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Sony's new Aibo pet robot goes on sale tonight in Japan
After more than a decade away, Sony's Aibo pet robot is making a return. The original dog-like robot launched in 1999, while Sony says its followup is "capable of forming an emotional bond with members of the household while providing them with love, affection, and the joy of nurturing and raising a companion." Its OLED eyes allow for "nuanced" expressions, fisheye cameras see and recognize individual faces while new actuators allow its body to move smoothly along 22 axes. The array of movements and sounds are intended to make Aibo more lifelike, while it's also capable of responding to voice commands and petting to learn what makes its owner happy.
Heroes of the Storm: Stitches
At the end of our look at the Support hero Tassadar, I said we would likely look at Muradin next. I lied. Stitches came up in the Heroes of the Storm free-to-play rotation and I learned the meaning of true love. Stitches is a beefy member of the Warrior class, heroes that are typically low damage, high survivability. In many cases, the threat a Warrior poses is not in his or her ability to kill you -- but the fact that they're a nuisance, unkillable things that make a slow push into your territory and you must struggle to stop them. While Stitches does have those qualities, I also like to think of him as something of an offensive Support character. Where most Support characters help your Heroes survive a battle, Stitches helps his allies murder the other team. He picks your enemies apart and holds them still while your assassins go to work.
Rescue robots map and explore dangerous buildings, prove there's no 'I' in 'team' (video)
We've seen robots do some pretty heroic things in our time, but engineers from Georgia Tech, the University of Pennsylvania and Cal Tech have now developed an entire fleet of autonomous rescue vehicles, capable of simultaneously mapping and exploring potentially dangerous buildings -- without allowing their egos to get in the way. Each wheeled bot measures just one square foot in size, carries a video camera capable of identifying doorways, and uses an on-board laser scanner to analyze walls. Once gathered, these data are processed using a technique known as simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM), which allows each bot to create maps of both familiar and unknown environments, while constantly recording and reporting its current location (independently of GPS). And, perhaps best of all, these rescue Roombas are pretty team-oriented. Georgia Tech professor Henrik Christensen explains: "There is no lead robot, yet each unit is capable of recruiting other units to make sure the entire area is explored. When the first robot comes to an intersection, it says to a second robot, 'I'm going to go to the left if you go to the right.'" This egalitarian robot army is the spawn of a research initiative known as the Micro Autonomous Systems and Technology (MAST) Collaborative Technology Alliance Program, sponsored by the US Army Research Laboratory. The ultimate goal is to shrink the bots down even further and to expand their capabilities. Engineers have already begun integrating infrared sensors into their design and are even developing small radar modules capable of seeing through walls. Roll past the break for a video of the vehicles in action, along with full PR.
Kinect quadrocopter gets a new mission: 3D mapping (video)
In the future, our flying robot overlords won't just navigate terrain autonomously, they'll also report back to base with detailed 3D maps of everything they've seen -- or at least that's what this homebuilt UAV does in a video released this week. In a nutshell, MIT's combined its room-mapping Roomba with the Kinect quadrocopter radar developed at UC Berkeley, resulting in a flying contraption sure to be the envy of topographers everywhere. We're not sure that the world's robot incumbents will be too happy, though -- perhaps MIT should invest in some laser protection next.
Ghostcrawler reveals upcoming class changes in Cataclysm
Lead Systems Designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street has posted the blog post I think most of us have been waiting for ever since Cataclysm went live. It features a summary of where the dev team sees the PvE and PvP games at this point, including some analysis of various classes and specs, and some planned changes for those specs that are underperforming and overperforming. In PvE, Ghostcrawler mentions that Blizzard is mostly happy with the tank classes and notes that while healers do have it a bit hard, this is intentional. Heroics are meant to be a challenge. As for DPS, he offered that some classes, such as arcane mages and marksman and beast mastery hunters, are too low in their damage, while others, such as shadow priests and fire and frost mages, are being watched closely before final judgment is made on their numbers. In PvP, Ghostcrawler says Blizzard is satisfied with the decreased emphasis on healing prevention and burst damage. Crowd control and dispel mechanics, especially offensive dispels, may see some PvP nerfs, and priests will specifically be getting some PvP buffs. Stats also got some mention. A lot of stats are being neglected by some classes, and the dev team wants to fix this. Mastery will be either buffed or completely revamped for many specs, such as unholy death knights and retribution paladins. Haste may be made to scale with more attacks, such as Lacerate, Slam, and Steady Shot, in order to make the stat more desirable to certain specs. Check after the break for the complete text of Ghostcrawler's post, including a list of specifically planned (but not finalized) class changes for future patches.
Leaked AT&T doc slams the Palm Pre
Need more proof that Apple (and AT&T, by proxy) is taking the Pre kind of seriously? Enter this internal document from the iPhone carrier exposing the Palm phone for what it really is -- a second-rate claptrap that is doomed to failure because of its inferior and stupid design. Among the highlights in this no-holds-barred slamfest -- similar to this Verizon / G1 hit piece -- is the comparison between WiFi (somehow the Pre has "limited WiFi access" because it can't connect for free in Starbucks), and the nasty burn which points out that the Pre is available "in black only." Ouch... Palm might want to stock up on aloe vera. In truth, though, the doc does point out some issues with the Pre that are very real, namely its lack of roaming capabilities outside of the US and an SDK which thus far won't allow for CPU-intensive apps like 3D games. It's significant that AT&T has deemed the phone worthy enough to address (internally at least), but it's also significant to see just how far the company seems to be reaching on a handful of these points. Just remember guys -- competition is a good thing.
Researcher gives AIBO rat-like abilities
While the AIBO is certainly no slouch as it is, a researcher at the ITAM technical institute in Mexico City seems to think it still has plenty more to learn, particularly from rats. To that end, the institute's Alfredo Weitzenfeld recently gave the AIBO a brain transplant of sorts, ditching its quasi-canine instincts in favor of some "rat-inspired" control software he developed. The result, it seems, was quite effective, with the AIBO able to navigate a maze in a manner "remarkably similar" to real rats, including the ability to recognize places it had already visited and distinguish between locations that look alike. As NewScientist reports, the goal of the research is to increase robots' proficiency in simultaneous localization and mapping (or "SLAM"), which allows them to create maps of their surroundings while working out their location at the same time. In the meantime, it looks like a few poor robots will be suffering from a rather severe identity crisis.
