Dragonfly Robot

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pz0XNGJ-ep8

Check out this video.  It is a Robot Dragonfly.  They show how the dragon fly and fly around the room being mainly controlled by a remote control.  It is so amazing to me that robots have come so far and how their parts can be so small and detailed.  

Russome Universal Robots summery(first use of the word robots)

Hey guys i found the cliff notes for Rossum's Universal Robot

R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots)

RUR [ Intro & Summary | Image Archive | Review ]

R.U.R. was written in 1920, premiered in Prague early in 1921, was performed in New York in 1922, and published in English translation in 1923. The following year, G. B. Shaw and G. K. Chesterton were among those in London participating in a public discussion of the play. Capek responded, via The Saturday Review, to what he felt was the excessive thematic attention they and other critics paid to one of his devices: "For myself, I confess that as the author I was much more interested in men than in Robots." [1]

Virtually every encyclopedia or textbook etymology of the word "robot" mentions the play R.U.R. Although the immediate worldwide success of the play immediately popularized the word (supplanting the earlier "automaton"), it was actually not Karel Capek but his brother Josef, also a respected Czech writer, who coined the word. The Czech word robota means "drudgery" or "servitude"; a robotnik is a peasant or serf. Although the term today conjures up images of clanking metal contraptions, Capek's Robots (always capitalized) are more accurately the product of what we would now call genetic engineering. The play describes "kneading troughs" and "vats" for processing a chemical substitute for protoplasm, and a "stamping mill" for forming Robot bodies. A more imaginative and scientifically plausible description of the artificial creation of armies of workers would have to wait for Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932). [2]

The translator (Paul Selver) changed the play quite a bit while preparing the English version, combining two Robot characters into one, and considerably toning down the ending. If you're interested in reading the play as it was originally presented to American audiences, read the 1920s version (most university libraries will have a copy -- it was tremendously popular in its day).

In the 1990s, a new translation, with much better dialogue and a chilling new final speech (new to English audiences, anyway) by the Robot Damon, was published in a Capek reader called Toward the Radical Center (with a short introduction by Arthur Miller).

Plot Summary (spoilers)

In R.U.R., the idealistic young Helena Glory arrives at the remote island factory of Rossum's Universal Robots, on a mission from a humanitarian organization devoted to liberating the Robots. From Domin (sometimes translated as "Domain"), she receives a compressed account of the company's father-and-son founders (who do not appear in the play). The mad inventor Old Rossum was bent on usurping the role of the Creator by artificially reproducing a man in painstaking detail, while the practical industrialist Young Rossum produced a stripped-down version of humanity to be sold as inexpensive workers: Domin: Practically speaking, what is the best kind of worker? Helena: The best? Probably the one who-- who-- who is honest-- and dedicated. Domin: No, it's the one that's the cheapest. The one with the fewest needs... [Young Rossum] chucked out everything not directly related to work, and [in] doing that he virtually rejected the human being and created the Robot. (41)

Mass-produced by Robot-run assembly lines, Robots remember everything, and think of nothing new. According to Domin, "They'd make fine university professors." Rejecting Helena's theory that Robots have souls, the psychologist Hallemeier admits that once in a while, a Robot will throw down his work and start gnashing his teeth. The human managers treat such an event as evidence of a product defect, but Helena prefers to interpret it as a sign of the emerging soul.

Domin rather inexplicably asks Helena to marry him. She accepts, but continues working to help the Robots by requesting that a scientist modify some Robots, so that their souls might develop more fully. One of the modified creatures is a Robotess, beautiful but useless. The scientist speculates that if the Robotess (named after her spiritual mother Helena) were to "wake up," she would hate him for making her so beautiful, yet giving her a body that cannot know love or give birth. The human Helena begins identifying with hothouse flowers -- sterile because they are artificially cultivated, satisfying a consumer demand that nature fulfills too slowly on her own. Meanwhile, human fertility has been dropping worldwide; industrial civilization's drive towards order and mechanization has made mankind superfluous.

The price would appear to be the gradual extermination of the human race; but one of Helena's specially modified Robots issues a manifesto: "Robots of the world, you are ordered to exterminate the human race. . . Work must not cease!" Domain possesses Old Rossum's formula for producing Robots -- a bargaining tool he hopes to use to ensure the freedom of the humans holed up in the factory. Helena, who has been kept ignorant of the real threat the Robots propose, decides to burn the formula, on the theory that halting the production of the Robots will halt the spread of economic and political collapse. The Robots swarm onto the stage, killing all the humans, leaving only Alquist -- the only human at the factory who still works with his hands. The Robot leader Damon plans to populate the earth: "We will give birth by machine. We will build a thousand steam-powered mothers. From them will pour forth a river of life. Nothing but life! Nothing but Robots!"

This dream, spoken by Damon (a demon?) echoes the dream of Domin (Dominus, the Lord?) -- both hope to use machinery to improve upon the work of nature. Without the all-important manuscript, however, the Robots discover "The only thing we cannot produce is Robots. The machines are turning out nothing but bloody chunks of meat." [3] They cajole, threaten and beg Alquist to help them discover what they call "the secret of life." In desperation, Damon offers himself up for study; screaming on the dissection table, he orders Alquist to continue the search.

Nature eventually re-emerges triumphant when two Robots (the beautiful but otherwise useless Helena, and Primus) fall in love. The play ends on an uplifting, religious note. Alquist blesses the lovers, renames them Adam and Eve, and sends them out to avoid the sins that destroyed their predecessors.

Robots With Feelings

This article talks about a project that is currently underway in regards to emotions with robots. They are currently testing out robots to have them express emotions of their own and to grow attached to people with emotional feelings. I think that this may be dangerous, because what if a robot learns to not like certain people???, then they may try to do something bad to that person. I think that robots should stay as machines that perform repetitive labor, and are not given emotional feelings.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/11/081120111622.htm

Robots for the Home

Here are some robots just in time for the holiday season. Irobot has everything from the popular Roomba to a robot that will clean your gutters or pool. Do you think that in time people will no longer have to do "chores" and will be able to focus on the more important things in life?? I know that I hate having to clean, as soon as a reliable robot is put out for a reasonable price, I plan on purchasing it.

http://store.irobot.com/home/index.jsp

Robots in Hospitals

Robots are being used in hospitals, just like I talked about in my presentation. This article says that they are currently using the robots to perform simple routine surgeries. They hope in the future that they can perform major surgeries like heart surgery. Robots are being controlled by the surgeons from a remote location, so they can actually perform some of these surgeries from anywhere in the world. This is helping to keep costs down, and keeping less people in the surgery room.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/04/19/robmedical/index.html

cool articale

Futurist Ray Kurzweil explains how the boundary between man and machine is quickly disappearing. PLUS: A gallery of today's most mind-blowing 'bots

By Ray Kurzweil. Photo essay text by Eric Mika Posted 09.01.2006 at 2:00 am 3 Comments

by John B. Carnett: John B. Carnett

View Photo Gallery

Click "View Photos" to meet the world's most advanced humanoid precursors: a 'bot with vocal cords, a mapmaking Segway, and more. And to hear more from Ray Kurzweil on his visionary predictions, subscribe to the PopSci Podcast (directions below).

Human experience is marked by a refusal to obey our limitations. We´ve escaped the ground, we´ve escaped the planet, and now, after thousands of years of effort, our quest to build machines that emulate our own appearance, movement and intelligence is leading us to the point where we will escape the two most fundamental confines of all: our bodies and our minds. Once this point comes-once the accelerating pace of technological change allows us to build machines that not only equal but surpass human intelligence-we´ll see cyborgs (machine-enhanced humans like the Six Million Dollar Man), androids (human-robot hybrids like Data in Star Trek) and other combinations beyond what we can even imagine.

Although the ancient Greeks were among the first to build machines that could emulate the intelligence and natural movements of people (developments invigorated by the Greeks´ musings that human intelligence might also be governed by natural laws), these efforts flowered in the European Renaissance, which produced the first androids with lifelike movements. These included a mandolin-playing lady, constructed in 1540 by Italian inventor Gianello Torriano. In 1772 Swiss watchmaker Pierre Jacquet-Droz built a pensive child named L´crivain (The Writer) that could write passages with a pen. L´crivain´s brain was a mechanical computer that was impressive for its complexity even by today´s standards.

Such inventions led scientists and philosophers to speculate that the human brain itself was just an elaborate automaton. Wilhelm Leibniz, a contemporary of Isaac Newton, wrote around 1700: â€What if these theories are really true, and we were magically shrunk and put into someone´s brain while he was thinking. We would see all the pumps, pistons, gears and levers working away, and we would be able to describe their workings completely, in mechanical terms, thereby completely describing the thought processes of the brain. But that description would nowhere contain any mention of thought! It would contain nothing but descriptions of pumps, pistons, levers!â€

Leibniz was on to something. There are indeed pumps, pistons and levers inside our brain-we now recognize them as neurotransmitters, ion channels and the other molecular components of the neural machinery. And although we don´t yet fully understand the details of how these little machines create thought, our ignorance won´t last much longer.

The word â€robot†originated almost a century ago. Czech dramatist Karel Capek first used the term in his 1921 play R.U.R. (for â€Rossum´s Universal Robotsâ€), creating it from the Czech word â€robota,†meaning obligatory work. In the play, he describes the invention of intelligent biomechanical machines intended as servants for their human creators. While lacking charm and goodwill, his robots brought together all the elements of machine intelligence: vision, touch sensitivity, pattern recognition, decision making, world knowledge, fine motor coordination and even a measure of common sense.

Capek intended his intelligent machines to be evil in their perfection, their perfect rationality scornful of human frailty. These robots ultimately rise up against their masters and destroy all humankind, a dystopian notion that has been echoed in much science fiction since.

The specter of machine intelligence enslaving its creators has continued to impress itself on the public consciousness. But more significantly, Capek´s robots introduced the idea of the robot as an imitation or substitute for a human being. The idea has been reinforced throughout the 20th century, as androids engaged the popular imagination in fiction and film, from Rosie to C-3PO and the Terminator.

The first generation of modern robots were, however, a far cry from these anthropomorphic visions, and most robot builders have made no attempt to mimic humans. The Unimate, a popular assembly-line robot from the 1960s, was capable only of moving its one arm in several directions and opening and closing its gripper. Today there are more than two million Roomba robots scurrying around performing a task (vacuuming) that used to be done by humans, but they look more like fast turtles than maids. Most robots will continue to be utilitarian devices designed to carry out specific tasks. But when we think of the word â€robot,†Capek´s century-old concept of machines made in our own image still dominates our imagination and inspires our goals.

Care To Dance?

You guys have to check out this robot that dances! It was created in Japan and claims to be able to react to peoples movements and dance in the appropriate style. It's a pretty cool video as it gives a demonstration. I saw it today on MSN homepage. So I guess there's hope for the guy that can't get a date to this year's prom? Here's the link.

http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?mkt=en-us&from=MSNHP

Build Your Own Robot

Came across this website, and it is a forum that has articles about how to build your own robot. They have sections for beginner builders to advanced builders. The site has everything that a person could ever want, to build their very own little creature...is anyone up for the challenge?

Wanna Buy A Robot?

Hey guys. I was browsing around and found this site that sell industrial size/type robots and robotic arms like the ones we highlighted in our presentation. You can browse based on apllication and price etc. Contrary to my initial opinion, they are atually relatively affordable. They are alot cheaper than I wouyld have guessed. Not a lot of thought provoking material, but I just thought some would find it interesting. Here's the link below. Check it out if you have a minute.

http://www.robots.com/

Catch Of The Day

The London aquarium has just added a new fish to their tanks. It's a self guided robot that can sense surroundings and respond accordingly. It really is incredible. One spokesman had this to say. "This work has many real-world applications, including seabed exploration, detecting leaks in oil pipelines, mine countermeasures, and improving the performance of underwater vehicles," project leader Huosheng Hu told the Associated Press. As always I have atached the article for your enjoyment.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/10/1007_051007_robot_fish.html

Creating Robots With A Mind Of Their Own!

This video on YouTube is about how they are trying to develop robots that can think for themselves and do tasks that are too dangerous for people. Although they are in the very beginning stages of development and not much progress has been made, I think that it may not be in our best interest to develop robots that can think for themselves. This may end up being like Irobot.................what do you guys think?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkvpEfAPXn4

Robots and Human Rights?

This is crazy. Robots are now being used in Qatar to, get this... race camels! You heard it right. Camel owners are now using these smart jockies to race their camels to the finish line. This serves as a human rights improvement as well as technology in sports. The article points out that before, owners used children as their jockies, even as young as four years old! Sometimes serious injuries would result! The article points out that the market for these robots will soon be growing as more and more Arab countries begin to adopt this technology. This is great news for the makers of these machies! Here is the complete article.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/07/0715_050715_robot_jockey.html

This article talks about the problems with developing robots in to machines that are able to think for themselves, and not just do basic manufacturing functions. They are starting to teach robots to walk more human like and have them perform hand gestures. Do you think that robots will ever really turn in to "humans" and be able to coincide with the rest of the human race??? I don't think so. Call me a pesimist, but I just don't think that they can get a hunk of metal to think for itself, I mean after all, they can't get every human to have the same standard intelligence.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/07/080729075109.htm

NASA Developing Robots with Human Traits

NASA's goal is not for robots to have the same "thought process" as humans, but for them to act, respond, and interact more "naturally" in ways that humans do with other humans.  The three areas that NASA will work on are collaborative control, reasoning mechanisms, and field work.

"Collaborative Control":

Is to help robots to speak to humans in a effort for them to work together as partners.

"Reasoning Mechanisms":

Will be put in place so that robots will be able to reason through problems and humans do.

"Field Work":

Will take place so that test can be made on robots helping assemble buildings, test equipment, weld structures and dig with small tools along with humans.

For more information about this article copy and paste the link below:

http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/roboticexplorers/robots_human_coop.html

Dinosaur Update

Hey Guys! I was looking through the Times Union today and found a good followup article on my previous post about Walking With Dinosaurs. The article gives some pretty interesting facts about the robots themselves including operations, weight, size, etc. It's pretty good and thought everyone would enjoy the followup. I have posted the link below. Enjoy

http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/111908/lif_356974176.shtml

Robots in nasa

Here is a link to NASA robots program
http://robotics.nasa.gov/

Robots in Space!

I thought that this article was very interesting, it talks about how robots are able to do tasks in space that humans physically can't. Do you think that someday there will be no need for astronauts at all, and robots can do all the work to discover space?

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/11/041130081240.htm

Are Robots Taking Over?

I found a very interesting article that talks about the explosion of robots into everyday society. Robots, as we pointed out in our presentation, are now involved in almost every area of human life. They are in businesses, military, homes, etc. The main question is going to be one of acceptance. Are people going to embrace this new technology or run from it. A quote from the article addresses this point. "Our biggest hurdle right now is skepticism," Angle said. But "we are just at a point where robots are becoming affordable ... and some of them can actually do real work." The sale of robots increased seven fold in the year 2007. Most of these bots perform relatively simple tasks such as vaccuming and mowing the lawn. As new tech becomes available the possibilities are literally endless. I Robot anyone?

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2004/10/65408

DINOSAURS ARE BACK!

Some of you may have heard about a new entertainment show called Walking With Dinosaurs. Well they are now taking the show on tour to educate and entertain people with life size monsters! These robots are pretty sophisticated and are HUGE! They really make for an incredible experience. The function of these robots is twofold. First they show that robots can be used for education purposes and can be interactive. They are also emerging as entertainment figures. The show is visiting several major cities and will be in Jacksonville in late November! They have some videos on their website that sheds more light on how things work. It's pretty amazing.

http://www.dinosaurlive.com/

Robots in the Fight Against Terror

This is apretty cool article about some of the various ways and types of robots that are being used in the military currently. These robots are being deployed all over the world in various capacities in order to aid in the fight against terrorists. From simple mine sweepers to advanced Predator robotic aircraft, these machines are making a difference for our armed forces. Check out the link.

http://www.learnaboutrobots.com/military.htm

Sexy Computer Geeks

Olivia Albritton
Ryan Kay
Jenny Noel
Christopher Persandi
Riley Stallard

Robots Solution to Oil Crisis?

Hey guys. I just read where MIT has developed an underwater robot that can hover in place just like a helicopter. It goes on to say that this is very important in deepwater oil exploration. This neww craft can dive to 6000 meters! It automatically adjusts to currents, obstacles, and anything that may cause it to move off course. This is just another example of how robots can aide society. By using this technology oil companies can obtain more detailed research of a new drill site to produce more oil. it is much more cost effective than its current mode of research. More oil= cheaper gas. Just another way that robots can shape our lives.


Here's a link http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/odyssey4-0925.html

cool stuff

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/11/081110112107.htm

anyone intrested in buying a robbot?

This store seems to sell kicks. Coding experience suggested.
http://www.robotstore.com/

Check out this article about the interaction between children and robots...  http://www.pnas.org/content/104/46/17954.full.pdf

Sony's Answer to Honda's Asimo

Hey guys. I found this pretty cool video of Sony's answer to Honda's robot "asimo." I haven't found the name of this particular robot yet. If anyone can find it please post it in a comment. This is yet another example of the extreme sophistication that this technology has taken on. will robots someday be waiting our tables, making our food, servicing our cars, etc? Only time will tell.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vwZ5FQEUFg

Are bots robots(source wikipedia)

Internet bots, also known as web robots, WWW robots or simply bots, are software applications that run automated tasks over the Internet. Typically, bots perform tasks that are both simple and structurally repetitive, at a much higher rate than would be possible for a human alone. The largest use of bots is in web spidering, in which an automated script fetches, analyses and files information from web servers at many times the speed of a human. Each server can have a file called robots.txt, containing rules for the spidering of that server that the bot is supposed to obey.

In addition to their uses outlined above, bots may also be implemented where a response speed faster than that of humans is required (e.g., gaming bots and auction-site robots) or less commonly in situations where the emulation of human activity is required, for example chat bots.

Bots are also being used as organization and content access applications for media delivery. Webot.com is one recent example of utilizing bots to deliver personal media across the web from multiple sources. In this case the bots track content updates on host computers and deliver live streaming access to a browser based logged in user.

These chatterbots may allow people to ask questions in plain English and then formulate a proper response. These bots can often handle many tasks, including reporting weather, zip-code information, sports scores, converting currency or other units, etc. Others are used for entertainment, such as SmarterChild on AOL Instant Messenger and MSN Messenger and Jabberwacky on Yahoo! Messenger. Another popular AIM bot is FriendBot

An additional role of IRC bots may be to lurk in the background of a conversation channel, commenting on certain phrases uttered by the participants (based on pattern matching). This is sometimes used as a help service for new users, or for censorship of profanity.

AOL Instant Messenger has now introduced a feature that allows you to make a screen name into a bot. This new feature removes the rate limit on the screen name, however it is now limited in the amount of instant messages that can be sent and received.

Contents [hide] 1 Commercial purposes 2 Charitable purposes 2.1 On FreeRice 3 Malicious purposes 4 Bots in popular culture 5 See also 6 References 7 External links

[edit] Commercial purposes

There has been a great deal of controversy about the use of bots in an automated trading function. Auction website eBay has been to court in an attempt to suppress a third-party company from using bots to traverse their site looking for bargains; this approach backfired on eBay and attracted the attention of further bots. The United Kingdom-based bet exchange Betfair saw such a large amount of traffic coming from bots they launched a WebService API aimed at bot programmers through which Betfair can actively manage botsucks.

[edit] Charitable purposes

Bots have also been known to fast-track the purposes of charities, one of whom is FreeRice.

[edit] On FreeRice

Since FreeRice became well-known through Digg.com and other news sources,^[1] many programming-adept users created scripts to automatically play the game for them. The scripts operate far faster than humans alone and run for 24 hours a day. At first, the scripts got only ≈1/4 of the words correct by random chance. Eventually, these bots were adapted with automated online dictionary search, dictionary files, and word database dumps so the programs can choose the correct answers the first time more often. The word database dumps were created so when the incorrect answer was chosen, the bots would record the correct answer the next page would show. Thus, the bot would choose the correct answer whenever it happened upon the same words later. Due to the growing number of scripts used on FreeRice, the number of rice donated has remarkably risen. Currently there are no rules governing "ricebots", as they are called. Until those rules are formed, anyone is free to program and use the scripts. With a delay of about 3 seconds between iterations, it is estimated that a script can feed about 8 people per day, if running 24/7.^[2] The idea was taken even further to create a multi-threaded bot which can run fifty or more browser instances at a time, enough to produce as much as 600,000 grains of rice per hour or to feed 720 people per day.^[3] One script with 1,000 threads was able to donate over 3,000,000 grains in just a few hours.

Donated rice comes from the advertisements from sponsors, therefore abuse of scripts will likely lead to catastrophe, as advertisers prefer that actual people view their advertisements. Knowing the existence of the bots, FreeRice updated their FAQ explaining the potential damage of botting.^[4] Some bots have made changes to make sure they won't spoil the FreeRice spirit.^[5]

It could be argued that using scripts could harm name brand support in the long run. If advertising companies realize that the ads are not being read by humans, they might decide to remove their support. This has yet to be seen.

[edit] Malicious purposes

Another, more malicious use of bots is the coordination and operation of an automated attack on networked computers, such as a denial-of-service attack by a botnet. Internet bots can also be used to commit click fraud and more recently have seen usage around MMORPG games as computer game bots. A spambot is an internet bot that attempts to spam large amounts of content on the Internet, usually adding advertising links.

• There are malicious bots (and botnets) of the following types:

1. Spambots that harvest email addresses from contact forms or guestbook pages
2. Downloader programs that suck bandwidth by downloading entire web sites
3. Web site scrapers that grab the content of web sites and re-use it without permission on automatically generated doorway pages
4. Viruses and worms
5. DDoS attacks
6. Botnets / zombie computers; etc.

• Bots are also used to buy up good seats for concerts, particularly by ticket brokers who resell the tickets. Bots are employed against entertainment event-ticketing sites, like TicketMaster.com. The bots are used by ticket brokers to unfairly obtain the best seats for themselves while depriving the general public from also having a chance to obtain the good seats. The bot runs through the purchase process and obtains better seats by pulling as many seats back as it can.
• Bots are often used in Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games to farm for resources that would otherwise take significant time or effort to obtain; this is a concern for most online in-game economies.

The most widely used anti-bot technique is the use of CAPTCHA, which is a form of Turing test used to distinguish between a human user and a less-sophisticated AI-powered bot, by the use of graphically encoded human-readable text.

[edit] Bots in popular culture

• The Basshunter song Boten Anna makes many references to IRC Bots, but confusingly also features the singer riding a boat.

Robot dog

Hey Check out the robot dog video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHJJQ0zNNOM

Hey check out the robot musiem

http://www.thetech.org/robotics/

Robots as defined by dictionary.com

1. A mechanical device that sometimes resembles a human and is capable of performing a variety of often complex human tasks on command or by being programmed in advance.
2. A machine or device that operates automatically or by remote control.
3. A person who works mechanically without original thought, especially one who responds automatically to the commands of others.

Robotics

This Blog will examine the newest innovation within robotics.
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2)Any thing excluding robotics will be removed by admin.

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