Asimo’s at it again! This wily robot is on the cutting edge of B.M.I., short for Brain Machine Interface., and can be seen above doing a jolly little jig after the successful interfpretation of a man’s thoughts into action. Yes, that’s right, folks! Great strides have been taken in the interdisciplinary study of human thought and robotic commands, because this year the Honda Research Institute, in coordination with Advanced Telecommunications Research (ATR) and Shimadzu Corporation, have announced an overwhelming 90% accuracy rate in their application of Brain Machine Interface, the most successful in all the world and quite impressive by itself. But get this: the accuracy rate stated above has been acheived using subjects who have not undergone special training! Wowee!

“Honda Research Institute Japan Co., Ltd. (HRI-JP), a subsidiary of Honda R&D Co., Ltd., Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International (ATR) and Shimadzu Corporation have collaboratively developed the world’s first*1 Brain Machine Interface (BMI) technology that uses electroencephalography (EEG) and near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) along with newly developed information extraction technology to enable control of a robot by human thought alone. It does not require any physical movement such as pressing buttons. This technology will be further developed for the application to human-friendly products in the future by integrating it with intelligent technologies and/or robotic technologies.

During the human thought process, slight electrical current and blood flow change occur in the brain. The most important factor in the development of the BMI technology is the accuracy of measuring and analyzing these changes. The newly developed BMI technology uses EEG, which measures changes in electrical potential on the scalp, and NIRS, which measures changes in cerebral blood flow, with a newly developed information extraction technology which enables statistical processing of the complex information from these two types of sensors. As a result, it became possible to distinguish brain activities with high precision without any physical motion, but just human thought alone.

The BMI technology announced by HRI-JP and ATR in 2006 used a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner to measure brain activities. The large size and powerful magnetic field generated by the fMRI scanner limited the locations and conditions where it can be used. As the newly developed measuring device uses EEG and NIRS sensors, it can be transported to and used in various locations.” source

The original MRI scanner project can be seen in the video above, and is explained in greater detail here.

It may only be in the Honda labs at this time, but the idea that future robots will be in our homes, reading our minds and doing our mental bidding… well, let me just say that I cannot imagine this will result only in a gaggle of Asimos dusting the mantle and watering the plants. Rather, I see a craving for brownies suddenly being met by the sound of a blender, and a casual hatred of the music one’s neighbor is playing loudly turning into an awkward situation wherein one suddenly needs to restrain a robot helper from knocking down said neighbor’s door. Or, not. Better start curbing those brownie cravings now… my neighbor, however, can deal.

Have a craving for some authentic Japanese noodle soup? Then call up the makers of these babies, and have a pair installed in your home today! No, seriously. And then invite Don and I over for dinner. Tonight works for us.

Fua-men, a restaurant in Nagoya, Japan, features robotic arms that prepare pork-broth ramen with the ultimate goal of publicizing the latest technological achievements of local robot manufacturer Aisei. However, we hear the soup’s not half bad either! According to Aisei’s president, Kenji Nagaya, the method has tangible merit:

“The benefits of using robots as ramen chefs include the accuracy of timing in boiling noodles, precise movements in adding toppings and consistency in the taste and temperature of the soup.” source

All this, AND it can make eighty bowls a day! Not bad! Did I mention that I want one of these? Watch the video, you’ll want some too! Oh, and be sure to stay tuned in for the finale. These bots get cooking with more than just ramen!

The Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) of the United States of America (those who develop, deliver and maintain the systems and sea crafts for the United States Navy) have awarded a whopping 13.5 million dollar contract to those hard-working innovators over at iRobot! That’s a lot of capacitors!

This funding will be used in the research and development of  ”robots capable of identifying and disabling improvised explosive devices. The PackBot MTRS (Man Transportable Robotic System) will be similar to the PackBot 500 robot — more than 2,500 of those are already in use by the military.” source

See the picture above to get a view of the PackBot- looks like the Rambo to Meticulor’s Sheriff Will Teasle.

We salute those life saving robots, and iRobot as well! Ten’shun!

We rarely say anything about industrial robots here at Bots 4 Tots. It’s a shame, really; industrial robots are an oft-overlooked facet of the world of robotics as it exists today, one that needs recognition now more than ever. Think of a robot, a real life robot such Asimo, and recognize that it’s robotic-great-grandparents were probably employed on an assembly line. Take a walk with us, if you will, through the fascinating Arcadia of industrial robotics!

As you can probably tell from posts such as GOAL!!! Robocup 2009! and Chicago Hosts Int’l Robot Show, many of the awesome robotics events that are held around the world are actually fun ways to display the current capabilities of robots for potential investors in industrial robotics. The advances that we have seen just this past year in the varieties of fields that the robotic sciences apply to, from the scientific (Garden Bots, Robots Simulate Evolution) to the social/artistic (Robot Rolls, Rocks, Tweenbots Capture Hearts)… these advances would arguably not have been possible without the precedent set by robots used in industrial and commercial settings*!

“The first digitally operated and programmable robot, the Unimate, was installed in 1961 to lift hot pieces of metal from a die casting machine and stack them. Today, commercial and industrial robots are in widespread use performing jobs more cheaply or with greater accuracy and reliability than humans.” source

The world-wide interest in robotics (beyond science-fiction, that is) saw its coming-of-age not so long ago, around the 1970s, when American companies such as General Electric and General Motors made huge investments with Japanese partners to change the way their factories produced. Development needs funding, and obviously huge conglomerates such as these were willing and able to provide the impetus for the leaps and bounds we have seen in the field of robotics since the seventies. Today, the field of robotics is seeing a new dawn wherein normal every day people like Don and I are building robots in our spare time, and even teaching kids to do so as well. But, as you can see from the video above, the industrial robot has become far more sophisticated than its predecessors.

Meet the FlexPicker, an example of the latest advancements in industrial robotics. It can sort items with a mass of under one hundred grams in as little as three tenths of a second. THREE TENTHS OF A SECOND! People… that’s the average reaction time to visual stimuli in most animals (source)! And consider that the FlexPicker is doing almost the same thing: it analyzes images taken, visual stimuli for all intents and purposes, from a camera mounted on the robot. I, for one, am impressed. This is not like the kind of speed we have come to expect from a bullet, for instance. This is an autonomous interpretation and relay the likes of which have never been known to mankind outside of that which occurs organically! Oh, and did I mention that it is fully washable? I cannot even say that about my cats!

By the way, thanks to our friends at BotJunkie for the video!

So, as our last homage to industrial robots, I would like to post this video as well: the Adept Quattro. It claims to be the fastest industrial robot, “with cycle times faster than any other robot of its kind” source, but I couldn’t find the exact cycle time. Either it’s an industry secret, or the information hasn’t been updated in the admittedly fast-paced world of robot rivalry. But it’s definitely worth a watch. Which one do you think is faster? I find it’s hard to tell; the snappy music for the FlexPicker makes it seem faster, but that’s unfair.

*I find it interesting to note, in respect to the seminal influence industrial robotics has had on the field of robotics, this little tidbit: “The field of robotics may be more practically defined as the study, design and use of robot systems for manufacturing.” source

The WatCleaner is a newly designed robot that proposes helping us to clean up the marine ecosystem by intelligently and autonomously removing pollutants such as floating garbage and oil slick.

Now, I really cannot say enough about the brilliance of this idea or the necessity of its assistance in our efforts to reduce the damage done to the greater aquatic landscape, but this descriptive summary from the Japan Design Foundation International Design Competition listing kind of slays me. I’m pretty darn sure this has been translated, though from Japanese or Chinese (given that the submitting country is listed as China) I am not certain. No matter, they certainly get the idea across!

“‘WatCleaner’ is designed to ease water pollution. ‘WatCleaner’ can detect the situation of water and do some cleaning automatically to make the water better. The detectors on the bottom of the WatCleaner can detector the things in water and the floating things(including oil) and then solve the problem by its intellective system. There are many oil absorbent socks stored at the top part of the Watcleaner which can quickly absorb oil in water and do some reclaimtion. The strobe can open after detecting garbage and then absorb garbage with water. After garbage sink down and be forced going into the disintegrator,the water will be sprayed out from the top. Open the cover then the bin and oil-bags can be replaced for use in the future.” source

Great work! I hope that this idea is thoroughly tested and implemented internationally soon!

Last week, from June 29th to July 5th, Robocup 2009 was held in Graz, Australia. The Robocup project brings together robotics, AI and programming enthusiasts from all over the world and pits them against each other on the same playing field… literally! Above, we see the winners of the middle size league, Universität Stuttgart (Germany). In the finals, they took on Tech United from Eindhoven (The Netherlands) for the win with a dominating score of 4:1 (in Germany’s favor). The ultimate goal of the Robocup is to, “by the year 2050, develop a team of fully autonomous humanoid robots that can play and win against the human world champion soccer team.” source

By having the autonomous robot teams compete in standardized soccer games, every type of technology available can display its range within the same sets of limitations! These restraints are supposed to encourage the participants to think differently, and attempt new applications for the most recent advancements in the robotic sciences. These breakthroughs allow the competing teams to not only win the Robocup and achieve worldwide recognition for their efforts, they ultimately lead to social and industrial application.

“Preconditions for the successful participation at these competitions are extensive efforts in current research topics of computer science such as real-time image processing and architectures, cooperative robotics and distributed planning. Possible application scenarios of these research activities reach from autonomous vehicles, cooperative manufacturing robotics, service robotics to the point of planetary or deep-sea exploration by autonomous robotic systems. In this context autonomous means that no or only a limited human intervention is necessary.” source

Apparently, this year’s Robocup was one of the most interesting ever. Stuttgart’s team of cooperative soccer-playing robots advanced steadily through the competition, a total of thirteen teams representing eight different countries. They stripped the title from last year’s winners, Portugal, and blazed through their worthy foes (neighboring Austria and Italy, as well as teams from Iran, China, and, of course, Japan) before meeting The Netherlands on the field. The final test for the winning team was to play against the human officials of the Robocup Federation, against whom our valiant Stuttgart robots were as of yet no match.  However, considering the advancements that have been made in the Robocup and in the field of robotics itself in the last few years, it would not surprise me in the least if the goal of the Robocup is met well before their 2050 deadline!

Imagine you are walking downtown in the middle of rush-hour. You make your way down the crowded sidewalk, easily moving side to side to avoid a collision with another person or object. It comes naturally to us, this ease of motion, and even as toddlers we can do it. It may shock you, then, to discover that the achievement of such autonomous, intelligent motion in robots has been one of the most challenging problems in the history of robotics. But that nut may have just been cracked!

Researchers at the European-funded research consortium Decisions in Motion decided to approach this problem three years ago, and as of this year they are now announcing stunning breakthroughs. The success of their team is a cooperative effort of both neuro- and cognitive scientists who study biological visual systems in humans and high-order mammals such as primates, as well as computer scientists and roboticists.

This rare amalgamation of many disciplines has proved very fruitful to the consortium. The biological researchers are engaged in a dialog with the roboticists and programmers, who then incorporate their findings into neural networks and mobile robots.

“The approach paid off. Decisions in Motion has already built and demonstrated a robot that can zip across a crowded room guided only by what it ’sees’ through its twin video cameras… The computerised brain controls the behaviour of a wheeled robotic platform supporting a movable head and eyes, in real time. It directs the head and eyes where to look, tracks its own movement, identifies objects, determines if they are moving independently, and directs the platform to speed up, slow down and turn left or right.” source

The structure of the robotic “brain” that is being developed by Decisions in Motion is very much inspired by the architecture of a high-order mammal’s biological brain, the flow of information following similar pathways through three layers, or subsystems, that then control the behavior of the robot. The secret of the solution lies in the discovery of anticipatory feedback as observed in organisms such as ourselves. When you make your way through that busy street, you are not plotting the present course so much as you are predicting the next dozen steps. I think that anyone who has misstepped can completely relate; when a person who is walking stumbles, one is already mentally taking those next few steps and it almost comes as a surprise that one is suddenly not along the plotted course anymore and is, instead, on one’s way towards the ground.

The work done by Decisions in Motion will not only benefit movementally challenged bots, but will also dictate further development in the field of electronic mobility assistance for the visually or cognitively impaired. Keep up the good work, guys!

Thought the iRobot Roombas were only good for collecting dust bunnies? Think again! At MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intellgence Laboratory (CSAIL for short), Roombas have been reimagined so that they now can collect fruit! These are no ordinary Roombas, though. As you can see above, they have been severely tinkered with to produce the above gardening robot.  At this amazing garden, a protype for a larger and more comprehensively autonomous greenhouse, the robots can water and polinate plants, locate and gather the fruit, and most amazing of all, respond to requests from the plants. Yes, I didn’t mistype: the plants can actually communicate to the robots!

“Networked sensors help the plants ‘request’ water or nutrients from their robotic gardeners… giving each plant the ability to monitor and broadcast its own physical state allows the robots to distribute resources and care on demand.” source

We may be looking at the garden of the future! But we’d better not tell any of this to Meticulor. He might get jealous.

To mark the 30th anniversary of the first television broadcast of “Mobile Suit Gundam”, a life-sized Gundam statue (imagining that Gundam were actually a real thing, that is) has been erected in Tokyo!!! WOW! It does “weigh nearly 35 tons, move its head and emit light or mist from 50 points of its body. The statue will be on display to the public at the [Shiokaze Park in Tokyo's Odaiba] from July 11 to August 31, free of charge.” source

Check out this video to see it in all its glory:

This past week, the International Robots and Vision Motion Control Show (whew, that’s a mouthful!) was in Rosemont, IL. One of the featured guests was the above robot, Toyota’s Partner Robot. I cannot find any footage of it playing at the International RVMCS, but here it is tooting it’s stuff in Nagoya, Japan (by the way, it can apparently play many different songs, and has companions who can play other instruments such as the violin!):

“The conference features presentations by some 50 international experts on automation in manufacturing…[and is] for companies currently using or considering using robots, machine vision, motion control and related technologies.”

This year’s theme was “Green and Lean”, and focused on “cost savings, green technology trends, inspection, lean and cutting-edge technology secrets…  [demonstrating] how these automation technologies can be used to manufacture solar cells, wind turbines, fuel cells and other green technologies. And system integrators will present real world application case studies during ‘Successful Applications of Robotics,’ providing insight and strategies for users to implement their own systems.” source

Don and I wish we could have attended to see all of the robotic glory!

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