Grok Robots

via TokyoMango, word of The Annual Stupid Robot Contest:

The Stupid Robot Contest is an annual show held by Meiwa Electronics to determine whose robot is the silliest…Some of the other contestants last year were a chorus of pregnant wife robots, a child robot that did push-ups, and and a “moe” robot dressed like a maid from a maid cafe.

Here are some videos: 1, 2, 3

Videos via a report in Japanese at Robotwatch

This article by Hiroko Tabuchi is a quick wrap-up of the state of robotics in Japan today, where “humans and intelligent robots routinely live side-by-side and interact socially.”

Along with info on current experiments, statistics (over 370,000 robots worked at factories across Japan in 2005) and history, there touch on the difference in cultural portrayal robots have had in Japan compared to the United States:

Robots have long been portrayed as friendly helpers in Japanese popular culture, a far cry from the often rebellious and violent machines that often inhabit Western science fiction.

While Japan had Astro Boy in 1963, in the US we had homicidal giant robots tearing up movie screens at drive-ins across the country. So you can see why we might not want them poking in our mouths with pointy instruments just yet.

Has your robot been lazing around the house instead of earning its keep? Robot Central has a summary of iRobot’s Colin Angle’s presentation at RoboBusiness. It basically reads like a robot classifieds section of the future, and is a good starting point if you need ideas for your next build.

At least, according to Hans Moravec of the Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute.

I see a strong parallel between the evolution of robot intelligence and the biological intelligence that preceded it. The largest nervous systems doubled in size about every fifteen million years since the Cambrian explosion 550 million years ago. Robot controllers double in complexity (processing power) every year or two. They are now barely at the lower range of vertebrate complexity, but should catch up with us within a half century.

The article includes a handy timeline, so you’ll know exactly when to start being suspicious of your household robots.

This cute robot helps out in Japan by watching kids in a department store while parents shop. Kids have to wear special badges to let the robots know who they are. Hey, why not just implant some microchips for the robot to read? That would be a lot simpler. There are absolutely no ulterior motives at play here:

The robot … can also use a projector in one of its eyes to beam advertising messages

Except that one.

Another objective is to make sure that children are accustomed to robots, which are expected to be increasingly common in day-to-day life in Japan.

Ok, and that.

Sharon Weinberger takes on this topic over at Wired’s Danger Room.

My point, which I’ll state here more clearly, is that rather than debating the real issue — what are the proper limits on the autonomous operations of weapons? — we are debating something a tad fantastical, an army of self-directing, lethal machines, deciding when they should kill or not. Terminators, in other words. I realize that debating Terminators is more fun, because it provides such sexy headlines as “Automated killer robots ‘threat to humanity,’” but I’m not sure it really addresses the main issue.

Mr. Roboto watch prototype from Azimuth

Mr Roboto’s visual appeal embodies the full-flavor revival of vintage tin robotic spaceman. The placements lend for easy reading and a radical tin robot visual appearance. The left ‘eye’ is the hour register, right ‘eye’ comes with GMT indication, the nose region joint with the mouth region are the seconds and retrograde minutes placements respectively.

Phobot is “a phobic robot, who’s very scared of certain objects, and robots in particular.” While designed as a tool to help kids with phobias, such behavior might also be desirable in any personal companion robot who would fear joining up with any robot uprisings.

Phobot was the winner of the Human-Robot Interaction 2008 Student Design Competition.

The “uncanny valley” is Masahiro Mori’s hypothesis which states:

that as a robot is made more humanlike in its appearance and motion, the emotional response from a human being to the robot will become increasingly positive and empathic, until a point is reached beyond which the response quickly becomes that of strong repulsion. However, as the appearance and motion continue to become less distinguishable from a human being, the emotional response becomes positive once more and approaches human-to-human empathy levels.-Mori, Masahiro (1970). Bukimi no tani The uncanny valley (K. F. MacDorman & T. Minato, Trans.). Energy, 7(4), 33–35. 

The media latches on to the first part — “as a robot becomes more humanlike in appearance and motion” — often. Most recently, Simroid the dental patient robot got this sort of attention.With the recent popularity of the BigDog video, I think the hypothesis needs amending. While BigDog looks more like an AT-AT Walker than your old pal Fido, its movement is nothing short of, well, uncanny. This was enough to activate the empathy response in humans worldwide:

I thought it was cute, and I felt bad for a second when it was kicked.

Something about the way the bot moves elicits sympathy in the viewer - its motions are so animal-like they throw you. When the researcher kicks BigDog to demonstrate how it can regain its balance, my first reaction was one of sympathy for “the animal”

On second viewing, I’m incredibly creeped out at how sad it makes me when BigDog gets kicked. 

At this rate if they just added a wagging tail and a machine gun, BigDog would be unstoppable.

via The Onion

Why would they turn against us? It doesn’t make any sense. We’re the ones who created them. At least the alpha models.