robot

a Robot readable world

9 February 2012

Terminator was very right when looking humans over the shoulder. We are so blind when analyzing our environment, machines can identify frillions of cars within a fraction of a second, can we?

Well, some still can’t differentiate between a van, a lorry and a car but time will tell. Matt Jones (from Berg) joined a growing discussion back in 2007 around creating a RFID-covered world, so instead of teaching machines to relate, identify and gather data based on how humans see reality, facilitate this task by covering reality with markers codes and signs that to us, humans, may not mean anything but for machines is another world.

Robotreadableworld
Robotreadableworld

Regardless of the outcome it’s particularly interesting to see the ever-growing number of sophisticated techniques and algorithms machines use to identify and quantify human life. From the artistic point of view the good people @ Shynola are now immersed in their very own track&trace film “The Red Men Movie” based on the novel by Matthew De Abaitua and produced by warpfilms.

PeopleTracking
PeopleTracking

And while they get it done Norwegian director Timo Arnall (remember his previous “nearness” project with Berg?) has compiled and uploaded this little video up here to give us a hint of how machines currently see us… and make sense of our messy world. Discussion this way.

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NAO Next Gen

13 December 2011

Another one gone viral…. yesterday just a few thousands and now over 100K views! The new more-than-a-toy NAO humanoid by French robotics manufacturer Aldebaran Robitics is now out for just 15.000$!!! A bargain!

It’s obviously not aimed at final users like us (although it’s their ultimate goal) but at researchers… for educational, scientific  and development purposes…. for now.

NAO became really successful a few years ago when it became the standard platform for the ROBOCUP league,  making it one of the most widely accepted humanoids on earth. Now that Aldebaran Robotics have a big fan base (sold over 2000 units on top of the freely distributed ones) and they want to make of NAO a basic element for the future of education.

It seems like it has become (we’re still hoping a lot from those good looking Japanese Ropid units) the de-facto standard and their new version packs a 1.6GHz processor and two HD cameras to improve performance in face-and-object recognition.

We’re simply just a few years ago from having our own helping humanoid at home.

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Ropid

28 October 2009
Ropid by Robo Garage
Ropid by Robo Garage

Ain’t it cute? With that little head and those big eyes who can say robots are scary? Ropid is the latest creation of Robo Garage a studio from the Kyoto University directed by Tomotaka Takahashi.

Continue reading Ropid

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