this old comic gets more relevant with each passing day.
(via seananmcguire)
this old comic gets more relevant with each passing day.
(via seananmcguire)
(Source: senj0ugahara, via neverdorothy)
I don’t care how many times this appears on my dash I must reblog it every time.
(via seananmcguire)
(via lavenderfoxes)
(Source: mrfrivolous, via boxofpoptarts)
The creation of an array of piezotronic transistors using nanowires that convert mechanical motion to electronic controlling signals means we will now have better touch-screen interactions with our tablets and smartphones—but also robots that have “a sense of touch.”
The arrays contain about 8,000 touch-sensitive transistors called taxels that are thin, clear, flexible sheets that wrap around a robotic limb like our skin.
“When we [humans] touch fire, we know it’s hot. [This technology] can allow robots to have that human sense - in other words, make robots more like humans,” lead researcher Zhong Lin Wang told TechNewsDaily.
The achievement of mimicking touch through electronic devices came through measuring changes in resistance caused by mechanical touch.
“Any mechanical motion, such as the movement of arms or the fingers of a robot, could be translated to control signals. This could make artificial skin smarter and more like the human skin. It would allow the skin to feel activity on the surface,” said Zhong Lin Wang, from the Georgia Institute of Technology and one of the study authors.
“This is a fundamentally new technology that allows us to control electronic devices directly using mechanical agitation,” Wang added in a news release. “This could be used in a broad range of areas, including robotics, MEMS, human-computer interfaces and other areas that involve mechanical deformation.”
The study was published in the journal Science.
PR2 Robot Fetches a Cup of Coffee - Stanford Presentation
1 coffee today. Barista-replacement tomorrow!
From the Stanford paper:
“The system avoided a variety of obstacles and failure conditions during the testing. A common case was the presence of people and carts in the environment. The robot successfully avoided these obstacles by either driving around them or by waiting for them to clear. A second issue occurred when humans called the elevator to another floor before the robot could successfully press the control button. The robot avoided this problem by detecting and rejecting incorrect floors during the exit phase of the elevator navigation process. A third common issue was failure to push the buttons inside or outside the elevator. Recovery was achieved because the robot re-ran these processes when the elevator did not act as expected within 30 seconds.
In addition to the failures of the robot described above, the robot avoided other cases caused by humans and environmental issues. One failure mode was that the coffee shop employee did not fully push the beverage cup into the robot’s hand. This cause the robot’s hand to slip off the beverage cup as the robot attempted to pull the cup back from the human. However, the robot detected that no object was present in its gripper and asked the human to try again. Another challenge arose from a case where a human pushed a door open and then released it while the robot was lining up to navigate the door. The robot avoided this problem by waiting for sensor readings to stabilize, given its quasi-static approach to navigating the world.”
(Source: spectrum.ieee.org)
Commission! More Robo-Senshi! Sequel to this previous commission.
And so, Youma-chine defeats Bad Queen Evil Person and the rest of the Sailor Scouts, and rules with complete inpunity over all earth and the negaverse. The first evil deed of this unstoppable army? Bank robberies! Mwahaha!
Robots can assemble Ikea furniture, potentially save your marriage
I hope the robots have a cute, barely-pronounceable Nordic name with umlauts and stuff. Like RÅBOT.