robots

US Americans do, according to Christoph Bartneck at the Technical University of Munich. He thinks that crossing the uncanny valley - overcoming the revulsion we feel towards robots that are almost, but not quite, human-like - is something that a society does together.Bartneck showed Japanese and US citizens a number of photos and asked them to rate them for likeability. Some of those showed the faces of real humans, some showed human-like androids, and some were simply photos of robot pets.

The video below shows a scenario that is likely to become real as industrial robots improve: a human and a robot work together to assemble an object from its parts. But in the clip from the University of Minho, Portugal, not everything is going to plan. The human gets a stern warning from the robot that they are doing it wrong.The pair are assembling a foam chassis with two wheels. Although the robot has already attached the wheel on its side of the chassis, the human offers it another. The robot - ARoS - is not impressed."Ah!

function FlashProxy() {}FlashProxy.callJS = function() {} At the SIGGRAPH graphics conference in Los Angeles I got the chance to look at GigaPan, a robotic tripod (pictured below) that lets photographers produce impressively large panoramas at the touch of a button.Check out the snowscape from Colorado above, taken by Jason Buchheim. Zoom in and you will appreciate how much detail GigaPan can capture. The image contains 1.91 gigapixels stitched together from 19 separate snapshots. A gigapixel is 1 billion pixels.Producing a GigaPan image is easy. The user clamps their camera to the tripod.

A person suffering cardiac arrest is at risk of death as their blood is no longer circulating. Some studies have shown that patients' survival rates can increase by a factor of 3 when high-quality CPR is administered. But the quality of CPR is important.Getting the depth of chest compressions right is one measure of quality. And a new gadget from Philips helps first aiders get it right, by giving physical feedback to let them know when the right depth has been reached. For an adult, that is around 4 centimetres, and for a child around 2.5cm.The CPR coach is a pad placed over the patient's chest that contains accelerometers to monitor compression depth. When the correct depth has been reached, the device vibrates to warn the rescuer to stop.

While some people may choose to mark the release of a DVD of the Terminator TV show by buying in a pizza, UK academic roboticist Noel Sharkey wrote a report on the future of policing robots. Not for free of course - Warner paid him to.Whatever you think of that arrangement, Sharkey, who has previously spoken out against military robots, still makes interesting points. He predicts a growing role for robots in policing between now and 2084.

Bart Remes and his team at the Technical University of Delft have just produced the smallest-ever flapping wing robot (ornithopter) with a built-in camera.With a wingspan of just 10 centimetres, the DelFly could easily be confused with a real dragonfly. There's a video of it in action below. The small box in the bottom righthand corner gives a DelFly's eye view of the world.The DelFly should help the researchers understand more about the aerodynamics associated with ornithopter flight, but its onboard camera suggests it could have immediate practical uses too. A swarm of the cheap fliers could quickly bring back footage from a wide area after, say, an earthquake.But taking the DelFly out of the lab and into the real world might generate its own problems. As one commentator on YouTube has already pointed out: "it would probably get blown away".

The US defence agency DARPA decided last year that it needed "Chemical Robots" (ChemBots) that could change shape in order to squeeze through small gaps. It's now chosen the people to provide them - US firm iRobot. The company makes the Roomba robot vacuum cleaner (video) and the 'Packbot' used for bomb disposal.The DARPA programme manager overseeing the project gave a hint at what the robots could be used for:"During military operations it can be important to gain covert access to denied or hostile space...

What happens when you bring robotics to a cheap radio-controlled toy car?

The robotic population of the world is over 5 million, I learned yesterday at the Cheltenham Science festival. Noel Sharkey of Sheffield University, UK, told the audience that there are already 1.2 million industrial and 4 million service robots in use.That number is growing. But robots are also taking on greater responsibilities and Sharkey thinks this raises ethical questions.

The singularity is what will happen when an explosive advance in technology unexpectedly leaves us humans behind. That rough definition by its nature lacks much detail, but has a powerful hold over some original thinkers.Fortunately computer scientist and sci-fi author Vernor Vinge has come up with what he thinks are the 5 most likely scenarios that will produce it (see below).

A few weeks ago, we suggested that Iron Man, the latest Marvel character to make it to the big screen, is as much science as science fiction.As if to prove the point, Berkeley Bionics this week began accepting orders for its prototype exoskeleton the Human Universal Load Carrier - the HULC.

Heidi Kumao's art pieces explore ordinary social interactions in order to reveal what lies beneath them: psychological states, emotions, compulsions, thinking patterns, and dreams. She is currently teaching animation, video, experimental television production, and electronic and conceptual art at the School of Art and Design at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. For 2007-08, she has been awarded a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship from the American Association of University Women Educational Foundation.

We reported last year that Fujitsu's HOAP-3 robot is learning the basics of chess. Now the little fellow is trying his hand at cooking. It can chop, whisk, and grate its way through a simple omelette recipe - check out the video below for the results.It's all lighthearted stuff, of course - is there nothing that doesn't become instantly funny when speeded up and played beneath the Benny Hill theme tune?

The robot jellyfish swimming and flying in the videos below are being shown off at the Hannover Trade Fair this week by industrial automation company Festo. We wrote before about their robotic manta ray which also moves very gracefully.Both jellyfish designs are really just for show. But if the swimming ones could achieve the simple efficiency of real jellyfish they could provide great platforms for cheap ocean sensors.

Hello readers! Here's something i was keeping in my Magic Bag for ages: the videos of the projects which received an Award or an Honorary Mention at the VIDA competition. This international competition on art & artificial life, set up 10 years ago by Fundación Telefónica, rewards works of art produced with and commenting on artificial life technologies. Most of them will give you a fantastic glimpse into the mind of the creators of projects which include empathic blobs, cabinets of curiosities for the biotech age, exploration into digital survival and animatronics.

Here's a new video of a bipedal robot called Dexter dealing with some shoving and pushing from one of the engineers working on the robot (below or here).I blogged last year about a another clip showing it withstanding a shove from another robot.In the new clip Dexter certainly appears steadier on its feet - which are sporting spiffy new white sneakers instead of the black shoes it wore before.

Nice, nice. I've lost my connecting flight and now i'm stuck in Madrid Barajas waiting for the next flight to Sevilla. It's an 8 hour wait but i'm on my way to ZEMOS98 so i am still cheerful.

Anyway, gives me plenty of time to catch up with the emails and the long overdue posts. So back to New York where i was a few days ago and the Exit Art gallery. I'm still wondering how this place managed to escape my radar so far.

The image left shows "robotic pack mule" BigDog channelling Bambi as it slides around on an icy surface. After a few slips it does regain its poise though - you can see how it gets on at about 1:25 into the video below. The new video also shows Big Dog tackling deep snow in the woods, carrying a 154kg (340lb) load and showing off running and jumping in the lab.

Which of these three scenarios do you think is most likely to happen in your workplace by 2018: Employees will communicate by hologram Robots or artificial intelligence programs will make some business decisions Businesses will use brain chips to enhance their employees' skills

According to a survey of members of the UK's Chartered Management Institute the first is most likely. Some 31% of more than 1000 senior executives polled thought it would happen. The AI scenario came next with 27% believing it would come to pass, while only 12% could see future managers upgrading workers using brain chips of some kind.

Software bugs are annoying - glitches that cause software to misbehave and do unpredictable things. But such bugs may actually be the future of robotics, if they are to exhibit intelligence that emerges from a swarm of simple individuals like social insects.

That's what a researcher involved in a new EU-funded project to advance swarm robotics told me:

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France Cadet had showed us slides of the Hunting Trophies she was working on during the presentation she gave at De l'objet de laboratoire au sujet social (From Laboratory Object to Social Subject), a week of lectures, screenings and workshops she organized at the Ecole d'Art d'Aix en Provence (France.) That was last November and i've been looking forward to see the final result of the work ever since. That day has come, yeah!

Panthera Leo (Lion)

"Can a robot commit a war crime?" That question was raised at the conference on The Ethics of Autonomous Military Systems behind yesterday's story on ethical concerns over robotic weapons.

Barrister and Engineer Chris Elliot explained his thoughts on the legality of future "intelligent" weapons, within international, criminal and civil law. He started by suggesting that as systems become more autonomous, they become capable of actions that are not, in legal terms, "foreseeable".

At that point, he suggested, it would be hard to blame a human for its actions. "We're getting very close to the where the law may have to recognise that we can't always identify an individual - perhaps an artificial system can be to blame."