From the excellent science blog Punctuated Equilibrium, a piece about MIT Media Lab’s Cynthia Breazeal and her absolute love for robots.
Cynthia Breazeal fell in love with robots after seeing Star Wars when she was a kid. As a grad student, she wondered why we were using robots on Mars, but not in our living rooms. The key, she realized: training robots to interact with people. Now she dreams up and builds robots that teach, learn — and play. This video shows a little of what she’s doing:
Remember Big Dog, the creepy robot I blogged about a couple of years ago? The company that made it, Boston Dynamics, continues its work to make robots that can navigate all sorts of terrain.
Check out what Little Dog can do, below. Skynet is surely not far behind.
The 2010 RoboCup began yesterday in Singapore. It’s a competition of engineers and scientists to see who can build the robot with the best football skills.
Its organisers have given themselves a target of the year 2050 to create a robot team that can beat humans. Or 2011 for a robot team that can beat England.
Wow. Check out this video of the robot hands developed by Ishikawa Komuro Laboratory at the University of Tokyo. Their level of control is amazing. The move with the mobile phone seriously freaks me out.
If you like that video, the department’s got plenty more.
The Plummet Onions 