Robotic FuA-Men Fully Automated Ramen Restaurant: Science Fiction in the News Robotic FuA-Men Fully Automated Ramen Restaurant The FuA-Men - Fully Automated raMen restaruant in Nagoya, Japan features a chef and assistant - both fully autonomous robots. The robots perform all of the cooking tasks needed to make eighty bowls per day, serving the customers who come to their small shop. Take a look at the FuA-men robotic chef video below. Computer, read my lips: Emotion detector developed using a genetic algorithm A computer is being taught to interpret human emotions based on lip pattern, according to research published in the International Journal of Artificial Intelligence and Soft Computing. The system could improve the way we interact with computers and perhaps allow disabled people to use computer-based communications devices, such as voice synthesizers, more effectively and more efficiently. Karthigayan Muthukaruppanof Manipal International University in Selangor, Malaysia, and co-workers have developed a system using a genetic algorithm that gets better and better with each iteration to match irregular ellipse fitting equations to the shape of the human mouth displaying different emotions. They have used photos of individuals from South-East Asia and Japan to train a computer to recognize the six commonly accepted human emotions -- happiness, sadness, fear, angry, disgust, surprise -- and a neutral expression.
Robots: Al.I.S.E Here is my latest robot. Al.I.S.E is an Aluminum, Infrared Scanning Entity; or just an old-school style crank arm hexapod :) This project was based on the mechanicals of the "Hexapod Monster" kit I built and reviewed back in 2008. I scaled it up a little, and added 2 super torquey gear head DC motors I found at a surplus store in Minneapolis. Power comes from a 9.6v RC transmitter pack, along with a separate 9v for the BS2 microcontroller. Robot Chefs Run a Restaurant The FuA-Men - Fully Automated raMen restaruant in Nagoya, Japan features a chef and assistant - both fully autonomous robots. The robots perform all of the cooking tasks needed to make eighty bowls per day, serving the customers who come to their small shop. When asked, customers seem to feel that there is little difference between noodle dishes prepared by real, human chefs, and meals prepared by autonomous robots. For those who appreciate precision in food preparation, you can't beat robot chefs. "The benefits of using robots as ramen chefs include the accuracy of timing in boiling noodles, precise movements in adding toppings and consistency in the taste and temperature of the soup," said Kenji Nagaya, president of local robot manufacturer Aisei. The two chefs also work very well together; their movements are perfectly choreographed (see video).
Video: Groombot Brushes Cat, Ushering in a New Era of Remote Robo-Petting Telepresence is cool, but it's currently not very versatile and--at least if you're going the commercial telepresence robot route--pretty expensive. For a princely sum, you can remotely putter around a faraway office or home and communicate with people there via a computer terminal. Outside of that, the technology has yet to break down any serious walls. That is, until software engineer Taylor Veltrop devised a way to brush his cat remotely via a robotic avatar, spearheading what could be the biggest revolution in cat-grooming technology since that kitty brush that you wear like a glove. In all seriousness, what Veltrop pulls off in this video is pretty amazing in that he doesn't just create telepresence, but actually achieves tele-grooming.
Build a Personal Food Computer What does it take to build an OpenAg Personal Food Computer (PFC)? We have released our internal documentation and an inside look into our engineering process. A beta version of our software and hardware are also currently live and open source, and we encourage anyone who is interested to take a look behind the scenes of what it takes to create a PFC. Watch the video below to see how we build the prototype version of the frame, the control panel, and the shell out of readily available parts.
Universal robotic gripper Robert Barker/University Photography The human hand is an amazing machine that can pick up, move and place objects easily, but for a robot, this "gripping" mechanism is a vexing challenge. Opting for simple elegance, researchers from Cornell, the University of Chicago and iRobot Corp. have created a versatile gripper using everyday ground coffee and a latex party balloon, bypassing traditional designs based on the human hand and fingers. They call it a universal gripper, as it conforms to the object it's grabbing, rather than being designed for particular objects, said Hod Lipson, Cornell associate professor of mechanical engineering and computer science. The research is a collaboration between the groups of Lipson, Heinrich Jaeger at the University of Chicago, and Chris Jones at iRobot.
Aquaponic DIY Automation Blog Temboo — aquaponic “HELLO WORLD” equivalent June 1, 2015 Posted by rik94566 in agponics.com, aquaponic automation, aquaponics, aquaponics electronics, Balcony aquaponics, internet of farming, Internet-of-Farming, rik94566. Tags: agponics, aquaponics, automation, balcony aquaponics, Controlled Environment Agriculture, DIY aquaponics, rik kretzinger, sensor, Temboo RAY KURZWEIL - That Singularity Guy - Vice Magazine In the year 2050, if Ray Kurzweil is right, nanoscopic robots will be zooming throughout our capillaries, transforming us into nonbiological humans. We will be able to absorb and retain the entirety of the universe’s knowledge, eat as much as we want without gaining weight, shape-shift into just about any physical form imaginable, live free from disease, and die at the time of our choosing. All of this will be thrust on us by something that Kurzweil calls the Singularity, a theorized point in time in the not-so-distant future when machines become vastly superior to humans in every way, aka the emergence of true artificial intelligence. Computers will be able to improve their own source codes and hardware in ways we puny humans could never conceive.
BCN3D MOVEO - A fully OpenSource 3D printed Robot Arm by BCN3D BCN3D Technologies keeps taking important steps in order to achieve his goal of bringing the digital manufacturing technology to everyone. In this occasion we are presenting the BCN3D Moveo, a robotic arm design from scratch and developed by our engineers in collaboration with the Departament d’Ensenyament from the Generalitat de Catalunya. Its structure is fully printed using additive manufacturing technologies and its electronics are controlled by the software Arduino. It has a Marlin based firmware developed for robot arms with steppers by Zortrax. The BCN3D Moveo has 5 axis.
Kinect Hackers Are Changing the Future of Robotics The Kinect lets people navigate the digital world through gestures rather than mouseclicks.Illustration: Justin Wood For 25 years, the field of robotics has been bedeviled by a fundamental problem: If a robot is to move through the world, it needs to be able to create a map of its environment and understand its place within it. Roboticists have developed tools to accomplish this task, known as simultaneous localization and mapping, or SLAM. But the sensors required to build that map have traditionally been either expensive and bulky or cheap and inaccurate. Laser arrays cost a few thousand dollars and weigh several pounds, and the images they capture are only two-dimensional.