Brains, Bots and Bodies

Scenario 2020. WWIII in progress. It’s up to you to save humanity. I love the in-game haptic touch table.

When I think about the future of the internet and “Web 3.0″, I generally don’t dwell on haptic displays or fully-immersive virtual worlds. Rather I think about the Do Button.  I’ve given a series of talks this year on emerging technologies that will change the world, and one of the main topics covered [...]

On your next trip to India – you might just want to take a detour to Ambalappuzha.  Ambalappuzha is a small town in the state of Kerala, in southern India. The town is famous for its Sri Krishna temple and its rice pudding.
For the temple of Ambalappuzha is where the legend of Paal Payasam originates.
According [...]

SciVestor took a tour of the Robotics Pavilion at National Instruments’ NI Week 2008.  Anu Saha, NI marketing manager discusses academic and corporate partnerships that feature LabView and CompactRIO technologies.

Rodney Brooks had it right in his 1991 paper “Intelligence without Reason.”  His approach to Artificial Intelligence is based an emergence of behaviors not explicitly programmed into a system.  Instead, a hierarchy of discrete behaviors is organized in such a way that higher-level behaviors subsume the resources required by lower-priority behaviors when appropriate conditions are [...]

I was sitting a home watching TV the other evening when a commercial came on the screen that blew me way.  It was made to look like archival footage of an old gas station being built, circa early 20th century. Snow-capped mountains loom in the distance indicating the creation of an American outpost where the [...]

What has become a milestone in the evolutionary timeline of robotic market development, iRobot sued its former competitor Robotic FX to death last year.  At the center of the battle was the Robotic FX version of a robot called The Negotiator which allegedly violated U.S. Patents 6,263,989 and 6,431,296 that relate to robot platform and [...]

iRobot Negotiator Provides a Cost-Effective, Basic Reconnaissance Robot to Public Safety Organizations
Bedford, Mass., August 6, 2008 – iRobot Corp. (Nasdaq: IRBT) today announced the introduction of the iRobot Negotiator, a low-cost tactical robot designed to meet the basic reconnaissance needs of public safety professionals.
After the success of the company’s iRobot PackBot 510, iRobot heard from [...]

Chetan Kapoor is a roboticist at The University of Texas and CEO of Agile Planet.  We spoke about how his firm’s control software might change the world in the years ahead, what is driving robotics growth, and why business should take note.

iC Hexapod is the coolest robot I’ve ever seen. Builder Matt Denton of Micromagic Systems designed and machined the parts, motherboard, controller, and algorithms required to bring elegant animate life to this gorgeous piece of creative engineering, as Denton calls it. Each leg sports three servos giving it 18 degrees of freedom. [...]