“Instead of focusing solely on determining routes to a specified waypoint, our system utilizes analysis of driver behavior in order to identify the set of goals the driver would like to achieve.” That is innovative, and as the video above indicates, AIDA can work to help you efficiently navigate your home city. It still looks suspiciously destination-oriented, and I wonder how much our continued reliance on navigation products is going to make us miss out of serendipitous discoveries, like the mom-and-pop movie theater nearby is showing your favorite B movie, or a big multi-family yard sale is taking place this Saturday. The more we rely on technology to get us where we’re going, the less likely we are to see what’s going on nearby.

AIDA is a product of the MIT SENSElab, the MIT Media Lab’s Personal Robots Group, and the Volkswagen Group of America’s Electronics Research Lab. The full press release is available.

These feats are child’s play for a robot designed for precision maneuvers. Just picture this, now: instead of a six-pack, it’s navigating the smoking rubble of one of humanity’s underground hiding places — you know, after the Robocalypse. A fraction of a second after it bursts into the room, it inputs the locations of all the faces, programs a path for its rapid-fire laser cannon, and…. boom, headshots.

[via BotJunkie and Gizmodo]

Will this be the voice with which our robot antagonists will soothe future generations of cowed humans?

[via Reddit]

An upgraded version of the VOCALOID, with an added conversation function and a new voice, help to make movement of the HRP-4C a bit more sophisticated. And as you can see here, a humanoid robot with human-like singing with an accompanying performance is sure to attract much attention.

VOCALOID is Yamaha’s proprietary vocal-processing technology developed for the manufacture of desktop music.

Drew, it’s now your responsibility to rock me to sleep tonight. A little scotch in my milk will help.

[via Gearfuse and Forever Geek]

Next is a more practical (though equally frightening) affair. This web-shooting ceiling-lurker gets around (extremely slowly, but still) by firing its little grippers and then ratcheting up the “web.” Nice to know someone could slip one of these in the window and it could be waiting above the door in your foyer by the time you get home.

It moves more like an extremely nervous robo-sloth than anything, but the webs clearly mark it as a spider-based design. It’s built and maintained by the Ben Gurion University Mechatronics Department.

[via Dvice and Robots.net]

My mind, of course, immediately jumps to the fact that those “hot spots” could just as easily be warm, fleeing humans after the Robocalypse, but for the moment that’s not a danger. For the moment.

This one in particular is being used in Alaska, where a major wildfire has destroyed almost half a million acres since June. Check out the video below. I like how they fire the thing into the air like a toy glider.

It’s got a couple freaky-looking arms capable of either carrying a wounded soldier or daintily plucking a grenade out of a purse. It cruises around on a cool sort of double-tread that can change angle to help it get over rubble (or human rubble). It’s pretty cool, but I think their next design goal should be making it less frightening. Human-looking or not human-looking, you gotta make a choice here, guys.

[via CNET]

Looks like the Robocalypse is going to have to wait on battery technology. The Hummingbot/Hunter-seeker we saw last month has improved somewhat, and is now capable of more than falling while flapping its wings. It can, in fact, hover in a controlled fashion for up to 20 seconds. If you’re quick, that’s enough time to get it through the ducts and assassinate the Kwisatz Haderach, but I’d wait until they can get it up to a full minute.

The bot is part of ongoing research by DARPA to create a sort of suite of robots for deployment in combat. This one would be for checking out potential hiding spots, bomb locations, or sniper perches. They call it a Nano Air Vehicle. And remember, it’s cute now, but when it’s loaded with a neurotoxin and trying to sneak up behind the barricades…

[via Dvice and BoingBoing]

New Scientist brings us word of Robot OS.

Roboticists have begun to think about what robots have in common and what aspects of their construction can be standardised, hopefully resulting in a basic operating system everyone can use. This would let roboticists focus their attention on taking the technology forward.

My plans for world domination will be greatly enhanced by the commoditization of robots. Hurry up, guys!!

If you’ve never had legitimate and fresh Japanese ramen, do yourself a favor and look up a place in town that offers it. I like the wide noodles — although I’d prefer it if you wouldn’t repeat that out of context. If I’m honest, though, the flesh-based ramen guys could deliver a bowl in less than the time it took these robots to do it, but they didn’t do it with as much flair or beautiful precision. They even horse around when they’re not working! I see no reason why these shouldn’t be on every street corner.

[via Wired]

The good news is that it isn’t stable at more than 7 km/h. If you can run faster than that, you’re all right. But if it has a rifle attached to its head, you’re out of luck. And believe me, it’s going to have a rifle attached to its head.

Yes, it can use plants and compost and stuff like that, but let’s be honest. You’re deploying these on a battlefield. These sons of bitches are going to be eating bodies all day long. And you think it’ll stop there?

In the presentation on the EATR (I know) robot’s construction and AI, it is shown that the robot creates plans for the next 50ms to the next 24 hours. Sure, if it’s in a foxhole with you, its one-hour plan is to sit tight and wait for backup. But if shutdown is imminent, it may start implementing Code Dahmer in its long-term strategy.

Seriously, it’s not enough to create simple sniper-bots, you have to make some that actively crave flesh?

[via HardOCP and Fox News]

The idea is that these micro air vehicles, or MAVs, would carry small sensors and be able to investigate, say, a radioactive or toxic area that other robots can’t access. Check out the way the bat works:

We’re using an alloy that responds to the heat from an electric current. That heat actuates micro-scale wires the size of a human hair, making them contract like ‘metal muscles.’

Yeah, I’m sure the machines will never be using these terrifying metal muscles against us when the time comes. At least these bat-things don’t have the power of flight yet; the researchers are putting together a full prototype with super-light materials (the whole thing weighs under 6g) so they can figure out just how to make that bat-flight thing work.

The latest fiend to come out of DARPA human-extinction research money is this Nano Air Vehicle, which flies like a hummingbird, at least for the few seconds it’s managing to stay up at this stage of research.

The idea, of course, is to create something like the hunter-seeker from Dune, floating silently in through the air vent and executing you while you sleep. Do not fear… fear is the mind-killer…

[via Wired Danger Room]

It charges itself and finds its own way around, and even lets you know via LED when it’s found an extra-dirty spot that needs a little extra inchworming across. It was shown at the TokyoFiber Senseware expo in Milan.

Ah, I just remembered what this thing reminds me of. Remember Out of this World?

I’d be afraid my little floorbot would one day rear up, bare its single poisoned fang, and take me down as vengeance for all the crumbs it had to mop up.

[via Pink Tentacle]

Yes, Neo woke up to one of these bastards. Looks like the Fraunhofer Institute is putting together the prototype for our future oppressors! Once they’ve broken us with their sniper-bots, these harvest machines will make sure no human heat goes unabsorbed. Good job, guys.

[Eurekalert via Botjunkie and Dvice]

The Vigilante 502 is an Army project meant to maintain visibility in areas where enemies can quickly disappear into the hills or what have you. This sucker can keep up with them, though, and then of course put heat on them from a kilometer away.

That’s all well and good, but isn’t this really just the precursor to these automated helicopters from Ghost in the Shell? (Anime warning)

[via DVICE]

Doug Aamoth here in Boston at the 2009 RoboBusiness Expo with some fodder for the “Robots Will Eventually Rise Up and Kill Us All” debate. No matter which side of the argument you support, if you’re someday killed by an autonomous robot it won’t have been made by iRobot.

Towards the end of his How Robots Make War More Survivable presentation this morning Vice Admiral Joseph W. Dyer (U.S. Navy, Ret.), President of the Government & Industrial Robots division of iRobot, touched on the subject of robot ethics. He posed the following question:

Will we ever see autonomous killing machines?

All military robots are currently operated by a human, and while autonomous robots are in development, that autonomy will progress in stages – they’ll require less and less control by humans until they’re fully automated. Picture a kind of robotic cruise control, if you will. Also, today, if a military robot loses communications, a soldier has to go and retrieve it. Soon, if a robot loses communications, it’ll maneuver itself back to the last point it had a com signal.

There will be armed robots but iRobot believes that “life-and-death decisions should not be made independent of a human.” The Laws of Armed Conflict (LOAC) places responsibility on humans, who are currently always in the loop when controlling military robots. In the future, iRobot believes that the introduction of more autonomous robots will call for a new code of ethics. For now, though, iRobot has no plans to create a military robot capable of killing without first being authorized by a rational human being.

Dyer also commented that the battlefield of the future will look different in that we’ll see far fewer human soldiers. He gave the example of an unmanned underwater vehicle hitting the shore and deploying a bunch of unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that can be controlled safely from afar.

This is important because currently over half of all soldier casualties occur at the point of first contact with the enemy. Military robots are able to greatly increase soldiers’ “situational awareness” by, for instance, surveying buildings before soldiers enter. UAVs also give a birds-eye-view of a battlefield, which is helpful from a logistics standpoint. Dyer referred to the most basic battlefield questions: “Where is the enemy, what is he doing, and where the hell am I?” Military robots are, for the most part, helpful in answering those questions safely.

Here’s a video featuring soldiers using military robots in battle. The quality’s not great, but it’s a video of a video taken from the back of a dark room. If I had my own robot, I could have maneuvered it up closer to the screen without causing too much commotion.

Adoption of UGVs is on the rise, with most functions currently entailing things like clearing buildings in Iraq and searching caves in Afghanistan. Dyer mused that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is a closet gamer, as he was shown actually smiling (see below) while testing a UGV. Apparently he “didn’t stand in the sense-of-humor line all that long,” according to Dyer.

As far as what’s driving the development of smart weapons and virtual presence technology, it’s predominantly logistics. The whole idea is to increase attack speed and survivability while reducing exposure. There’s been a shift from broad attacks to precision, surgical attacks thanks to the help of UAVs, UGVs, and recently, UUVs (unmanned underwater vehicles.

From a development standpoint, the UAV market took 20 years to sell half a million units, the UGV took 10 years, and the newer UUV market is expected to take about ten years as well. The U.S. is the current leader in military robotics and, when asked which country would be able to potentially challenge that crown, Dyer responded that Japan and China can produce robotic technology quickly and on a large scale, but “Korea is most worrisome” as government and private industry is placing a lot of emphasis on military robotics. It might soon become one of the biggest industries there.

The mecha-fish we saw a few weeks ago were also slightly unnerving, but at least they’re being put to good purpose.

[via Reddit]

This fun little video demonstrates how to become an evil, bitter human being and take it out on the world. An interesting alternative to the Terminator-style robocalypse, and possibly worse, since you can’t shoot nanobots. They’d just eat the bullets.

I find I’m actually quite good at laughing maniacally. Does that mean I’m more likely to become a villain? I’m not saying that’s bad or anything.