Isotropic is …
... my personal blog.
Unless otherwise indicated, anything I write here is simply my personal, probably ill-formed, opinion and does not represent the views, beliefs, positions, or opinions of any other person or entity.
Tag Archives: robots
09 Mar 2009
Robot Pics
Time for some more robot stuff. The Boston Globe has a collection of 32 images in “Robots – The Big Picture“. #3 & #12, the da Vinci surgical system — flashbacks to Logan’s Run #14 — a Christmas card? #19, Big Dog — my favorite critter #27 — “FRONT TOWARD ENEMY”
29 Nov 2008
Fun With Your New Head
Live demonstrations at ICT 2008 will include several robotic heads that show facial emotional responses to humans’ faces and voices. Of course, the first thing I thought of was Thomas M. Disch’s Fun With Your New Head. If I remember correctly, it was a user manual of sorts for bodyless human heads that were sold [...]
15 Jul 2008
Carebots
“Who doesn’t long for household help at times? Service robots will soon be able to relieve us of heavy, dirty, monotonous or irksome tasks. Research scientists have now presented a new generation of household robots, the ‘Care-O-bot® 3′.” — ScienceDaily, New Generation Of Home Robots Have Gentle Touch It is interesting that (according to the [...]
27 Jun 2008
Pipe Robots
Totally tubular, man! Robots for teh Intertubes. In the main, today’s robots are not that clever [to inspect pipes and shafts]. They cannot climb or navigate in vertical pipes – and very few have active joints. Cybernetics and optical measurement scientists at SINTEF are working on a solution. SINTEF (2008, June 27). Robot That Climbs [...]
09 Jun 2008
Robofish Hunter-Seekers
According to Hannah Hickey, in Underwater communication: Robofish are the ultimate in ocean robots, keeping in touch without scientists’ help (University of Washington), “The Robofish pack’s first assignment, beginning this summer, will be to trail a remote-controlled toy shark.”. Robofish are unique in that that they can coordinate their activities and, due to underwater inter-communication, [...]
18 May 2008
Driver Buddy
Do you want to have a conversation with your car, or perhaps an invisible passenger riding shotgun (if a talking car freaks you out too much)? Years ago, Stanford communication and sociology researcher Clifford Nass wondered why some people treated their computers as humans, instead of machines, a question that led him down a path [...]
18 May 2008
Survivor Buddy
[Robin Murphy] envisions a robot that plays soothing music to trapped victims and features a monitor showing the faces of loved ones and rescuers trying to reach them. It will deliver water and transmit a victim’s vital signs to doctors. And it should be friendly, she said. –Shannon Colavecchio-Van Sickler, A USF professor plans to [...]
31 Mar 2008
Tiny Terminators
A post on ScienceDaily says “Salmonella bacteria can be turned into tiny terminator robots that venture deep into cancerous tumors where conventional chemotherapy can’t reach.” No, I don’t have a thing for robots, it’s just coincidental that robot-related items have caught my attention lately, and they make for easy posts. I guess the next robot [...]
22 Mar 2008
Cyborg Insects
The goal is to create insects that can be remotely controlled to serve as remote sensing devices, giving the paranoid schizophrenic in us all one more excuse to start gibbering about “Project: Beelzebub.” –Joel Johnson, Cyborg Moths Will Soon Watch You Pee, at Boing Boing Gadgets Urm, yet another DARPA project. Not that I’m paranoid, [...]
22 Mar 2008
BigDog Quadruped Robot
BigDog is a quadruped robot being developed by Boston Dynamics (funded by DARPA). You can read more about BigDog at Think Artificial. BigDog’s behavior is fascinating, eerie, creepy — there’s a certain dissonance, knowing that it’s just a machine, yet its behavior induces that reptile-brain gut feeling that this is a living, very alien, creature. [...]
