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Up to 23 million active Twitter accounts are bots (updated)
Twitter's said its active user base is growing, but not every account that's active is necessarily a flesh-and-blood human. Alongside those verified accounts of the stars, there are all kinds of bots that use the service to deliver completely stupid nonsense, sudden (urgent!) sale news and even earthquake reports -- well, some have their uses. Twitter's now disclosed some specific numbers, noting that bot accounts total up to 8.5 percent of its active user count at the end of June. That's roughly 23 million tweeters that aren't human - and probably aren't going to be clicking on that ad for Innovative Cloud Storage Solutions any time soon. Update: Twitter reached out to Engadget and Quartz to clarify: this 8.5 percent are accounts that have "automatically contacted our servers for regular updates", which could also include our own Twitter feed. Twitter's SEC filing does go into particularly deep specifics on this, however.
Robot Hall of Fame inducts Big Dog, PackBot, Nao and WALL-E (video)
It's the sort of ceremony that's so magical it can only occur on even-numbered years. Inventors, educators, entertainers, college students and media folk gathered at the Carnegie Science Center in Pittsburgh, PA tonight for the 2012 inductions to the Robot Hall of Fame, a Carnegie Mellon-sponsored event created to celebrate the best of our mechanical betters. This year, the field included four categories, judged by both a jury of 107 writers, designs, entrepreneurs and academics and the public at large, each faction constituting half the voting total. The show kicked off, however, with the induction of 2010 winners, the Spirit and Opportunity Mars rovers, the da Vinci Surgical System, iRobot's Roomba, the Terminator and Huey, Dewey and Louie, a trio of robots from 1971's Silent Running. The first 'bot to secure its spot in the class of 2012, was the programmable humaoid Nao, from Aldebaran Robotics, which beat out the iRobot Create and Vex Robotics Design System in the Educational category. The PackBot military robot from iRobot took the Industrial and Service category, beating out the Kiva Mobile Robotic Fulfillment System and Woods Hole Oceanographic's Jason. Boston Dynamic's Big Dog ran over some stiff competition in the form of Willow Garage's PR2 and NASA's Robonaut to win the Research title. And WALL-E triumphed over doppelganger Johnny Five and the Jetsons' Rosie in the Entertainment category. Relive the festivities in four minutes after the break.
Robot Hall of Fame voting begins for class of 2012, Johnny 5 learns where BigDogs sit
It's that time again: time for Carnegie Mellon to roll out the red carpet and welcome the crème de la crème of the robotics world into its halls. Since 2003 the school has been selecting the best of the best and inducting them into the Robot Hall of Fame. Past honorees have included everything from LEGO Mindstorms to the Terminator. This year's list of nominees is no less impressive, with celebrity bots Johnny 5 and WALL-E pitted against each other in the entertainment category, while NASA's Robonaut takes on the PR2 and BigDog under the banner of research bots. There will also be two other inductees awarded a spot in the hall in the consumer and education category and the industrial and service field. Best of all, for the first time ever, Carnegie Mellon is letting the public vote on the inductees. And, while PETMAN was snubbed yet again, he's not letting that get him down -- the Boston Dymanic's biped just keeps on struttin'. Hit up the source link to cast your vote before the September 30th deadline and check back on October 23rd to see who's granted a podium speech.
VIA shows off EPIA Pico-ITX-based robots
VIA may be ditching its traditional motherboard business, but it looks like its not wasting any time in stepping up its efforts to get its more specialized boards and chipsets into as many devices as possible, and it's now taken advantage of the Taipei International Robot Show to show off their potential for robotics. Leading the way is Lynxmotion's Johnny 5 robot above (yes, that's actually its name), which has been outfitted with VIA's new EPIA P700 board and VX800 unified chipset just for the show. That, VIA says, offers a whole host of advantages over other systems, including "far easier" software development. Of course, VIA also sees plenty of potential beyond hobby kits, with it also showing off an EPIA Mini-ITX-based version of the Vecna Battlefield Extraction-Assist Robot (or BEAR), and it touting the benefits of its Pico-ITX platform for all sorts of "extremely space constrained robotics designs."[Via Far East Gizmos]
