Designing robots to help in a disaster View the video Dennis Hong first spied Japan’s ruined nuclear power plant from a bus wrapped in plastic. A hefty layer of protection guarded the seats, floors and handles from radioactive dust. More than three years earlier, after an earthquake and tsunamis battered Japan’s eastern coast, the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station blew, blasting radiation into the sea and sky. “It’s like a disaster site frozen in time,” Hong says. Workers toiled day and night to save the plant, but they had to get out as radiation levels rose. Ideally, robots could take over for human crews. Hong, a UCLA roboticist, is one of several engineers racing to make robots that can come to the rescue in disasters. Engineers have built impressive-looking humanlike bots that can play trumpet and even compete against each other in slow-moving soccer games. So DARPA kicked off a contest to create robots that someday could do the job. National Robotics Engineering Center/Carnegie Mellon University On the scene D.
Systems - A Journey Along the Way Systems A Journey Along theWay Welcome to a journey in the realm of systems. The journey is still unfolding as this web site continues to evolve over time. Yet, even with the endless changes, there continues to be a connection, in one fashion or another, with systems. The real intent here is not to study systems as a discipline, though more an intent to study lots of things and employ a systems perspective to foster understanding. Every attempt will be made to avoid the major failing of "system science." Enjoy the journey! System The word system probably has more varied meanings than any other word in use today. A system is an entity which maintains its existence through the mutual interaction of its parts. The key emphasis here is "mutual interaction," in that something is occurring between the parts, over time, which maintains the system. This definition of a system implies something beyond cause and effect. Emergence Associated with the idea of system is a principle called emergence.
Scientific Blogging: programmable sheet self-folds into a boat- and into a plane-shape. Sign In | Support | Create Your Own Channel programmable sheet self-folds into a boat- and into a plane-shape. About this Video Submitted By: Editor on June 28, 2010 About the Video: courtesy of Robert Wood, Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and Daniela Rus, MIT.Movie: A programmable sheet self-folds into a boat- and into a plane-shape. Hosted At Magnify | 426 views Rate this Video Magnify it! This video hasn't been rated yet. Who should see this video? Comments (0) Add your comment Tags Popular: None [Sign In To Tag] Your tags: Report a Problem What type of problem are you reporting? Please enter your email address: (required) Enter a description of the problem: (required) Embed Email Share this Video Link
SystemsWiki Innovator Under 35: Pieter Abbeel, 33 Instead of programming robots to handle each step of a new job, Pieter Abbeel, an assistant professor at UC Berkeley, has created robots that can observe humans demonstrating a task and then mimic them, or learn from pictures how to handle a piece of flexible material they've never seen before. His robots have learned to perform flying acrobatics, tie surgical sutures, and neatly sort socks. Abbeel's key innovation was to program the robots so that they can reliably infer the underlying intent of their instructors, filtering out the "noise"—irrelevant variations, or even slight mistakes, in the instructors' demonstrations. Each robot is usually shown around 10 demonstrations before it can extract general rules of behavior.
Systems Analysis Interesting Web Sites List Systems Analysis Web Sites General Systems Analysis Links Systems and Systems Thinking Definition of a System A system definition courtesy of the Pentagon. Horizonwatching: A Smarter Planet --- aka a system! Systems and Systems Thinking Dr. Benefits of Systems Analysis Product Design by Business Week Systems Theory at work: Using a Complex Systems Approach to Study Educational Policy Horizonwatching: A Smarter Planet --- aka a system! MetaPlanning Victorian Data Processing Modern Systems Analyst Don Norman's website. International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis Web-based Information Systems Hospital begins process by re-examining patient experience Places to Intervene in a System Systems Analysis for Beginners To Combat Terrorism, a Systems Approach is Vital -- read the article. Systems Analysis: A Tool to Understand and Predict Terrorist Activities Systems Thinking at Wikipedia Systems Thinking from MIT VIDEO: Warriors of the Net An Example Systems Analysis Humor in Systems Analysis IDE-O comes to St.
Morgan Quigley | Innovators Under 35 Three decades ago, the availability of many versions of DOS helped spark the boom in personal computers. Today, Robot Operating System, or ROS, is poised to do the same for robots. Morgan Quigley programmed the first iteration of what grew into ROS as a graduate student in 2006, and today his open-source code is redefining the practical limits of robotics. Since version 1.0 was released in 2010, ROS has become the de facto standard in robotics software. 159,000 Number of industrial robots sold in 2012 To visit Quigley’s office at the Open Source Robotics Foundation in Mountain View, California, the organization he cofounded last summer to steward ROS, is to step into a future of robotics where hardware is cheap, and it’s quick and easy to snap together preëxisting pieces to create new machines. Unlike more conventional robotic technology, Quigley’s four-fingered hand is not controlled by a central processor. Despite its name, ROS isn’t really an operating system. —Ted Greenwald
Why I don’t agree that systems thinking is a ‘fallacy’ It’s been some time since I wrote my counterpoint to Bojan’s article on quitting GTD, and in that time I’ve come to know him a great deal better, to respect his opinion, and I consider him a friend. However when I read his latest post on the fallacy of systems thinkers I felt compelled to lay out the things I disagree with, and to defend what I see as my position as one of the ‘systems thinkers’ he refers to. Here’s the case for the defence: Exhibit A: The Review process ‘doesn’t work’ Bojan says that for the ‘majority’ of people, the review part of productivity systems is a ‘complete disaster’. Whilst it’s hard to dispute that many people (including me) find the review aspect of GTD tough, I think it’s worth considering two points: Not all productivity systems require a ‘review’ in the same way that GTD does. I would add that there are a lot (I’d love to know the numbers) of people for whom GTD, and the review process, has been incredibly helpful. I say the exact opposite. Of course not.
superfast rock-paper-scissors robot wins every game it plays nov 05, 2013 superfast rock-paper-scissors robot wins every game it plays superfast rock-paper-scissors robot wins every game it playsall images courtesy of ishikawa oku laboratory take a look at the video below to see the mechanical hand win every game of rock-paper-scissors it plays against its human opponent: janken (rock-paper-scissors) robot with 100% winning rate: 2nd version video courtesy of ishikawa oku laboratory diagram showing how the high-speed vision recognizes the shape of the human hand the evolution of the janken rock-paper-scissors robot h/t nina azzarello I designboom Fallacy of systems thinking and reversing the productivity game The problem with productivity enthusiasts these days, is that they will pay more attention to the hacks and tricks, than doing the actual work. We’ve created this “work masturbation” environment, where doing it better is more important than doing it at all. The problem lies with the saturation of the marketers in the field. They are creating all these artificial needs, like systems, and gadgets, in order to sustain themselves and their continuous work. First you need wake up to the truth… …that system is irrelevant. You are justifying your procrastination by doing what has perceived notion of urgency, instead of doing what is important. The habit of mindfulness and it’s impact on productivity For a long while I was procrastinating on mindfulness, it sounded to me like yet another fad. As any other addiction, procrastination can be cured by being completely mindful of what you are doing in any given time. Brain patterns and Mindfulness Some thoughts for the system thinkers
Cleantech 100 case study: Liquid Robotics | Guardian Sustainable Business | Guardian Professional Oceans cover three quarters of the earth's surface yet remain mostly unexplored. Vast distances and harsh conditions make manned ocean exploration expensive and often hazardous. So why not get robots to do the job? "The robot doesn't get sea sick, it doesn't slip on the deck and hurt itself, it doesn't get bored, and it doesn't run out of fuel," says Bill Vass, chief executive at Liquid Robotics, developer of the Wave Glider, an unmanned robotic vessel designed to monitor, observe and measure the world's oceans. Founded in 2007, with offices in California and Hawaii, the company's technology grew out of efforts to capture the songs of migrating humpback whales. The Wave Glider consists of two parts. Solar panels on the float generate power for computing and navigation and for transmitting data back to shore in real time. The craft has proven itself durable. The Wave Glider navigates by autopilot, with its route programmed prior to a mission.
Complex systems tutorial Jan Burian burianj (at) vse.cz You can find here: Basic introduction to Complex Systems Science and relevant modeling tools Many links to web resources and a list of relevant literature "Complex systems" (4IZ636), lecture on University of Economics, Prague Content Intuitive definitions of complexity Basics of (complex) systems science Self-organization and related concepts Formal definitions of complexity Very short introduction to modeling methodology Cellular automatons Complex networks Agent-based models References Intuitive Definitions of Complex Systems System is an entity in terms of parts and relations between them. Structural relations define which parts are connected together. Structurally complex system A system that can be analyzed into many components having relatively many relations among them, so that the behavior of each component can depend on the behavior of many others. Basics of (complex) systems science Remember: Interconnection of parts matters in complex systems! Feedback
Pentagon Seeks Robotic Hand With Soft Touch - Government - Enterprise DARPA invests in technology to develop more human-like robotic hands; iRobot demonstration shows promise. Spy Tech: 10 CIA-Backed Investments (click image for larger view and for slideshow) The Department of Defense has demonstrated a robotic hand with finger movements that are closer to those of a human hand than the claw-like hands of earlier robots. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Autonomous Robotic Manipulation (ARM) program released a video showing the prototype hand picking up a key, turning it in a door lock, and opening a door, among other tasks. The purpose of the ARM program is to develop autonomous manipulation devices that are able to grasp and manipulate objects of various sizes in a real-world environment, receiving only high-level direction from human operators. [ What other innovations has DARPA been investing in? Uncle Sam's taken the lead on secure use of cloud services. More Insights
The Complexity and Artificial Life Research Concept for Self-Organizing Systems