Robot------ISYS100MQ

2011 VEX Robotics World Championship-------------WEIWEI

I was invited out to Orlando, FL to cover the 2011 VEX Robotics World Championship last week. It was bigger and busier than ever this year. There were lots of things going on besides just VEX matches this year including BEST, Boy Scout, and Coast Guard robot events. It's also turning into a good networking event. I ran into old friends, met friends I'd previously known only online, and even made some new friends. I've spent the last several days working my way through all the photos I shot. Read on to find out more about the event!

Every year, the VEX Robotics World Championship gets bigger. This year it topped 500 teams, and more than 10,000 total participants, from around the world. For 2011, the event moved to the Walt Disney World's ESPN Wide World of Sports complex near Orlando, FL from its previous location in Dallas, TX. The smaller venue resulted in the VEX event being spread out across multiple buildings as well a large temporary structure. Vendors were scattered around in small tents outdoors and some events were held on the baseball field. The downside to this was a lot more walking and decreased probability of seeing the random cool things that teams spontaneously do like parading around, playing instruments and dancing. But the upside (at least for the younger crowd) was the proximity to all the Disney theme parks.

I only saw one alligator during my four days in Florida but every evening as I walked back to my hotel room, I saw dozens of green anoles scurrying out my way. They were apparently attracted to the warm sidewalks after sunset.


This year's VEX challenge was called Round Up and involved the usual tasks of moving red or blue objects around on a square field. You can check out the Round Up challenge description if you're curious about the details. As always, the teams of all age groups came up with ingenious robot designs to tackle the problem. There were a lot more university teams this year than last year in addition to the many High School and Middle School teams. There were also more all girl teams again this year. If VEX is any indication, expect to see more female engineers in the future!

In addition to their own matches, VEX hosted other events including the BEST championship and the US Coast Guard Academy's AROW water robotics competition. The Boy Scouts of America also showed up with lots of scouts, robots, and scouting officials so we could watch the first scouts ever finish the requirements for the recently announced robotics merit badge. There were other distractions including a DJ, random Disney characters, live music, dancing, and occasional pyrotechnics.


The BEST teams continue to be the most enthusiastic robot builders I've seen. Anytime someone mentions the B-word, the response from all the BEST teams is deafening, even though I'm pretty sure all that noise is coming from a much smaller number of people than the VEX group. Somebody needs to figure out what BEST is doing in the cheer training department - it's definitely working!

Artist Kari Byron of MythBusters and Head Rush hosted the event. Last year, MythBuster's Grant Imahara hosted but I think Kari may have him beat on popularity with the kids. What better role model for aspiring female engineers than Kari? And teenage boys seem to really like her too for some reason. In addition to her duties as MC, Kari put in endless hours posing for millions of photos with robot builders (and robots) as well as signing autographs.

VEX Competitions have many awards, lots of complicated "alliances" between multiple teams, and several different divisions, so I won't even attempt to tell you who won what. If you're curous about that sort of thing check out the 2011 VEX Robotics World Championship Awards & Results list (also checkc the BEST webset for BEST competition scores and award rankings). You can read the official VEX news release or check out the more detailed press kit with photos and video.

And, of course, I shot photos while I was there. Lots and lots of photos. More photos than you could possible want to look at. You'll find them over in my 2011 VEX World Championship photo gallery (Update: by popular demand, here's a flickr slide show of the Kari Byron photos).

http://robots.net/article/3158.html

Human-robot interaction-----Senlong Jiang

Human-robot interaction has been a topic of both science fiction and academic speculation even before any robots existed. Because HRI depends on a knowledge of (sometimes natural) human communication, many aspects of HRI are continuations of human communications topics that are much older than robotics per se.

Even through the robots do lots of things that instead of human beings, there are also some rules to control robots' behaviours.

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

The 3 laws of robotics determine the idea of safe interaction.
The robot has to adapt itself to our way of expressing desires and orders and not the contrary. But every day environments such as homes have much more complex social rules than those implied by factories or even military environments. Thus, the robot needs perceiving and understanding capacities to build dynamic models of its surroundings. It needs to categorize objects, recognize and locate humans and further their emotions. The need for dynamic capacities pushes forward every sub-field of robotics.

In addition to general HRI research, researchers are currently exploring application areas for human-robot interaction systems. Application-oriented research is used to help bring current robotics technologies to bear against problems that exist in today's society. While human-robot interaction is still a rather young area of interest, there is active development and research in many areas.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human-robot_interaction

Adept Technology Robotics Selected to Participate in Advanced Cancer Treatment Program.

Adept Technology, Inc. (Nasdaq:ADEP), the leading provider of intelligent vision-guided robotics and global robotics services, today announced it is participating in the CLARA (Lyon Auvergne Rhone-Alpes Cancer cluster) program with Lyon Civil Hospitals as the robotics component in a method for treating small cancer tumors.
The goal is to demonstrate that an Adept Viper 6-axis robot will ensure perfect positioning of a treatment probe in a tumor for both percutaneous and laparoscopic surgical approaches.
Currently, early diagnosis of smaller tumors is made possible through screening biological tests and medical imaging. The CLARA project introduces a new concept where Adept robots will be employed to automatically locate a treatment probe close to a tumor using an innovative three-dimensional navigation robot that is guided by a tracking sensor implanted in the body. The goal is to demonstrate that an Adept Viper 6-axis robot will ensure perfect positioning of a treatment probe in a tumor for both percutaneous and laparoscopic surgical approaches.
The success of this project relies on a well experienced surgical and radiological academic team from Universite Lyon 1 (UCBL), whose research is oriented on focal therapies with strong experience in engineering and experimental surgery, and on Adept Technology, with over twenty-five years of robotics and application expertise.
"We believe that the instrument designed will have a strong impact on both therapeutic and economic ground," said Professor Marc Colombel, Head of Surgical Robotics Developments at Lyon Civil Hospitals and Professor at Universite Lyon 1.
"We are very excited to be an active participant in developing technology that supports advanced methods for treating cancerous tumors," said Rush LaSelle, director of worldwide sales and marketing for Adept Technology, Inc. "This opportunity allows Adept to accelerate the development and deployment of safer and more collaborative robotic technologies, further enabling mechatronics to assist the medical community in improving people's lives."
http://www.robotworldnews.com/100713.html

How a robot can replace you at work – and how it can't-- Feifan lu

Telepresence robots are deputising for their human controllers in the workplace, but can they really fit in?
YOU wander around the office, stopping off in the kitchen to chat with colleagues before heading down the hallway to an impromptu design meeting. Afterwards, you head to a colleague's office to continue the discussion.
It is a fairly typical day at work - except that you are in London, while all the people you have been talking to are in your company's New York office. You have, in effect, beamed yourself across the Atlantic in the guise of a telepresence robot.
These robots are essentially a video camera, speaker and screen on wheels, and they can be controlled from anywhere in the world using a web browser. They allow managers to keep an eye on their factories overseas and multinational teams to collaborate on projects - all without setting foot on a ...

iRobot Packbots enter Fukushima nuclear plant to gather data, take photos, save lives (video)-----------WEIWEI

iRobot recently deployed a pair of robots to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan, where intense levels of radiation have made it increasingly dangerous for human rescue workers to operate. The remote-controlled Packbots entered one of Fukushima's reactor buildings on Sunday morning, in the hopes of providing authorities with a better idea of what's going on inside the plant's nether regions. Each Packbot entered the facility with an attached video camera, allowing Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) to receive live interior images and temperature readings of the troubled reactor building. It would certainly be a daunting task for any human to undertake, but the Packbot is specially designed to cope with hazardous conditions (in the past, it's been used to defuse bombs for the U.S. Army). And the Packbot isn't alone, either. Authorities are also using a mechanical excavator and transporter to wipe away some of the debris outside the plant, while an unmanned helicopter has been hoisted skyward, to take aerial photos of the area. TEPCO has yet to release information on the Packbots' findings, but if Sunday's mission proves to be a success, they'll be sent in to two other reactor buildings, to do it all over again. Check out a video and an extra image of the Packbot, after the break.

 

 

http://www.engadget.com/2011/04/18/irobot-packbots-enter-fukushima-nuclear-plant-to-gather-data-ta/

Six ways to build robots that do humans no harm - FeiFan Lu

With the relentless march of technological progress, robots and other automated systems are getting ever smarter. At the same time they are also being given greater responsibilities, driving cars, helping with childcare, carrying weapons, and maybe soon even pulling the trigger.

But should they be trusted to take on such tasks, and how can we be sure that they never take a decision that could cause unintended harm?

The latest contribution to the growing debate over the challenges posed by increasingly powerful and independent robots is the book Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right from Wrong.

Authors Wendell Wallach, an ethicist at Yale University, and historian and philosopher of cognitive science Colin Allen, at Indiana University, argue that we need to work out how to make robots into responsible and moral machines. It is just a matter of time until a computer or robot takes a decision that will cause a human disaster, they say.

So are there things we can do to minimise the risks? Wallach and Allen take a look at six strategies that could reduce the danger from our own high-tech creations.

1. Keep them in low-risk situations
2. Do not give them weapons
3. Give them rules like Asimov's 'Three Laws of Robotics'
4. Program robots with principles
5. Educate robots like children
6. Make machines master emotion