Boredom is a Killer
Please, readers! If you experience disinterest, apathy, ennui, malaise, dysthymia, lassitude, or neurasthenia as you peruse this essay... click away to safety!
Read More »Japanese
EXPO21XX: Where the Bots Are
You no longer need to contend with crowds, parking, lousy food, or noise to visit the halls of a conference center. EXPO21XX has created an online exhibition hall to showcase projects in more than 100 university robotics labs from around the world.
Read More »Robot see, Robot Do
It’s not just the Japanese and Americans who are building humanoid robots. An ambitious coalition of researchers from German, French, and Italian universities and research labs recently met in Berlin to tackle the problem of how bots can autonomously learn and develop motor skills in open-ended environments.
Read More »Transhumanism and Superheroes
When I tell people I study transhumanism I get three responses: “What?” “Wow!” and “Is that like posthumanism?”
Read More »A Samsung Robot In Every Home By 2020?
In 1960, South Korea was poorer than two-thirds of the nations in sub-Saharan Africa. Today it’s the world’s most digital nation, with a per capita income of nearly $28,000, higher than New Zealand ($27K) or Portugal ($22K).
Read More »“SixthSense” and the Magic of Fluid Interfaces: An Interview with Pattie Maes of MIT Media Lab
Walking into MIT’s Media Lab is like walking into a digital candy store. On the third floor, you're greeted by an HD display with “Emotional Weather” (data mined from Twitter using an intelligent agent that shows you the emotional content of tweets on any given topic).
Read More »Darwins Robots
Like Christmas tree ornaments rolling around a pool table, the brightly colored little bots were allowed to explore their surroundings.
Read More »Playing Games
Bionic Commando is surprising: it asks, “what could ’80s-era stupidity actually mean?” A reboot of a series launched in 1987, the new Bionic Commando retains the macho posturing and goofball premise of its forebears, but instead of merely riffing ironically on its retro weirdness, it tries to consider their implications. What would it mean to run around with a bionic hook-shot in...
Read More »Robots ‘to revolutionise surgery’
They say by using the natural orifices of the body and the body's own natural scar the belly-button (or umbilicus), it will be possible to insert robots into the body which can help perform every surgical procedure.
Read More »Robotics insights through flies’ eyes
Common and clumsy-looking, the blow fly is a true artist of flight. Suddenly changing direction, standing still in the air, spinning lightning-fast around its own axis, and making precise, pinpoint landings – all these maneuvers are simply a matter of course.
Read More »