Eagles trained to intercept drones in the french military

These sorts of projects make really cool headlines (at least, until the arrival of drones with defensive capabilities).

On an earlier post, we had seen already the Dutch working on the same idea. Check out this video for more advanced apparatuses.

From 3D printing to robot tattooing

Tattoo robot "made in France", yes Sir. Visual servoing people rejoice!

Introducing robots in the train stations of France

This is a cleaning robot that will shortly be deployed in the Gare de Lyon. I wander how this is considered from the socialist party of François Hollande. Of course, cleaning jobs will be shortened but engineering posts will be opened, but in the end, what is the real (economic and societal) cost for the introduction of such robotic technology?

On the other hand, a robot "valet" that carries your suitcases and follows you, is indeed within the french culture and in my opinion should have no problem to be accepted as technology...

Deep Art

------ http://www.deepart.io/ ------ 

Abstract: In fine art, especially painting, humans have mastered the skill to create unique visual experiences through composing a complex interplay between the content and style of an image. Thus far the algorithmic basis of this process is unknown and there exists no artificial system with similar capabilities. However, in other key areas of visual perception such as object and face recognition near-human performance was recently demonstrated by a class of biologically inspired vision models called Deep Neural Networks. Here we introduce an artificial system based on a Deep Neural Network that creates artistic images of high perceptual quality. The system uses neural representations to separate and recombine content and style of arbitrary images, providing a neural algorithm for the creation of artistic images. Moreover, in light of the striking similarities between performance-optimised artificial neural networks and biological vision, our work offers a path forward to an algorithmic understanding of how humans create and perceive artistic imagery.

Original article

Object recognition App for the visually Impaired - Aipoly

http://aipoly.com/

Help EMILY robot help drowning refugees

Friends of CRASAR (Center for Robotic-Assisted Search & Rescue)

We can't wait any longer- people are drowning and the technology exists to help. We have permission from the Hellenic Coast Guard and partial funding but are short $5,000. We will send 2 small robot marine vehicles (EMILY, which are used by the Los Angeles County Fire Department to rescue drowning victims) and a team of 4 to rescue drowning refugees fleeing from Turkey to Greece. Check fundraiser site below

https://www.gofundme.com/Friends-of-CRASAR

Next INNOROBO in Paris!

From 24 until 26 of May, INNOROBO exhibition will take place in Paris, France. I will try to keep this post updated with new information related to the event.

Full information below:

http://innorobo.com/en/home/

Baidu’s Artificial-Intelligence Supercomputer (Minwa) Beats Google at Image Recognition

The race for ever-increasing discriminative power in image classification has been heating up over the last period.

2 days ago the chinese Baidu search company announced that they beat the previous record in image recognition set by Microsoft Research, by a marginal 0.36% less error rate. Microsoft was the first to surpass human recognition performance almost 3 months ago in February 2015, with Google currently holding the 2nd best recognition performance.

All this is made possible through the use of deep convolutional networks and deep learning schemes, namely, the construction of neuromorphic recognition schemes where raw information passes through multiple intermediate layers before giving the desired class recognition output. This is made possible by using immense computational power (super-computers) which is directed into training a system onto huge amounts of ground-truth data.

These news come as a follow-up to the previous post on human emotion emulation and recognition where scientists reported that the corresponding system could reach and marginally exceed the human recognition performance of emotions!

For those interested, you may have a look at the news talking about the technological breakthrough here:

Baidu’s Artificial-Intelligence Supercomputer Beats Google at Image Recognition

and at the arxiv repository for corresponding scientific documentation on the respective systems:

- Baidu: Deep Image: Scaling Up Image Recognition

- Microsoft: Delving Deep into Rectifiers: Surpassing Human-Level Performance on ImageNet Classification

Robots at their infancy

The use of robots nowadays has already "escaped" from the realm of industry and is now becoming available to the citizens. We can find today commercial robots for various uses at very low cost that come together with tele-operation interfaces designed for untrained users or other which are programmable.

Robots are also in use by the military, space exploration, civil security and fire-protection at a small scale, but it seems that their integration will proceed further in view of their advantages over humans.

This, of course, has a different meaning for each particular case, but at the basis of all we can recognize cost and responsibility.

Regarding cost, it appears as a natural consequence if a robot substitutes a human, given that both can do equally well the respective job but the robot construction and maintenance is much more cheaper. Well... at least if that does not concern your job and only if the substitution of the human by the robot means that the respective product will be cheaper for you, the consumer. 

If that's the case, what about the unlucky man/woman that will loose his/her job because of the robot? Before answering that question, consider if you prefer to pay the more expensive product/service given by the man or the less expensive product/service given by the robot. If you are a philanthropist and prefer to save the man's job, what do you think that the rest of the society will prefer? You may start to think now, that the substitution of the man is inevitable, if not necessary. You may even become positive if you think that for the construction and maintenance of the robot, other men will have to work and new jobs will be have to be created.

In any case, the relation between production cost of a robot/machine and human labor cost seems to have a well-understood basis and a long history today, as it has started some centuries now with the industrial revolution.

But the use of robots outside the factory and in particular within human society has and will have very serious new implications. Within the small, constrained boundaries of a factory, the notion of responsibility is very clear and accountability for the operation of robots is strictly within the limits of the company.

Unfortunately, we are not yet ready to understand these concepts for robots that are at the hands of consumers and in general out there in the open world (see earlier posts Beginning of a new era and Beginning of new era II). With robots being produced at a global scale and without any regulation for permission of use, anybody with good gaming skills can become a robot owner and user.

I truly do not wish that as a society we will need to realize the potential of this technology through an unfortunate event, but i fear that the freedom and lack of control for use of this technology will sooner or later lead to such an outcome.

The source of the following video is from euronews channel and is about a series of air drone flights in the surroundings of several nuclear plants around France, which are currently under investigation with no information yet about the purpose of those flights or their operators. 

Is it about naive enthousiasts that just want to draw attention and try something daring, or is there something more serious behind such actions? Whatever the answer, now is the time to see robotics from a very serious perspective before we need to pay the cost of negligence. The days of innocence will soon be over.

Beginning of a new era: Air drone causes chaos in EURO 2016 qualifier football game between Serbia and Albania

The football game between the national teams of Serbia and Albania for the qualifier round of EURO 2016, which took place the 14th of October 2014, has been forced to be terminated just a few minutes before the end of the first half. The disruption was caused when a remotely controlled air drone entered the stadium and started to hover around carrying an Albanian flag followed by the word "AUTOCHTHONOUS" which means "indigenous", from the greek "αυτόχθονας".

The football players and the fans were stunned by the sight, until a serbian football player managed to grab the flag that was immediately after pursued by Albanian football players. The overall confusion lead to a conflict between football players of both teams, followed by the intrusion of fans in the terrain.

SPARC: The world's largest funding for robotics in EU

SPARC initiative

Agreement signed by Neelie Kroes, Vice president of European Commision, and Bernd Liepert president of euRobotics (Europa press release).

Cybathlon: Sports competition for robot-assisted parathletes

Not too long ago, i presumed that we were not far from the time when sports competition would take on a whole new image by introducing robotics technology into athletes with disabilities.

A few months later, the Cybathlon competition is announced which will take place in 2016 in Zurich and will constitute the first championship for parathletes who use advanced assistive devices in replacement of the corresponding impaired physical capability.

These news come faster than i expected, as now i can hardly imagine what could be the next great milestone in the progress of robotics technology. If one thing is for sure, it is that the future is here.

3D printing technology currently allows replacement of almost any human part

This testifies the first ever implant operation of a 3D-printed skull to a human, replacing the upper part of the natural skull as its abnormal thickening put exceeding pressure to the person' s brain. The operation was recently performed in a Dutch hospital in Europe for a 22 year old woman who has now reportedly completely recovered and is back to her natural activities.

3D printing is already revolutionalizing diverse fields including medicine, robotics and military, as it brings manufacturing to a whole new level by globalizing the potential of producing physical objects that could otherwise cost multiple times more, since their production was geographically attached.

This essentially implies that a digitization of a domain in combination to 3D printing will bring the corresponding technology to the hands of anyone with an internet access and a 3D printer. This has immense implications in our understanding of the functioning of the world and the organization of the society as we knew it, is now, as a result, being completely transformed.

To conclude, and to satisfy the readers of the blog that might wonder about the relevance of this to robotics, here is a video that could make the above thesis more convincing.

Open Hand Project

Robotics market data in Europe and worldwide; INNOROBO spotlight

INNOROBO 2014 exhibition will soon be hosted in Lyon. France between 18 and 20 of March. INNOROBO is an international event that hosts industry as well as academic exhibitors that showcase their latest products and results in all fields of robotics. It is an initiative that aims in increasing collaboration in Europe for research and development through the organization of workshops, presentations and general assemblies.

Here is a link that gives a spherical overview of the state of the market and research in Europe in various sectors, in comparison to the main players at the international level. Some figures date back at 2011, but still data are quite informative of the growth of robotics and their increasing integration at various levels.

Project TANGO

Project Tango by Google was announced officially, featuring a prototype mobile device with augmented sensing and processing capabilities allowing it to perceive the motion of the device and reconstruct the surrounding environment. The project' s launch video is disclosed here:

The technology that it seeks to integrate has already been showcased, scientifically, but this should be the first time where it could be part of commercial technology at the scale of the mobile phone market. However, together with the new range of cool applications that such a technology would offer, we should at the same time consider its implications to everyday life and in particular the aspect of privacy. 

It is probably not so far in the future where the ability to accurately track the motion of a mobile phone and reconstruct its surroundings in real-time within indoor environments, will be integral part of our mobile phones. This may probably bring the end in privacy as people tend to carry their cell-phones wherever they go.

Consider that you use this functionality while you are at home, when you are with your friends or family. Just as a single photo may capture a single moment of a single view in time, we can imagine how this would translate in the case of a reconstructed environment and your motion within it. And after you may consider what this would mean if this data were to be "accidentally" taken by various companies, agencies or individuals and be exploited for different reasons.

To conclude, Big brother might be knocking at your door very soon and you could be its new star.

First kick in WORLD CUP 2014, through mind-controlled exoskeleton?

As the titles suggests, this the provisioned plan for this year' s world cup in Brazil.  This is the goal of Brazilian neuroscientist Miguel Nicolelis and his team, in the context of a project called "Walk Again".

Generally speaking, this is probably where the future of robotics resides i.e. actively assisting people' s lives and surpassing their natural barriers, rather than developing completely autonomous machines that replace humans.

Here' s a promo video of the corresponding work:

And so if that is going to happen next summer by a person, i believe that it will not be long before the idea of Special Olympics will take on a whole new model, or we will even witness a new concept in sports competition as a result of robotics technology. Too ambitious... ? Place your bets!

VERSABALL; dexterous manipulation revisited

This post comes as a follow-up to the earlier post A custom-made robotic gripper where we saw how ingenuity and simplicity in robotics can provide state-of-the-art solutions, in this case when it comes to robotic grasping.

Empire Robotics, a start-up company from Cornell University has recently announced the commercialization of this idea with the name VERSABALL and is probably about to revolutionalize the concept of dexterous manipulation. VERSABALL is a low-cost gripper (around 4000$) that can grasp objects with diverse shapes, will little care about computing grasping affordances of the object. 

As can be seen from the video, it is very effective and agile and seems to be very well suited for home robots allowing them to pick up and manipulate common house-hold objects, even at the scale of coins!

Super Ball Bot: next generation planetary explorer

NASA is considering an innovative design for planetary robots, in an effort to optimize the mobility when it comes to uneven terrain and reduce hardware payload that is required for safe landing. The next picture shows an illustration of the featured design which is inspired by the concept of Tensegrity, that is, by preserving integrity through tension.

The idea is to use rods that are connected with elastic wires and by regulating the tension among them, movement patterns arise that allow the structure to move at a desired direction. These patterns can emerge iteratively by optimizing certain criteria. At the same time, the elasticity of the cords allows the structure to sustain collisions upon landing on the surface or moving along it, by absorbing the energy of collision.

The following video illustrates the prototype in action and shows its full provisioned utility in simulation.

The project is lead by Vytas Sunspiral and Adrian Agogino from the Intelligent Systems Division of NASA' s Ames Research Center. Visit here for full article.

First ever conversation between human and a robot, in space

The first ever documented conversation between a human and a robot just took place in the International Space Station (ISS) between Japanese commander Wakata and robot Kirobo.

Kirobo is a small humanoid robot designed to serve as a companion for astronauts who normally spend several months in space before returning to earth. This implies extended periods of time of isolation from human-human interactions which is also something that is expected as plans are made for longer-term space missions (as for example within the Mars One project).

The following video shows parts of the conversation that was documented in ISS last days, between Kirobo and Wakata.

Mars One launches crowd-funding project

Mars One is an international initiative aiming at sending the first humans on the surface of the red planet and eventually building a permanent human settlement. It consists of a series of missions that will start with sending a robotic vehicle in 2018 which will deploy the first modules and demonstrate the application of the necessary technologies before actually sending humans, starting in 2024.

Figures say that more than 200.000 people from all around the world have applied for an opportunity to be among those stepping on the surface of Mars for the first time in human history. Next to this record, Mars One claims to be the first space project that is open for private funding. In fact, a crowd-funding scheme has just been launched at Indiegogo where anyone can be a contributor and write history.

Obviously the amount of funds set by the crowd-funding scheme ($400.000) are not meant to support the total budget of such an extraordinary project, but it gives the opportunity to people to be actively involved in making this happen. After the successful missions of the earlier missions of Opportunity and Curiosity, Mars One can be the next leap in space exploration and boost robotics technology to unprecedented frontiers.