Automaton

A strange-looking fly has been seen buzzing around the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. And we have the video.

It's the robotic fly built by Robert Wood and his colleagues at Harvard. Click here or on the image below to go to the video player:

Want to learn more? In "Fly, Robot Fly," Robert Wood describes how he built his artificial fly. This other article, "Fly Like a Fly" is about how real flies ... fly.

A Japanese friend pointed me to an article on the history of the Actroid robot series. I don't speak Japanese, but the article features 9 video clips showing the robot's incredible progression since 2003. The clip below shows a video of the actroid Repliee Q1 from April 2007.

The Actroid series is jointly developed by Japanese entertainment firm Kokoro and Hiroshi Ishiguro, well known for building a robot doppelgÿnger of himself. Kokoro offers the Actroids for rent to greet customers and provide information in up-market coffee shops, office complexes, and museums or "old houses".

Will life-like robots like these make for more cases like 33-year old Zoltan, who fell in love with and married a robot? [Editor's note: The previous two links lead to pages that contain adult material and language.] If the comments on the youtube page are any indication then that's a yes.

Thanks, Mototaka!

Photos: Sci Fi Channel

So "Battlestar Galactica" is back for its final season. "Battlestar," which some call the "smartest sci-fi TV show ... maybe ever," is probably also the most theorized series on television these days, full of mysteries, twists, and parallels to real world events.

The show chronicles the journey of the last human survivors as they search for the long-lost Earth and are chased by Cylons, a cybernetic race created by humans that decided to take over. Some Cylons look like the metal robot above, left. Others look like Tricia Helfer, right.

In the episode that aired last Friday, viewers are left wondering who is a Cylon and who is not, and I found one dialogue particularly interesting. Lee Adama, a character that some say "represents the 'conscience' of Battlestar," tells his father, Commander Adama:

- Dad, what if Zak had come back to us in that Viper? If my brother had climbed out of that cockpit would it matter if he were a Cylon? If he always had been? When all's said and done, would that change how we really feel about him?

That may well be one of the greatest questions not only in "Battlestar" but also in the field of artificial intelligence. Will we, humans, one day truly love robots just like we love other humans? Will love for a person and for a robot be indistinguishable?

Those questions lead to another: If robots reciprocate our feelings, will their emotions be just a very sophisticated simulation, or could we see them as the "real thing," the same kind of "stuff" as our own emotions?

IEEE Spectrum is preparing a special report that will discuss many of these issues and we'd love to know what you think. Leave a comment below or write to automaton@ieee.org.

(If you aren't familiar with "Battlestar," you can catch up by watching this 8 minute summary.)

I'll be attending the RoboBusiness conference in Pittsburgh next Tuesday and Wednesday. They have an excellent set of conference sessions lined up and I'm excited to see the companies that are boothing (especially Ugobe, whose Pleo I have yet to see in person). Have any questions for the exhibitors or speakers? Let me know!

Whew! I have just recovered from helping out at the Boston FIRST Regional that took place over the weekend (see our previous coverage of FIRST). The Regional was a celebration of science and technology, and especially of robotics -- we had air, land, and sea unmanned vehicles stationed in the lobby, Roombas cleaning the floors between matches, and of course, the 51 competing robots. There was also a special entrance by MIT Professor Woodie Flowers, one of the co-founders of the FIRST program and an all around excellent guy.

What Woodie is hanging on to is a robot from Atlas Devices. It's designed for the military to use to rapidly ascend and descend ropes safely -- from their website, "Its powerful lifting capacity can directly hoist fully-loaded soldiers or firefighters at unprecedented speeds. Utilizing the ATLAS with standard rescue equipement can magnify its capacity even more, enabling effective lifting and towing capacities in excess of 1,000 lbs." Woodie was trained on it on Wednesday evening and it seemed like a pretty shallow learning curve. It's all fun and games watching it descend, but it's when it ascends (so smoothly and quickly) that it looks really impressive. Here are a few more videos for your pleasure.

In yet another great step towards insect-size robots Petter Muren, current world record holder for the smallest remotely controlled helicopter, today announced plans for his pocket-size "Black Hornet" helicopter. Built by newly founded Prox Dynamics, the helicopter will weigh in at less than 20 grams, and feature a video camera with wireless transmission to stereo-vision goggles. The ultimate surveillance tool, it will be ready for launch within seconds to give immediate situational awareness to police, fire fighters, military and special forces.

Like Muren's previous designs, the "Black Hornet" will rely on his patented Proxflyer rotor system, centered around a dual coaxial counter-rotating rotor. This design combines a number of advantages making it well suited for surveillance applications, including passive stability, high efficiency and a very low noise level.

Muren's past projects include a series of very small to tiny helicopters (see IEEE video), with his current record holder a mere 70 mm long, weighing less than one gram, equal to 1/5 of a sheet of paper. And Muren has big plans for the future: "Our long term goal is to establish a 2% market share in a US$ 3 billion market, currently growing over 10% per yearâ''. With more than 2 million of his past helicopters sold he means business. The first version of the "Black Hornet" is expected 2009.

Image: Prox Dynamics 2008

After our Big Dog scoop last week, we now learn that footage of a deeply flawed predecessor model, Big Dog Beta, has recently surfaced. Disturbing.

The video is by the same troupe (they call themselves Pantless Knights) that made the YouTube hit "Mac or PC Rap Music Video."

The Global Robotics Institute at the Florida Hospital has just hosted the Third Annual World Robotic Urology Symposium, which brought together 600 healthcare professionals, including world leaders in robotic surgery, from around the globe. The field of robotic surgery is slowly building followers among surgeons, who swear by its accuracy and precision. In addition, robotic surgery promises reduced costs, mostly due to shorter anesthesia, less blood loss, smaller wounds and, ultimately, shorter hospital stays. And then there's always the possibility of remote robot surgery, promising to save lives in remote communities, war zones, and disaster-stricken areas - or simply allowing you to be operated by the top surgeon of your choice, without the need to fly around the globe.

This year's conference program included 10 live surgeries beamed in from around the country. The not-so-faint-hearted can follow future live internet broadcasts online - the next live robot surgery webcast is scheduled for tomorrow, March 26th, 12.00pm PST.

In spite of its youth, robotic surgery has already made itself a bad name with some patients: Germany's RoboDoc debacle has resulted in over 100 lawsuits of patients suffering muscular and nerve tissue damage after undergoing robot-assisted hip-replacement surgery. Nevertheless, Germany has just re-invested 13 Mio Euro in the orthoMIT program to develop robotic surgical strategies.

For further reading, make sure to check out a previous post on underwater robot surgery as well as the 2006 IEEE Spectrum article Doc at a distance.

Image: The Da Vinci Surgical Robot

The world's robot population has reached 4.49 million, and that number should nearly double by 2010 to 8.37 million. That's one automaton for every person in Austria, whatever that means! But we've written about that already: we put together these numbers based on data from the latest edition of World Robotics, a survey by the International Federation of Robotics released late last year.

IEEE Spectrum correspondent Saswato Das visited Sir Arthur C. Clarke in January. Clarke was in the hospital with severe back pain, but even in those conditions the visionary author kindly agreed to meet Das [in the photo below with Clarke].

Here, our correspondent's reports on that unique encounter:

The Audio Interview "Sir Arthur C. Clarke's Final Interview":

http://spectrum.ieee.org/radio?date=18.03.08&segStart=1

The Complete Audio Transcript "Sir Arthur C. Clarke's Final Interview":

http://spectrum.ieee.org/mar08/6076

Last Thoughts from Sir Arthur C. Clarke:

http://spectrum.ieee.org/mar08/6075

Sir Arthur C. Clarke's Treasure-Diving Days:

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/mar08/6077