AITopics / Robots

"Then you don't remember a world without robots. To you, a robot is a robot. Gears and metal; electricity and positrons. Mind and iron! Human-made! If necessary, human-destroyed! But you haven't worked with them, so you don't know them. They're a cleaner better breed than we are."

- from I, Robot by Isaac Asimov

Robot, which is derived from a Czech word meaning "menial labor," got its modern meaning from a 1920 play, R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), by Czech playwright Karel Capek (1890-1938). The robots in Capek's play develop emotions and overthrow their human masters. A sinister "power struggle" with robots has long been a popular theme in science fiction --- for a change of pace, try Isaac Asimov's "I Robot" stories in which he consciously strove to depict robots as a benefit to society.

Today, robots are used in many ways, from lawn mowing to auto manufacturing. Scientists see practical uses for robots in performing socially undesirable, hazardous or even "impossible" tasks --- trash collection, toxic waste clean-up, desert and space exploration, and more. AI researchers are also interested in robots as a way to understand human (and not just human) intelligence in its primary function -- interacting with the real world.

Good Places to Start

Robotics. An In Depth report from CBC.ca News (July 2007). Features include:

What is a robot? No simple definition, experts say (July 16, 2007).
Timeline: Evolving Robots - from fantasy to fact.
Photo Gallery: Robots - from fiction to fact.
Warning! Robots ahead - Are we ready to trust autonomous machines in our daily lives? By Paul Jay (July 16, 2007).
Dream machines - Surveying pop culture�s robotic fixation. By Martin Morrow (July 16, 2007).
Starter bots - Are kids' home-built robots laying the foundation for inspired inventions? By Denise Deveau (July 19, 2007).

A Robot in Every Home - The leader of the PC revolution predicts that the next hot field will be robotics. By Bill Gates. Scientific American (January 2007). "[T]he emergence of the robotics industry, which is developing in much the same way that the computer business did 30 years ago. ... Meanwhile some of the world's best minds are trying to solve the toughest problems of robotics, such as visual recognition, navigation and machine learning. And they are succeeding. ... I can envision a future in which robotic devices will become a nearly ubiquitous part of our day-to-day lives. I believe that technologies such as distributed computing, voice and visual recognition, and wireless broadband connectivity will open the door to a new generation of autonomous devices that enable computers to perform tasks in the physical world on our behalf. We may be on the verge of a new era, when the PC will get up off the desktop and allow us to see, hear, touch and manipulate objects in places where we are not physically present. ... Because the new machines will be so specialized and ubiquitous--and look so little like the two-legged automatons of science fiction--we probably will not even call them robots."

Robot Pals. Scientific American Frontiers (April 13, 2005). Alan Alda [host]: "The problem with most robots is that they tend to be, well, robotic. They know nothing they aren't programmed to know, and can do nothing they aren't programmed to do. But for many applications where robots could be useful, they need to be more like humans, able to respond as a cooperative partner rather than a mindless machine. In this program, we'll meet some robots that are learning to figure out for themselves what their human companions have in mind."

I, Robot. A Newspaper In Education (NIE) Weekly Lesson from The Dallas Morning News (May 29, 2007). "In this week's lesson, you will discover how technology is advancing in the field of robotics and get some insight into what considerations to make when designing your own robots for completing certain tasks. ... In what ways are robots different from stand-alone computers and electric motors? How exactly can artificial intelligence be created? ..."

"To me what makes a robot a robot, and as with every definition you can poke it enough until it breaks, but for me it's something that senses the world in some way, does some sort of computation, deciding what to do, and then acts on the world outside itself as a result."
- Rodney Brooks, Newsmaker interview

"I started in industrial robotics. I have a very broad idea of what a robot is, especially if you're interested in robotics research you are interested in the principles that might be applied across a lot of domains. Machine perception, you might end up working on technology that would be deployed on the Internet to search for images. We may not think of that as robotics technology, but it is. That and AI is endlessly fascinating."
- Matt Mason, Newsmaker interview

What is a robot? No simple definition, experts say. CBC.ca News (July 16, 2007). "The International Organization for Standardization also has a definition. Under ISO 8373, a robot is: 'An automatically controlled, reprogrammable, multi-purpose manipulator programmable in three or more axes, which may be either fixed in place or mobile for use in industrial automation applications.' Your microwave oven fits that bill, even though many wouldn't think of it as a robot. We put the question to several experts in robotics. Each of them had a slightly different take on the issue of what a robot actually is. Alan Mackworth, the director of the University of British Columbia Laboratory for Computational Intelligence and president of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence, says robots are goal-oriented. ... Rodney Brooks, the director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology computer science and artificial intelligence laboratory, thinks current notions of 'robot' are too broad. ... Gregory Dudek, the director of the Centre for Intelligent Machines at McGill University in Montreal, sets three criteria for robots. ... Joseph Engelberger has been called the father of robotics. ... Asked to define a robot, he once said, 'I can't define a robot, but I know one when I see one.'"

"We already live with many objects that are, in one sense, robots: the voice in a car�s Global Positioning System, for instance, which senses shifts in its own location and can change its behavior accordingly. But scientists working in the field mean something else when they talk about sociable robots. To qualify as that kind of robot, they say, a machine must have at least two characteristics. It must be situated, and it must be embodied. Being situated means being able to sense its environment and be responsive to it; being embodied means having a physical body through which to experience the world. A G.P.S. robot is situated but not embodied, while an assembly-line robot that repeats the same action over and over again is embodied but not situated." - from The Real Transformers. By Robin Marantz Henig. The New York Times Sunday Magazine (July 29, 2007).

Profile - Cynthia Breazeal: A daring engineer designs robots to communicate and interact the way people do. NOVA scienceNOW [broadcast date: November 21, 2006]. "Thinking outside the box of traditional engineering, Breazeal designs these robots with theories of child development and parent-child interactions in mind, equipping her creations with an ability to learn and giving them expressive, human-like features. And if, as Breazeal hopes, robots are to become our partners, they need to develop the same social skills as people, including emotions. NOVA scienceNOW joins Breazeal in her lab and introduces viewers to some of her seminal inventions: the famous toddler- like robotic head named Kismet; Leonardo, a million-dollar joint project with Stan Winston, legendary in Hollywood for The Terminator robots; and a touch-sensitive teddy bear called the Huggable, which may someday comfort patients and assist caregivers in hospital pediatric wards."

In addition to the video and audio slide show, there's also a collection of Breazeal's responses to questions submitted by viewers such as:
- "Your childhood stories were truly inspiring. Therefore, I would like to know what you would say to girls of today who might still think that science and inventing is something for boys."
- "I'm just starting my B.S. in Computer Science. What educational path should I take to get into social robotics and AI [artificial intelligence]?"

FAQ - Keeping pace with robots. By Jonathan Skillings, with Michael Kanellos contributing. CNET News.com (October 5, 2005). "FAQ The robots are among us, but they're not exactly the stuff of science fiction. At least, not yet. Every week seems to bring a new report of a robot taking up a human task: cleaning floors, riding camels, babysitting the kids, firing machine guns. ... To help set the record straight on where we stand now, here's a rundown of what robots are up to these days. What exactly is a robot? ... What's the difference between a robot and an android? ... Can a computer be considered a robot? It has silicon based intelligence of a sort, and performs specific tasks. ... What have they done for us lately? ... Who's leading the charge to get robots into real world settings? ... Where will Robot Valley sprout? ... When will there be a robot for every household? ... Is one robot better than another? ... Can robots reproduce? ... How smart are they? ... Is it ethical to send a robot to do a human's dirty work? ... When will robots become like human beings?"

Robots | New Scientist Special Reports On Key Topics In Science And Technology: Robots As stated in Duncan Graham-Rowe�s Instant Expert: Robots (September 4, 2006): "Today, over one million household robots, and a further 1.1 million industrial robots, are operating worldwide. Robots are used to perform tasks that require great levels of precision or are simply repetitive and boring. Many also do jobs that are hazardous to people, such as exploring shipwrecks, helping out after disasters, studying other planets and defusing bombs or mines. Robots are increasingly marching into our lives. In the future, robots will act as carers, medics, bionic enhancements, companions, entertainers, security guards, traffic police and even soldiers." There�s much, much more to learn about robots in the dozens of resources collected for this report, including John Pickrell's list of the Top Ten Robot Videos (with links to the actual videos).

The Robots Are Coming! By Elizabeth Corcoran. Forbes.com (August 18, 2006). "The robots are on the move--leaping, scrambling, rolling, flying, climbing. They are figuring out how to get here on their own. They come to help us, protect us, amuse us--and some even do floors. Since Czech playwright Karel Capek popularized the term ('robota' means 'forced labor' in Czech) in 1921, we have imagined what robots could do. But reality fell short of our plans: .... No more. In our eighth annual E-Gang (our group of tech innovators to watch), we present the masters of robotic innovation--entrepreneurs and researchers who are fusing advances in biomechanics, software, sensor technology, materials science and computing to create new generations of robotic assistants. ... Unlike PCs, however, robots are calling on the ingenuity of people from wildly diverse backgrounds: biologists are teaching robots to move, entertainers are teaching them how to amuse us, statisticians are teaching them when to ignore data, computer scientists are teaching them how to think, and materials scientists are inventing new composites that make them light on their feet."

In addition to the main slide show, Seven Amazing Robots That Will Change Your Life, there's another that explores 25 Great Moments In Robotics History.

Robots: An Exhibition of U.S. Automatons from the Leading Edge of Research Highlighting the WTEC [World Technology Evaluation Center] International Study of Robotics. Presented by NSF, the National Science Foundation (September 2005). Resources within the exhibit site to complement the WTEC study include:

Exhibit Descriptions:

Learning and Attention with a Humanoid Robot Head
Learning to Walk in 20 Minutes
Molecule Self-Configuring Robots
Self-Assembling Robotics
Systems for Surgical Assistance
Solar-Powered Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (SAUV)
RHex/RiSE
COOL Aide: Robotics Assistance for the Elderly
COTS-M Scout Robot
Aerial Robots
Mars Exploration Rover

The Robotics Research collection with resources such as:
- Robotics: A Special Report (November 22, 2004):
  - Overview: Quest for Intelligence
  - Helping Hands
  - Robots & Biology
  - Putting the Team in Teamwork
  - Sense and Sensor Abilities
  - Robots at Work and at Play
  - Where No Human Can Go
- Researcher Founds a Robot Soccer Dynasty. - Since receiving her doctorate in 1992, Manuela Veloso's research interests in artificial intelligence have focused on duplicating the success with which humans plan, learn and execute tasks. Founding a robot soccer dynasty was purely coincidental. By David Hart. NSF Discovery (March 24, 2004).
- Shoebox-sized Robots Deployed in Rescue Effort at Ground Zero - Graduate students and the experimental robots they helped to develop were among the early responders who joined the search and rescue efforts shortly after the Sept. 11 collapse of the World Trade Center towers. By Peter West. NSF Discovery (March 24, 2004).

Invasion of the Robots - From medicine to military, machines finally arrive. By Michael Kanellos. CNET News.com (March 10, 2004). "The robots are coming. And when they get here, they will take out the trash. Mobile, intelligent robots that can perform tasks usually reserved for humans are starting to creep into mainstream society and could become a multibillion-dollar market in a few years."

The Robotics Research Group at the University of Texas at Austin has "put together a small educational section which will enable you to explore the world of robotics." Among the topics covered are:

Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics (actually it's three plus a 'zeroth law')
Benefits of Robots
Degrees of Freedom < and check out our DOF toon >
Types of Robots

Robots! A website from The University of Birmingham. "Explore our site to find all about the real robots that we build - sporty robots, clever robots, smiley robots, and ... ooo, those pesky robots! Ask your questions about robots to our expert - Professor Robotnik! Read about robo-pets and robo-footballers! Build your own robots!"

Among the questions that have been asked of the Prof are "How can I build a robot that has a human personality?" and "What is a robot?"
Be sure to see their richly illustrated History of Robotics.

Robots, a CBBC Newsround Guide: *What is a robot? *Robots in films *Award winning robots *Robot gadgets and toys *What is Artificial Intelligence (AI)? *The world's most powerful computer *Robots then and now *Robots in the future *Robots in space.

Another helpful resource from the the BBC is the Robotics section of the Ask a Teacher feature of BBC Education Scotland's Standard Grade Bitesize site.

Examining the Sensitive Side of Robots. [Radio broadcast.] NPR's Talk of the Nation (March 21, 2007). "Science fiction and pop culture have conspired to make most of us think of robots as something out of Terminator or I, Robot. But after six years of behind-the-scenes reporting from the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, Lee Gutkind knows better. Gutkind, the founder and editor of the literary journal Creative Nonfiction, examines the subculture surrounding these mechanical creatures in a new book, Almost Human: Making Robots Think. He found that today's robots are more fun than ferocious, and scientists are making wires and chips increasingly human-like. Gutkind talks with Neal Conan about the sensitive side of robots."

Also see: Outsized effort powers robots in 'Almost Human.' Book review by David Templeton. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (March 14, 2007). "[I]t's the dramatic tale of Carnegie Mellon University roboticists working to build robots that feature human-like abilities when they move, see, record, learn, and even understand. Lee Gutkind, the self-described 'godfather of creative nonfiction,' tells their story in his latest book that provides an inside look into Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute. 'Almost Human: Making Robots Think,' the 320-page book published by WW Norton.... 'It's a great test of character to get them to work,' Mr. Gutkind said of robots that do not make good eye contact with humans. 'The main thesis is that young people are making things happen.'"

The Humanoid Race - Machines are getting more and more like the rest of us. A piece-by-piece guide to the globe's most advanced bots. By Robert Capps. Wired Magazine (July 2004; Issue 12.07). "With each advance in computing speed, battery capacity, camera and motor miniaturization, and software capability, the world grows closer to the ultimate goal of robotics: a walking, talking, feeling android worthy of our cinematic inspirations. Consider the progress of just the past 15 years. There are now robots that can get around on two legs, participate in simple conversations, and manipulate objects in rudimentary ways. ... And while there are a number of extremely complex problems to solve before we can make something as advanced as Sonny, the star of I, Robot, we're getting there, one piece at a time. To find out where the state of the art lies, Wired surveyed the projects that might one day add up to an android just like the rest of us. "

Robotics Minicourse: Basics of Robots - "Welcome to this Open University robotics minicourse, which is aimed at anyone who has a general interest in robots and now wishes to learn more about robotics. We hope you'll find the course entertaining, informative and worthwhile!" From the Open University - RoboFesta web site. One historical fact you'll learn is: "Where did the word robot originate? The word robot was introduced in 1920 in a play by Karel Capek called R.U.R., or ...."

Industry Statistics - Robotics: Check out our fascinating collection.

Thinking Machines, part of Discovery Channel Canada's AI mini-site. Resources include:

Robots that reason, learn and crave improvement. By Tamar Simon (June 22, 2001). "In order to create robots capable of complicated tasks, like spacecraft that can pilot themselves, higher-level representational thinking is required. ... [Brian] William's approach is to give a robot 'models' - common sense principles that explain how the robot and the outside world work. The robot must then reason from these models to achieve its goals."
Self sustaining robots a taste of things to come. By Tamar Simon (June 22, 2001). "So you've developed a fantastic, artificially intelligent robot to do all kinds of stuff you don't want to do: walk your dog, grocery shop, undertake reconnaissance and search and destroy missions into enemy territory. Trouble is, within half an hour of leaving the house - or military base - it runs out of juice. ... But researchers at the University of South Florida may have the answer to this dilemma: gastrobots - robots that can digest food. Led by mechanical engineering professor Stuart Wilkinson, the USF team has created a prototype known as 'Gastronome' (a.k.a. 'Chew Chew') that can process food using a Microbial Fuel Cell located in its centre wagon. It's a piece of biotechnology that converts food into electricity without combustion using biocatalysts like living microorganisms or enzymes."

Robot Systems. "Robots are comprised of several systems working together as a whole. The type of job the robot does dictates what system elements it needs. The general categories of robot systems are: Controller, Body, Mobility, Power, Sensors, Tools." A clearly written text combined with lots of photos and links to actual projects make this page from ROVer Ranch, part of the NASA JSC Learning Technologies Project, a great place to start!

Check out NASA's Robot Web Links, where you can get a preview of Robonaut (an advanced humanoid system), meet Urbie (the Urban Robot), learn about nanorobots, and much, much more.
And for those of you looking for some exciting robot related projects & activities, see ROVer Ranch's K-12 Experiments in Robotic Software homepage.

The Big Picture - A Short History of Robotics and Thinking Machines. Part of the teaching guide for the Scientific American Frontiers in the classroom series: ROBOTS ALIVE!

Ethics for the Robot Age - Should bots carry weapons? Should they win patents? Questions we must answer as automation advances. View by Jordan Pollack. Wired Magazine (January 2005; Issue 13.01). "My definition of a robot is any device controlled by software that can work 24/7 and put people out of work. The machines are not intelligent. ... In case you missed them, today's most popular robots are ATMs and computer printers. While our hopes for and fears of robots may be overblown, there is plenty to worry about as automation progresses. The future will have many more robots, and they'll most certainly be much more advanced. This raises important ethical questions that we must begin to confront. 1. Should robots be humanoid? ... 2. Should humans become robots? ... 4. Should robots eat? ... 6. Should robots carry weapons? ..."

Also see our Ethical and Social Implications and Science Fiction pages.

Meet Some Robots

ASIMO - Say Hello to ASIMO. From Honda Motor Company. A fascinating collection of information (including FAQs, movies & teaching resources) about this humanoid robot whose name stands for Advanced Step in Innovative MObility.
Assembly Robotics Group, part of the Institute of Perception, Action, and Behaviour in the Division of Informatics, University of Edinburgh. Home of Freddy, the Famous Scottish Robot: "Freddy (mid1960s - 1981) was one of the first robots to be able to assemble wooden models using vision to identify and locate the parts -- given a jumbled heap of toy wooden car and boat pieces it could assemble both in about 16 hours using a parallel gripper and single camera (1973)." **For more information about Freddy - including a photo - check out this page from the seminar: Artificial Intelligence - Recollections of the Pioneers.
- And be sure to see the segment featuring Freddy in this video available from AI Videos.
Bristol Robotics Laboratory, a collaborative research partnership funded by the University of Bristol, the University of the West of England and HEFCE, is the home of Ecobot II, A robot powered on a diet of flies.
- Listen to this related podcast: Chris Melhuish - Energy Autonomy. Talking Robots (August 17, 2007). "In this episode we interview Chris Melhuish, who is the director of the Bristol Robotics Laboratory at the University of Bristol and the West of England in the UK. Whether for your iPod or robot, we all crave for a better energy autonomy. Batteries, solar panels and gas tanks are the usual, but what if machines could digest bugs or waste to get on the move? Chris Melhuish presents the fly-eating EcoBot, artificial gills for underwater robots and the technology behind Microbial Fuel Cells. The question now is whether these robots will be begging for food or capable of autonomously foraging for it in their environment (SlugBot). So... why don't we have humanoids sitting in our restaurants yet?"
Kismet: A Sociable Humanoid Robot. Well-written text complemented by delightful images, not to mention several video clips, make this an excellent site for getting to know a robot, up-close and personal.
- Meet the Humanoid Robotic Group at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and their other robots, including: Coco, Cog, and Macaco.
- See this photo gallery from CNET News.com: Humanoid robots come to life at MIT (May 15, 2007).
- Interested in an article about the theological adviser to Kismet's creators?
- And be sure to read: The Real Transformers - Researchers are programming robots to learn in humanlike ways and show humanlike traits. Could this be the beginning of robot consciousness -- and of a better understanding of ourselves? By Robin Marantz Henig. The New York Times Sunday Magazine (July 29, 2007 cover story). "I was introduced to my first sociable robot on a sunny afternoon in June. The robot, developed by graduate students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was named Mertz. ... " **Also listen to this related interview with the author of the article and Rodney Brooks: More Than Meets the Eye. The Leonard Lopate Show. WNYC, New York Public Radio (July 30, 2007).
Robotic Life Group at the MIT Media Lab. " We create socially intelligent robotic creatures that communicate with us, cooperate with us, and learn from us as capable partners." Be sure to meet Huggable, Leonardo and others.
Shakey the Robot, from SRI's innovation timeline:"From 1966 through 1972, the Artificial Intelligence Center at SRI International (then Stanford Research Institute) conducted research on a mobile robot system nicknamed �Shakey.� Endowed with a limited ability to perceive and model its environment, Shakey could perform tasks that required planning, route-finding, and the rearranging of simple objects. Although the Shakey project led to numerous advances in AI techniques, many of which were reported in the literature, much specific information appears only in a series of previously relatively inaccessible SRI technical reports." Those reports and other resources are now available and can be accessed from this SRI page.
- Also see this related article: Robot learns to grasp everyday chores. By Brian D. Lee. Stanford Report (November 8, 2006). "Stanford scientists plan to make a robot capable of performing everyday tasks, such as unloading the dishwasher. By programming the robot with 'intelligent' software that enables it to pick up objects it has never seen before, the scientists are one step closer to creating a real life Rosie, the robot maid from The Jetsons cartoon show. 'Within a decade we hope to develop the technology that will make it useful to put a robot in every home and office,' said Andrew Ng, an assistant professor of computer science who is leading the wireless Stanford Artificial Intelligence Robot (STAIR) project. ... Stanford has a history of leading the field of artificial intelligence. In 1966, scientists at the Stanford Research Institute built Shakey, the first robot to combine problem solving, movement and perception. Flakey, a robot that could wander independently, followed. In 2005, Stanford engineers won the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Grand Challenge with Stanley, a robot Volkswagen that autonomously drove 132 miles through a desert course. The ultimate aim for artificial intelligence is to build a robot that can create and execute plans to achieve a goal. 'The last serious attempt to do something like this was in 1966 with the Shakey project led by Nils Nilsson,' Ng said. 'This is a project in Shakey's tradition, done with 2006 technology instead of 1966 AI technology.' To succeed, the scientists will need to unite fragmented research areas of artificial intelligence including speech processing, navigation, manipulation, planning, reasoning, machine learning and vision."
- And see:
  - Shakey's page at The Robot Hall of Fame,
- the 1972 video, Shakey the Robot, just one of the Shakey videos that can be found in our AI Videos collection.
Vikia and the Social Robot Project. "The goal of the Social Robot Project is to overcome the human-robot social barrier. Towards this end, we are in the process of developing a robot which bears a personality, and which can behave according to social conventions. The idea is that communication and interaction with robots should be easy and enjoyable, both for unfamiliar users and trained professionals. We want robots to behave more like people, so that people do not have to behave like robots when they interact with them."
- "At CMU [Carnegie Mellon University], Grace serves as VIKIA's sucessor as a platform for the social robots project."
The Robotics Institute at the School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University. Check out their collection of projects and find out who Pearl is . . . and what a HeartLanderdoes.
Seven Amazing Robots That Will Change Your Life, from Forbes.com.
List of Famous Robots with videos from YouTube.

Timelines:

AI Topic's Brief History of Artificial Intelligence, by Bruce G. Buchanan.
BBC News Timeline: Real robots - "Robots are not new. They have been around for centuries in various forms. Here's a brief overview of the development of both robots and computers."
CBC.ca News Interactive Timeline: Evolving Robots, from fantasy to fact.
The Computer History Museum's Robots and Artificial Intelligence Timeline. An exciting tour which begins in 1948 . . . and in 1961, you'll meet UNIMATE!
Forbes.com's 25 Great Moments In Robotics History.
Man's Best Friend. By Steven Kotler. Discover 26(12): December 2005."Discover offers a look in that mirror as we analyze the 25 greatest stepping-stones in robotics, points in time where science fiction meshes with science fact."

Competitions (a sampling)

"BEST is a non-profit, volunteer-based organization whose mission is to inspire students to pursue careers in engineering, science, and technology through participation in a sports-like, science and engineering-based robotics competition."
"Botball is a hands-on learning experience in robotics designed to engage students in learning the practical applications of science, technology, engineering and math." As explained on the About Botball page: "Presented in your region by KISS Institute for Practical Robotics, the Botball Educational Robotics Program integrates science, technology, engineering and math with robotics to keep your students on the forefront of technology. Any middle or high school aged student can participate in Botball as long as the team has an adult contact. The organization of the team is up to the team leader."
- Be sure to check out the video gallery as well as their [AITopics/Software#robotcode | robot products and programming tutorial]], and see what's happening at their National Conference on Educational Robotics.
- Also watch this video: Bay Area Students Recognized For Their Robots. By Richard Hart. abc7news.com. "Some exuberant Bay Area high schoolers will be traveling to Hawaii soon, thanks to their robots. They won part of an annual nationwide robotics competition sponsored by NASA and held this weekend at Santa Clara University. It's a tabletop sport called Botball. Kids shout: 'We're going to Hawaii!' These kids are competing against 5,000 others from the U.S. to the Middle East. They spent months building and programming their machines on the way to the regional finals at Santa Clara University. Every team must use the same Lego body parts, the same brain, a Nintendo Gameboy, in the same challenge. ... They learn sportsmanship. But most of all, how to build awesome robots. These are not remote control toys. They are programmed to think. Some have vision."
- And check out this Robotics and Engineering Course (available online from NASA's Robotics Alliance Project): Robotics with the XBC Controller. Instructor: David Culp (August 8 - September 7, 2006). "An introduction to key robotics and engineering concepts by utilizing a hands-on and project based approach to learning. Students will explore autonomous mobile robotic systems using advanced robotics hardware and software from the KISS Institute for Practical Robotics."
Eurobot: "An amazing event gathering fun, high technology, friendship, creativity, education and passion! Created in 1998, Eurobot is a international amateur robotics contest open to teams of young people, organised either in student projects or in independent clubs. Eurobot takes place in Europe but also welcomes countries from other continents."
"FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) is a multinational non-profit organization, that aspires to transform culture, making science, math, engineering, and technology as cool for kids as sports are today." "The FIRST LEGO League (FLL), considered the 'little league' of the FIRST Robotics Competition, is the result of a partnership between FIRST and the LEGO Group. FLL extends the FIRST concept of inspiring and celebrating science and technology to children aged 9 through 14, using real-world context and hands-on experimentation."
- "The FIRST Robotics Competition is an exciting, multinational competition that teams professionals and young people to solve an engineering design problem in an intense and competitive way. The program is a life-changing, career-molding experience�and a lot of fun. In 2005 the competition will reach close to 25,000 high-school-aged young people on close to 1,000 teams in 30 competitions. Our teams come from Brazil, Canada, Ecuador, Israel, Mexico, the U.K., and almost every U.S. state."
Grand Challenges: several in our collection involve robots!
RoboCup: "an international joint project to promote AI, robotics, and related field. It is an attempt to foster AI and intelligent robotics research by providing a standard problem where wide range of technologies can be integrated and examined. RoboCup chose to use soccer game as a central topic of research, aiming at innovations to be applied for socially significant problems and industries. The ultimate goal of the RoboCup project is By 2050, develop a team of fully autonomous humanoid robots that can win against the human world champion team in soccer."
- Also see RoboCup-Rescue on our Hazards & Disasters page, and this article:
  - RoboCup Rescue: A Grand Challenge for Multiagent and Intelligent Systems. By Hiroaki Kitano and Satoshi Tadokoro. AI Magazine 22(1): Spring 2001, 39-52. "Disaster rescue is one of the most serious social issues that involves very large numbers of heterogeneous agents in the hostile environment. The intention of the RoboCup Rescue project is to promote research and development in this socially significant domain at various levels, involving multiagent teamwork coordination, physical agents for search and rescue, information infrastructures, personal digital assistants, a standard simulator and decision-support systems, evaluation benchmarks for rescue strategies, and robotic systems that are all integrated into a comprehensive system in the future. ... In this article, we present a detailed analysis of the task domain and elucidate characteristics necessary for multiagent and intelligent systems for this domain. Then, we present an overview of the RoboCup Rescue project."
- Historical note: "The idea of robots playing soccer was first mentioned by Professor Alan Mackworth (University of British Columbia, Canada) in a paper entitled 'On Seeing Robots' presented at VI-92, 1992. and later published in a book Computer Vision: System, Theory, and Applications, pages 1-13, World Scientific Press, Singapore, 1993. A series of papers on the Dynamo robot soccer project was published by his group. Independently, a group of Japanese researchers organized a Workshop on Grand Challenges in Artificial Intelligence in October, 1992 in Tokyo, discussing possible grand challenge problems. This workshop led to a serious discussions of using the game of soccer for promoting science and technology." - from A Brief History of RoboCup.
  - And be sure to watch Dynamos and Dynamites - The World's First Soccer Playing Robots, a collection of videos on Professor Alan Mackworth's Robot Soccer page.
- Articles:
  - RoboCup. AI Magazine 21 (1), Spring 2000. Among the many articles you'll find in this exciting issue are: Overview of RoboCup-98 (Minoru Asada, Manuela M. Veloso, Milind Tambe, Itsuki Noda, Hiroaki Kitano, and Gerhard K. Kraetzschmar), AAAI-98 Robot Exhibition (Karen Zita Haigh and Tucker Balch), and Using Robot Competitions to Promote Intellectual Development (Robin R. Murphy)
  - The AAAI 2006 Mobile Robot Competition and Exhibition. By Paul E. Rybski, Jeffrey Forbes, Debra Burhans, Zach Dodds, Paul Oh, Matthias Scheutz, and Bob Avanzato. AI Magazine 28(2): Summer 2007, 101.
  - RoboCup: 10 Years of Achievements and Future Challenges. By Ubbo Visser and Hans-Dieter Burkhard. AI Magazine 28(2): Summer 2007, 115. "Will we see autonomous humanoid robots that play (and win) soccer against the human soccer world champion in the year 2050? This question is not easy to answer, and the idea is quite visionary. However, this is the goal of the RoboCup Federation. There are serious research questions that have to be tackled behind the scenes of a soccer game: perception, decision making, action selection, hardware design, materials, energy, and more. RoboCup is also about the nature of intelligence, and playing soccer acts as a performance measure of systems that contain artificial intelligence in much the same way chess has been used over the last century. This article outlines the current situation following 10 years of research with reference to the results of the 2006 World Championship in Bremen, Germany, and discusses future challenges."
- See More Readings below and AI Magazine and for more articles about RoboCup and other competitions.
"RoboFesta � Europe is part of an international movement to promote interest throughout Europe in science and technology through many different kinds of robotics activities. These include many exciting robot competitions for children and adults, expositions, technical meetings, and widespread media cover. RoboFesta began in Japan in 1999, and is rapidly spreading throughout the world."
- RoboFesta-UK
- RoboFesta-France
- Additional countries and lots of resources can be found by using the links on any of the RoboFesta pages mentioned above.
Sodarace [a joint venture between: soda and Queen Mary, University of London]: "the online olympics pitting human creativity against machine learning in a competition to construct virtual racing robots. ... Sodarace is not just for fun. It is a shared competition for Artificial Intelligence researchers to test their learning algorithms while also being a play space in which to communicate the benefits of Artificial Intelligence research with a wide audience and promote a creative exploration of physics and engineering."
Also see:
- AI in the news
- Robot Competitions Over the Years: A Retrospective. AI Magazine 23:1 (Spring 2002).
- Robot Competition Links from RobotBooks.com

Statistics

The International Federation of Robotics
Robotics Online, from The Robotic Industries Association, offers an assortment of very helpful resources including current news articles and Robotics Industry Statistics.
The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE)
Our collection of Robotics Statistics

Readings Online

For the most recent articles, see: AI in the news:'''

Robots and Robotics in Undergraduate AI Education. AI Magazine 27(1), Spring 2006.

The Robots Among Us - If robotics technology now stands where computing did in the '70s, what can we expect in the future? By Tom Abate. San Francisco Chronicle (December 7, 2007). "It may seem like a science fiction leap to go from the dust-sucking Roomba to the walking, talking machines of movie and television fame. But David Calkins, 39, director of the San Francisco State University Robotics Institute, says it isn't so much that the robots are coming as that they are already working for us under different names. 'Why do we call a Roomba a robot and not a dishwasher?' asks Calkins, arguing that we already rely on increasingly clever special-purpose devices and programs such as search engines, which use rudimentary artificial intelligence to answer queries and rank replies. ... 'It's a problem of definitions,' says Calkins. 'People use the r-word to mean so many different things.'"

The 50 Best Robots Ever. By Robert Capps. Wired (January 2006; Issue 14.01). "They're exploring the deep sea and distant planets. They're saving lives in the operating room and on the battlefield. They're transforming factory floors and filmmaking. They're - oh c'mon, they're just plain cool! From Qrio to the Terminator, here are our absolute favorites (at least for now)."

Medicine & Machines - Robot makes history as surgical technology evolves. By David Cho. Palm Beach Daily News & Cox News Service (August 21, 2005). "Penelope is a robot, a machine that recently made medical history by becoming the first to act as an independent surgical aide during an operation. During a June procedure at New York-Presbyterian Hospital to remove a benign tumor from a patient's forearm, Penelope responded to voice commands from a surgeon, handing over clamps, forceps and other instruments with her magnetized mechanical arm. Watching with digital cameras, the robot retrieved the instruments when the surgeon placed them down. Inside her computer brain, artificial intelligence software kept track of the implements to ensure none were misplaced and made predictions about what tool the surgeon would ask for next. 'Penelope is just the first step,' said Dr. Michael Treat, a surgeon, physicist and lifelong robotics fan who founded the company that developed Penelope. ... The robot, named for the resourceful wife of Odysseus in Homer's epic poems, weighs about 60 pounds and has a lightweight arm made of carbon fiber mounted on a stainless steel frame."

Meet Penelope at the Robotic Surgical Tech, Inc. web site.

The Future of Humanoid Robots: a panel discussion produced by Discover in partnership with The Disney Institute. Discover 21(3): March 2000. Panelists -- Charles Petit, Eric C. Haseltine, Joe Engelberger, Kazuhiko Kawamura, Sebastian Thrun, Marvin Minsky, John McCarthy, Joe Herkert, and Alan C. Schultz -- address the question: How human should a humanoid robot be?

The gentle rise of the machines. Robotics - The science-fiction dream that robots would one day become a part of everyday life was absurd. Or was it? The Economist Technology Quarterly (March 11, 2004). "Since 1939, when Westinghouse Electric introduced Electro, a mechanical man, at the World's Fair in New York, robot fans have imagined a world filled with tireless robotic helpers, always on hand to wash dishes, do the laundry and handle the drudgery of everyday tasks. So far, however, such robots have proliferated in science fiction, but have proved rather more elusive in the real world. But optimists are now arguing that the success of the Roomba and of toys such as Aibo, Sony's robot dog, combined with the plunging cost of computer power, could mean that the long-awaited mass market for robots is finally within reach."

Trust me, I'm a robot - Robot safety: As robots move into homes and offices, ensuring that they do not injure people will be vital. But how? The Economist Technology Quarterly (June 8, 2006). "Last year there were 77 robot-related accidents in Britain alone, according to the Health and Safety Executive. With robots now poised to emerge from their industrial cages and to move into homes and workplaces, roboticists are concerned about the safety implications beyond the factory floor. To address these concerns, leading robot experts have come together to try to find ways to prevent robots from harming people. Inspired by the Pugwash Conferences -- an international group of scientists, academics and activists founded in 1957 to campaign for the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons -- the new group of robo-ethicists met earlier this year in Genoa, Italy, and announced their initial findings in March at the European Robotics Symposium in Palermo, Sicily. ... According to the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe's World Robotics Survey, in 2002 the number of domestic and service robots more than tripled, nearly outstripping their industrial counterparts. ... So what exactly is being done to protect us from these mechanical menaces? 'Not enough,' says Blay Whitby, an artificial-intelligence expert at the University of Sussex in England. ... Robot safety is likely to surface in the civil courts as a matter of product liability. 'When the first robot carpet-sweeper sucks up a baby, who will be to blame?' asks John Hallam, a professor at the University of Southern Denmark in Odense. If a robot is autonomous and capable of learning, can its designer be held responsible for all its actions? Today the answer to these questions is generally 'yes'. But as robots grow in complexity it will become a lot less clear cut, he says."

Robots/ Mechanical Life. NPR Talk of the Nation: Science Friday With Ira Flatow (August 30, 2002). "This week, an automated convenience store opened in Washington. This robo-mart dispenses snacks, toiletries, and even DVDs. From housekeeping to the battlefield to your neighborhood convenience store, researchers are creating robots to live with us and work for us. In this hour, we'll look at how robots may change our lives. Plus, early attempts to create mechanical life." Guests: Rodney Brooks & Gaby Wood. You can listen to the radio broadcast by clicking here.

The Courage to Doubt: How to Build Android Robots as a Theologian. Anne Foerst's talk presented at Harvard Divinity School, November 27, 1995.

Also see: Do Androids Dream? M.I.T. Is Working on It. Claudia Dreifus interviews "Dr. Anne Foerst, 34, a researcher at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the director of M.I.T.'s God and Computers project." The New York Times (Science, page D3; November 7, 2000).

The robot that thinks like you... Scientists built a robot that thinks like we do and set it loose to explore the world. New Scientist discovers what happened next By Douglas Fox. New Scientist (November 5, 2005; subscription req'd.; Issue 2524). "The infant I am watching wander around its rather spartan playpen in the Neurosciences Institute (NSI) in La Jolla, California, is a more limited creature. It is a trashcan-shaped robot called Darwin VII, and it has just 20,000 brain cells. Despite this, it has managed to master the abilities of a 18-month-old baby -- a pretty impressive feat for a machine. ... Darwin VII is the fourth in a series of robots that Jeff Krichmar and his colleagues at NSI have created in a quest to better understand how our own brains work. ... The idea of an artificial neural network that could perform computations was proposed as long ago as 1943, by Warren McCullough and Walter Pitts at the University of Illinois. ... [I]n the past few years, neuroscientists and AI researchers have started collaborating more closely, and their labours are beginning to bear fruit. Their conclusions challenge two decades of research into artificial neural networks."

Visit the %newwinNeurosciences Institute ... and meet Jeffrey L. Krichmar and Nomad & Darwin!

How Robots Work. By Tom Harris. HowStuffWorks. "Artificial intelligence (AI) is arguably the most exciting field in robotics. It's certainly the most controversial: Everybody agrees that a robot can work in an assembly line, but there's no consensus on whether a robot can ever be intelligent. Like the term 'robot' itself, artificial intelligence is hard to define. Ultimate AI would be a recreation of the human thought process -- a man-made machine with our intellectual abilities. This would include the ability to learn just about anything, the ability to reason, the ability to use language and the ability to formulate original ideas. Roboticists are nowhere near achieving this level of artificial intelligence, but they have had made a lot of progress with more limited AI. Today's AI machines can replicate some specific elements of intellectual ability."

The Real Transformers - Researchers are programming robots to learn in humanlike ways and show humanlike traits. Could this be the beginning of robot consciousness -- and of a better understanding of ourselves? By Robin Marantz Henig. The New York Times Sunday Magazine (July 29, 2007 cover story). "I was introduced to my first sociable robot on a sunny afternoon in June. The robot, developed by graduate students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was named Mertz. ... "

What We Can Learn from Robots. By Gregory T. Huang. Technology Review (January 2005). "On a crisp October day last year, Carnegie Mellon University�s Robotics Institute kicked off its 25th-anniversary celebration.... On the third day, it was Mitsuo Kawato�s turn to speak. The lights went down, and the director of the ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories in Kyoto, Japan, made his way to the stage to the beat of rock music. ... [T] here is a difference between him and other attendees. Kawato loves robots not because they are cool, but because he believes they can teach him how the human brain works. 'Only when we try to reproduce brain functions in artificial machines can we understand the information processing of the brain,' he says. It�s what he calls 'understanding the brain by creating the brain.' By programming a robot to reach out and grasp an object, for instance, Kawato hopes to learn the patterns in which electrical signals flow among neurons in the brain to control a human arm. ... 'This is very different from the usual justification for building humanoid robots --- that they are economically useful or will help take care of the elderly,' says Christopher Atkeson, a robotics expert at Carnegie Mellon."

Bots on The Ground - In the Field of Battle (Or Even Above It), Robots Are a Soldier's Best Friend. By Joel Garreau The Washington Post (May 6, 2007). "The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have become an unprecedented field study in human relationships with intelligent machines. These conflicts are the first in history to see widespread deployment of thousands of battle bots. ... Even more startling than these machines' capabilities, however, are the effects they have on their friendly keepers who, for example, award their bots 'battlefield promotions' and 'purple hearts.' ... Humans have long displayed an uncanny ability to make emotional connections with their manufactured helpmates. ... Digital pets like the Tamagotchi or the Furby, designed to be cute, have long caused children to make spooky levels of connection. Sherry Turkle, founder of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self, quotes kids describing intelligent machines as 'sort of alive.' ... Humans respond so readily to Kismet, created by Cynthia Breazeal, that graduate students working in the lab at night have been known to put up a curtain between themselves and the bot, [Rodney] Brooks reports. ... The 2 million personal bots in use around the world in 2004 are expected to grow to 7 million next year. The South Korean Ministry of Information and Communication hopes to put a bot in every home there within six years."

Robots get friendly - Robots are acting more like people. Will our attachments eventually become too strong? By Gregory M. Lamb. The Christian Science Monitor (February 5, 2003). "Of course, computers and their physical manifestations, robots, are already deeply embedded in our lives. In some sense, ATM machines, self-service gas pumps, and TiVo video recorders serve as rudimentary robots. Now, scientists are pushing to make these machines more sophisticated and humanlike, both in appearance [see related story] and intelligence. ... Some experts worry that attachments may become too strong [see the other related story: If you kick a robotic dog, is it wrong?], subjecting people to manipulation by clever programmers or unnatural reliance on machines for companionship."

Newsmaker interview with Rodney Brooks, director of MIT's CSAIL and CTO of iRobot: Sizing up the coming robotics revolution. By Candace Lombardi. CNET News.com (May 15, 2007). "When it comes to robots, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab is one of the places in the world where the magic happens. Rodney Brooks is the Panasonic professor of robotics at MIT and the director of CSAIL. He is also the co-founder and chief technology officer of iRobot and one of the principal architects of iRobot's Roomba vacuum. On Tuesday, RoboBusiness 2007, an international conference showcasing consumer, commercial and military robots, will convene in Boston. To gain insight on what's in the pipeline, CNET News.com sat down with Brooks, one of the leading experts on robots and artificial intelligence. From his office at CSAIL, Brooks shared his thoughts on the best AI readily available today and the four things it will take for the magicians of science to match science fiction fantasies."

Newsmaker interview with Matt Mason, director of the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University - Roboticist inspired by more than machines. By Candace Lombardi. CNET News.com (May 18, 2007). "On Tuesday, Matt Mason, the director of the Robotics Institute at CMU announced the 2007 inductees into the Robot Hall of Fame. The honor, which is judged by a jury of both leading science and science fiction experts, was created in April 2003 to call attention to the contributions robots and their creators make to society. Mason is known for his work on the mechanics of robot manipulation and has written four books on the topic. He spent some time with CNET News.com from the great glass hall of the Hynes Convention Center in Boston during RoboBusiness 2007."

Domestic bliss through mechanical marvels? By Kevin Maney. USA Today (September 1, 2004). "Never mind the humanoid Automated Domestic Assistants walking rich people's pets in the movie I, Robot, or the accordion-armed Robot B9 in TV classic Lost in Space warning of danger on lonely planets. The real force driving the development of personal robots -- and what will eventually create demand for them in the marketplace -- is aging baby boomers. That's the secret among robotics researchers and budding robot companies. As the horde of boomers become old, they increasingly will be unable to care for themselves or their homes. They'll face a social and medical system straining to help them. But they'll be comfortable with technology. ... Robots that are likely to serve the elderly seem to fall into three broad categories. Though the categories don't officially have names, you could call them homebots, carebots and joybots. A look at those categories speaks volumes about what's going on in robotics -- and what's still beyond technology's reach. ... 'Whether or not you have to love your robot is another question,' Brooks says. 'I don't need my ATM to be cute.' Here is a great point of departure between U.S. and Japanese robotics research. U.S. labs and companies generally approach robots as tools. The Japanese approach them as beings. That explains a lot about robot projects coming out of Japan."

20 Things You Didn't Know About... Robots - Modern robots can respond to emotion and the smell of fine wines. By Sean Markey and Corey S. Powell. Discover Magazine (April 2, 2007).

Getting a Grip - Building the Ultimate Robotic Hand. By Gregory Mone. Wired (Issue 15.12; December 2007). "A 6-foot-tall, one-armed robot named Stair 1.0 balances on a modified Segway platform in the doorway of a Stanford University conference room. ... From his seat at a polished table, roboticist Morgan Quigley sends the bot on a mission. 'Stair, please fetch the stapler from the lab.' ... To do real work in our offices and homes, to fetch our staplers or clean up our rooms, robots are going to have to master their hands. They'll need the kind of 'hand-eye' coordination that enables them to identify targets, guide their mechanical mitts toward them, and then manipulate the objects deftly. There's a growing need for robots with these skills. In Japan, the elder care industry is already employing robots as assistants. To keep seniors out of costly nursing homes, though, they need to be able to perform household chores like serving up a drink. Even that simple task will entail plucking a glass out of a crowded cupboard, finding and removing a bottle from a fridge, and then pouring the beverage from one container into the other. And the bot needs to do all this without spilling, dropping, or breaking anything. ... In a more spacious lab at the University of Massachusetts, UMan is going through a similar kind of basic training. Stair and UMan could be brothers: They look alike, use the same scanning lasers, and were both developed around a single hand built by Barrett [Technology]. The UMan creators designed an algorithm that helps their robot figure out how to use that hand with objects it has never seen before.� ... In a more spacious lab at the University of Massachusetts, UMan is going through a similar kind of basic training. Stair and UMan could be brothers: They look alike, use the same scanning lasers, and were both developed around a single hand built by Barrett. The UMan creators designed an algorithm that helps their robot figure out how to use that hand with objects it has never seen before. ... As Europe's preeminent robotics facility and one of the world's epicenters of artificial intelligence research, [University of Genoa's Laboratory for Integrated Advanced Robotics is] dominated by eggheads staring at monitors. And, of course, there's an android hanging around the place. The size and shape of a 3-year-old, RobotCub has two five-fingered hands,"

Meet the robots:
- STAIR: STanford Artificial Intelligence Robot (Stanford University)
- Uman (University of Massachusetts, Amherst campus)
- RobotCub consortium

Rise of the Robots. By Hans Moravec. Scientific American. December 1999; pp.124-135. "By 2050 robot 'brains' based on computers that execute 100 trillion instructions per second will start rivaling human intelligence."

Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendant Mind. By Hans Moravec (1998). New York: Oxford University Press. An adventurous look at the future in which the author sees intelligent machines surpassing their human creators as the next evolutionary step. The author's web page includes an in-depth look at the book. You may also want to read the transcript of a November 1998 interview with Hans Moravec.

The Scientific Relevance of Robotics (Remarks at the Dedication of the CMU Robotics Institute). By Allen Newell. AI Magazine 2(1): 24-26, 34 (Winter 1980). "My first point, then, is to remind you that science doesn't fit any single mold. ... From where I stand, it is easy to see the science lurking in robotics. It lies in the welding of intelligence to energy. That is, it lies in intelligent perception and intelligent control of motion."

Human-Free Kick At Robocup 2002 - humanoids battle it out in soccer. By Dennis Normile. Scientific American Explore (September 23, 2002). "'The goal of RoboCup is to develop a team of robots that can beat the human World Cup champions by 2050,' says Hiroaki Kitano, a Sony artificial-intelligence specialist who is also president of the RoboCup Federation."

Emotionware. By Lynellen D.S. Perry (1996). ACM Crossroads Student Magazine. "The capability of displaying emotion seems to be a critical component of creating intelligent agents with whom humans can comfortably relate and communicate. The emotional aspect distinguishes a dead machine from an agent who is believable, alive, and trustworthy."

The Intimate Machine. Scientific American Frontiers (October 22, 2002). "Scientists blend technology with sociology to make our machines more fun to use."

The programmable robot of ancient Greece. By Noel Sharkey (Professor of artificial intelligence and robotics at the University of Sheffield, UK. His forthcoming book is called The Tin Man). New Scientist (July 7, 2007; Issue 2611: pages 32-35; subscription req'd). "Constructing a mechanical lion that could walk, let alone present flowers to the king, can't have been a simple task back in 1515 - even for a genius like Leonardo da Vinci. How he managed this feat remained a mystery until 2000, when US robotics expert Mark Rosheim came to a surprising conclusion. ... [W]as da Vinci influenced by an earlier design? And if so, how far back in history can we trace programmable robots? In search of answers I followed the technology back through medieval Europe to the Islamic world, where I have found evidence of an even earlier programmable automaton, made in Baghdad by the brilliant 13th-century engineer Ibn Ismail Ibn al-Razzaz Al-Jazari. ... Yet the trail doesn't stop there. It led me even further back past the automata of the Byzantine court and ancient Rome to ancient Alexandria. It was here that Hero, one of the greatest Greek engineers, constructed a programmable robot that pre-dates da Vinci's by 1500 years. ... So what exactly do we mean by 'programmable'? ..."

Robots and the Rest of Us. View by Bruce Sterling. Wired Magazine (May 2004; Issue 12.05). "Since when do machines need an ethical code? For 80 years, visionaries have imagined robots that look like us, work like us, perceive the world, judge it, and take action on their own. The robot butler is still as mystical as the flying car, but there's trouble rising in the garage. In Nobel's vaulted ballroom, experts uneasily point out that automatons are challenging humankind on four fronts. First, this is a time of war. ... The prospect of autonomous weapons naturally raises ethical questions. ... The second ominous frontier is brain augmentation, best embodied by the remote-controlled rat recently created at SUNY Downstate in Brooklyn. ... Another troubling frontier is physical, as opposed to mental, augmentation. ... Frontier number four is social: human reaction to the troubling presence of the humanoid. ... If the [First International Symposium on Roboethics] offers a take-home message, it's not about robots, but about us."

Be sure to also visit our Ethical & Social Implications page.

Machine learning on physical robots [slide show with audio]. By Peter Stone, The University of Texas at Austin. Presented at the University of Pennsylvania's GRASP Lab's GRASP Seminar Series (March 31, 2006). Abstract: "As robot technology advances, we are approaching the day when robots will be deployed prevalently in uncontrolled, unpredictable environments: the proverbial 'real world.' As this happens, it will be essential for these robots to be able to adapt autonomously to their changing environment. For a robot to learn to improve its performance based entirely on real-world environmental feedback, the robot's behavior specification and learning algorithm must be constructed so as to enable data-efficient learning. This talk presents 3 examples of machine learning on physical robots. ..."

Man and machine - Part 1: the quest for mechanical man. By Dheera Sujan. Radio Netherlands (November 26, 2004). "In her book Edison's Eve: A Magical History of the Quest for Mechanical Life, Gaby Wood documents the long history of humanity's fascination with mechanical representations of itself. And she poses the question - what do we want from a machine that simulates us? 'Is it supposed to be as close as possible to a human being, or to improve on that, and become superhuman? In the quest for mechanical perfection, does perfection mean infallibility (as in the computer), or innocence (as in the child)?' These questions have been around since the Enlightenment and the dawn of the age of machines; now researchers in the field of Artificial Intelligence are returning to them as they gain renewed relevance. ... At what pointpoint does a humanoid machine achieve personhood? Dr [Anne] Foerst's search for an answer to this question has led her through a philosophical maze that has forced her to examine her own ideas on what it means to be alive. ... Fear has always been part of the fascination we have for the idea of reproducing ourselves mechanically. According to Dr Foerst, however, that won't happen if we take responsibility for our creation. After all, Dr Frankenstein didn't create a monster; the creature (never dignified with a name) only became a monster when he was rejected by his creator and the rest of mankind." ��You can listen to the broadcast via a link on the page.��

Autonomous Mental Development by Robots and Animals. By Juyang Weng, James McClelland, Alex Pentland, Olaf Sporns, Ida Stockman, Mriganka Sur, Esther Thelen. (2000). , Science, Vol. 291, No. 5504; pages 599 - 600, 26 January 2001). "How does one create an intelligent machine? This problem has proven difficult. Over the past several decades, scientists have taken one of three approaches: In the first, which is knowledge-based, an intelligent machine in a laboratory is directly programmed to perform a given task. In a second, learning-based approach, a computer is 'spoon-fed' human-edited sensory data while the machine is controlled by a task-specific learning program. Finally, by a 'genetic search,' robots have evolved through generations by the principle of survival of the fittest, mostly in a computer-simulated virtual world. Although notable, none of these is powerful enough to lead to machines having the complex, diverse, and highly integrated capabilities of an adult brain, such as vision, speech, and language. Nevertheless, these traditional approaches have served as the incubator for the birth and growth of a new direction for machine intelligence: autonomous mental development."

Also see: Developmental Robotics - A 2005 AAAI Spring Symposium.

WTEC [World Technology Evaluation Center] Study on International Research and Development in Robotics. "The purpose of this study is to gather information on worldwide status and trends in robotics R&D and disseminate it to government decision-makers and the research community. The study panelists will gather information on robotics R&D abroad useful to the U.S. government in its own R&D programs, and to critically analyze and compare the research in the United States with that being pursued in Japan, Korea, and Europe."

Proceedings of the U.S. review workshop held at the National Science Foundation on July 21-22, 2004: Review of U.S. Research in Robotics. The 6 research areas addressed are:
- Network Robotics; Multi-Robot Systems; Sensor Networks, Environmental
- Medical Robotics; Biological Applications; Bio/Pharmaceutical ; Assisitive/Rehabilitative
- Cognitive Human-Robot Interaction (CHRI); Physical HRI (PHRI); Humanoids; Entertainment; Personal/Service; Educational
- Space; Field; Military Applications; Underwater; UAV
- Actuators/Mechanisms; Bio/Nano/Mems; Industrial Applications
- Perception (Sensing, Vision, Imaging); Control, Architecture, and Learning; Navigation/Mapping
Also see this exhibit from the National Science Foundation which complements the final report of September 16, 2005.

Related Web Sites

AI on the Web: Perception and Robotics. A resource companion to Stuart Russell and Peter Norvig's "Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach" with links to reference material, people, research groups, books, companies and much more.

Cogbotlab at Technischen Universitat Munchen. "Mission: to build robots that learn. Tools: recurrent networks, Bayesian methods, reinforcement learning, evolution, optimal search, others. Theory: optimal universal learners, universal Bayesian induction, Kolmogorov complexity, G�del machines."

Evolutionary Robotics - Co-evolution is just one of the fascinating projects you'll find at DEMO's (Dynamical & Evolutionary Machine Organization) site (Brandeis University). "Our work investigates both evolving controllers for robots and co-evolution. Ultimately, we aim for inexpensive robots that design themselves to address problems."

Field Robotics Center at Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute: "creating automated work machines for land, sea, air and space." Be sure to check out their Research Initiatives and Robots [Terregator, NavLab, Dante, Nomad, Hyperion, Yogi, Zoe, and many others].

GRASP Laboratory of Robotics Research and Education: "The General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception (GRASP) Lab is a truly inter-disciplinary research center at the University of Pennsylvania. ... Founded in 1979 , the lab has grown today to be one of the premier research centers focusing on fundamental research in robotics, vision, perception, control, automation and learning."

Good Ideas for the Humanoid Robot. A long list of technologies a humanoid robot should have compiled by Luis Beck. See, in particular, the list of famous robots with videos.

IEEE Robotics and Automation Society. "The Society is interested in both applied and theoretical issues in robotics and automation. Robotics is here defined to include intelligent machines and systems used, for example, in space exploration, human services, or manufacturing; whereas automation includes the use of automated methods in various applications, for example, factory, office, home, laboratory automation, or transportation systems to improve performance and productivity. Robotics and Automation involves designing and implementing intelligent machines which can do work too dirty, too dangerous, too precise or too tedious for humans."

Also see: Workshop on Roboethics (14 April 2007) at the 2007 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA'07).
- As stated on the Objectives page: "Roboethics deals with the ethical aspects of the design, development and employment of Intelligent Machines. It shares many 'sensitive areas' with Computer Ethics, Information Ethics and Bioethics. Along these disciplines, it investigates the social and ethical problems due to the effects of the Second and Third Industrial Revolutions in the Humans/Machines interaction�s domain. Urged by the responsibilities involved in their professions, an increasing number of roboticists from all over the world have started - in cross-cultural collaboration with scholars of Humanities - to thoroughly develop the Roboethics, the applied ethics that should inspire the design, manufacturing and use of robots. The goal of the Workshop is a cross-cultural update for engineering scientists who wish to monitor the medium and long effects of applied robotics technologies."
And be sure to check out IEEE Spectrum's blog on robots and other silicon-brained contraptions: Automaton

NASA's Robotics Education Project has a special portal for students of all ages with exciting projects, education & career information, a variety of challenges & competitions, a collection of FAQs about many topics, and the opportunity to ask Dr. Robot a technical question!

Robotics: sensing - thinking - acting. An online exhibit from The Tech Museum of Innovation. These are just some of the exciting resources that await you:

Timeline: "a reference list of landmarks in fiction about people and technology, many of which are centered around robots."
Classroom Activities
Machines and Man: Ethics and Robotics in the 21st Century

Robots and Society - "Robots have a evolving role in society today. The following list outlines some of the ways in which robotics and artificial intelligence has an impact on our lives." From The British Council. Other related pages in their web site include: Research in Robotics and UK Companies.

Robot Books.com - "Our Job is to sort through the many robotics books available today, and select, review, recommend, and sell, just those few that we feel are the very best. In addition to books, you will also find a selection of robot toys, movies, educational toys, magazines, and robot kits, that you can't find anywhere else on the web." Also be sure to see their robot competitions and robot clubs link collections.

Talking Robots: "a podcast featuring interviews with high-profile professionals in Robotics and Artificial Intelligence for an inside view on the science, technology, and business of intelligent robotics. Talking Robots is brought to you by the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems, EPFL, Switzerland."

Walking with Robots: "What is a Robot? What do we want robots to do in the future? What can they do now? Can robots have personalities? Can a fully-functional conscious robot be developed? If so, would it be human? And should it have rights? Walking with Robots is a three-year programme of public events funded by the EPSRC [Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, an UK government agency] that aims to address these questions and more. ... Our intention is to increase awareness, especially amongst the young, of where robotics research is heading and how they can themselves contribute, either as engineers or as informed citizens making choices about the world they wish to live in."

Software & Hardware:

See our collection on the Software, Open Source Projects & Hardware page.

Summer Camps, Courses, After-School Programs & more:

See our collection.

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