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Simple, healthy, delicious tea steeped with the help of a robot hanging onto the edge of your cup like a little artificial companion? No wonder it's sold out. $15 if it ever materializes in stock again. [Uncrate via Uber Rreview]
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Asimo, the Honda humanoid, one of the world's most loved robots, was showing off its dance moves this week at the 2011 IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems in San Francisco.
The robot was here to demonstrate some new tricks it's been learning from scientists at the Honda Research Institute in Mountain View, Calif.
Victor Ng-Thow-Hing, Behzad Dariush, and colleagues work with Asimo seeking to develop robotics technologies that can assist people, especially in terms of mobility.
In one demonstration, the scientists showed how Asimo can mimic a person's movements in real time. The researchers use Microsoft's Kinect 3D sensor to track selected points on a person's upper body, and their software uses an inverse kinematics approach to generate control commands to make Asimo move. The software prevents self collisions and excessive joint motions that might damage its system and is integrated with Asimo's whole-body controller in order to maintain balance. The researchers say that the ability of mimicking a person in real time could find applications in robot programming and interactive teleoperation, among other things.
In another demo, the scientists showed how they're using gestures to improve Asimo's communication skills. They're developing a gesture-generating system that takes any input text and analyzes its grammatical structure, timing, and choice of word phrases to automatically generate movements for the robot. To make the behavior more realistic, the scientists used a vision system to capture humans performing various gestures, and then they incorporated these natural movements into their gesture-generating system.
This was my first encounter face to face with Asimo, and upon close inspection I noticed something on Asimo's face that I didn't know it was there. Take a look at the photo below. Can you see it?
Photos: Evan Ackerman; video: Erico Guizzo and Evan Ackerman
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Every year, the government gives scientists money that they use for amazingly cool things, like building robots that dive to extreme underwater depth and record video like this.
Thanks to funding from taxpayers and philanthropists (and, of course the Internets, which come to think of it also launched as a government program), you can sit on your couch in your underwear and watch magma flow deep under the sea.
This post is part of the Public Science Triumphs organized by our sister site io9 in partnership with several other publications that cover science. On November 23, the U.S. Congress has pledged that its budget supercommittee will present a proposal for US$1.2 trillion in cuts to government spending, which makes us fear for publicly-funded science institutions in the United States. We hope the series will help you and U.S. government representatives remember that science is a non-partisan public good that enriches local and global economies - and makes it all the more awesome to be human.
The video above (you might want to turn down your sound; the scientists get excited) was recorded on equipment carried by the Jason remotely-operated vehicle, which you can see in the foreground. Jason was designed and built by the Wood's Hole Oceanographic Institute, which gets funding from federal agencies, private contributions, and endowments. The vehicle gives scientists access to the seafloor without leaving the deck of a ship. In the video scientists witness for the first time glowing lava from a submarine volcanic eruption. The undersea volcano is part of the Mariana arc, which extends from south of Guam northward more than 800 nautical miles. It's amazing the lava is so hot that it remains red for a split second before the water snuffs it. It was recorded during the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association's (a government-funded institution) Submarine Ring of Fire 2006 exploration.
This is another video from the 2006 NOAA Ring of Fire expedition. Scientists were trying to take samples when the "Brimstone Pit" erupts and nearly engulfs the submarine in an ash plume.
This gorgeous video shows what arctic ice looks like from under water (again, you might want to mute). The 2002 Arctic Expedition Dive, which was supported by the NOAA Ocean Exploration Program, funded team of 50 scientists from the United States, Canada, China and Japan to explore the frigid depths of the Canada Basin in the Arctic Ocean for the first time.
Robert Ballard was the first diver to find the sunken Titanic in 1985. In 2004, thanks to funding from the NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration, he returned to study the ship's rapid deterioration. Ballard and his team spent 11 days in June at the wreck site, mapping the ship and studying its decay. Using the remotel operated vehicles, they used high-definition video and stereoscopic still images to provide an updated assessment of the wreck site 12,600 feet below the surface.
Ok, this is a cheesy IMAX preview. But: Dolphins! The National Science Foundation helped fund this 2000 film so divers could share with anyone who didn't already know how awesome and smart dolphins are. The divers mounted cameras on the front of remote-controlled torpedo-shaped vehicles to examine how dolphin families and societies form, how they communicate with one another, and how humans sometimes adversely affect their health and mortality. The divers (and their dogs!) also have super fun play time in the water with dolphins, which is just mesmerizing to watch.
You can keep up with our Science Editor, Kristen Philipkoski, on Twitter, Facebook, and occasionally Google+ Related StoriesView the original article here
Moneual took a page from the book of iRobot and created an air purifier that motors around your house, doing its dirty work while you are away.
The sensor-filled Rydis H800 purifier will traverse your room, cleaning when it finds a pocket of polluted air. And it's a monster cleaner with a five different filters and a navigation system that'll make sure it hits every nook and cranny. The self-sufficient Rydis H800 even knows to return to its base station to charge when its battery gets too low.
Sadly, it wont cook your meals, do your dishes or massage your feet. You'll have to travel to South Korea if you want that type of robotic indulgence. [Kitchen Design Guide]
You can keep up with Kelly Hodgkins, the author of this post, on Twitter, Google + or Facebook. Related StoriesView the original article here
I don't mind heights, but you won't see my sky diving—or BASE jumping, for that matter. This little Disney-financed BASE jumping robot was seemingly made just for me.
Called the Paraswift, this autonomous 'bot can climb smooth walls using a low pressure vortex, and then leaps from them all by its lonesome before deploying a chute and living the climb another day. It even has a tiny camera on board to record the jump (or splat).
Click to viewEarly tests are limited to a mere 30 feet, but that will seemingly scale with time. This is Disney-funded, after all. The Mouse is unstoppable. [Geeky Gadgets via DVICE]
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