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Biz Buzz: Monkeys Make Machines Move With Their Minds

fjackal — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 06:45:48 +0000

A recent IEEE Spectrum article shows the amazing progress researchers have made lately with brain-machine interface technology. With two implants, one in the monkey’s arm and one in his motor cortex, the monkey is able to control a robotic arm with seven degrees of freedom! It is easy to see that this technology will carry over to humans for a broad range of applications. Most notably, quadriplegics and other disabled individuals will soon be able to walk again with robotic limbs they control with their minds. Yay!

Who’s Who: Jeff Hawkins

fjackal — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 10:13:49 +0000

Jeff Hawkins sits in front of a copy of his book, On Intelligence

One of the biggest innovators in artificial intelligence today is Jeff Hawkins. Inventor of the Palm Pilot and the Treo Smartphone, Jeff Hawkins decided to turn away from consumer electronics and turn his attention toward solving the problem of advancing machine learning. Hawkins founded a research company called Numenta in 2004 and published a book, “On Intelligence”, that same year. The book makes the case for studying neurobiology to build a model for intelligent systems. His Hierarchical Temporal Model (HTM) algorithm has the potential to revolutionize the computer and robotics industries.

HTM theory is based on the brain’s neocortex, the primary interpretation center for the brain. The theory states that all learning, whether visual or auditory or otherwise, is derived from the same basic function (or algorithm) in the neocortex. At the center of this model is the brain’s use of memory to predict future inputs coming in from sensory organs such as the eyes. The neocortex is able to perceive invariant representations of reality in spite of noisy input coming in from sensory organs and the environment. The hierarchical structure of the neocortex, in which information is passed up along several “layers” in the brain until an invariant image is produced. This is how the brain is able to perceive that a person standing in front of you is the same person even as that person spins around.

Hawkins, who has already enjoyed a stellar career in computer science, is still one to watch for significant future impact. For more information on his company and the HTM algorithm, visit Numenta.com.

Biz Buzz: Personal Robotics Industry To Reach $19 billion in 2017

fjackal — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 02:17:55 +0000

The personal robotics industry is currently growing at a rapid pace. Earlier reports pointed to the personal robotics industry reaching a market value of $5 billion by 2015. ABI Research has recently conducted a study which predicts that the Personal Robotics Industry will reach $19 billion within six years. Among the top applications of personal robotics which are growing the industry include security, telepresence, and home cleaning applications.

Biz Buzz: Motoman’s DA Is On the Case

fjackal — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 04:52:29 +0000

Humanoid industrial robot DA120

Motoman has been shaking up the industrial robotics industry with their latest humanoid offering, the DA120. This particular bot has 7 degrees of freedom per arm, and another additional degree of freedom at the base on a rotational axis. Since it is two-armed, compact, and molded after the human form, it is dynamic and can perform a huge, diverse set of tasks. Equipped with custom programming software, the robot can easily fill a slot on an assembly line that requires precision work, such as wiring cable, applying glue, or stir fry(yeah, I had to go there)…The arms are very agile, and are depicted playing the drums in a parade around Japan on YouTube.

Motoman, a subsidiary of the Yaskawa Electric Corporation, has had a long standing in the robotics industry, with patents in the field dating back to 1969. Many of their robotics have been used in the auto industry, and over 180,000 of their machines have been installed around the world.

Who’s Who: Rodney Brooks

fjackal — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 02:15:36 +0000

Rodney Brooks is credited as being a major contributor and proponent of the Subsumption architecture that deals with the way in which robots handle tasks. Essentially, the architecture builds “layers” of small, simple tasks to perform autonomous behavior. This has allowed robotics to achieve fast speeds in performing tasks, but has been criticized for its lack of accuracy. Much of his research in robotics has been at MIT, where he has worked since the 1980′s. Recently, Rodney Brooks made headlines in the robotics industry by leaving iRobot, one of the world’s largest robotics corporations, as Chief Technical Officer to start his own venture dubbed Heartland Robotics. He is one of the most prominent roboticists around, and it will be interesting to see just what sort of projects and creations will be coming out of this newfound company.

America Falling Off the Flat Earth

fjackal — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 05:12:16 +0000

We as a nation must wake up! I’m becoming increasingly aware of the tremendous shortcomings our educational system has and the impact it will continue to have on the American economy. I’ve just been privvy to a fantastic academic article published by the National Academies of Science and Engineering titled, “America Is Falling Off the Flat Earth”. Obviously inspired by Thomas Friedman’s bestselling book, “The World Is Flat”, the paper builds a case that in this global economy, America is at risk of losing its dominance as the largest and most productive economy in the world. It provides a slew of alarming statistics about the number of U.S. born Engineers and Scientists this country is producing. While hardly news to anyone, the paper does implicitly state that we are churning out more foreign born graduates in Engineering and Science in our own universities than American born!

Among many other things, it states that everyone in China studies Calculus…meanwhile, only 15% of American students do! We are falling fast academically and if something is not done to reverse this trend, I believe we’ll find ourselves being the third world country that China is outsourcing its jobs to!

I will not go into much more detail, but if you’re interested in the paper, you can find it here: http://www.nap.edu/catalog/12021.html .

What I find interesting, is that I find myself as an example of this frightening trend. I’m a mathematical genius…I’ve got 145 IQ, I was certified Gifted in grammar school, and there is very little that I cannot wrap my head around if I apply myself…yet, I never even considered becoming an Engineer until this point in my life: at the age of 23! How much further ahead would I be if I had been exposed to the concept in middle school or high school!

Well, why not? My special Gifted education, while higher than that of my peers in my local school district, did not expand past middle school. Upon reaching high school, I did take a Careers course…but get this, our “final paper” involved doing a study on a career which was “randomly selected”…the course was very limited in scope. It was also geared toward the lowest common denominator in the class…instead of realistically assessing our talents and abilities and directing us toward a field that suits us, individually.

Furthermore, my parents are not college graduates, and their exposure to the academic world and the fields of study within are limited in scope. There is very little industry where I’m from, with most of our resources going into serving the needs of retirees. And so, knowing nothing of where I could go or what I could do with my talent, I opened a business at the age of 18. Largely, in hopes of getting ahead early in life. Instead, I suppose, I put myself behind in a way. I’ve learned a lot, and I hope to make tremendous use of those lessons, but I am somewhat dissapointed that I never received any encouragement or direction or even suggestion from ANY of my teachers at the high school level. What more does one have to go on as a child but the parents and teachers that he is essentially “lucked” into?

At any rate, I’m going back, I’m getting my degree, and gosh darnit, I’m going to be one of the few U.S. born engineers to compete with the Chinese and Indians. Hopefully along the way, I can inspire more of my peers to do the same!

VEX: My First Bot?

fjackal — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 03:45:28 +0000

A VEX intermediate kit bot

I’m exhaustively researching which hobby bot I should buy first to kickoff my career. There are a myriad of choices out there, with companies pawning robot kits pouring out of the woodwork to feed the high demand in this area. One of the leaders that has emerged, it seems, is VEX Robotics. They sponsor high school and middle school programs around the country and promote simple, educational kits that are great for beginners.

I was drawn to the company originally by their recently released ‘VEXPlorer’. The VEXplorer is a kit bot that contains six wheels, a gripping claw, and a wireless camera which can broadcast to any TV. This kit also includes stripped down “CAD” software called Softworks. Essentially, Softworks contains computerized models of all the parts that VEX produces…so you can design your robot in 3D on your computer before you even start to build it…That’s pretty powerful stuff!

Sadly, the bot is not programmable. All functions, including manipulation of the claw and movement of the bot, must be done manually via RC. This, to me, doesn’t even classify as a robot. Robots must contain some sort of autonomous control. But I suppose, it is a fabulous beginner kit, and they didn’t want to complicate things by throwing programming into the mix.

They have a more intermediate kit, which is more expensive and requires the purchase of a programming module. The kit is $300 and the programming kit is an additional $100. The only dissapointing bit, is that this kit does NOT include the Softworks software for designing your robot on the PC. Still, programming robots for useful, autonomous tasks is my primary motivation for entering the field. Any kit I purchase must be programmable…so I may forego the Softworks feature and purchase their intermediate kit.

Before I fork out my hard-earned bucks, however, I’m going to explore a few other companies and their offerings. I’ll post my impressions here.

Servo Slang: Linear Actuator

fjackal — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 18:50:56 +0000

A linear actuator is a device that transfers rotational energy into linear motion. This is usually achieved by threading a round gear into a grooved shaft. Upon rotating the “handle”, energy is guided and forced into a linear motion. Examples include car jacks and jack screws. Their application in robotics should be apparent, as motion along a linear axis is often accomplished through a linear actuator.

Who’s Who: Takeo Kanade

fjackal — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 15:41:23 +0000

Takeo Kanade is a professor at Carnegie Mellon University. His official title is the Director of Quality of Life Technology Engineering and he has been an integral part of the campus since 1980. His greatest accomplishments are in the area of computer vision and IU (Image Understanding).

According to Kanade in his CMU profile at http://www.ri.cmu.edu/people/kanade_takeo.html , the most successful examples of IU involve the Factorization Method and the Multi-Baseline Stereo Method. Using Factorization, a 3D model of a scene or object is created by simply recording a scene through video. The Multi-Baseline Stereo method, on the other hand, uses multiple camera angles to produce a dense depth map of a natural scene. This works like a 3D camera.

Work is also being done, thanks to his facial and object recognition advances, in producing a searchable video database in which, the actual videos themselves are scanned for the desired person or subject. This will one day revolutionize the way videos and images are searched, and it is being called the Informedia Project.

His Virtualized Reality application was applied in the 35th Super Bowl in 2001, employing 30 cameras and allowing “Matrix-like” views of the action on the field. Essentially, the technology works by having a master camera focus on one point as directed by a human. The rest of the cameras robotically center on the exact same spot, only from a different angle. The result is a quasi 3-Dimensional scene which broadcasters can use to vary the camera angle in real time and in playback.

Other projects at Carnegie Mellon which he may be involved in:

Helicopter Lab – an autonomously-guided helicopter project
Face Group – an effort to track human faces and expressions algorithmicaly
Human Identification – developing the ability to track humans from a distance and at various angles
Medical Robots – enabling robots and physicians to perform pinpoint surgery
Deception Detecion – learning how to detect human deception devices preventing facial recognition
Face Recognition – the ability to detect a face as the same under any lighting conditions

Many more projects are being worked on at CMU, and as an expert in computer vision, Kanade is likely involved in all of them at some level. Computer vision is obviously an extremely important component of robotics, as autonomity requires some form of sensory input and object recognition in order to achieve anything useful. Advances in this technology will aid in bringing robots to the forefront of the workforce.

Robonova – Wow!

fjackal — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 02:16:56 +0000

: The acrobatic robonova hobbyist android

This is one incredibly dynamic hobbyist robot! Just watched a YouTube video of this at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufQf6wyhyAs . It’s a wonderfully orchestrated video of 6 of these things performing synchronized dance routines to background music. In the video, these flexible, double-jointed robots showcase somersault and cartwheel abilities as well as stretches and small jumps. They run just $900 for a kit! What a bargain…Apparently, this robot is used quite often in the RoboGames competitions and frequently win medals. RoboGames is also home of the famous ”BattleBots” arena style fighting. Hopefully, this will become one of my first hobby kit robots…I’d love to see what I could program it to do.