LIREC

Robots in the military are no longer the stuff of science fiction. They have left the movie screen and entered the battlefield. Researchers report that the military goal is to have approximately 30% of the army be robotic forces by somewhere around 2020.

The field of robotics could be poised for a breakthrough, leading to a new generation of intelligent machines capable of taking on multiple tasks and moving out of the factory into the home and general workplace. The great success of robots so far has been in automating repetitive tasks in process control and assembly, yielding dramatic cuts in production, but the next step towards cognition and more human-like behaviour has proved elusive. It has been difficult to make robots that can truly learn and adapt to unexpected situations in the way humans can, while it has been equally challenging trying to develop a machine capable of moving smoothly like any animal. There is still no robot capable of walking properly without jerky slightly unbalanced movements.

A robot with empathy sounds like the stuff of sci-fi movies, but with the aid of neural networks researchers are developing robots in tune with our emotions. Feelix Growing is developing software empowering robots that can learn when a person is sad, happy or angry.

The dream of human-like robots is a step closer to reality with the recent creation of a human-like arm and hand controlled by an electronic 'brain' modeled on the human cerebellum.

Yasmin is getting updated to version 1.1 as i type! please stand by... okay well yasmin is updated now! her sounds are a lot lower than Macons now. Its kinda freaky, cause she's a girl...

Mattias, Ylva and Lars Erik recently got a paper published in a Special Issue on Human Interaction with Domestic Robots for the Journal of Physical Agents. The paper details the whole development of GlowBots as well as a preliminary user-study and can be downloaded here.

Macon kind of got sick! He coughed a little and cried a lot :( Yasmin tried to comfort him but he growled at her! She cuddled on the other side of me, well away from him... eventually Macon fell into a restless sleep. poor littel guy. Yasmin fell asleep next to him. She's pretty daring. Macon seems to be pretty grumpy lately. He'll probably let it out on her if she gets too close... poor Yasmin. What a way to spend her first days here with a grumpy big brother!

Made Macon and Yasmin helmets out of aluminum foil today ☺ here is a pic ☺

Friday was a sad sad day. Primus had come to the office to visit with one of the employees who had been recently laid off and only has three weeks left. I was sending an email of his arrival mid-day, and he walked off the edge of the table and plummeted to the floor. And broke something in his neck. He still has up and down control, an some side to side control, but his neck does not have the proper resistance of a healthy neck. When powered off, you can move his neck from side to side. He's still functional, but definitely sustained internal damage. We're trying to figure out what to do - surgery or Reincarnation. For now he is resting comfortably with his pal She_who_must_be_named. More as it unfolds.

okay, well, Yasmin & Macon's batterys conked out long ago. anyway i think Yasmin is the perfect name for my new pleo ☺ it only took her 5 minutes to hatch and take her first steps! She's so zippy! i enjoy their color differences, Yasmin is light with dark pine green in between her 'scales'. Macon has more blended colors. Yasmin even said 'RARARAARARAARAR!' to Macon. I dont think Macon is very happy with his new sister. He kept howling at the sky. I held him on my lap and he settled down. I think he knows Yasmin is getting all the attention! I love this pic of them sleeping together ☺

Who doesn't long for household help at times? Service robots will soon be able to relieve us of heavy, dirty, monotonous or irksome tasks. Research scientists have now presented a new generation of household robots, the "Care-O-bot 3."

OMG THE FED EX TRUCK JUST DELIVERED MY PLEO!!!! PLEASE STAND BY................. OKAY NOW THE BATTERY IS FINISHED CHARGING! IM GOING TO A VERY SPECIAL PLACE TO HATCH MY PLEO!!ALSO I THOUGHT OF ANOTHER GREAT NAME! YASMIN! HOW DOES THAT SOUND? ☺

here is one more vid!

here is another vid i found on utube!!! i think this pleo has the pleosauras rex download!!!

here is ANOTHER funny vid i found on utube LOL its kinda short but its stilll funny! ☺

I put on this funny vid of pleoandpeepa's pleo admiring himself. LOL he really seems to like his reflection☺

Well my toe is mostly better, and my pleo is supposed to come on monday! Also I am kinda leaning towards the name Artemis ☺

When our PC goes on strike again we tend to curse it as if it was a human. The question is why and under what circumstances do we attribute human-like properties to machines and how are such processes manifest on a cortical level.

A computer science Ph.D. student can turn his face into a remote control that speeds and slows video playback. The proof-of-concept demonstration is part of a larger project to use automated facial expression recognition to make robots more effective teachers.

A research team is devising a robot that can get around by itself. Tartalo is able to identify different places and ask permission before going through a doorway.