Automaton

Illustration: Bryan Christie Design

Spectrum's June issue has a 50-page special report on the technological singularity. The report is in part an attempt to see how the singularity measures up against real-world science and engineering. Or as stated in the cover: "The Rapture of the Geeks: Separating science from fiction in the technological singularity."

All articles from the print issue and a bunch of web extras here:

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/singularity

Spectrum's Josh Romero talked with R2-D2 builder Steve Simmons at Maker Faire to find out how this screen-accurate, home-built, VEX-brained replica works.

For more on how to build your own droid, check out http://www.artoo-detoo.net/.

"Engineers are finally putting some practical exoskeletons through their paces outside of laboratories," Spectrum declared in 2005. Well, it was a slow but steady pace. Now it seems the bionic body suits are really ready to hit the market.

Sarcos/Raytheon have showed off their XOS full-body exo. And Japan's Cyberdyne has announced it will begin "mass-production" of its HAL powered suit.

Now Berkeley Bionics says it is "accepting orders for prototype HULC systems," one of its advanced lower-extremity exoskeletons.

The company, founded by researchers from the UC Berkeley Robotics and Human Engineering Laboratory, has recently released a video of its ExoHiker system, which lets a user carry loads of up to 200 lb, shadowing the wearer's maneuvers -- you can crawl, run, kick, climb stairs and the powered legs follow your moves.

We at Spectrum would love to borrow one of these ExoHiker legs to test them on the streets of New York as we, um, climb stairs of subway stations and fight off muggers.

UPDATE: After the jump, watch videos of Sarcos/Raytheon's XOS and Cyberdyne's HAL so you can compare all three exos ... and put in your order.

Stanford's Stickybot, a wall-climbing robot that uses gecko-inspired directional adhesives on its feet. Photo: Stanford University

Spectrum correspondent Prachi Patel-Predd reports that engineers at the 2008 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2008), in Pasadena, Calif., are presenting "the latest takes on how to tackle a new frontier: vertical surfaces."

Read Patel-Predd's report or check out all the presentations at today's Climbing Robots track of the conference.

Spectrum reports that Caltech researchers are developing a MEMS robotic device to insert and position electrodes in the brain. The system could enhance the performance of neural prosthetics, which have proved hard to implant accurately. The researchers haven't built the device yet, but they've devised control algorithms to guide the miniature robots to make good neural connections. From the article:

The Caltech team has designed a system that would make the procedure more predictable by attaching a tiny MEMS-based motor to each electrode on a multichannel electrode array and using an algorithm to direct the electrodes to individual neurons.

[...]

As the electrodes are driven into the tissue, the software starts taking sample recordings to detect spikes of electrical activity at the electrode tip. When the software detects spikes, it moves forward in small increments and tracks how the signals change. After determining whether the signal has improved or gotten worse, the algorithm moves the electrode to a new position and does more recording and comparing, driving the electrode in further if necessary until it finds the best signal. If the signal wanes, the algorithm will automatically adjust the electrode position to improve the signal.

Spectrum associate editor Sally Adee on how researchers are looking for a way to connect prosthetics directly to the brain. [Click on the image below to go to the video player.]

In the US, the three big robotics centers are Boston, Pittsburgh, and Silicon Valley, all in large part thanks to the great universities in those areas that have spun their research out into industry (for that reason, Georgia Tech is growing the industry in Georgia). Yesterday Boston business news site Xconomy took a look at the Boston industry and gave an overview of all the robotics companies in the greater Boston area.

From the article:

Whatâ''s more, the greater Boston area has clearly established itself as one of the worldâ''s leading centers for robotics. There are more than 150 companies, institutions, and research labs that deal in robots or robot components here. That adds up to more than 1,500 workers, $150 million in government contracts, and $250 million in annual sales[...]

Looking at the list, a few things leaped out at us. The majority of firms (at least 13 out of 24) get substantial support from defense contracts, while most others serve niche markets. Local companies are strong in mobile robots and vehicles, growing in medical robots, and not as strong in industrial applications.

That company list is a great resource and the industry overview is really interesting. I wonder if this kind of analysis and overview exists for the other major cities?

Thanks, Janet!

This month's Full Spectrum video segment focuses on robot kits -- as seen recently at CES and Maker Faire -- and highlights my embarrassing prom date past. Check it out here.

Spectrum associate editor Josh Romero on his favorite robots from the Faire:

If there's one thing you can count on at Maker Faire, it's the presence of robots. They're everywhere in all shapes and sizes. Sure, it was impossible to miss the giant electric giraffe, but size isn't everything.

Take Herbie the Mousebot (a robot kit from Solarbotics) - if you judged just by the number of delighted smiles and giggles coming from children's faces, this had to be the winner. The little robot has a light sensor that it uses to follow around a beam of light from a flashlight. It also has whisker and tail sensors that make it turn around when it hits your foot or starts to go under the couch. Brilliant! It's smart, cute, and simple. Made solely of discrete components, it looked fun both to build and to play with:

As cute as Herbie was, how could he possibly compete with one of the world's most loved androids? That's right, I'm talking about R2-D2. The R2-D2 Builder's Club were also a big hit at the Faire, showing off their handcrafted, chrome-domed creations. In some ways, they're even better than George Lucas's original (for one thing, they don't require a tiny man inside). Check out the video to see the droids in action and find out what makes them tick:

And I always have room for the just plain weird. Voxhead is a robot with a neck, head, and one arm. He sits on a table making bizzare sounds (even after you know that he's supposed to be singing Radiohead's "Creep," it still takes a lot of imagination). While it's easy to just slap a speaker on a robot to make it talk, Voxhead sings the hard way, by replicating the human vocal cavity (complete with artificial tongue). Its creator, Mike Brady wants to use Voxhead to probe the ways we learn to communicate - the robot itself learns by listening to its own attempts to mimic sound and trying to improve. Voxhead's the android equivalent of a babbling baby. Take a listen yourself:

I recently had a chance to play with the LEGO Mindstorms NXT kit. I mentioned the Mindstorms in a previous post about robot kits, but this is the first time I've had free reign with one -- and the first time I've used one of the NXTs. Keep reading for the review.

With the help of two intrepid friends, we gave the Mindstorms kit a try.

First, the unboxing. The kit comes with a stock of different LEGOs, the NXT brick that contains the onboard computer and I/O ports, and a bunch of peripheral sensors. The sensors include an ultrasonic sensor for ranging, a bump sensor, a light sensor, and a sound sensor. Separately you can buy an accelerometer, compass, and color sensor. These all hook directly into the NXT brick. There are also three motors included in the kit, with gears, shafts, and wheels.

Installing the software is easy -- it's both OSX and Windows compatible (I have it running on my Macbook). It takes a while for the install to finish, but no big deal.

Now what to build? The kit comes with a booklet of designs and instructions for building them, as well as a few designs built in to the software. We chose to build the humanoid robot that's featured on the box.

I have to admit here that I was never a LEGO kid growing up. This is actually the first set of LEGOs I have ever had. I find it intimidating. I don't think in terms of mechanisms anyway, so trying to translate LEGO pieces into linkages and such makes no sense. However, my two friends -- one a fellow engineer, one a marketing professional -- are much better versed in LEGOs than I, and they found them much more approachable. Your mileage may vary.

At any rate, we started off with our humanoid, following the instructions on my computer. From my LEGO-uneducated perspective, it was difficult for me to see the larger context of what we were building (for example, while we were building what ended up being one of the feet, I didn't have any sense of what parts were supposed to be what until the end when we started putting segments together -- and had to go back and correct a few mistakes). It's also occasionally hard to tell exactly where a piece goes when all you see is the isometric view of the part; this also led to some backtracking and correcting.

Once it was built, it was time to program it. The programming is very easy; you have a starting point from which you can build branches of code in block form. Building a "while" loop is easy, and the "switch" block is your basic if/then/else function. "Move" blocks choose which motors to move, which direction, power, and durations. All the most basic blocks are enough for most functionality, but behind a menu there are also more advanced blocks like Boolean logic. You can also make your own custom blocks or download them from the online community.

Uploading code is easy over USB or Bluetooth (if your computer has that capability). The NXT brick itself runs on 6 AA batteries, which so far I haven't drained. As to actual use... well, I don't personally need my own robot sentinel to guard my apartment, and with my short attention span I can only watch a LEGO bot walk around for so long. But with a goal in mind -- a competition, for example, or a school project -- I can definitely see the attraction.

So what do I think? I think I wish I were more comfortable with LEGOs, frankly. But I do have to give the NXT team credit for having put together a kit that presents the mechanical and software problems of robotics so well. With the kit instructions and built-in software the Mindstorms NXT can be easy to get up and running (it took the three of us about three hours total, including some time spent just messing around with the bricks and the software), and it can present a great engineering challenge to people more familiar with the design and programming concepts.

The Mindstorms NXT runs $249.99 and is designed for elementary school and up. I'd personally recommend some adult help for elementary school kids, though, as I could see a high likelihood of kids that young getting easily frustrated with some of the more complicated designs and getting started with the programming.

Happy building!

Many thanks to National Instruments for providing the Mindstorms unit, and thanks to Deanna and David, my partners in crime