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The reality behind the promise of personal 'robot butlers'
B e it Robby the Robot from Forbidden Planet , the translation skills of Star Wars' C3-PO or the neurotic Kryten from Red Dwarf whipping up a curry, the idea of having an autonomous mechanical servant to help around the home (or spaceship) has been part of our imagination for decades.
Yet, like many of science-fiction's most alluring promises, it seems the robot butler – aside from vacuum cleaners bumping into the furniture – remains tantalisingly out of reach; frighteningly close but forever just around the corner.
Google X unveils consumer robot project that will learn - Business Insider
Alphabet, the parent company of Google, is getting back into robotics after a first attempt several years ago fizzled. But this time the company wants to create robots with minds of their own.
The company's R&D lab, known as X, announced the Everyday Robot Project on Thursday, describing its efforts to build a new breed of robots infused with artificial intelligence. The goal is a robot that can be "taught" how do to something, rather than needing to be programmed by humans ahead of time to perform a chore.
How to design and control robots with stretchy, flexible bodies | MIT News
An MIT-invented model efficiently and simultaneously optimizes control and design of soft robots for target tasks, which has traditionally been a monumental undertaking in computation. The model, for instance, was significantly faster and more accurate than state-of-the-art methods at simulating how quadrupedal robots (pictured) should move to reach target destinations.
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Soft robots have springy, flexible, stretchy bodies that can essentially move an infinite number of ways at any given moment. Computationally, this represents a highly complex "state representation," which describes how each part of the robot is moving. State representations for soft robots can have potentially millions of dimensions, making it difficult to calculate the optimal way to make a robot complete complex tasks.
Quite a lot has been going on:
Google's Parent Company Alphabet Introduced a New Project That's Aimed at Developing
Alphabet, the parent company of Google, is getting back into robotics after a first attempt several years ago fizzled. But this time the company wants to create robots with minds of their own.
The company's R&D lab, known as X, announced the Everyday Robot Project on Thursday, describing its efforts to build a new breed of robots infused with artificial intelligence. The goal is a robot that can be "taught" how do to something, rather than needing to be programmed by humans ahead of time to perform a chore.
Synthetic psychology -- understanding behavior through robotics
Tony Prescott is among the researchers developing models of human intelligence based on the synthetic psychology of robots. Source: University of Sheffield
The field of psychology, particularly neuroscience, is constantly taking steps toward successfully being able to explain and model human behavior. That is the holy grail for everyone working in this field. "Synthetic psychology is the idea that we can understand ourselves by building physical models of ourselves, in the form of robots," says Tony Prescott, a lead neuroscientist at the University of Sheffield in the U.K.
Are coding robots worth your kids' time?
Toy robots are nothing new. In the 1980s, the R2D2-like Tomy Verbot or the clunky Milton Bradley Big Trak let kids program their movements or actions using voice commands or a keypad.
The marketing for those robots focused mostly on the fun — and, in the case of the Big Trak, the ability to deliver an apple to your dad . These days, toy companies have a different message for parents as they hawk their coding toys: Your kids will have fun, but they'll also be prepared for the jobs of the future.
ICYMI: Surgical Robots Shine; Robots Ready for Black Friday - Robotics Business Review
It's been another busy week here at the Robotics Business Review news desk. I suspect it's because companies want to get their news out before next week's Thanksgiving holiday (and Black Friday/Cyber Monday/etc.). Let’s jump right into this week’s ICYMI column (In Case You Missed It).
In addition to all of the content we've published this week, here are some additional "news briefs" that caught my eye:
The second news item around surgical comes from Think Surgical , which along with MCRA LLC announced that it obtained clearance from the FDA to market its TSolution One Total Knee Application for use in total knee arthroplasty (TKA) in the United States. Read more here .
Happening on Twitter
The Evolution of Bricklaying Robots: Changing the Rules of Traditional Construction https://t.co/ncUwZ6yHBs ArchDaily (from New York) Fri Nov 15 13:32:02 +0000 2019
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