Tanga Robot

Why you should care about the Uncanny Valley

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Tanga RobotI am going to make a number of assumptions about a certain group of roboticists. They:

  1. May have heard the term “Uncanny Valley.”
  2. Are vaguely aware that it has something to do with people’s revulsion of certain types of humanoid robots.
  3. Feel the concept of “Uncanny Valley” has nothing to do with them, because they deal with “real” robots, not those faddish, impractical, Japanese human imitation contraptions.

If the above describes you, guess what? You are wrong; the “Uncanny Valley” may impact your work, and sooner than you think.

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Telepresence: The killer app for robots? UPDATE

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 Update: This telepresence article inspired more than a few comments in LinkedIn discussion groups.  With the authors’ permission, we are reposting comments made by Tandy Trower of Hoaloha Robotics, and Jim Gunderson of Gamma Two Robots.

“For certain types of scenarios, telepresence is very useful. For example, it has enabled us to explore the surface of Mars, inspect the nuclear reactor buildings in Japan, and enable soldiers to remotely defuse bombs. However, for business and personal/consumer scenarios it is much less clear if the value proposition works. Read more

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Is There a Robot in the House?

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robot_housecleaner_275Here we are, well into the second decade of a new millennium, and not only is there a conspicuous absence of jet packs, but also no robot butler made my breakfast this morning.  Domestic robots are not completely unknown, of course.  There’s the famous vacuuming Roomba, and home-based medical robots are starting to appear.  Yet, while robots are ubiquitous in industry, and rapidly expanding in the military sphere, their presence in our homes is minimal. Read more

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Where are the Japanese robots? – DECEMBER UPDATE

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December Update If you are not reading The Robot Report (and you should be; it’s one of the best things on the web about the robotic industry), you may have missed their article about the Fukushima Daiichi disaster.  Much of what it says will not be news to the readers of this blog, but one paragraph caught my attention:

“In the case of Fukushima, both iRobot and QinetiQ, companies that volunteered equipment to Tepco, instructors found that senior Tepco employees were chosen to be trained to operate the American and British robots yet they were less suited to the task than the 20-year olds who had gamer experience. The remote-controlled PackBot and Talon robots and the RC Bobcat tractors, all used gaming consoles to operate their devices and the senior employees were slow to learn. In a recent Webinar on the issue by Robotic Trends, the trainers found that 20-year olds learned in less than a day while it took the older Tepco employees many days to gain the same level of competence.”

With the recent rapid growth of unmanned systems, there has been much speculation about the disruptive effects of their wide-spread adoption.  A commonly-held view is that low-skilled workers will be displaced, while an educated elite (presumably people who make robots) will continue to thrive. Read more

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Walk n’ Roll

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10065456 funny robot walk with cogwheelShould robots walk or roll?  While the answer to this question is obvious for certain applications, it has implications for the entire robot industry, and society as a whole.

Colin Angle, CEO of iRobot, has seen the future of robots, and they aren’t walking. In an interview with Pilots Presence (reprinted in IEEE Spectrum), Angle criticized the millions of dollars spent on developing bipedal robots.  These systems often require large groups of support personnel during operation, and have a Mean Time To Failure of 45 minutes. Angle compares these delicate, slow-moving, humanoid systems to the robust iRobot Warrior UGV, which uses treads. Watch this video of the Warrior 710 running rampant over rocks and up stairs, and you will understand his preference for non-legged robots. Wheeled/treaded robots are cheaper, simpler, and more rugged. Read more

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The Unmanned Farmer

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Farms grow more than just food.  For the last couple of years, one of the biggest crops has been unmanned systems. Click here to read about it.

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AMREL on Wired.com

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Wired has a video featuring MESA’s amazing ACER UGV as well as its autonomy programming, which was created by the folks at 5D.  At the 5 minute, 20 second mark of the video, you can see the AMREL laptop that’s serves as ACER’s Operator Control Unit.  Check out Exclusive Video: Robot Mini-Tank Battles Homemade Bombs

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Unmanned Vehicle Abuse

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With tongue firmly placed in cheek, Military’s & Aerospace Electronics Report’s John Keller expresses his concern about the latest social ill. After viewing the numerous displays of  rugged, ”throwable” robots at the recent AUVSI gathering, he worries about Unmanned Vehicle Abuse. Video below.

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The Incredibly Shrinking UGV

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In the early days of the Afghanistan and Iraqi wars, US forces had no effective countermeasures against Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), the single biggest cause of combat deaths. To fight the IED threat, our armed forces turned to Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGV).

It’s hard to remember now, but UGVs barely existed 10 years ago. The Defense community abandoned the traditionally leisurely pace of decades-long weapons development and quickly flooded combat theaters with thousands of UGVs. In 2011, the world’s governments are projected to spend $702 million a year on UGVs.  Below is a chart comparing a few UGVs. Read more

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Micro UAVs do more than look cool

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Some of the big attractions at last month’s AUVSI North American conference were micro-UAVs.  The Samurai UAV was especially impressive, sporting an unusual asymmetric design.  You may have seen images of this amazing little device, but do yourself a favor and check out the video below of Engineering TV’s interview with Bill Borgia, Director of the Intelligent Robotics Laboratory at Lockheed Martin. Read more

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