Automaton

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

Automaton reader Ingo Lÿtkebohle is a PhD student at Bielefeld University in Germany studying how roboticists develop their software. His team has posted a survey for software developers to complete. An initial pilot study has already been done and those results will be presented at this year's IEEE Conference on Robotics and Automation. This survey is part of the larger study, so they need a broader audience to respond to it.

You can take the survey here.

Apparently the "uncanny valley" concept relevant to so many robots is cool enough to have made it into a recent episode of 30Rock.

Thanks, Drew!

If you missed it Friday, NPR's Science Friday last week had a show called "Building a More Sociable Robot." Guests include Helen Greiner (chair and co-founder of iRobot), Peter McOwen (a computer science professor from Queen Mary, University of London), Dean Kamen (inventor of the iBot, Segway, and founder of FIRST), and Grant Cox (member of FIRST champion team The Thunder Chickens). Greiner and McOwen talk about what average people expect out of robots in terms of interaction, the relationship between interactive technology, price, and consumer demand, and what the state of technology is to get robots interacting with the environment and with us in a "natural" way. Kamen and Cox, meanwhile, talk about the FIRST program, how it's encouraging people to follow science, engineering, and technology as careers, and why robotics is so effective in doing this. (They also give a nod to former President Bush's thought that FIRST is like "the WWF, but for smart people," which he observed while giving a speech at FIRST's closing ceremonies two weeks ago)

You can download the podcast here.

First the robot snow shoveler. Then the robot urinal cleaner. Robots are getting better at doing our jobs, and I knew it was only a matter of time before I too became obsolete.

And now that day has come.

Senior design students at Texas A&M have designed a robot that can play the popular video game Guitar Hero (version 3, to be specific), by reading the pixel pattern on the screen as the notes stream and using actuators to hit the fret and strum buttons on the guitar controller appropriately. As a seasoned Guitar Hero myself I can see some room for improvement in efficiency (namely, it'd be great if it could hold down the fret buttons for repeated notes), but what can I say? I can't get 97% accuracy on expert on that song.

There's another video for a different song here.

From TechEBlog via Fark

Tonight at 8 PM is the second monthly installment of Boston Robotics Drinks at the Enormous Room in Central Square. Last month a small group of engineers from a few companies suggested an informal get-together for the robotics professionals in the area, and through chains of email about twenty-five or thirty people showed up throughout the night from several different companies in the area. It was a great opportunity to get to know the folks in industry and academia from the area and find out what everyone is working on. It's modeled off of the internationally successful Green Drinks, a similar monthly networking event for the sustainable/green engineering community.

So -- in the Boston area? Come on by tonight!

Not in Boston? Start your own and let us know!

If you're near San Jose, Calif., you might want to check the "Robots: Evolution of a Cultural Icon" exhibit at the San Jose Museum of Art.

The exhibit features sculptures, paintings, photographs, multimedia installations, and other creations by more than 20 artists, who respond to the evolution of robotics technology "with optimism, pessimism, and humor, presenting work that ultimately explores our ambivalent attitudes towards robots."

In the video below, JoAnne Northrup, a senior curator at the museum, gives an overview of the project:

Here are some photos and videos. The exhibit runs through 19 October.

Photo: Ugobe

Spectrum senior editor Tekla S. Perry and her kidsâ''ages 9, 12, and 16â''adopted a ­dinosaur for two weeks. We're talking about Pleo, the AI-powered toy dino. The kids, who quickly decided that Pleo was a girl, liked its realistic movements and sounds. But Perry thinks the robot needs better batteriesâ''and a behavior software update. The Perry family is keeping the cats.

The brainchild of Ugobe, a robotics ­company in Emeryville, Calif., Pleo looks and acts the way youâ''d expect a baby Camarasaurus to, thanks to ­sophisticated ­robotics. She has two 32-bit and four 8â''bit ­microprocessors, ­fourteen motors, a ­camera, two ­microphones, eight ­sensors under her ­rubberized skin, a tilt ­sensor, an infrared mouth sensor, fourteen force-­feedback sensors, and four switches in her feet.

First, the good: the ­movement and sounds are indeed amazing. My ­daughter handed Pleo to a friend to cuddle, and Pleo nestled in and wrapped her tail securely around the friendâ''s arm, completely freaking her out. Our cats considered Pleo real and scaryâ''they ran for cover whenever we tried to get them to meet her.

[...]

When I first saw Pleo two years ago, at a conference for emerging technologies, I was impressed by Ugobeâ''s claim that the dinosaur would develop a personality based on how it was treated. But now the company says it will provide most of that malleability only later, via free software updates.

Read the entire review, and for a look under the skin of Pleo, here's a video showing how its sensors work.

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!