Robots Podcast #97 (February 10th, 2012) features Carlo Ratti, Associate Professor of the Practice in MIT's Department of Urban Studies and Planning, and Director of MIT's SENSEable City Laboratory, discussing the lab's purpose and several of its projects, which include the Digital Water Pavilion installation in Spain, depicted in the composite photo above. Professor Ratti also presented his work nearly a year ago, at a TED conference.

I imagine a brilliant scientist somewhere was thinking of what he could do one day and came up with: I think I'll make a robot that runs on human excrement, then craps into a litter box. And there you have it, the EcoBot-III. Thanks to funding from Bill and Melinda Gates, you know of Microsoft, researchers at Bristol Robotics Laboratory gave EcoBot-III sensors to move itself towards food, water or light which it consumes and then poops out the waste. Like don't stand in the light, swim or smell tasty. Previous versions ran on other bio material like dead flies or sugar which were processed through the MFC or Microbial Fuel Cell which uses e-coli bacteria to turn the bio matter into electricity. The software and sensors monitor the digestive system and can wirelessly report on its surroundings.

The famous ‘Big Dog’, a quadruped robot with a characteristic life-like appearance evolved into the new Legged Squad Support System (LS3), which recently underwent its first outdoor test. The new LS3 like its predecessor is a highly mobile, semi-autonomous legged robot. It use vision sensors (DARPA calls them ‘eyes’) to follow a person and also to map its path while avoiding or navigating over obstacles like rocks, trees etc. Over the next 18 months it will be tested thoroughly in order to be able to operate along a squad of Marines or soldiers. LS3 should carry 400lbs of cargo on a 20 mile trek in 24h without refuel. It could follow a specific person, track people, objects and the terrain in front of it while creating its own course. Along with its vision sensors, “hearing†technology will be added enabling soldiers to address it and command it with simple orders like “stopâ€, “sit†etc. The end result will be similar to a clever robot mule that will follow and obey to simple commands. You can find more info in DARPA’s press release and at the website of Boston Dynamics.

Using hardware developed by KMel Robotics, Alex Kushleyev and Daniel Mellinger, of UPenn's GRASP Lab, working under the direction of Professor Vijay Kumar, and with assistance from Associate Professor Daniel Lee, have demonstrated coordinated flight of as many as twenty nano quadrotors.

David Anderson, a long time member of the Dallas Personal Robotics Group, did an interesting presentation recently in which he distills down what he's learned about building subsumption based mobile robots over the years. The video is a bit long but well-worth your time if you're interested in intelligent robots. David provides some additional notes that link to video of specific examples. And don't forget to check out David's "my robots" webpage for more photos and details on his robots.

The Uncanny Valley has been called upon to explain why Mitt Romney's persona disturbs so many people despite general agreement that he's a "successful, good-looking family man". Like Democrat Al Gore in previous races, Republican Mitt Romney creates a strange unease even among his supporters. A recent essay in the Atlantic provides an explanation for this phenomenon based on the Uncanny Valley theory that we are repulsed by slight imperfections in human-like action. The author argues that Romney's personality exhibits traits which put him into an "uncanny valley" for politicians.

There were lots of jokes and comments about Al Gore being a "robot" in earlier races. But here we've got a more detailed attempt at explaining what makes people uncomfortable about this type of politician. This raises interesting questions: 1) is this just an amusing analogy or could there be any real psychology behind claims of a political uncanny valley? 2) does a reference to the uncanny valley by a political pundit mean even relatively obscure robotics and AI science is going mainstream? 3) if even some humans fall into the uncanny valley, is it more important that robots climb the other side or that we adjust our expectations of intelligent behavior?
Diagram based on Mori Uncanny Valley

In the new episode of Robots Podcast we talk to Subramanian Ramamoorthy from the University of Edinburgh about the recent progress in walking robotics. We then speak with Felipe Brandão Cavalcanti, an Electrical Engineering student working on bipedal walking at the LARA lab at the University of Brasilia with Professor Geovany Borges. Ramamoorthy tells us about the recent advances in humanoid bipedal walking illustrated by Petman and the latest version of Asimo. In particular, we look at the history of the field with work from Mark Raibert, Russ Tedrake andDaniel Koditschek and how different areas, such as machine leaning and motion capture, come together to accelerate progress. Felipe Brandão Cavalcanti's project focuses on the study and implementation of gait generation and stabilization algorithms for small humanoid robots. He tells us how they hacked a humanoid toy to improve its balance and the importance of math in his work.To learn more about walking robotics read on or tune in!

Inspriational video from iamFIRST.com.
(Via Nikolaus Correll)

While this won't matter to most readers of Robots.Net until a version with English subtitles becomes available for download, SVT's Akta Manniskor starts tomorrow, January 22nd. A ten hour series following the stories of a handful of "hubots" - human-like robots we might prefer to call androids - and the humans into whose lives they become entwined, the release of this Swedish production has been preceded by a bit of guerrilla marketing, and there is a making-of video available, also in Swedish of course.

Shermine of Universal Robots, a Danish company, writes to tell us about a light-weight robot arm and matching touch-screen controller they've just completed. We also got word of a new robotics and AI blog called NooTriX, check it out. For our LEGO fans, Simon tells us about WorldBricks, a website where you can download LEGO instructions and catalogs dating back to the 1950s. Guy Cefalu sent a link to the Element microcontroller for .NET developers. No specs on memory or CPU type yet but looks like a PIC. (bonus points to the first reader who posts instructions for using an open source compiler like SDCC with this one!) The Swirling Brain spotted an instructable for a tiny robot called the Roule_Robot, just 14g and 39x22mm. Finally, Colin Adamson wrote to tell us about the Kickstarter campaign for his OCULUS Surveillance and Telepresence Netbook Robot (which looks a bit like the old Evolution ER1). Know any other robot news, gossip, or amazing facts we should report? Send 'em our way please. And don't forget to follow us on twitter.

It appears Justin Bieber got around at CES. So did the GeekBeat.tv crew, including to the XYBOTYX booth, where they recorded the XYBOT rolling around on a wooden platform.

In Robots Podcast episode #95 David Lane, Professor of Autonomous Systems Engineering and affiliated with the Heriot-Watt University Ocean Systems Laboratory (Edinburgh), talks with interviewer Per Sjoborg about his journey from research to business and back. He tells about how he got started first in offshore work then in robotics research, developing control software for autonomous underwater vehicles. He also tells how frustration with the lack of utilization of his work led he and his associates to start the company SeeByte, to commercialize it, and how having the U.S. Navy as their first customer proved very helpful towards the company's success. (Dr. Lane has much to say about the value of customer funding and customer focus for a startup.) Finally, he tells about his return to academia after finding the right person to take over the day-to-day details of running SeeByte, and how his experience in industry finds its way into his academic work.
Read On or Tune In

CES is nearly over, but we have a few more items to share. The Inventist SoloWheel, shown above, was panned by The Verge as having zero chance of making it to the mainstream. As may be, pending further development, but the company provides an assortment of videos on its website. Without having tried it myself, I doubt it requires more skill than rollerblades. NEC showed its Communication Robot PaPeRo, a research prototype, not yet for sale, along with an Android app that allows users to control the robot remotely. There were Dancing Cats and Baby Seals, and a robotic vacuum cleaner that entertains while it works, and is itself cleaned out each time it docks. And last, but far from least, TechCrunch interviewed Bre Pettis of Makerbot about their new Replicator model, and the future of 3D printing.

You've probably already heard about the event wherein Justin Bieber was enlisted to introduce TOSY's new mRobo at CES, but you may not have learned much about the device itself or the company that makes it. mRobo is a combination music player and dancing robot. It can store 2 gigabytes worth of music in its own memory, or stream it via bluetooth, or simply listen. In any case, when there's music playing, it sprouts a head, arms, and legs and begins to dance in time to the beat. The price is set at $199, and you won't be able to get one until later this year.