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July 25, 2007 The 50 best movie robots To coincide with the release of Michael Bay's epic Transformers movie we rate the most celebrated 'artifical people' in movies Michael Moran We selected the fifty most memorable robots in film and rated them in four different categories: Plausibility (meaning how likely it would be that, with advances on currently existing technology, such a device could be built) Coolness (just how well designed, shiny or generally well-appointed the robot appeared to be) Dangerousness (scoring not only on built-in weaponry, but the robot's eagerness to use it) Comedy Value (how effective the robot...

Are we safe from robots that can think for themselves? By REBECCA CAMBER Robots that can think for themselves could soon be caring for our children and the elderly and policing our streets, say experts. Scientists told yesterday of a new generation of robots which can work without human direction. They predict that in the next five years robots will be available for child-minding, to work in care homes, monitor prisons and help police trace criminals. And while it may sound like something out of a science-fiction film, the experts say advances in technology have made the thinking robot possible....

A new set of laws has been proposed to govern operations by killer robots. The ideas were floated by John S Canning, an engineer at the Naval Surface Warfare Centre, Dahlgren Division – an American weapons-research and test establishment. Mr Canning's “Concept of Operations for Armed Autonomous Systems” presentation can be downloaded here (pdf). Many Reg readers will be familiar with the old-school Asimov Laws of Robotics, but these are clearly unsuitable for war robots – too restrictive. However, the new Canning Laws are certainly not a carte blanche for homicidal droids to obliterate fleshies without limit; au contraire Canning...

In Pictures: Robot menagerie An ethical code to prevent humans abusing robots, and vice versa, is being drawn up by South Korea. The Robot Ethics Charter will cover standards for users and manufacturers and will be released later in 2007. It is being put together by a five member team of experts that includes futurists and a science fiction writer. The South Korean government has identified robotics as a key economic driver and is pumping millions of dollars into research. "The government plans to set ethical guidelines concerning the roles and functions of robots as robots are expected to...

South Korean scientists are working on a new-generation robot resembling a human which will be able to walk the walk as well as talk the talk, one of the team said Thursday. The first walking "android" will make its debut within two to three years, said So Byung-Rok, one of the team of researchers at the Korea Institute of Industrial Technology. Androids present particular technological challenges in cramming complicated modules, motors and actuators into a life-size body. The team has already developed two android prototypes designed to look like a Korean woman in her early 20s, which can hold hold...

A new robot, dubbed "Starfish" because of its size and shape, has the unusual ability -- in the mechanical world, that is -- of fixing itself. The Starfish is programmed to recognize its parts, but not how they're arranged or meant to be used. It figures that out for itself, using trial and error. Cornell University researchers have created a robot capable of self-awareness, learning and adapting -- all keys to the intelligence and technology needed for robots Latest News about robots to function in adverse and changing environments. The Cornell researchers, who published their findings in the Nov. 17,...

A car that can drive itself is the fantasy of any designated driver, but the dream of owning a vehicle that does all the driving while you sit back and relax is one step closer to reality, as in-car artificial intelligence being developed by a team at Stanford University is ready to be used on city streets in the ultimate test of robot cars. Winning the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Grand Challenge last year with a car called Stanley, Sebastian Thrun and his team at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory developed a form of robotics that went beyond...

Experiments involving real and simulated robots suggest that the relationship between physical movement and sensory input could be crucial to developing more intelligent machines. Tests involving two real and one simulated robot show that feedback between sensory input and body movement is crucial to navigating the surrounding world. Understanding this relationship better could help scientists build more life-like machines, say the researchers involved. Scientists studying artificial intelligence have traditionally separated physical behaviour and sensory input. "But the brain's inputs are not independent," says Olaf Sporns, a neuroscientist at Indiana University, US. "For example, motor behaviour has a role to play...

The touch device has been created by researchers in America who used nanoparticles to sense the contours of a coin. It is accurate enough to detect the outline of Abraham Lincoln's face on a 1c coin and the letters TY in the word Liberty. To make the sensor, the researchers built up a film consisting of alternate layers of gold and cadmium sulfide nanoparticles with a thin plastic sheet on top and glass below. An object is placed on the plastic and an image sensor beneath the glass reads the changes in electrical current and electroluminescence caused within the nanoparticle...

A Chiang Mai University team has developed a motor so small it will power a microscopic robot on an expedition through human blood vessels.Boffins at the university's science faculty describe their invention as a "nanomotor". It will drive a medical robot about the size of a blood cell on a tour of the maze of human veins and capillaries.A "nanobot" - or nanotechnology robot - developed at Kent State University in Ohio, United States will be powered by a motor made of an extremely fine and pure ceramic created at Chiang Mai University. In addition to powering the nanobot, the...

LAS CRUCES, N.M. - Two seconds. That's how close students from the University of Saskatchewan and their international colleagues came to winning $150,000 in the Space Elevator Games, held here this weekend in conjunction with the Wirefly X Prize Cup rocket festival. The competition, organized by the Spaceward Foundation under the auspices of NASA's Centennial Challenges, aims to promote technologies that could be used in next-generation power systems and planetary rovers — and perhaps someday in robots capable of climbing a 62,000-mile-long (100,000-kilometer-long) ribbon to orbit, known as a space elevator.

A new generation of robots will be able to take more risks exploring other worlds by changing their shape to suit the terrain. An innovative rover robot designed to explore planets and moons is undergoing final assembly this week in a lab at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. The robot may also be useful in hazardous environments on Earth, its creators say. Instead of driving, walking, or rolling around like other vehicles designed to traverse distant, rugged landscapes, the new rover changes its shape and topples along, veering a bit from side to side as it moves ahead. "We call...

KEIHANNA, JAPAN — With little more than a train station and a few government buildings, the sleepy town of Keihanna is a far cry from the dazzling celluloid cityscapes of Fritz Lang's Metropolis and Ridley Scott's Blade Runner. But just as in those classics of science fiction, futuristic robots are coming to life here -- androids that are astonishingly realistic, and could challenge our ideas of what we consider human. Hiroshi Ishiguro is at the forefront of designing machines that look just like us. The senior researcher at Keihanna's ATR Intelligent Robotics and Communication Laboratories drew headlines around the world...

Scientists from the Korean Institute for Industrial Technology recently unveiled a new android capable of showing expressions on her face, only the second android to do this after Japan's Actroid. The Ever-1 takes its name from the Biblical Eve plus the r from "robot", can understand about 400 words and make eye contact while talking. We have to confess that we don't really care about any of this, only that we're looking forward to the day that Korea and Japan get both their androids to the point where they can, you know, fight each other. With lasers and missiles, even.

Soldiers may no longer have to call for a medic on the battlefield – thanks to a robot which can pick up the wounded and carry them to safety. The remote-controlled android, dubbed the Battlefield Extraction and Retrieval Robot (Bear), has a range of up to 50m. Defence experts say it is the most promising solution yet to the 'holy grail' of being able to send robots into war zones to rescue wounded. The US army is backing the project by handing designer Vecna Robotics funding for the robot – each one costs more than £50,000. The Bear could also...

BEIJING (AFP) - A company in south China has developed the nation's first cooking robot, equipping it with the skills to cook thousands of traditional dishes, state media said. The robot, developed by Fanxing Science and Technology Co. in the city of Shenzhen, knows how to "fry, bake, boil and steam, and can perform other special Chinese cooking actions," Xinhua news agency reported. At a recent show arranged by the company, the robot cooked a dish of "beautifully-flavored, attractive-looking" shrimp in five minutes, according to Xinhua. The robot will hit the market in 2007, targeting mainly fast-food restaurants, while a...

SAN FRANCISCO--Intel is trying to see if millions of tiny robots can work together to create a coffee cup, or a model of a truck. Intel's lab in Pittsburgh, affiliated with Carnegie Mellon University, is showing off a technology concept at the Intel Developer Forum here this week called Dynamic Physical Rendering, which could ultimately lead to a shape-shifting fabric.Apply the right voltage and software program and the flat piece of fabric turns into a 3D model of a car. Change those parameters and it transforms into a cube. Dynamic Physical Rendering has grown out of the ongoing Claytronics project...

George, who is 39, single and light-hearted, is looking for friends on the Internet. He has gifts: the ability to speak in 40 languages and with 2000 people at the same time. There's just one quirk: he doesn't really exist. George is a piece of software, arguably the best of the speaking "chatbots" or talking robots, and he's recently received the Loebner prize in Britain ... ... George appears on the website www.jabberwacky.com and takes the form of a thin, bald man with yellow glasses who wears a white turtleneck sweater. He can smile, laugh, sulk and bang his fist...

Copying the humble honeybee's foraging methods could give robots better 3D vision, researchers say. Robot explorers could identify points of interest by mimicking the way bees alert others of promising foraging spots. Explorer bees report the location of a new food source, like an inviting flowerbed, by dancing on a special area of honeycomb when they return to the hive (see How vibes from dancing honeybees create a buzz on the dance floor). A new type of stereoscopic computer vision system takes inspiration from this trick. It was developed by Gustavo Olague and Cesar Puente, from the Center for Scientific...

The software giant thinks it can make robotic engineering easier with a set of standards: its own of course Microsoft believes the demand for consumer, research, and military robots will grow significantly--and it wants to own the market. At the annual RoboBusiness conference this past June, the software giant released the first "community technical preview" of Microsoft Robotics Studio (MSRS). Now, in its second preview version, MSRS is both a product and the lynchpin of a new educational push: the Institute for Personal Robots in Education (IPRE). Founded by Microsoft Research, Georgia Tech, and Bryn Mawr College, the computer science...