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This ultra-efficient robot walks just like people do
You don't have to worry about robots rising up against humanity anytime soon -- the bipedal ones, at least. When they aren't constantly falling down, two-legged robots are running down their power supplies due to inefficient gaits and wasted motion. During a recent DARPA competition, teams from Sandia National Labs and SRI International squared off to see whose robot could walk the furthest. SRI's robot, dubbed the "DURUS," won out by walking 2.05 kilometers in just over two and a half hours while using just 350 watts of power. For those of us who aren't electrical engineers, that's a really impressive feat. In fact, the DURUS uses up to 30 times less power than the ATLAS robot employed in the DARPA challenge.
Watch a tiny, magnetically powered robot construction crew go to work
A robot doesn't have to big, powerful and terrifying to be worthwhile, and many people are working on miniature machines that are just as cool. Some of these endeavors show promise in medicine, but there are plenty of potential uses for microbots, especially when you can persuade a swarm of them to work together. Research outfit SRI reckons tiny automatons have a bright future in manufacturing, thanks to its new method for precisely controlling individuals within a larger group. You see, one of the best ways of propelling and controlling microbots is by using magnets. and it's because there's no need for an on-board power source that we can make 'em so small. This poses a problem, however, as a pack of bots will all respond to a magnetic field in the same way, making it hard to give anything but a blanket order.
The 'first electronic person' was a box on wheels
Welcome to Time Machines, where we offer up a selection of mechanical oddities, milestone gadgets and unique inventions to test out your tech-history skills. Some humans have enough trouble navigating an apartment without stubbing their toes, and that's with a robust onboard computer, finely tuned sensory apparatuses and years of practice in the field. Shakey was a pioneering bot under the tutelage of the SRI Artificial Intelligence Center's (AIC) research team, and it would take its share of bumps and wrong turns as it learned its way around the lab. It was born in 1966 as an artificial intelligence project to develop robots with the ability to navigate real-world environments and make decisions on the fly in order to overcome obstacles and solve complex problems. Life magazine even gave Shakey the title of "first electronic person" for its efforts in a 1970 article, vaulting it to near peer-level status with its toe-crunching creators.
Computing UI visionary Douglas Engelbart passes away at age 88
The computing world lost one of its great minds and true pioneers yesterday. Douglas Engelbart passed away at age 88, just over a half-century after he joined the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) -- the place where much of his ground-breaking computing research would take place. Among his (and his research team's) many inventions made at SRI are the mouse, bitmapped screens, hypertext, networked computers and elements of a modern, windowed GUI. Should you be among those unfamiliar with his work, we've included a video of his epic and appropriately named "Mother of All Demos" that he gave in 1968 to introduce many of his computational contributions to the world. Tip of the cap, Mr. Engelbart. You will be missed, but assuredly not forgotten.
SRI EV1 brings all-electric racing to the Mexican 1000 rally (video)
We've seen electric off-roaders tackle the Dakar Rally, but racing on the Baja peninsula has proven elusive -- until this weekend. After driving in smaller races, SRI's EV1 has joined the big leagues by starting in NORRA's Mexican 1000 rally. The 535HP, 400kW open-wheeler has participated in at least the first trio of special stages, and it will ideally join a handful of further stages that fit within the vehicle's 100-mile range. While the EV1 is far from the front of the Evolution class, at 36th place as of this writing, winning isn't the point -- SRI wants to drum up enough funding to hot-swap batteries and complete every stage in future races. Its project should at least be proof that smaller EVs can thrive in some of the world's harshest racing conditions.
Jack of all trades: Tempo Smart Calendar does a little bit of everything
Sure, your phone's built in calendar does a fine job of keeping track of meetings and chiming in with the occasional alarm, but can it tell you how to actually get to those meetings, or tell your colleagues that you're running late? That's the promise behind the Tempo Smart Calendar, a machine learning iOS planner that leverages the same SRI patents that fathered Siri. Tempo pulls information from the user's contacts, email and apps to present a more complete calendar experience -- associating scheduled events with specific people, or sussing out a meeting's specific location based on limited information (such as "the Starbucks at mission"). The app even promises to ease your social obligations by wishing your Facebook friends "happy birthday," when appropriate. As time goes on, the smart calendar app acclimates to the user's patterns, streamlining how it associates information with appointments based on previous use. Check out the calendar's full assortment of tricks in the press release after the break.
Smart calendar app Tempo speeds up your day
Not to bother you with a study from the University of the Obvious, but if you think about the history of technologically facilitated intelligent agents, the goal always seems to be to sub in for a clever, always-on human personal assistant. There's a reason that hyper-busy, well-compensated folk have such staffers on the payroll: they make things easier. Need a file for that meeting, or background on the attendees? Running late and need to tell them? Want to know which flights are delayed before you head to the airport, or where to park near the place you're having lunch? With a personal assistant, one call or text and you've got it handled. We can't all have personal aides, but a lot of us have smartphones. Siri tackles the question of accessing your data or contacting people without putting your hands and / or eyes on the iPhone; Android's Google Now feature aims at the information supply side, parceling out the tidbits you need (or at least the ones it thinks you need) just when you're likely to want them. Even the oversubscribed launch of Mailbox this week speaks to the desire we have to start getting a streamlined, secure handle on the ebb and flow of our critical information. Another option for getting the smart back into your smartphone launches today, and it's aimed at both your calendar and all the collateral information that surrounds it. Tempo Smart Calendar, incubated in Siri's birthplace at SRI International, derives situational awareness by analyzing your meetings alongside other data sinks like your email, LinkedIn contacts, attachments, location and more. The app is iPhone-only for now, with other platforms to come along later. Tempo may look like other calendar apps on the App Store -- to my eyes, it pays some UI tribute to the revamped Gmail native app -- but its power lies in context as well as content. Rather than overwhelm you with every tidbit and factoid about your events, Tempo's design is intended to "reduce the noise that's often associated with virtual assistants that push information to users out of context or intent," says founder and CEO Raj Singh. The app will even find context that you didn't explicitly associate with the event, by looking for frequently emailed people connected to meeting hosts or attachments to messages with contextually relevant subjects. Wherever possible, the calendar app distills actions down to a single tap: send an "I'm running late" alert, get directions, pull up attachments for the next appointment, check LinkedIn profiles or join a conference call (it even auto-dials conference codes for you, which I currently do with a $1.99 singletasker). As Tempo learns your modus operandi, it adjusts to provide the most-frequently needed information more promptly. I may not be busy enough to take full advantage of Tempo's savvy, but if your day involves hopping from call to meeting to meal to evening, you may indeed benefit from the added clarity and context that the app provides. Of course, Tempo's AI has to learn about you and what your day looks like, so using it means giving it access to a lot of your personal data, including your email (and letting it mull for a while on initial setup). If that makes you uncomfortable, be forewarned. You should check the Tempo site for privacy assurances and make sure that if you do try it and don't like it, you can fully erase yourself from the service. Tempo's privacy statement is here; the important note for anyone who intends to do a short-term trial and possibly cancel later on is that if you delete your Tempo account, your third-party service info might remain on their system for several weeks until it's aged out. If you want to get your mail and other data off more quickly, be sure to remove those subaccounts within the Tempo app before deleting your master Tempo account. Tempo is launching as a free app, with possible premium features down the road for paid users. In contrast to Mailbox's Gmail-only limitation, Tempo is calendar- and email-agnostic. To provide a sense of what's possible inside the app, Tempo's produced this adorable promo video featuring a busy architect dad and his preternaturally articulate daughter. Robert Scoble also has a 30-minute interview with founder Singh in his enthusiastic writeup.
Google Talk to use SRI technology for stabilizing video chats, revive Chatroulette
Okay, so maybe it's not the only reason that Chatroulette is due for a revival, but it certainly won't hurt matters. SRI International has just announced that it'll be providing image stabilization software to take the jiggles from your future Google Talk videocalls. 'Course, you'll need an Android 3.0+ device in order to take advantage, but the general consensus here seems fairly positive. SRI's press release (embedded after the break) isn't exactly laced with details, but GigaOM is reporting that this could also improve battery life, but only the heaviest of video chatters are apt to notice the difference. Looks like distracting yourself just got a whole lot less distracting.
SRI unveils Taurus, DaVinci's bomb-defusing little brother
This is SRI International's Taurus. Brought to you by the minds behind the DaVinci robo-surgeon, the diminutive (14 x 5-inch) bad boy is used to detect and defuse IEDs. Piggy-backing on existing devices such as Talon or PackBot, the device delivers hi-def 3D images and haptic feedback (via gloves) to a bomb disposal tech operating from a safe distance. According to IEEE Spectrum, it works so well that users forget they're working remotely. Right now it's a prototype, but with any luck the system could be in the field as early as this summer.
SRI's electroadhesion tech enables new army of wall-climbing robots
When the inevitable Robot Apocalypse goes down, you can credit SRI International for helping the forces assimilate. The aforesaid entity has apparently been toiling around the clock on a technology it's calling compliant electroadhesion, and to put things simply, it gives robotic climbers the ability to scale all sorts of walls made of all sorts of materials. Tests have shown wall-gripping robots climb surfaces made of steel, brick, concrete, glass, wood and drywall, which effectively eliminates any hope of you surviving the fallout based on the construction choice of your bunker. Thankfully, it does seems as if this could also be applied to human footwear, giving Earthlings at least a fighting chance of standing toe-to-toe with these guys on the side of the Menara Kuala Lumpur. Head on past the break if you're looking for a horror film. Or a demonstrative video... same difference.
Robot surgeons compete with humans aboard the vomit comet
We were always of the opinion that robot surgery was edgy enough as it is, but you know how those science peoples always have to kick things up a notch. SRI International and the University of Cincinnati hitched a ride on NASA's DC-9 "vomit comet" to pit human surgeons against semi-autonomous robots in suturing and incision tasks on simulated tissue -- while experiencing periods of zero gravity and 1.8g acceleration. Surprisingly, the robots kept pace just fine until SRI's fancy compensation software was switched off, which we're guessing is exactly the point SRI was trying to prove. Right now SRI is building a robotic operating room for the battlefield called Trauma Pod, which is mostly autonomous, and they're also working on a fully autonomous system for NASA that could treat an astronaut on Mars, where the 20 minute delay would make telesurgery not an option. Field testing for the trauma pod should begin in 2009.[Via Slashdot]
