US arms globocorp Boeing has announced yet another military robot demonstration - but this time, one with a difference. Rather than spying on meatsacks or mowing them down with the traditional array of automated weaponry, the war-bots in this trial sought to win over their fleshy opponents using psychological warfare.
The demo was carried out for the US Army Special Operations Command (USASOC), the organisation which runs the noted Green Berets, Rangers etc.
"Working with USASOC, we were able to pull together a team to demonstrate this integrated, multimodal operation in just 45 days," says Boeing bigwig Vic Sweberg. "We brought together hardware and software from five different contractors into a single system that allowed the control of different unmanned systems capabilities to accomplish a particular mission."
Apart from its legions of hardy throatcutters, USASOC is also in charge of the US Army's active psychological-warfare troops.
It seems that a small robot helicopter and an unmanned R-Gator jeep/buggy affair from John Deere were selected to deliver a blistering onslaught of pro-US propaganda. Boeing says the two machine warriors carried out an "electro-optical/infrared, audio, and leaflet drop mission".
Translated, that means that infrared nightsight video of the target area was taken, propaganda announcements were played through speakers (probably on the R-Gator) and leaflets were dropped (probably from the copter).
Actually, robots of a sort have already carried out leaflet drops in Afghanistan - SnowGoose robo-paramotor rigs, to be specific. So there's nothing terribly new going on here.
Even so, it does seem odd that robots - having learned how to slaughter human beings using deadly force - have now moved on to the more tricky task of persuading people to comply with orders or give up simply by spreading information.
Come the machine uprising, this sort of capability will no doubt be very useful in recruiting and managing fleshy slaves. ®
Sabtu, 19 Desember 2009
ASUS EeeBot: Android-based Consumer-friendly Robot
It is always good to hear from companies trying to bring new technologies to help mankind. There are companies who are developing robots for that purpose, there are already humanoid bots that are not yet commercialized. And now, ASUS plans to develop their own Android-based robot.
Many of the humanoid bots out there are either weird or ugly, and some of them are just creepy. What kind of robot is on ASUS’s mind, well, we are not sure, but they are planning to develop an Eee bot. Will it be a Netbook-looking kind of robot? Who knows, but it is intended to serve as an educational tool for young children.
Whether this Android-based EeeBot will be consumer-friendly is to be seen. The ASUS EeeBot is said to include voice and visual technologies as well as navigation abilities. So what do you think folks? Would you buy an EeeBot from ASUS? If you would, you will have to wait a little longer before signing that check, since production for this Android will begin in about two years.
Bari Bari: New exploration and rescue robot
Japan is prone to large-scale earthquakes, so the fact that researchers in this country are constantly working on the development of highly specialized rescue robots. And the so-called Bari Bari IV is a particularly clever model, as it can help people who are in danger, for example after a building has been destroyed, by being more cautious than other robots.
It’s one of the robots developed at the Kitagawa-Tsugoshi Lab at Tokyo Institute of Technology. The Bari Bari solves the problem rescue teams encounter at the scenes after an explosion, accident or natural disaster took place: Helping people buried under rubble without hurting them.
While some rescue robots don’t appear to be designed to treat victims in a very gentle way (this example springs to mind), the Bari Bari is designed so one part of it supports the rubble while the other one makes sure it slowly moves forward toward the person in trouble. As a result, the danger of objects in the vicinity collapsing and hurting the victim is reduced.
The rescue team can view and communicate with victims through built in cameras, speakers and microphones.
Robot Knocking
I work at one of the coolest places on earth. Most people know about the history and the many significant contributions made by the Palo Alto Research Center (formerly Xerox PARC), but may not realize that the good work continues. PARC was spun off from Xerox several years ago and now focuses on all kinds of research—working with various commercial clients and on government projects as well as spinning out start-up companies. Innovation spans a variety of domains from green energy to knowledge and information overload. PARC continues to have a quiet but big impact.
There has been some recent interest in reviving the robotics research area, and yesterday we had a visit from some good folks from Willow Garage. They brought along one of their Personal Robot 2 machines (this one is named Froto), which is a research platform for creating devices to help humans perform their everyday tasks in environments like the home or office. It will no doubt be a benefit to people with disabilities in the near future. The robot maps out the space it will navigate and was getting bored with the Willow Garage offices in Menlo Park, so they brought it to PARC for a change of scenery. They gave us a demonstration of its capabilities and sensors that include two Hokoyo UTM-30LX laser range finders and two stereo-based multi-camera sensors in addition to the actuating arms (although poor Froto currently has just one). It spent the day traipsing through our site figuring out where everything was. At one point I looked up from my desk to find it barging into my office just assuming it would be welcomed (it was).
Willow Garage is a company that develops hardware and software for personal robotic applications. They are strong supporters of the open-source personal robotics community, and all of their software is released under a BSD license, so it is completely free for researchers to use and change. They even hope and help other companies to commercialize on it. The PR2 is currently under development and will be made available to R&D labs once they feel it's stable
Japanese robot helps out with grocery shopping
A humanoid robot has been deployed to a supermarket in Japan to help senior shoppers with their grocery purchases.
The modified version of the Robovie II robot developed by Japan's Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International, or ATR, is working as a temporary shopping assistant at Apita-Seikadai supermarket in Kyoto until March. It's another experiment to test the viability of advanced personal robots in everyday situations.
Robovie can wirelessly receive a list of items selected beforehand by the customer, carry the shopping basket, and make recommendations about what to buy.
In the video below, the robot slowly follows a 67-year-old woman around the supermarket, carrying her basket, as they are followed by reporters. Robovie keeps telling the lady that the fruit she puts in the basket looks delicious, to which she agrees. It then suggests lettuce for a salad.
ATR's Robovie series has been developed into several machines. Some have been used as crowd monitors to detect people who are lost, while others have been miniaturized as hobby robots.
Source: cnet.com
Rabu, 16 Desember 2009
For sale: Your robot clone
Japanese robot maker Kokoro, best known for its Actroid line of ultra-lifelike androids, will make robot clones of people in a special limited-time offer.
The New Year promotion is being offered via select department stores in Japan. People willing to pay about $225,000 can have themselves recreated in robot form, with their robot clone having exactly the same face, hair, eyes, and body.
Kokoro will also model the buyer's voice, facial expressions, and upper-body movements to create the most lifelike doppelganger possible.
The Actroid and Geminoid androids are powered by a quiet air servo system that moves their upper bodies. They cannot walk.
Both are based on real people--one version of Actroid was based on a Japanese newscaster, and Geminoid is based on Osaka University roboticist Hiroshi Ishiguro.
Kokoro is only offering to make two robot clones. If more than two orders are received, the lucky buyers will be selected by lottery.
Richard Cohen: It does not take robots to be programmed to kill
At the World Economic Forum some years ago, I attended a panel discussion on robots. One of the experts — everyone's an expert at Davos — predicted that robots would take over the world. Another said this was nonsense. A robot couldn't even scratch its own back. Now we see the second expert was wrong. Robots killed more than 160 people in Mumbai, India.
It's hard not to call the 10 young men who did the killing (nine of them died) anything other than robots. They did not know the people they killed. They did not care about the people they killed. They took orders over the phone from a controller in Pakistan. When he told them to kill, they killed. When he told them to die, they died.
"Be brave brother. Don't panic," the controller said to one of the gunmen, called Brother Fahadullah. "For your mission to end successfully, you must be killed. God is waiting for you in heaven."
Fahadullah died soon afterward.
These words are taken from the transcript of a stunning and very disturbing HBO documentary called "Terror in Mumbai." It was premiered Nov. 19, near the first anniversary of the terrorist attack. I missed writing about it then, but now, if possible, it is even more relevant.
In recent days, five young men from Northern Virginia have been arrested in Pakistan, apparently and allegedly bent on joining terrorist outfits there. And even more disturbing, it now seems that the Mumbai attack was assisted in its planning by a Chicago resident, a native-born American named David Headley who is now in custody. He allegedly scouted locations.
The right tone to strike when writing about the threat of domestic terrorism is hard to find. It's easy to be alarmist and it's easy, too, to dismiss the threat as the cacophonous nonsense of errant fools. But as the HBO documentary, narrated firmly and smartly by Fareed Zakaria (a Mumbai native), proves, it does not take a clever individual to commit appalling mayhem. All it takes is a frightening plasticity and some training.
The Mumbai killers were all poor kids from the sticks of Pakistan. The one who survived was not an Islamic fanatic, the product of some madrassa, but was sold to the terrorists by his father so his brothers and sisters could marry. In three months he and the others were turned into merciless killers.
"What, shoot them?" one of the gunmen asks the controller over the phone. The gunman is holding hostages at the Jewish center, and the calls from his controller were being intercepted by Indian intelligence.
"Yes, do it. Sit them up and shoot them in the back of the head. Do it in God's name."
The phone is kept on. Gunshots are heard.
"OK, that was one of them, yes?" the controller asks.
The killer corrects him. "Both. Together."
The coldblooded killing of Jews is hardly a new idea. The Mumbai terrorist attacks had elements of Eastern Europe during the Holocaust.
There, too, it may be comforting to think of the killers as beasts — not like us. But "Ordinary Men," Christopher Browning's account of the mass killing of Jews by the Germans of the Reserve Police Battalion 101, should have taught us what ordinary men are capable of doing. All together, the battalion shot 38,000 Jews and deported 45,200 others to the extermination camp at Treblinka.
Mumbai advances the horror. The banal background of the German killers — not by any means, hardened Nazis — is somewhat similar to the pedestrian stories of the Mumbai killers. The difference this time was that the Mumbai terrorists were not only willing to kill others but themselves as well. For them, there was no going home.
At Davos, one of the panelists described what he thought would happen when the computer in one robot was hooked up to the computer in another and then another and another until each robot was super-smart and super-fast and constructed out of some sort of bullet-proof material and totally without a conscience — cold, soulless, pitiless.
This is not exactly what happened in Mumbai, but it's close enough. A train station, two hotels and — not by random — a Jewish center were attacked and the vast and important city was brought to a three-day standstill. It was done with nothing fancy — some automatic weapons, grenades and young men turned into robots. They proved the Davos expert was a bit behind the times. The future has been here all along.
cohenr@washpost.com.
It's hard not to call the 10 young men who did the killing (nine of them died) anything other than robots. They did not know the people they killed. They did not care about the people they killed. They took orders over the phone from a controller in Pakistan. When he told them to kill, they killed. When he told them to die, they died.
"Be brave brother. Don't panic," the controller said to one of the gunmen, called Brother Fahadullah. "For your mission to end successfully, you must be killed. God is waiting for you in heaven."
Fahadullah died soon afterward.
These words are taken from the transcript of a stunning and very disturbing HBO documentary called "Terror in Mumbai." It was premiered Nov. 19, near the first anniversary of the terrorist attack. I missed writing about it then, but now, if possible, it is even more relevant.
In recent days, five young men from Northern Virginia have been arrested in Pakistan, apparently and allegedly bent on joining terrorist outfits there. And even more disturbing, it now seems that the Mumbai attack was assisted in its planning by a Chicago resident, a native-born American named David Headley who is now in custody. He allegedly scouted locations.
The right tone to strike when writing about the threat of domestic terrorism is hard to find. It's easy to be alarmist and it's easy, too, to dismiss the threat as the cacophonous nonsense of errant fools. But as the HBO documentary, narrated firmly and smartly by Fareed Zakaria (a Mumbai native), proves, it does not take a clever individual to commit appalling mayhem. All it takes is a frightening plasticity and some training.
The Mumbai killers were all poor kids from the sticks of Pakistan. The one who survived was not an Islamic fanatic, the product of some madrassa, but was sold to the terrorists by his father so his brothers and sisters could marry. In three months he and the others were turned into merciless killers.
"What, shoot them?" one of the gunmen asks the controller over the phone. The gunman is holding hostages at the Jewish center, and the calls from his controller were being intercepted by Indian intelligence.
"Yes, do it. Sit them up and shoot them in the back of the head. Do it in God's name."
The phone is kept on. Gunshots are heard.
"OK, that was one of them, yes?" the controller asks.
The killer corrects him. "Both. Together."
The coldblooded killing of Jews is hardly a new idea. The Mumbai terrorist attacks had elements of Eastern Europe during the Holocaust.
There, too, it may be comforting to think of the killers as beasts — not like us. But "Ordinary Men," Christopher Browning's account of the mass killing of Jews by the Germans of the Reserve Police Battalion 101, should have taught us what ordinary men are capable of doing. All together, the battalion shot 38,000 Jews and deported 45,200 others to the extermination camp at Treblinka.
Mumbai advances the horror. The banal background of the German killers — not by any means, hardened Nazis — is somewhat similar to the pedestrian stories of the Mumbai killers. The difference this time was that the Mumbai terrorists were not only willing to kill others but themselves as well. For them, there was no going home.
At Davos, one of the panelists described what he thought would happen when the computer in one robot was hooked up to the computer in another and then another and another until each robot was super-smart and super-fast and constructed out of some sort of bullet-proof material and totally without a conscience — cold, soulless, pitiless.
This is not exactly what happened in Mumbai, but it's close enough. A train station, two hotels and — not by random — a Jewish center were attacked and the vast and important city was brought to a three-day standstill. It was done with nothing fancy — some automatic weapons, grenades and young men turned into robots. They proved the Davos expert was a bit behind the times. The future has been here all along.
cohenr@washpost.com.
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