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Campaigners call for ban on "killer robots" LONDON (Reuters) - Machines with the ability to attack targets without any human intervention must be banned before they are developed for use on the battlefield, campaigners against "killer robots" urged on Tuesday. The weapons, which could be ready for use within the next 20 years, would breach a moral and ethical boundary that should never be crossed, said Nobel Laureate Jody Williams, of the "Campaign To Stop Killer Robots". "If war is reduced to weapons attacking without human beings in control, it is going to be civilians who are going to bear...

Robotic automation has long been the domain of manufacturing, but of late, service robots have made an often entertaining and sometimes gimmicky leap to restaurants in China, Taiwan, Japan, and increasingly the US. Please accept the following video ode to Singularity Hub’s favorite restaurant robots of the past few years. Noodle bot: Knife-brandishing chopper of noodles, you terrify and inspire us in equal parts. You slice noodles with grim efficiency, and for that we are grateful. (VIDEO AT LINK) Sushi bot: Although the high art of sushi-making may best be suited for human hands, we hold your pace of 3,600...

If you meet Baxter, the latest humanoid robot from Rethink Robotics – you should get comfortable with him, because you'll likely be seeing more of him soon. Rethink Robotics released Baxter last fall and received an overwhelming response from the manufacturing industry, selling out of their production capacity through April. He's cheap to buy ($22,000), easy to train, and can safely work side-by-side with humans. He's just what factories need to make their assembly lines more efficient – and yes, to replace costly human workers. But manufacturing is only the beginning.

The CIA's secret experiments to turn cats into spies Want to know what's going to happen to animals in the next century? Then you must read science journalist Emily Anthes' new book Frankenstein's Cat, about how the animals of tomorrow will be transformed by high tech implants and genetic engineering. We've got an amazing excerpt from the book -- about how the CIA tried to create cyborg cat spies. "Robo Revolution," an excerpt from Frankenstein's Cat: Cuddling Up to Biotech's Brave New Beasts, by Emily Anthes In the 1960s, the Central Intelligence Agency recruited an unusual field agent: a cat....

Simple chemical reaction powers robot to make lofty leaps. Kaboom! Controlled explosions in the legs of this silicone 'soft robot' make it leap higher than 30 times its own height. Researchers led by George Whitesides, a chemist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, have engineered a three-legged silicone device that is powered by combustion — previously used only in hard systems such as diesel engines. The soft robot has in each of its legs a channel with a soft valve at the end. Methane and oxygen gases are fed into this channel in a ratio of one part methane to...

Typing on computers that have replaced typewriters, which previously replaced ink-pen and paper, some reporters write about the concern that increased productivity is leading to irreversible job losses for workers. "Some experts now believe that computers and robots will take over much of the work performed by humans, raising critical concerns about the future of jobs," wrote business and economics columnist Rick Haglund in MLive. Haglund’s piece came after a recent Associated Press article, “Recession, tech killing middle-class jobs” that also questioned advances in technology. "For decades, science fiction warned of a future when we would be architects of our...

"Compressorhead" rehearsing for an upcoming gig at The Big Day Out Festival - Drummer has four arms

NAVY DOLPHINS’ WORK WILL BE OUTSOURCED Robots to pick up animals’ tasks, like some detection of mines Like the factory worker and travel agent before them, some Navy dolphins trained to hunt down mines are scheduled to be replaced by computers in five years. However, the Navy’s marine mammals aren’t going away. Military-trained dolphins and sea lions will continue to be used for port security and retrieving objects from the sea floor — jobs they are still better at than machines. The Navy’s $28 million marine mammal program, headquartered in San Diego, uses 80 bottlenose dolphins and 40 California sea...

Homeland Security to deploy underwater drones that mimic tuna fish With even gossip magazines being (falsely) accused of wanting to deploy aerial drones, it seems like the only place you might be able to escape robotic scrutiny would be somewhere far off at sea. Turns out: not true. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has funded a new underwater robot that can find you even in your underwater lair. The BIOSwimmer was developed by Boston Engineering Corporation's Advanced Systems Group (ASG) as an unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) modeled after the shape and swimming mechanics of a tuna fish. According to...

Foxconn has been planning to buy 1 million robots to replace human workers and it looks like that change, albeit gradual, is about to start. The company is allegedly paying $25,000 per robot – about three times a worker’s average salary – and they will replace humans in assembly tasks. The plans have been in place for a while – I spoke to Foxconn reps about this a year ago – and it makes perfect sense. Humans are messy, they want more money, and having a half-a-million of them in one factory is a recipe for unrest. But what happens...

A number of robots in development for the military are being given increasing amounts of autonomy. The question is now how they will be used. But, despite widespread press about armed drones hunting down terrorists and insurgents in Afghanistan and Pakistan and the increasing use of ground robots to fight roadside bombs, the truth is that most military robots are still pretty dumb. In fact, almost all unmanned systems involve humans in almost every aspect of their operations—it’s just that instead of sitting in a cockpit or behind the wheel of a vehicle, humans are operating the systems from a...

At the Philips Electronics factory on the coast of China, hundreds of workers use their hands and specialized tools to assemble electric shavers. That is the old way. At a sister factory here in the Dutch countryside, 128 robot arms do the same work with yoga-like flexibility. Video cameras guide them through feats well beyond the capability of the most dexterous human. One robot arm endlessly forms three perfect bends in two connector wires and slips them into holes almost too small for the eye to see. The arms work so fast that they must be enclosed in glass cages...

Computerworld - MIT researchers have developed an algorithm that they say will enable robots to learn and adapt to humans so they can soon work side-by-side on factory floors. Traditionally, robots working in factories are large, imposing and sectioned off in metal cages as they move heavy loads and perform menial, repetitive tasks. However, Julie Shah, the Boeing Career Development Assistant Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT, said robots can be more than they've been in a manufacturing setting. It's time for robots to begin working more closely with humans, making workers jobs' safer and easier. Shah, in a...

South Korea unveils robotic prison guards, promises futuristic cavity searches To round out their drug-sniffing clone dog army, South Korean authorities are now experimenting with robotic prison guards. Lest you think these cyber-wardens will be equipped with gatling guns in the style of Robocop's ED-209, know that this alarm-equipped bot has more in common with the Death Star's delivery droids. Of course, the robots' responsibilities may expand as the technology improves. Explains Reuters of these security machines' potential uses: The robot has been designed to patrol a prison autonomously, but an IPad will allow manual control as well. The next...

Sex workers in Amsterdam will have a hard time finding work if two New Zealand academics' vision of the future comes true. "In 2050, Amsterdam's red light district will all be about android prostitutes who are clean of sexual transmitted infections, not smuggled in from Eastern Europe and forced into slavery, the city council will have direct control over android sex workers controlling prices, hours of operations and sexual services," write futurologist Ian Yeoman and sexologist Michelle Mars. The duo's paper, Robots, Men And Sex Tourism, published in the journal Futures, centres on an imaginary future sex club in Amsterdam...

The Navy has teamed up with Virginia Tech and the University of Pennsylvania to develop a humanoid robot to fight fires on-board its vessels. The Navy Technology Center for Safety & Survivability at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., carries out research to solve Navy problems regarding combustion, fire extinguishing, fire modeling and scaling, damage control, and atmosphere hazards. The robot, called the Shipboard Autonomous Firefighting Robot, or SAFFiR for short, is designed to move throughout the ship, interact with people and fight fires. It will be charged with handling the dangerous firefighting tasks normally performed by humans. The...

TAMUNING, Guam – Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney picked up nine more delegates Saturday, winning unanimous backing at the Guam GOP convention. Republicans on the tiny Pacific island decided to shun traditional paper ballots and all 215 eligible to vote at the convention backed Romney with a show of hands.....

The U.S. military is researching ways for its troops can use their minds to remotely control androids who will take human soldiers' place on the battlefield. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), the Pentagon's hi-tech research arm, has earmarked $7million for research into the project, nicknamed Avatar. In the James Cameron movie, set far in the future, human soldiers use mind control to inhabit the bodies of human alien hybrids as they carry out a war against the inhabitants of a distant world. According to the Darpa's 2013 budget: 'The Avatar program will develop interfaces and algorithms to enable...

It appears that while we were busy over the past month spreading the Greek pre- and post-bankruptcy balance sheet, and otherwise torturing Excel (something we urge other financial journalists to try once in a while - go ahead, it doesn't bite. In fact, it is almost as friendly as your favorite Powerpoint) our peer at such reputable financial publications as Forbes, and many others, were laying of carbon-based reporters and replacing them with... robots. As Mediabistro reports, "Forbes has joined a group of 30 publishers using Narrative Science software to write computer-generated stories. Here’s more about the program, used in...

Something tells me that the University of Pennsylvania is not in the toy business. Got to see this!