Herself’s Artificial Intelligence

What makes this robot interesting is that it uses touch to find its way around. Biotact is a consortium of researchers from all over the world who are working on this project.

. . .Based on principles of active sensing adopted widely in the animal kingdom, the multinational team is developing innovative touch technologies, including a ‘whiskered’ robotic rat. The whiskered robot will be able to quickly locate, identify and capture moving objects. ‘The use of touch in the design of artificial intelligence systems has been largely overlooked, until now,’ says Prof. Ehud Ahissar of the Weizmann Institute of Science’s Neurobiology Department, whose research team is one of the groups participating in the multinational project. . . [ read more Robot rat to lead the way in touch technology ]

. . . What is the whisker’s “secret”? Why is the sense of touch through a rat’s whiskers much more efficient than that of the average person’s fingertips? The consortium’s teams have provided some insights into these questions. One explanation concerns the way in which the sensory system works: Whiskers actively sweep back and forth repetitively, accumulating information about the surrounding environment. The sensing begins in the neurons at the whiskers’ bases, which then fire signals off to the brain. Moreover, experiments have shown that the way in which a rat uses its whiskers is context-dependent. The seemingly simple act of feeling out a three-dimensional object, for example, requires three different types of code, each encoding a different dimension – the horizontal, the vertical, and the radial (distance from the whisker base). The horizontal plane, for instance, is encoded in the precise timing of neural signals relative to the whisking motion. The vertical, i.e., the object height, is encoded by the vertical spacing of the whiskers, which are arranged grid-like on either side of the snout. The radial plane, on the other hand, is encoded in the number of times the neurons fire: The closer an object is to the rat’s snout, the higher the number of neuron-signaling spikes. . . [ read more Global team developing 'Robotic rats' ]

More information:
BIOmimetic Technology for vibrissal ACtive Touch ( BIOTACT)

Papers:
Whiskerbot: A robotic active touch system modeled on the rat whisker system ( $$$ pdf )
An active artificial whisker array for texture discrimination ( $$$ pdf )

Last month several tech sites ran headlines about “3d Shape Shifting Robot Swarms”. We’ve also seen this begin to appear in many recent science fiction stories.

Goldstein calls the programmable matter claytronics and the tiny robots catoms. And it’s not all out of a sci-fi movie. Goldstein said. Working hand-in-hand with Intel Corp., the research team has made a lot of progress in getting the catoms to bond together and even share power.

Think of each catom as a tiny robot or computer that has computational power, memory and the ability to store and share power. Right now, each catom has 24 electromagnets around its circumference. Based on whether the electromagnets are powered on or off decides how the catoms are moved into position with each other. The robots will harness these forces to achieve their goals.

“They talk to each other all the time and move together or apart,” explained Goldstein. “In the long term, we’ll use electrostatic forces. We’ll create it by putting a voltage on them.” . . [ read more 3d Shape Shifting Robot Swarms ]

This technology is not as far fetched as it might seem at first blush. We’ve seen chairs that fall apart and put themselves back together. and NASA had a pyramid shape shifting robot in 2005 which they hope to miniaturize to nano scale. And a Xerox researcher built a shape shifting robot in 2000.

So shape shifting robots are closer than you think, and are you really sure that lamp on your desk is just a lamp?

More information:
York investigates evolving ’swarm’ robots
Swarm robotics work hundreds of robots into one

Researchers have a working robotic fly. However, despite news stories of spying I can find no references to cameras or other spy equipment embedded in the flies so no need to panic yet.

Researchers at the University of California at Berkeley are building a minuscule robot guaranteed to give new meaning to the old phrase, “fly on the wall.”

Known affectionately as “robofly,” the gadget is exactly what its name implies: a flying robot about the size of a housefly. It even looks a bit like a fly, although it will have four wings instead of two and one glassy eye instead of two beady ones.

Uncle Sam, who is bankrolling the project to the tune of $2.5 million and wants to see robofly airborne by 2004, will add the flying robot to its espionage toy box.

“The potential application of a robot based on a fly might be, in an urban environment, clandestine surveillance and reconnaissance,” said Teresa McMullen of the Office of Naval Research. . . [ read more Spy fly - Tiny winged robot to mimic nature's fighter jets ]

Scientists in England have a robot that powers itself eating flies so you can just get one of those to keep your home free of robotic flies.

r Chris Melhuish and his Bristol-based team hope the robot, called EcoBot II, will one day be sent into zones too dangerous for humans, potentially proving invaluable in military, security and industrial areas.

Melhuish, who is director of the Intelligent Autonomous Systems Lab at the UWE, told CNN that the EcoBot II was a result of a quest for an intelligent robot that could function without human supervision.

“That means they need energy. It is one thing to have a robot getting its energy from a household socket, or maybe from the factory floor, but it is another thing when the robot goes outside buildings,” he said. [ read more Fly eating robot powers itself ]

But if you don’t have a fly eating robot — fear not and remove the tinfoil hat; Endgadget is reporting hawks are hunting down WowWee Dragonfly bots. I’m thinking if you are concerned about fly bots spying on you you just need to attract a few fly eating birds to your yard.

More information:
Robotic fly to descend on New York
Robotic fly gets its buzz
Tinker, Tailor, Robot, Fly