machine-human - happy droids, bad robots and functional zombies

Wii Chef Robot in action – having a hard time learning how to whip the eggs and cut ham. Recipe of the Day: Ham ‘N Cheese omelet. Very cool.

AirJelly is a helium-filled balloon with an intelligent, adaptive mechanism. It has a two lithium-ion polymer battery to which the central electric motor is connected. Jelly also uses its tentacles to perform peristaltic movements and gently glide through the air.
Festo.com

Amazing typographic illustrations based on sans-serifs:

Artist: Jonathon Yule
Website: www.invdr.com

Yesterday I bought this magnificent book Robots – Spaceships & Other Tin Toys (Kitahara, Teruhisa / Shimizu, Yukio – Hardcover – 15.5×21.7 cm, – 352 pages – Multilingual Edition: German, French, English). This Taschen’s 25th anniversary special edition features the Tehurisa Kitahara collection of tin toys from the 50s and the 60s – various tin aeroplanes and ships, rockets, clockwork robots, the Coney Island Rocket Ride, Godzilla, Batman, Popeye, Fire Dept. cars, big American limousines, genuine precursors of today’s toys and grownup designs. An excellent gift for the boys (aka adults), this amazing book transported me back to childhood, a place of colorful dreams and interplanetary adventures.

Who, with more than 30, hasn’t had one of these in hands?

Very annoying reporter interviews philosopher Daniel Dennett about his book “Breaking the Spell” (Viking, 2006).

Part 2

Part 3

Part 3 fix

1. A scene that has been cut off from American release of “Breaking the Code” – English mathematician Alan Turing (Derek Jacobi) tries to explain the Entscheidungsproblem to his supervisor, which, by the way, doesn’t have a clue of what he is talking about.

2. Artificial Intelligence Computer Algorithms (3D digital actors) compete with each other in a Game Show setting where they attempt to pass the ‘Turing Test’ and be accepted as human.

3. The origins of the Turing Thesis Myth

2004 paper written by computer scientists Dina Goldin (University of Connecticut) and Peter Wegner (Brown University) analyzing the historical reasons for the widespread acceptance of what they call the Turing Thesis Myth – that Turing Machines model all computers.

This class of robots is called “MDS” – mobile/dexterous/social. The purpose of the robots is to support research and education goals in human-robot interaction, teaming, and social learning.
For more details, visit xitome.com

First Conference on Artificial General Intelligence – March 1st 2008, at the University of Memphis. Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) research focuses on the original and ultimate goal of AI – to create intelligence as a whole, by exploring all available paths, including theoretical and experimental computer science, cognitive science, neuroscience, and innovative interdisciplinary methodologies.

More at agi-08.org

Chop Shop’s designs are really cool! The one above depicts 51 different robots from movies, television shows, books, toys and even a robot from a famous classic rock album. Do you recognize some of them?

University of Maryland physicists (CNAM) have shown that in graphene the intrinsic limit to the mobility, a measure of how well a material conducts electricity, is higher than any other known material at room temperature (100 times faster than in silicon!). Graphene is an atomic-scale chicken wire made of carbon atoms. It’s a very promising material which combines aspects of semiconductors and metals, extremely useful for applications in which transistors much switch extremely fast, such as in processing extremely high frequency signals.

Research results were published online in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.