wide range of terrains; and (2) the robot can automatically improve its behavior with experience.”

“Thanks to modern simulation tools, our robot can accumulate 100 days worth of experience on diverse terrains in just three hours of actual time. We developed an approach by which the robot’s behavior improves from simulated experience, and our approach critically also enables the successful deployment of those learned behaviors in the real world.”

The Mini Cheetah features a mechanically robust design that lets it survive accidents and high-impact falls. It’s powered by high-torque actuators that allow for omnidirectional movement with different gaits depending on the terrain: trotting, pacing, bounding, and something called “pronking,” a behavior seen in animals like gazelles that involves springing into the air and lifting all four feet off the ground simultaneously.

This is what allows the Mini Cheetah to do a 360-degree backflip, which it was able to do before it could even walk. The cheetah has also learned how to turn at high speeds and run with a disabled leg. To understand just how agile the Mini Cheetah really is, you have to see it in action. Check out this video from MIT CSAIL showing the robot’s latest evolution.

The post MIT’s Frighteningly Fast Robot Cheetah Uses AI to Break Speed Records first appeared on Dornob.

The name 2526 refers to the number of hours Gao invested in the creation of the two polymorphic robotic garments, from her earliest sketches to the final stitch. Inspired by NFTs, digital fashion, and virtual clothing, the garments are real, worn by actual models, and crafted from materials like glass, silicone, organdy fabric, and electronic devices. They truly take futuristic fashion to a whole new level, resembling alien creatures or some strange extension of the human body that hasn’t been invented yet.

“If the role of the fashion designer is to imbue a form and a function to materials intended to dress the body, we can wonder about the question of the immaterial garment and the virtual body, devoid of substance, and their level of reality, when the digital has become a real ‘second nature,’” says Gao. “As our jaunts into the metaverse become more recent and less surprising, digital fashion inevitably unfolds into an infinity of possibilities and uncertainties.”

In 2019, Gao debuted a previous robotic garment collection called “Flowing Water, Standing Time.” These translucent and transparent garments are also capable of chromatic movement, recognizing the colors in their immediate surroundings, and responding in liquid, chameleon-like ways. Color sensors, light sensors, and tiny cameras linked to a raspberry Pi computer analyze the wearer’s environment and translate that information to the garment via a series of actuators and magnets, causing the fabric to ripple.

In this way, the wearer almost becomes secondary to the garment itself, which has gained a sense of autonomy. The wearer can’t control what their own clothes are doing at any given time.

“This project was inspired by neurologist Oliver Sacks’ novel The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat, in which he relates the story of Jimmie G, a 49-year-old former sailor convinced of being aged 19 since having left the Navy,” says Gao. “Shocked by his own reflection when Sacks hands him a mirror, Jimmie reverts to his 19-year-old self as soon as his gaze leaves the reflective surface. Having lost any sense of temporal continuity, Jimmie lives as a prisoner to this single, perpetual moment, oscillating between a presence to the world and a presence to self.”

“Much like Jimmie G, the garments evolve between two states and display perpetual metamorphosis as they react to the chromatic spectrum. This traveling between opposite states — from immobility to movement — does not operate as a dichotomy. Upon the field time, which injects energy into the very core of inertia, fluctuates the intensity animating each garment in its unique way. These two states are mere dropping-off points among an infinite array of possibilities.”

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“It’s well known that we have a problem with plastics in the environment,” says Mackintosh. “We face the challenges of figuring out ways to reduce and prevent it as well as clean up the water that’s already out there.”

Held by the University of Surrey, the brand new public competition solicited entries from anyone who had an idea for a bio-inspired robot. Mackintosh’s proposal was a simple drawing showing how the robot fish could swim through the water, its internal cavity opening and then compressing to force water over the gills in order to collect plastic particles. The winning entry was selected and built by a group of senior engineers and scientists with years of experience bringing robotic concepts to life.

“We don’t know where the vast majority of the plastic that enters our waters ends up,” says Dr. Robert Siddall, lecturer at the University of Surrey and initiator of the competition. “We hope that this robo-fish and its future offspring will be the first steps in the right direction to help us find and eventually control this plastic pollution problem.”

The roboticists assisting with the competition turned Mackintosh’s proposal into a remote-controlled robot about the size of a salmon. It swims by flapping its tail while keeping its mouth wide open to collect water (and microplastics) in its internal cavity. Once the cavity is full, the robot closes its mouth and opens its lamellar gill valves, pushing the water out of the valves and lifting the bottom of the cavity. Its features include pectoral fins, a gill and mouth motor, a gill raker, particulate mesh, a separate motor for the fins, a tail fin actuation rod, a tail fin motor, battery and microcontroller, and sensors that detect light levels and turbidity (clarity) of the water.

You can now make your very own Gillbert Robo-Fish, as the plans for the current iteration of the design are available as free, open-source CAD files on GrabCad.com. Future revisions will make the fish autonomous instead of remote-controlled so they can be deployed in groups. The public is encouraged to make their own changes and improvements as they experiment with the design.

Other entries in the 2022 Natural Robotics Contest included a forest-protecting robot bird, a hermit crab rover, a robotic sea urchin, and a plastic-collecting dolphin. You can see them all and apply for next year’s contest at the Natural Robotics Contest website.

“We chose Eleanor’s both because we really liked the idea and the way it used bioinspiration, but also because cleaning up ocean plastic was the most common purpose among all the entries we received, so we thought our winner should reflect that,” Siddall told FOX Weather.

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Watching “Plant Machete” in action is a little surreal. The multi-jointed robotic arm pivots and rotates, the blade swinging to and fro in a threatening manner. The plant appears to be fighting back against humans that approach it, warning us that it’s no longer defenseless. Skeptics might immediately wonder whether this disturbing display is actually controlled by a computer program, but it’s the result of EEG sensors translating the electrical signals inside the plant into movements.

The system uses an open-source Arduino micro-controller connected to the plant to read these signals across the plant’s leaves. Bowen’s custom software maps them in real time to the movements of the joints in the arm wielding the machete. This basically makes the plant the “brain” of the installation. Bowen mounted the plant to the wall and filmed the results in all their glory.

Another recent project by Bowen called “Plant Drone” gave a plant the unlikely ability to fly. As with Plant Machete, this project translated the real-time variable resistance data collected from a live on-board plant into movements: left to right, forward to reverse, up and down. That allowed the plant to pilot the drone, with a mounted LED light creating long exposure drawings in the night sky and tracking its path.

Similarly, “Fly Revolver” tracks the movements of flies inside an acrylic sphere with a target backdrop, processing them with custom software and outputting them to a robotic device that aims a revolver. Collectively, these projects might induce a feeling of unease in the viewers. What if plants and animals really could use our own weapons against us? What would that say about our accountability to them, and the consequences of our actions?

“Using intersections between natural and mechanical systems, I produce unique relationships within my sculpture and installations,” says Bowen in his artist statement. “With robotics, custom software, sensors, tele-presence, and data, I construct devices that are set in motion to interface with the physical, virtual, and natural world. The devices I construct often play the roles of observer and creator, providing limited and mechanical perspectives of dynamic situations and living systems. These devices and situations create a dissonance that leads to an incalculable changeable situation resulting in unpredictable outcomes.”

It may seem absurd to imagine that plants have the capability to communicate with us, but scientists have found evidence that they speak to each other in languages we simply don’t register or understand. UK-based computer scientist Andrew Adamatzky recently published a study in which he compared electrical signals in mushrooms to human language, finding that their patterns can be interpreted as up to 50 different words. In another study, ecologist Suzanne Simard demonstrated how trees “talk” to each other by sending each other nutrients via a network of fungi buried in the soil.

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It turns out this idea is not only a viable one, but something that could revolutionize the entire construction industry. Publishing their findings in the science journal Nature, researchers at Imperial College London and Empa (Swiss Federal Laboratories for Material Science and Technology) created a fleet of small flying 3D printers that can work together to build and repair structures high above the ground. The teams were inspired by swarms of bees, which cooperate seamlessly to construct their hives.

Using unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) technology, the scientists created a fleet of drones collectively called Aerial Additive Manufacturing (Aerial-AM). To test their idea, the team tasked the bots with the job of building four cement-like structures. Some drones were designed as “BuilDrones” to do the actual work of creating materials during the job, while others were created as “ScanDrones” to continually assess the BuilDrones’ output and provide instructions for next steps.

After all being fed the exact same blueprints, the drones worked autonomously to create a 72-layer, two-meter-high tower out of polyurethane-based foam, as well as a 28-layer, 18-centimeter higher cylinder out of a custom-designed cement-like compound.
The researchers also acted as human controllers on the ground, analzying the bots’ work in real time and intervening if necessary to make sure they were working collectively and accurately (within five millimeters of the building schematics).

“We’ve proved that drones can work autonomously and in tandem to construct and repair buildings, at least in the lab,” says lead author Mirko Kovac, Professor at Imperial’s Department of Aeronautics and Head of Empa’s Materials and Technology Center of Robotics. He adds: “Our solution is scalable and could help us to construct and repair buildings in difficult-to-reach areas in the future.”

The team’s next goal is to prove the drones’ viability in a real-world setting, and they already have plans for collaborations underway. If the trials are successful, the 3D printing drones could not only construct new buildings and help make standard repairs, but they could also be deployed for massive rebuilding in post-disaster situations, where manpower may be limited or access is obstructed for traditional construction vehicles.

Armies of building drones would significantly lower the risk of human injury and death on tall worksites, all for dramatically lower costs compared to conventional construction methods. The bots’ environmental benefits are also promising, as they would reduce the need for massive fuel-consuming vehicles and cause far less damage to local ecosystems during the construction process.

While we may not yet be at the point where swarms of flying robots swoop down in our neighborhoods to create new homes and buildings from the ground up, these smart drones hint that a world like that could be our reality in a matter of years, if not decades.

The post Bee-Like 3D Printing Drones Can Build Structures on the Fly first appeared on Dornob.

The wires-out bot was able to walk around on the stage, wave, and even “raise the roof.” Although this was “literally the first time the robot [had] operated without a tether,” in theory, Optimus — also known as Tesla bot — will be able to lift enormous loads and traverse tricky terrain. It uses “essentially the same self-driving car computer” that controls Tesla’s electric cars and is outfitted with a host of video feeds to direct its movements.

During the presentation, Tesla engineers explained that proprietary actuators, which act as muscles for the humanoid bot, could allow it to lift objects many times its weight. The adaptive robotic hands will also be able to independently move their fingers and manipulate a wide range of objects.

While the robot didn’t show off many skills on stage, the presentation featured video of a tethered Optimus walking around Tesla HQ delivering boxes to desks and watering office plants.

After debuting the “Bumble C” prototype, as he called it, Musk explained that his team had already moved on to developing the next model, which he plans to put into production. Three Tesla engineers then brought the sleeker version to the stage, where it waved but could not walk.

Musk first introduced the concept of his Optimus robot at last year’s AI Day, but without a shred of physical work to show, he presented a dancer dressed in Tesla bot spandex instead. Since then, the company has been hard at work on the new prototype. The production model bot features customized Tesla actuators and is getting a special battery that can hopefully allow it to work for a full day on a single charge.

“There’s still a lot of work to be done to refine Optimus and prove it,” Musk said, adding, “I think Optimus is going to be incredible in five or 10 years, like mind blowing.”

“We are trying to follow the goal of fastest path to a useful robot that can be made at volume,” he added, estimating that the Tesla bot could be commercially available within three to five years. Musk also posited that when manufactured en masse, the cost should be much less than that of a car. “I would say probably less than $20,000 would be my guess.”

He envisions Optimus robots eventually creating an army of productivity. “This means a future of abundance, a future where there is no poverty, where people, you can have whatever you want, in terms of products and services. It really is a fundamental transformation of civilization as we know it,” he said with his characteristically dramatic flair.

Musk also believes that this type of cutting-edge AI should be for everyone, not just the private sector. “It’s very important that the corporate entity that makes this happen is something that the public can properly influence,” he said. “So I think the Tesla structure is ideal for that.”

And although the Optimus robot is a bit of a departure from Tesla’s long-standing mission to “accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy,” Musk defended his humanoid helper by saying: “I think the mission does somewhat broaden with the advent of Optimus to — you know, I don’t know: making the future awesome.”

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Researchers at Italy’s University of Naples Federico II developed a bartending robot called BRILLO that does more than just sling precisely measured drinks. Computer scientists at the university used machine-learning algorithms to teach the robot how to hold complex conversations. BRILLO, which stands for “Bartending Robot for Interactive Long-Lasting Operations,” can make small talk or respond to customers who just want to vent. It can even sense the tone of the conversation to gauge whether it’s appropriate to be cheerful, playful, or serious.

The team at the university’s Projects of Intelligent Robotics and Advanced Cognitive Systems (PRISCA) lab began working on the robot bartender back in 2020. They collaborated with Totaro Automazioni, an Italian manufacturer of food assembly line machines, to get the physical part down. After all, making good drinks is still a bartender’s primary job. For now, at least, performing as expected requires the robot to look less than convincing. It’s weirdly tall, with enormous, multi-jointed low-slung arms that rotate in various directions to grab ingredients from various locations behind the bar.

A brief video posted on Twitter shows how the BRILLO looks while moving these very robotic arms. A mannequin-like head with an immovable face glows faintly, and the body is dressed in a vest and bowtie. The effect is far from realistic, but for now, that’s not the point. Professor Silvia Rossi, one of the project’s lead researchers, told CNBC that her team just wanted to take the concept of a cocktail vending machine a step further and test whether a robot could mimic the social aspects of a bartender’s job.

Their goal is for BRILLO to be able to recognize customers, remember their favorite drinks, and ask them questions based on conversations they’ve had in the past. The researchers taught BRILLO to study customers’ faces and speech patterns to gauge what kind of mood they’re in. That will help it choose how to start the conversation.

For the foreseeable future, BRILLO is just a learning tool. Its creators don’t plan to market and sell it. Rossi notes there are a lot of wrinkles that need to be ironed out, not the least of which is protecting the privacy of human customers whose personal data is already being gathered from every conceivable source. Spilling your troubles to a robot bartender sounds like an action that could have consequences, even if you aren’t exactly confessing to murder.

Rossi and her team believe that robots like BRILLO will never fully replace human workers, no matter how advanced they get. Even if conversations with artificial intelligence eventually feel as natural as can be, it’s unlikely they’ll be able to fulfill all of our social needs. Robots like BRILLO could step in to alleviate labor shortages or take on the kind of grunt work most humans don’t want to do, but the extent to which that will affect our own livelihoods and quality of life remains to be seen.

The post BRILLO the Bartending Robot Can Fulfill Your Social Needs While Slinging Cocktails first appeared on Dornob.

“It happens to be the case that the spider — after it’s deceased — is the perfect architecture for small-scale, naturally derived grippers,” says Daniel Preston, an engineer with Rice’s George R. Brown School of Engineering. The macabre idea came to Preston and Rice graduate student Faye Yap when they encountered one of the eight-legged creatures in their lab post-mortem.

“We were moving stuff around in the lab and we noticed a curled-up spider at the edge of the hallway,” says Yap. “We were really curious as to why spiders curl up after they die.”

They quickly realized that, unlike antagonistic human muscles like biceps and triceps, spiders only have flexor muscles, which allow their legs to curl in. They must be extended outward by hydraulic pressure.

“When they die, they lose the ability to actively pressurize their bodies. That’s why they curl up,” Yap adds. “At the time, we were thinking, ‘Oh, this is super interesting.’ We wanted to find a way to leverage this mechanism.”

He eventually harnessed that power by supergluing a needle into the hydraulic chamber, or prosoma, of a wolf spider carcass. They then connected the other end of the needle to a handheld syringe. When they injected a shot of air into the “necrobot’s” legs, they unfurled instantaneously, and then re-curled when the pressure was relieved. The legs can also be individually controlled thanks to the internal valves in the spider prosoma.

Yap notes “When we did it, it worked … right off the bat. I don’t even know how to describe it — that moment when you see it move.”

The scientists were able to control the zombie spiders to turn on and off a light switch and even pick up other dead spiders. And the necrobots repeated the tasks hundreds of times without decay.

“It starts to experience some wear and tear as we got close to 1,000 cycles,” says Preston. “We think that’s related to issues with dehydration of the joints. We think we can overcome that by applying polymeric coatings.”

Preston and Yap are excited about the implications these spider robots could have on the world. Preston says “There are a lot of pick-and-place tasks we could look into, repetitive tasks like sorting or moving objects around at these small scales, and maybe even things like assembly of microelectronics.”

“Another application could be deploying it to capture smaller insects in nature because it’s inherently camouflaged,” adds Yap. And as a final bonus, these necrobots are “biodegradable.” Preston explains “We’re not introducing a big waste stream, which can be a problem with more traditional components.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JOS6hMHIUM
Arachnophiles — and anyone else fascinated by the idea of zombie spiders — can watch a video of their work here.

The post “Technomancer” Scientists Make Robot Zombies Out of Dead Spiders first appeared on Dornob.

“The idea is that robots need to take care of themselves,” says Boyuan Chen, a roboticist at Duke University in North Carolina and an author of a study on the self-aware robot published in Science. “In order to do that, we want a robot to understand their body.”

“We humans clearly have a notion of self,” he adds. “Close your eyes and try to imagine how your own body would move if you were to take some action, such as stretch your arms forward or take a step backward. Somewhere inside our brain we have a notion of self, a self-model that informs us what volume of our immediate surroundings we occupy, and how that volume changes as we move.”

In addition to Chen, the team for this project included Robert Kwiatkowski and Carl Vondrick, both with the Department of Computer Science at Columbia University, and Hod Lipson from Columbia’s Mechanical Engineering Department. Together with their assistants, they created a simple robotic arm and gave it access to multiple camera feeds so it could essentially see itself from several angles.

“We were really curious to see how the robot imagined itself,” says Lipson. “But you can’t just peek into a neural network, it’s a black box.”

Using that neural network, the robot (which was mounted to a table) was able to create a conglomerate picture of its own shape and size, using a marker to draw a self-portrait on paper for the researchers. The robot was also given a command to pick up a red sphere on the surface of the table. Through a process of wiggling and rotating its arm back and forth, it began to teach itself the cause and effect of each movement. After just three hours, it was able to easily touch the ball consistently.

While past robots have been self-aware in that they were given models of themselves, this experiment is novel, as the robot came up with an understanding of itself much in the way an animal or human would — by looking in the mirror, flailing limbs about, and trying out new motions. A robot that can self-model could be much more effective and long-lasting.

“Self-modeling is a primitive form of self-awareness,” Chen explains. “If a robot, animal, or human has an accurate self-model, it can function better in the world, it can make better decisions, and it has an evolutionary advantage.”

This self-awareness could help robots on assembly lines diagnose their own problems and learn to fix them. It could also be extremely useful in situations where humans cannot be on hand to solve mechanical errors, like deep sea dives or in space.

The robotic arm currently has four degrees of freedom, or types of motion. The researchers are now trying to work it up to 12 degrees. By comparison, a human body has hundreds.

“The more complex you are, the more you need this self-model to make predictions. You can’t just guess your way through the future,” notes Lipson. “We’ll have to figure out how to do this with increasingly complex systems.”

The group’s work is also groundbreaking in that most researchers first use virtual simulations to model how a robot would respond, but such computations can be expensive and time demanding. Allowing a robot to teach itself about its own nature could potentially save vast amounts of money and resources.

The post This Self-Aware Robot Taught Itself How to Control Its Own Body first appeared on Dornob.

Recently UC Santa Barbara engineers and Disney researchers have created a device which fluidly mimics even the best jumpers in the natural world—a robotic device capable of leaping its way up to 32.9 meters (107.9 feet) in the air.

The distance, which is approximately three times higher than the current jumping record for a robot, is undoubtedly impressive. After all, even nature’s highest jumpers have their limits; certain tree frogs can sometimes leap up to ten times their own height, while the Guinness World Record holding froghopper insect has been known to jump 70 centimeters (28 inches), in the air, accelerating with a mind-bending 13,000 feet per second. However, unlike their wildlife counterparts, robot devices do not have to worry about biological characteristics that limit how far and how often they can jump: pesky limiters like muscle power and stamina do not come into play when dealing with man-made robotic devices.

Last month, the team responsible for this breakthrough bouncer discussed their project in the scientific journal Nature, explaining their inspiration for creating the high-flying hurdler, which was designed with biological jumpers in mind: “…for decades engineers have designed jumping machines that often mimicked or took inspiration from biological jumpers…[however] general analyses are missing that compare [both sets of jumpers] across scale.” Essentially, despite advances in robotic jumpers, scientists have not been able to adequately compare natural jumpers with their manmade counterparts—at least in a meaningful way that allows them to improve upon (and perhaps expand) their natural design.

Until now.

Unlike nature’s skippers, non-biological devices can multiply their jumping prowess with add-ons like ratcheting and rotating mechanisms and other artificial means to store up energy between jumps—an insight which has propelled (pun intended) the team to create their new and improved record-breaker.

The device is comprised of two intersecting carbon fiber legs that are inherently flexible—imagine two very thin wheels overlapping each other, connected by a central ‘spoke’ made of polyethylene that’s reeled in by a small motor. Once released, the built-up energy of the formerly compressed legs causes the robot to rocket an astounding 30 meters in the air.

For their part, the team says “[their] work advances the understanding of jumping and shows a new level of performance” that can be achieved when comparing the essential differences that exist between biological and non-biological jumpers. Additionally, they hint at the possibilities for practical applications, too—such as using the robot for transportation in space.

An engineered robotic device able to jump over 30 meters in the air could potentially quadruple its jumping capabilities on the moon’s surface; launching it into the stratosphere and unlocking unlimited potential for these robots to bridge the gap between earth and its lunar neighbor—a prospect made entirely possible by the humble tree frog and its natural jumping counterparts.

The post At a Height of Over 30 Meters, This Robot Outjumps Nature’s Most Impressive Leapers first appeared on Dornob.

Developed by Florida-based company Harvest CROO (Computer Robotic Optimized Obtainer) Robotics, this rolling piece of heavy machinery is reportedly able to do anything a human picker can do, including judging whether berries are ripe enough to be picked. Measuring 32 feet long and 18 feet wide, the autonomous machine scans the plants to find harvestable berries using artificial intelligence and a machine learning vision system.

Each harvester is equipped with 16 individually functioning robots, which agitate the leaves, identify the best berries, snip them, and pick them up. A key part of the machine is its patented “Pitzer Wheel,” which features a series of soft silicone claws that allow it to gather the berries very rapidly. It’s named for former Intel engineer Bob Pitzer, who leads the Harvest CROO design team.

The robotic harvester is also equipped with a LiDAR system, a remote sensing method using lasers that map surroundings and identify nearby objects. This grants the machine a 360-degree, three-dimensional view of the fields for more precise navigation down rows of strawberries. It also prevents collisions with people and other obstacles. The machine spans several rows at once. Able to do the job of six to 10 workers, it’s capable of picking eight acres of strawberries in a 20-hour day, even after the sun sets.

Harvest CROO just completed a round of commercial tests, and the robotic pickers should be ready for deployment in Florida by December after a seven-year development process. About 70 percent of the U.S. strawberry industry is invested in the company, with most farms located in California. The company plans to scale up production next year to provide 1,500 machines to growers around the country. Harvest CROO will own and operate the machines at a price that matches what farms pay for human labor.

“Over last 15 years we’ve heard from growers who are dealing with labor issues and government and saying it just isn’t fun anymore. Our goal is to put the fun back in farming,” said Gary Wishnatzki, co-founder and managing partner of Harvest Croo Robotics. “My experience at picking strawberries is it is a young person’s game. Harvesting strawberries hasn’t changed in the past 100 years. We’re still doing it the same way. If we don’t have young people coming to the field, we’re going to have to have to rely on robotics.”

So what does this mean for you, the average reader who isn’t a strawberry grower? More plentiful strawberries year-round. Not so long ago, few retailers carried strawberries in winter because they were too expensive. As labor costs go up, they’ll become even less affordable and less available. That could mean in the not-so-distant future, only wealthy families have access to them (unless, of course, you grow your own). Robotic solutions like this harvester will likely become a crucial element of food production in the decades to come.

The post Robotic Strawberry Picker Plucks More Berries Than 6 Human Workers first appeared on Dornob.

The Astro (yes, that’s a nod to The Jetsons’ beloved dog) is part home monitor, part home assistant. The rolling robot can provide live views of your home while you’re away using two handy cameras. One is even mounted on a periscope for looking into higher spaces, allowing the bot to do things like make sure the stove’s turned off. Ring Protect Pro subscribers can even schedule house patrols while they’re away and have Astro keep track of everything it detects.

These cameras can also identify your family and friends through opt-in facial recognition software. You and any other willing parties can submit your biometric information to be instantly recognized by the pint-sized robot, allowing it to spot intruders and sound alerts. Amazon says this data is processed only on the device, not sent to the cloud, and that any scans of people who haven’t been encountered in the last 18 months will be automatically deleted, but any recordings or conversations with the built-in Alexa will go straight to the company’s servers.

When you’re home, Astro can find you to deliver calls, alarms, and reminders. This could be especially helpful with elderly people who need to take medication at certain times but may not always have their phone with them. Astro can also follow its owner from room to room playing music, podcasts, or movies. Even better, the robot has two drink holders and can be directed to deliver items to someone in the house. It has no arms, though, so real people are required to place items on top and retrieve them.

Astro was specifically designed to have a man’s best friend feel. While taller robots “came off as more imposing or intimidating,” Anthony Robson, a product lead for Astro, says that “people really appreciated the smaller, more pet-like form factor we ended up with.” The animal concept also helps keep expectations more realistic. People wouldn’t expect their dog to do the laundry, for example.

The robot’s swiveling head and expression-changing eyes have already proven to be a big hit with kids, who can ask Astro to follow them around the house, dance with them, or play their favorite shows.

Of course, you have to consider that bonding with a data collector might not be such a good thing for owners and their kids. The device requires a ton of personal information for day-to-day functioning. In addition to facial scans, it also stores scans of the owner’s entire home for its mapping and movement purposes, and sends voice and video recordings to advertisers.

The company promises that it has implemented safety checks to keep that data more secure. “At Amazon, customer trust is at the center of everything we do and is critical to inventing devices and services that help make our customers’ lives better,” reads an official statement. However, if hackers were to get access to Astro’s stored information, it could leave owners vulnerable to some dangerous attacks.

You could argue that people already regularly turn similar household data over to their vacuum robots, but because the Astro has cameras and microphones, the potential for personal information collection is much greater.

Amazon’s new home robot is only available for purchase by invitation (interested consumers can request an invite) for $999, but the price will increase to $1,450 when it becomes available to the general public.

The post Amazon Astro Robot: Cute or Creepy? first appeared on Dornob.

Ever thought it would be nice to have an extra pair of hands? Or maybe you’ve always thought Spider-man’s Doc Ock had the right idea with his mechanical appendages. A robotics lab at the University of Tokyo is taking such matters into their own hands by creating a pair of attachable arms that could have multiple applications in everyday life.

The extra arms from the University’s Information Somatics Lab (ISL) aren’t available for public use yet, but a recently released video on YouTube shows how consumers might someday benefit from these robotic limbs. Wearers are strapped into a contraption via shoulder bands and a waist belt with mini controllers atop each metal forearm. So far, ISL has created three distinct modes that assist users in performing normal daily tasks.

Passive Mode

In this setup, the limbs are locked into certain positions to hold or grab things for the user, allowing them to use their natural arms for other tasks. For example, in passive mode, the robot arms can hold and carry a tray of food, extract something hot out of an oven, or hold a phone for the perfectly positioned selfie. In locked positions, the arms could also pull your luggage for you at the airport, hold an umbrella over your head during a rainstorm, or hold a drink at the ready while you go about your day.

Playback Mode

After the user makes the arms perform a certain motion in Playback mode, they can automatically repeat it. This setting could be helpful with repetitive movements like fanning yourself, leaving your real arms free for other purposes.

Power Assist Mode

In Power Assist mode, the robotic arms augment the strength of the user, amplifying the force they apply to any object. Not only does this mean people can save their backs during heavy lifting, but the co-limbs in this setting could also provide great blessings to those with physical limitations. The team thinks they could especially benefit elderly populations, as the robo-arms could grab on to something to help them stand up from a sitting position as well as hold and stabilize things, like a cup of tea, if hand tremors are an issue.

Other Configurations

While these mechanical arms are controlled by the wearer’s actual hands, the ISL team is also developing alternate ways to send directions to them. For instance, they’ve constructed a headset with a fisheye lens over each shoulder that can sense six different shoulder motions, each of which triggers a different motion from the arms.

Another experiment involves using foot-powered levers to control the robotic limbs. So far this is only effective while the wearer is seated, but the possibilities could be expanded further down the road.

In a separate project, the ISL is studying the possibility of robot “swarms” as extra limbs. In this iteration, dozens of tiny robots would connect to form arms and hands, but when a small surface needs to be breeched, the bots could detach and squeeze through to retrieve an object or perform a task before swarming back into hand position.

These experiments point to a future where the human body will be artificially enhanced for all kinds of daily tasks, perhaps turning us all into some version of a comic book superhero after all.

The post This Japanese Lab Can Lend You a Hand with Robotic Arms first appeared on Dornob.

Joining forces with renowned architect Masayuki Sono, winner of NASA’s 3D-Printed Habitat Challenge, Serendix and Sono designed a small house that could be printed quickly enough to serve as emergency housing after a natural disaster like an earthquake or hurricane that destroys the population’s homes.

“The skeleton weighed about 20 tons, and its assembly was completed in 3 hours,” Serendix said in a press release. “Housing construction such as waterproofing and openings was completed in just 23 hours and 12 minutes.”

While the assembly time doesn’t include installation of windows, doors, or interior features, these can be prefabricated and added on site within a few extra hours, allowing these “instant homes” to provide temporary shelter for disaster victims in as little as a day after a catastrophe hits.

The entire pod costs just 3 million yen, or roughly $25,000 USD, to construct thanks to the lack of human labor required. “Using a 3D printer and advanced robotics, we are working on a design that only works with robots and uses as little human hand [input] as possible,” the firm explains.

The home’s distinctive shape was chosen because of its large surface area-to-volume ratio and for its high structural stability. The Sphere is fashioned from 12 identical base segments cut from a cylinder. The pieces are then assembled into a single cocoon-like form. The result is a pod that can look round, square, or hexagonal depending on the particular vantage point.

“This creates a dynamic effect as if it is constantly changing its profile as people walk around the structure,” the firm says. “When multiple units are installed in a cluster such as in the case of cottage or camping ground, this provides diversity and avoids the next house from looking monotonous while maintaining a consistent design vocabulary.”

With its rib-reinforced double shell structure, the 3D-printed dwelling meets both European heat insulation performance standards and Japanese seismic operation requirements. And because it’s made up of separate but easily conjoined parts, the Sphere can be manufactured either onsite or pre-printed as needed. “The goal is to print each unit on ite for highest efficiency,” Serendix says on its website. “Due to identical base geometry of all [pieces] it can also be pre-printed in a controlled factory environment and assembled onsite in case the site condition limits use of in situ printing.”

The 3D-printed structure can also easily be customized for multiple uses. The “window locations can be flexibly adjusted and even the entire base model can be rotated in [a] vertical orientation to achieve variations in design and form.” This could include vaulted, domed, and pitched roof profiles. Multiple units can also be connected to create larger spaces for bigger families or community groups.

Serendix reports that it has already printed its first full-scale prototypes on two different continents and assembled a proof-of-concept unit in Japan. The firm is further improving the fabrication process for upgraded models.

The post This 3D-Printed Housing Pod Can Be Built in Under a Day for Less than the Price of a Car first appeared on Dornob.