HIRO III lets you feel what you see on screen: “
Researchers in Japan are developing a ‘haptic interface robot’ — the HIRO III, a robot hand that can transmit realistic sensations of touch to a user’s fingertips.
The user straps their fingers into a robot hand. Through the haptic interface the user can sense tactile sensation including the textures of surfaces, size of virtual objects and a sense of weight.
All this is embedded in a 3d display that also renders the user’s hand–positioned just as it is in real world. It is thought this accurate rendering will enhance the realism of the experience.
The developers anticipate its use in in applications such as factory work and for aiding medical procedure.
(Via KurzweilAI » News.)
Parrot’s AR Drone brings flying games to the real world! This automated 4 blade helicopter sports a camera and WiFi hotspot. The player connects over WiFi using an iPhone app and watches a live video feed on the phone. The software then looks for paper tags (other Drones or static markers) in the real world to engage in battle. Space ships and robots are overlaid on these “tags” in the live video feed, thus creating the augmented reality. The player can launch missiles to shoot down intruders. The stabilization software is quite good, making the AR Drone easy to fly. Remote control helis are notoriously difficult to control, but they appear to have worked out all of the bugs! The control mechanism will take some getting used to since it uses the iPhone’s tilt mechanism as a bi-directional input for each axis. The axis is selected by pressing a button on the screen.
- No ETA on pricing or delivery dates.
- They claim the inability to carry payloads (darn, no nerf launcher), but imagine the advertising opportunities.
- Flight time is limited to 15min, but rechargable batteries are quickly replaced.
- They claim no military applications, but if I was doing house to house searches I’d want one. It’s not very quiet, but most of the time bad guys know you’re in the house anyway.
While the gaming aspects of this are interesting, I think it’ll end up being used for surveillance a lot more than gaming. Coming soon to a curious 13 year old in your neighborhood!
A robot and glitch…what more could you want?!?!?
instrumental video nine from beeple on Vimeo.
DARPA strikes again. This article in Scientific American is about their interest (and investment) in LS3 (Legged Squad Support System). DARPA’s goal is to have an autonomous, legged robot that can carry over 180 kg of supplies and travel at least 32 kilometers without refueling.
Although the initial goal is robotic pack mules, robotic soldiers cannot be far behind.
Seems like we’re moving toward the future foreseen by Battlestar Galactica and Terminator….
via Robot Pack Mule to Carry Loads for G.I.s on the Move: Scientific American.
Noel Sharkey, professor of robotics and Artificial Intelligence at the University of Sheffield, discusses ethical issues with robots.
William Saletan of the the New York Times reviewed Michael Belfiore’s new book, The Department of Mad Scientists (book, audio). The book is about DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), the controversial and secretive military group that produces projects (the internet, artificial limbs, human-machine interfaces, etc.) that fundamentally change our lives. And those are only the projects we know about….
Haptic sensation (virtual touch) is the slowest sense to develop in virtual environments. It still is not possible for humans to feel accurately in virtual worlds.
An article in New Scientist described work to give ROBOTS the sense of touch through artificial skin embedded with optical sensors.
Robots that can respond to body language? European researchers have developed a new approach to artificial intelligence that can respond to the subtle nuances of human communication: the meaning inferred from both behavior and conversation. This multifaceted response to human behavior is an outside-the-box approach to artificial intelligence.