Techdirt. Stories filed under "robots"

Techdirt. Stories filed under "robots" Easily digestible tech news... http://www.techdirt.com/ en-us Techdirt. Stories filed under "robots"http://www.techdirt.com/images/td-88x31.gifhttp://www.techdirt.com/ Tue, 9 Apr 2013 17:00:00 PDT DailyDirt: Better Robots Keep Coming Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110125/03205712814/dailydirt-better-robots-keep-coming.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110125/03205712814/dailydirt-better-robots-keep-coming.shtml

DARPA's robotics programs have been developing cool and useful robots for decades, and one of its latest demonstrations is a set of robotic hands (and arms) that can change a tire (almost). This bot won't be replacing F1 pit crews any time soon, since it hasn't quite mastered putting the tire back on (and it's painfully slow), but it shows that robot hands are almost ready to do some everyday tasks without human supervision. [url]

Mechanical computers aren't too common nowadays, but they could make a comeback in artificial muscles. Robot muscles that can respond reflexively to stimuli might lead to better robots that can navigate dynamic environments. [url]

Boston Dynamics' BigDog robot is almost creepy in how it moves like an animal -- hitting that Uncanny Valley of robotic movement. Recently, BigDog has been given a head/neck appendage that can hold and throw heavy things, adding to its Frankenstein-look of a cobbled together collection of robot body parts. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story
]]> urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20110125/03205712814 Thu, 4 Apr 2013 17:00:00 PDT DailyDirt: Fighting The Next Pandemic Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110105/20125212539/dailydirt-fighting-next-pandemic.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110105/20125212539/dailydirt-fighting-next-pandemic.shtml H7N9 strain that has no vaccine (yet!) and is starting to infect and kill people (instead of sticking to birds). We're just about coming to the tenth anniversary of SARS, and we're still creating over 100 million flu vaccines every year using egg embryos -- a process that takes months, time that we might not have if a really serious flu strain spreads quickly across the globe. Here are a few projects that are making vaccines more quickly.

Tobacco plants can be made transgenic in order to grow vaccines for us, and they've been shown to be able to produce over a million doses of vaccine in a few weeks. DARPA has a challenge out to anyone who can produce vaccines at a rate of 10 million doses in a month. [url]
Genetically modified tobacco plants can be grown and harvested by robots -- producing vaccine proteins very quickly and efficiently -- without the need for human labor. These robots can grow tens of thousands of tobacco plants in a batch, and it's likely only a matter of time before researchers can get these plant factories to produce other kinds of pharmaceuticals. [url]
Flublok relies on insects to grow flu vaccines for us -- a process that has been used for other kinds of vaccines, but has only started to be used for the flu. Flublok has already been FDA approved, so it will be available to patients for the 2013-2014 flu season. [url]
Bananas could potentially be grown with edible vaccines, but the regulatory hurdles for development have caused researchers to focus on non-edible vaccines grown in other plants (like tobacco). Bananas grown for edible vaccines might still be viable for treating fish or other animals. [url]

Momentum Machines has a hamburger-making robot that can churn out about 360 burgers in an hour, each custom made to order. This hamburger chef can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever... until you are full. [url]
In 2003, McDonald's tested some automation equipment for grilling its burgers and cooking its french fries. We covered this story about a decade ago, but we don't seem to be living in an all-robot McD's future now. Oh well. [url]
If you're in San Francisco, you can get ~~an In&Out~~ Super Duper burger delivered to you for just $10, fulfilled by TaskRabbit via a simple web-based order form. It's not available any time, so there's no option to get french fries during the Renaissance. [url]

The HyTAQ Robot can roll around on the ground and fly over obstacles whenever it needs to. This bot looks pretty crash resistant, and if it can survive kids playing with it, it'd probably be a great toy. [url]

If you thought only hipsters rode fixies, then you should watch this cute little Japanese robot ride a small bike without brakes. This bot just needs a companion that can ride a recumbent bike.... [url]

Here's a bipedal robot walking a tightrope, but it sorta cheats because it doesn't lift its feet off the wire once it gets on. (Warning: You might want to mute this video to avoid the dance music.) Maybe someday there will be a robot version of Cirque du Soleil. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story
]]> urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20101110/19014411805 Fri, 14 Dec 2012 12:04:00 PST Robots Or Robber Barons? What If The Answer Is Both And Neither? Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121212/10051821362/robots-robber-barons-what-if-answer-is-both-neither.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121212/10051821362/robots-robber-barons-what-if-answer-is-both-neither.shtml really worked up for often irrational reasons -- mostly having to do with red team / blue team political arguments that have little bearing on actual economics. My personal preference is to ignore the whole somewhat meaningless "left/right" dichotomy (no matter where a particular economist is normally associated) and focus on the actual economics being discussed. And, recently, Krugman has been doing some deep thinking on what he's referred to as the question of robots or robber barons. The issue may be a little deep in the weeds for folks who aren't econgeeks, but it is both really interesting and really important to think through.

The short version -- hopefully translated sufficiently via my "econgeek to normal people" translator -- is that there are economic metrics out there suggesting that things should be much better than they are: in particular, companies are making massive profits. But, at the same time, wages are not showing any sort of increase. Krugman uses this graph to demonstrate the point:

As the graphic shows, as a percentage, wages ("labor") have been dropping. If the output is not going to wages, where is it going? Krugman uses the term "capital," which, basically (in this case), just means return on investment for assets: that is, if you own stuff, you're getting a return on it, which is going into your pockets rather than to people doing work. Of course, when you look just at percentages of a single factor, things can quickly get misleading -- and at least some have suggested that looking at just the percentage going to labor may be exaggerated by a hidden third factor, such as land. While using terms like "labor" and "capital" are standard in economics, I find that they actually can distort the conversation (and even Krugman notes that some of the discussion veers into what sounds like "Marxist" discussions on "capital" and "labor").

A simpler and perhaps more useful way of looking at things is: Where is the money going and how is it spent? And, as it stands now, over the past ten years, the amount of money going to wages, as a percentage of money being made, has been going down. So what's it all mean? Krugman has two theories -- both of which may actually be true to varying degrees.

Robots: The idea here is that automation has meant fewer jobs, and thus has held down wages and kept the supply of workers high. This is an old argument, of course, but perhaps one worth thinking about. We'll discuss it more below.
Robber barons: That is, monopolists. The argument here is that when you see an aggregation of wealth to "capital," it suggests that the free market is somehow "stuck," and one possible reason is that the "owners of capital" have effectively created monopolies, allowing them to retain more than a free market might allow, via monopoly rents.

If you think both of those suggestions sound somewhat anachronistic, you're not wrong. Both of those possible arguments sound quite similar to the complaints people made a century or so ago. And, as with that situation, I'd argue that the two explanations that Krugman puts forth may both have some element of truth, but also may not tell the whole story by a long shot.

Let's start with the robots. For years, many have suggested that greater productivity from automation leads to lower demand for human employees, thus creating less demand for workers -- leading to lower salaries, high unemployment and all that jazz. Many people (myself included) have often used the term "luddites" for this, after the original followers of Ned Ludd, who believed that the industrial revolution was destroying jobs, leading to the "Luddites" smashing machines. The term is used pejoratively, because the original Luddites, for the most part, weren't just wrong but were ridiculously wrong. Far from destroying jobs, automation eventually created many new jobs.

And, instinctively, I have the same reaction to the argument when put forth here. We've heard this claim for so long, that greater productivity leads to fewer jobs -- but in practice it has never come true. It has, certainly, meant that there has been job displacement, and potentially a shift in job skills requirements -- which can be very difficult for those whose skills are no longer relevant. But, in the longer term, such automation has always created more jobs.

Does that necessarily mean that this shall always be the case? Not necessarily, but I'd argue that the long history of it being true suggests that you would need very, very strong evidence to back up the claim this time around -- and I'm not convinced we've seen that. Of course, playing devil's advocate to myself, I can see one plausible argument that someone could make (even if I don't think it's true): automation in physical work increased demands for jobs in other sectors -- such as services and information processing (desk jobs). But the information age revolution has now started to automate many of those jobs as well, and it's not clear where we move along the spectrum from there. That is, as the argument goes, that new jobs have always been created further along the spectrum from manual labor to services to information processing, but we've more or less hit the end of the line.

I find this difficult to believe for a few reasons. First, the same argument was made in the past every time some new fears about automation came along. And every time it turned out that there were new job opportunities. I can't see that changing now. At all. If it becomes true that labor is really increasingly available or cheap, that will create all sorts of new opportunities to make use of it. The news that Apple is going to start making some computers in the US is just a small indication of that possibility coming true. And, yes, even if they're using a robot-centric process, they're still creating domestic jobs. But, further on that, there's tremendous opportunity coming out of disruptive innovation to create new jobs where none really existed previously. The number of people making a living by selling goods on things like eBay, Etsy or Amazon is astounding. Even newer tools like Kickstarter and Indiegogo are creating additional possibilities, and we write about all sorts of interesting business models all the time -- creating new opportunities. Similarly, we've seen things like distributed call center services, such that people can work from home and be productive. In fact, this could help explain some aspects of wage decline, as some people, who might have formerly not been in the workforce at all, can now work part time from home.

But, of course, job displacement is messy, and figuring out where the new job opportunities are, and how they apply on a wider scale, is not a smooth process at all. It takes time to work out the kinks -- and that could explain the lag in wages. It could simply be the dip in efficiency as we enter that chaotic period of experimentation and attempts at new things before it becomes more clear where the new job opportunities will be.

The "robber baron" argument makes a lot more sense to me -- and it even appears that Krugman may be leaning bit more that way, after hearing from some other economists:

Barry Lynn and Philip Longman have argued that we're seeing a rapid rise in market concentration and market power. The thing about market power is that it could simultaneously raise the average rents to capital and reduce the return on investment as perceived by corporations, which would now take into account the negative effects of capacity growth on their markups. So a rising-monopoly-power story would be one way to resolve the seeming paradox of rapidly rising profits and low real interest rates.

Of course, I think that the use of the term "robber barons" is potentially misleading as well. This isn't necessarily a case of the Andrew Carnegies, JD Rockefellers, JP Morgans and Cornelius Vanderbilts of old. Instead, it often seems that what we're dealing with are less super greedy "robber barons" (and yes, I know some people will point to examples that suggest otherwise -- especially on Wall Street) and more of a fight against innovation. This goes back to my recent discussion on corruption laundering, in which companies are able to secure favorable regulations that actually help them against disruptive upstarts by arguing that allowing the upstarts will harm "jobs" or will upset the economic apple cart.

In the end, that leads me to wonder if what we're really seeing is a third thing, which can account for both the "robots" and "robber barons" story lines and tie back to that corruption laundering situation: the rise of what Andy Kessler has referred to as political entrepreneurs vs. market entrepreneurs. In that scenario, you have companies who aren't quite robber barons, but are adept at using the political system to engage in a form of "corruption laundering" to put in place regulations that limit true competition and the kind of innovation that helps to speed up the creation of new jobs.

In some sense, we've discussed this before, in noting that politicians often fear disruptive innovation because it "destroys jobs" even as it's creating new ones. So they pass regulations that hinder disruptive innovation, in an attempt to "protect jobs." But the end result is that the few larger players in the industry tend to suck up control of that industry and, as such, limit job growth (and begin to profit by being able to capture the monopoly rents). They can employ greater automation to suck more profits out of their own business, but also can hold back the disruptive innovation that creates new jobs.

So, in that scenario, you get higher profits and fewer jobs -- with increasing automation. But you're missing out on the important disruptive innovations that help create the new jobs. Part of the problem with the "robots" storyline from Krugman is that it assumes all technological advancement is equal: that big companies automating is the same thing as disruptive innovation that enables new jobs. I don't think that's true. Either way, these are certainly big and important questions worth thinking about and exploring.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story
]]> efficiency-lags-change http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20121212/10051821362 Tue, 23 Oct 2012 17:00:00 PDT DailyDirt: Robots Are Stealing Our Jobs Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20091007/1059316447/dailydirt-robots-are-stealing-our-jobs.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20091007/1059316447/dailydirt-robots-are-stealing-our-jobs.shtml

Baxter is a 6-foot tall, 300-lb robot that is easy to program, costs about $22,000, is designed to work safely next to humans by moving slowly and gently, and could help bring back manufacturing to countries with high standards of living. Unlike other manufacturing robots, Baxter doesn't have to be put in a protective cage and can self-adapt to small changes in its work environment. [url]

The Last Moment Robot is designed to comfort dying hospital patients -- but it's just an art project for now and not an actual prototype for practical use. Other therapeutic robots have been used in nursing homes, but these comforting robots sound a bit more creepy than calming. At least they're trying, though. [url]

Would you trust a three-armed robotic barber to shave your head? One guy had his head shaved for charity by a remote-controlled mechanical barber, and he lived to tell the tale. He also looked very nervous during the procedure. [url]

Algorithms deep inside the secretive Google X lab have been watching millions of YouTube videos -- and have learned to identify cat faces. This feat was accomplished with unsupervised learning -- so no one explicitly programmed anything to look for cat faces. Maybe those computers figured out for themselves that kittens are good for productivity... [url]

Eugene Goostman is a chatbot that has come very close to passing the Turing Test by fooling a panel of human judges into thinking it was a real boy 29% of time (Passing the Turing Test requires a 30% fooling rate). This chatbot was given the fake personality of a 13yo boy living in Odessa, Ukraine -- so expect next year's competition to include a lot of fake teenagers with strange idiosyncrasies. [url]

DeeChee the iCub robot is learning how to talk like a human baby by listening to adults speaking and babbling until recognizable words form. DeeChee is a project in the field of embodied cognition -- which asserts that cognitive processes are shaped by the bodies in which they occur. This robot doesn't think like a human baby, but it could help understand how biological brains create language. [url]

Robot fish can mimic how real fish look and move -- and even be accepted into schools of real fish. If these robot fish can figure out how to become fish leaders, they could navigate large numbers of fish directly into fishing nets or away from man-made pollution. [url]

A Raspberry Pi might be the brains of one of the first autonomous robot boats to cross the Atlantic Ocean without human intervention. This FishPi bot will be solar powered, propelled by a small motor (no sailing!) -- and hopefully it won't get eaten by anything on its trip. [url]

Underwater gliders have already crossed the Atlantic and are being put to use for scientific, military and commercial applications. These robots are relatively cheap to make and could be produced by the thousands to monitor the oceans. [url]

Robots are good at tasks that are dull, dirty or dangerous -- so they can be useful for all kinds of farming. Robots are helping dairy farmers to milk cows, and robots can plant and harvest fields -- but human farmers won't be completely replaced just yet. [url]
Flying, lightweight agricultural robots could help monitor crops and spray herbicides more intelligently. Zapping bugs from a remote-controlled quadcopter sounds like it could be a better game than Farmville. [url]
Japan's Ministry of Agriculture is experimenting with a robot farm project in a 600 acre that was devastated by a tsunami. Over 59,000 acres farmland were damaged by the earthquake, flooding and nuclear fallout from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, but robots could help clean up and revive agriculture in northeast Japan. [url]

One of the other lessons I learned in teaching (and in tutoring before that) was that the best way to truly master a subject is to teach it yourself, and have people asking you to explain it back to them. This is why I'm not joking up above when I talk about the possibilities of having certain subjects taught by other students as well. You might think you fully understand a subject, but just wait until people start asking questions (similarly, despite quite a bit of study in the subject, my full "understanding" of certain aspects of information economics didn't become really clear until I had to explain them repeatedly via this blog). And, of course, it need not be students teaching students -- but you could have software designed to act like a "learning" student, where the student has to "teach" the software.

It appears that others have had the same idea... and been doing some studies about it. Via TechCrunch, we learn of some new research, by Shizuko Matsuzoe and Fumihide Tanaka at the University of Tsukuba, Japan, that found that when students "taught" a "dumb" robot, they learned a subject much better (in this case, it was Japanese students learning English):

Matsuzoe and Tanaka found that the children did best when the robot appeared to learn from them. This also made the children more likely to want to continue learning with the robot.

They note that most traditional "educational" robots tend to work in the other direction... acting as "teachers" for the kids. But those appear to not be nearly as effective as when you flip the relationship. As I found back when I taught, having people continually ask you questions to clarify their own understanding forces you to truly understand the subject yourself at a much deeper level than if you're just a "student."

You can take a look at the full study over here (which, it's great to see, is published under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License). And there are some really interesting findings. First, the difference in performance with and without the robot is pretty significant:

But perhaps even more interesting is that "3 to 5 weeks later" result. This actually went against the researchers' hypothesis going into the research (I'm always a fan of research that rejects researchers' initial hypothesis!). They expected that after a few weeks had passed, students would gradually forget some of what they learned. But what they found was really encouraging. It seems that the experience itself made them even more interested in continuing the learning process, and those who learned with the robot really seemed to figure out how to "teach themselves" much better: Contrary to our initial assumption, the average percentage of questions answered correctly was in fact higher than the results obtained on the day of the experiment (we predicted that it would have been lower because the children might have forgotten the learned verbs). Subsequent interviews with parents (details in Section 6.3.3) provided us with some clues for this result. Most parents told us that their children appeared to enjoy the experience of teaching the care-receiving robot so much that he or she continued to play the game at home, even after several days, weeks, and wherever similar objects were found.
While this is still early research, it's definitely encouraging, and hopefully more people will start to explore similar ideas. Teaching kids by having them teach others could be a really effective way to create a much deeper level of understanding within students, rather than just teaching them to learn by rote.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story
]]> surprise... http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20120908/01101520317 Fri, 7 Sep 2012 18:36:00 PDT Should Robots Get Rights? Timothy Geigner http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120905/06254220281/should-robots-get-rights.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120905/06254220281/should-robots-get-rights.shtml robots when someone imagines them rising to the level of cognition. Usually these stories are filled with luddite fear of the coming robot apocalypse. This time, however, let's take a quick trip down a robotic philosophical rabbit hole.

Computerworld has a story questioning whether or not the robots that will be increasingly life-like and ubiquitous in our lives will attain the kind of rights we afford animals.

Imagine that Apple will develop a walking, smiling and talking version of your iPhone. It has arms and legs. Its eye cameras recognize you. It will drive your car (and engage in Bullitt-like races with Google’s driverless car), do your grocery shopping, fix dinner and discuss the day’s news.

But will Apple or a proxy group acting on behalf of the robot industry go further? Much further. Will it argue that these cognitive or social robots deserve rights of their own not unlike the protections extended to pets?

If you're like me, your gut reaction may have been something along the lines of: of course not, idiot. But the article actually raised some interesting questions, based on a paper by MIT researcher Kate Darling.

The Kantian philosophical argument for preventing cruelty to animals is that our actions towards non-humans reflect our morality — if we treat animals in inhumane ways, we become inhumane persons. This logically extends to the treatment of robotic companions. Granting them protection may encourage us and our children to behave in a way that we generally regard as morally correct, or at least in a way that makes our cohabitation more agreeable or efficient.

Now, this, to me, makes a bit of sense save for one detail. Yes, our values are reflected in the way we treat some animals, but there seems to be a vast difference between organic life and cognitive devices. Robots, afterall, are not life, or at least not organic life. They are simulations of life. This is, of course, where the rabbit hole begins to deepen as we have to confront some tough philosophical questions. How do you define life? If at some level we're all just different forms of energy, is the capacity to think and reason enough to warrant protection from harm? Can a robot be a friend, in the traditional sense of the word?

But, putting aside those questions for a moment and assuming robots do attain some form of rights and protection in the future, this little tidbit from the article made me raise my eyebrows.

Apple will patent every little nuance the robot is capable of. We know this from its patent lawsuits. If the robot has eyebrows, Apple may file a patent claiming rights to “a robotic device that can raise an eyebrow as a method for expressing skepticism.”

Here's where we may find commonality with our metallic brethren. With the expanded allowance for patenting genes, it becomes all the more likely that the same codes that manufacture our humanity could indeed be patented in the way that a robots manufactured "humanity" would be. If robotics progresses to produce something along the lines of EDI, the very things that make her "human" enough to be worthy of rights will be locked up in an increasingly complicated patent system. And, with our courts falling on the side of gene patents for humans, we've virtually ensured that all of that robotic humanity will indeed be patentable.

On the other hand, what happens if future courts rule that human genes cannot be patented? And then what happens if we do indeed define some kind of rights structure for our robotic "friends"? Do those rights open up the possibility that robotic "genes" should not then be patented?

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story
]]> be-kind-to-skynet http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20120905/06254220281 Tue, 7 Aug 2012 17:00:00 PDT DailyDirt: More Olympic Trivia Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100907/23180510930/dailydirt-more-olympic-trivia.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100907/23180510930/dailydirt-more-olympic-trivia.shtml

The speed of sound is apparently too slow for the Olympics now, so the starting pistols have been replaced by electronic beeps. Perhaps there shouldn't be a starting pistol at all, and the judges should simply measure when the athletes start and finish? [url]

Robotic cameras are catching more action at the Olympics. Not too surprising that cameramen can't run alongside Olympic athletes and keep up.... [url]

The modern pentathlon is using laser pistols instead of real guns this year. No sound effects like "pew pew pew!" will be tolerated from the audience. [url]

While the testing for performance enhancing drugs has generated some controversy, the testing of athlete gender seems a bit trickier to handle. Does a person with XXY compete in the male or female events? [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story
]]> urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20100907/23180510930 Wed, 25 Jul 2012 17:00:00 PDT DailyDirt: Underwater Robots For Fooling Fish & Finding Foul Waters Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100903/10032410893/dailydirt-underwater-robots-fooling-fish-finding-foul-waters.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100903/10032410893/dailydirt-underwater-robots-fooling-fish-finding-foul-waters.shtml

Get your own open source underwater robot capable of diving down to 100 meter depths for just $775 on Kickstarter. OpenROV runs on eight C batteries and runs for about an hour at 1m/s. [url]

A fish-like robot inspired by notemigonus crysoleucas (a species of the Golden shiner) has been accepted into schools of the real fish. The creators of this robot envision the possibility of using remote-controlled fish robots to steer real schools of fish away from pollution (or maybe directly into fishing nets). [url]

An ocean-going drone could help clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The Marine Drone is a concept design for an autonomous robot that can collect plastic debris and other garbage floating around in the oceans. [url]

The SHOAL project has developed a robotic fish that can detect pollution and monitor water quality. These autonomous robots can work together to cover a square kilometer area to a depth of 30 meters, running on rechargeable batteries that last about 8 hours, and the prototype robots cost about $32,000 each. [url]

"Evolution of Music by Public Choice" is the title of a paper that describes how a genetic algorithm -- along with input from volunteers -- made some not-unpleasant-sounding music. Check out Darwin Tunes to participate in the project and become part of the evolutionary record for this. [url]
If you really want to surround yourself with your favorite music, there's some software that'll turn your tunes into a carpet pattern for you. But for some practical reasons (and copyright law?), only 5 carpet patterns from this algorithm have been manufactured: classical, ambient, jazz, electronic and silence. [url]
Sound Machines 2.0 (a robotic string quintet) listens to whatever music you play for it, re-interprets your musical choice, and then plays its own musical composition based on what it heard. However, it might be better to wait for Sound Machines 3.0 for all the bugs to be worked out.... [url]

The SushiBot can serve up to 3,600 portions of nigiri sushi in an hour. Its manufacturer, Suzumo, also has bots for maki rolls, but disappointingly, these robots still need a human operator to handle the raw fish and some of the other ingredients. [url]

Yoshiaki Shiraishi was the inventor of the sushi boat conveyor belt -- an idea he borrowed from seeing beer bottles on a conveyor belt. His kaiten-zushi system helped to spread the global consumption of sushi, and it first appeared in 1958 in Japan. [url]

To discover more food-related links, check out what's floating around in StumbleUpon. [url]

By the way, StumbleUpon can also recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story
]]> urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20100520/1350449515 Mon, 23 Apr 2012 17:00:00 PDT DailyDirt: Robots Of The Sea Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100415/0945149023/dailydirt-robots-sea.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100415/0945149023/dailydirt-robots-sea.shtml

The field of biorobotics has created evolving fish robots to help understand the natural evolution of fish. Or... this is actually a direct study of intelligent design if you live in Tennessee. [url]

The Octopus Project has built the world's first entirely soft robot with eight flexible arms that can crawl around underwater. It's not quite as mobile or dextrous as a real octopus, but soft robots are making some progress towards becoming useful. [url]

The US Navy has funded a Robojelly project to make a soft robot that copies some of the characteristics of the moon jellyfish. This Robojelly robot is also self-powered using seawater as an electrolyte to activate its artificial muscles to contract. [url]

To discover more interesting robotics-related content, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story
]]> urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20100415/0945149023 Mon, 9 Apr 2012 17:00:00 PDT DailyDirt: National Robotics Week -- Save The Bots! Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100413/0915038996/dailydirt-national-robotics-week-save-bots.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100413/0915038996/dailydirt-national-robotics-week-save-bots.shtml House Resolution 1055. If you haven't hugged your robot today, it's about time you did, perhaps.

A full calendar of events is available at nationalroboticsweek.org. There's something going on in every state, and you can keep up with some of the activity via Facebook. [url]
The iRobot Corp, famous for its line of robot vacuum cleaners, is sponsoring some public awareness projects for students to get kids interested in robots and science/technology subjects. FYI, iRobot products are also serving in the military to help clear out explosives from the battlefield, so its robots don't just clean up dirt. [url]
If you're in Florida, the University of Miami School of Law will be discussing legal and policy issues relating to robotics at its inaugural 'We Robot' conference, April 21-22. The future of lawsuits against robots covers some things you might not expect. [url]
To discover more interesting robotics-related content, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story
]]> urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20100413/0915038996 Tue, 13 Mar 2012 17:00:00 PDT DailyDirt: Open Source Robots Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100329/1822088773/dailydirt-open-source-robots.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100329/1822088773/dailydirt-open-source-robots.shtml

An open source robot surgeon called Raven is making some impressive progress in the field of medicine. However, its advancements could be threatened by the makers of the da Vinci Surgical System -- and various patents on robot surgery procedures. [url]

PhillieBot is a one-armed robo-pitcher designed by engineers at Penn that threw a ceremonial opening pitch for an MLB game. The creators credit the open source robot operating system (ROS), but also admit that their robot won't be competing with human pitchers any time soon. [url]

In 2010, Willow Garage modified its open source PR2 robot to do a laundry task -- successfully folding towels neatly. The towels don't have to be a specific size or color, but it does take some patience to wait for a pile of towels to be completed. [url]

To discover more interesting robotics-related content, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story
]]> urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20100329/1822088773 Wed, 29 Feb 2012 17:00:00 PST DailyDirt: Toys Are Too Cool For Kids Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100105/1020367617/dailydirt-toys-are-too-cool-kids.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100105/1020367617/dailydirt-toys-are-too-cool-kids.shtml

Imagine a remote-controlled robot spider that shoots projectiles and wears explosive plastic armor. Help name this toy here. [url]

Kids used to play with everyday objects and use their "imagination" to interact with simple toys. Now there are "augmented reality platforms" -- so kids don't need to use their imaginations anymore. [url]

The Kackel Dackel is a crappy German toy. What kid wouldn't want to clean up the plastic pooh that came out of a toy dog? [url]

Satoshi Furukawa took 2 hours out of his busy day on the International Space Station (ISS) to build a Lego replica of the ISS. They just completely ignored the second rule of making scale models. Do not nest. [url]

To find some more bizarre/cool stuff, check out some things that other StumbleUpon users have found. [url]

By the way, StumbleUpon can also recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story
]]> urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20100105/1020367617 Thu, 23 Feb 2012 17:00:00 PST DailyDirt: Who Drives Best -- Men, Women... Or Robots? Joyce Hung http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120207/11315417688/dailydirt-who-drives-best-men-women-robots.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120207/11315417688/dailydirt-who-drives-best-men-women-robots.shtml

A New York City traffic study found that male drivers were responsible for 80% of car accidents in which pedestrians were severely injured or killed. Blame it on testosterone, which increases aggression and risk-taking. [url]

A University of Michigan analysis of 6.5 million car accidents in the U.S. between 1998-2007 found that female drivers were responsible for 68.1% of all crashes. Apparently, women have trouble navigating intersections, as they were most often hit on the driver's or passenger side while trying to turn left or right. [url]

A more recent UK study showed that women are actually better at parking than men, dispelling the myth that men have better spatial awareness than women. According to the professional driving instructor who created the study, men learn and perform better during driving lessons, but it's possible that women retain what they learn better than men. [url]

Let the car park itself. Many automakers, including Ford, Toyota, and BMW, are offering self-parking systems in their vehicles now. While they can guide cars into parking spaces with minimal driver involvement, they aren't always reliable. [url]

To discover more interesting car-related content, check out what's driving around StumbleUpon. [url]

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story
]]> urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20120207/11315417688 Thu, 16 Feb 2012 17:00:00 PST DailyDirt: Robots Inspired By Nature Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/blog/innovation/articles/20100124/1920007889/dailydirt-robots-inspired-nature.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/blog/innovation/articles/20100124/1920007889/dailydirt-robots-inspired-nature.shtml

Robot researchers in Switzerland are copying the physiology of bats, grasshoppers and locusts to create robots that are more efficient at moving around. Swarms of these kinds of robots are going to be pretty scary looking... [url]

Lockheed Martin is developing an unmanned aircraft called the Samarai and looks like a foot-long maple seed -- with propellers attached. These remote-controlled aircraft can hover in place and come equipped with video cameras for surveillance missions. [url]

The exoskeleton of an African desert scorpion isn't smooth, but covered with microscopic bumps that protect it from sandblasting winds. This discovery could help helicopters fly in the desert for longer periods of time, since adding some grooves to smooth steel surfaces can reduce erosion by up to 20%. [url]

To discover more interesting robotics-related content, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story
]]> urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20100124/1920007889 Wed, 25 Jan 2012 17:00:00 PST DailyDirt: Space Robots... Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110912/13511815913/dailydirt-space-robots.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110912/13511815913/dailydirt-space-robots.shtml

Voyager 2 is about 14 BILLION kilometers from earth now, but it's still getting software upgrades after 34 years in service. Even with its plutonium batteries, it'll cease to function in the mid-2020s. And unlike the Terminator, it won't be back (hopefully). [url]

A 3m-by-1m spacecraft weighing about 400kg will relatively cheaply collect medium-resolution images of the earth using radar. The radar sensors will be able to see the the earth's surface in any weather -- and a series of these satellites would be able to image any location on earth within 24 hours. [url]

A robotic arm with a sticky hand will grab onto objects in space with the help of electrostatic forces. This robot arm could help clean up space junk or launch/retrieve nanosatellites. [url]

To discover more links on space exploration, check out what's floating around in StumbleUpon universe. [url]

By the way, StumbleUpon can also recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story
]]> urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20110912/13511815913 Tue, 17 Jan 2012 17:00:00 PST DailyDirt: Robot Scientists Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100310/1540038513/dailydirt-robot-scientists.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100310/1540038513/dailydirt-robot-scientists.shtml

Robot mathematicians like Graffiti have been around for a very long time, generating far more interesting conjectures than any human could. Interesting mathematical conjectures should be surprising, not too closely related to an existing conjecture, and not too specific. [url]

Software dubbed Eureqa is analyzing (without help from humans) experimental data from biological systems to derive mathematical models for processes like glycolysis -- and could potentially find new biological discoveries. And I'm sure we'll see stories of robots found cheating by plagiarizing from Wikipedia soon. [url]

Adam is the first automated scientist -- successfully developing a hypothesis, performing experiments, refining its hypothesis into a novel discovery. Adam found three yeast genes that coded for an orphan enzyme. [url]

A newer version of Adam, called Eve, is sifting through some of Adam's data and looking to find her own discoveries about yeast genetics. Unfortunately, some intellectual property issues are delaying some of Adam and Eve's latest publications. [url]

To discover more interesting robot-related content, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story
]]> urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20100310/1540038513 Tue, 27 Dec 2011 17:00:00 PST DailyDirt: Crazy Weapons... Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110203/05040112942/dailydirt-crazy-weapons.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110203/05040112942/dailydirt-crazy-weapons.shtml

The ethics of using robots for military operations is getting some attention. Usually, military robots have been assigned to dull, dirty or dangerous jobs -- but now they're being assigned to dispassionate tasks... (aka Terminator-like killing) [url]

A hypersonic vehicle could hit a target anywhere on the planet in under an hour. The aerodynamics of hypersonic flight is being studied with real rockets flying through the atmosphere at thousands of miles per hour. [url]

US Air Force pilots who control drones are burning out at a concerning rate. Almost 30% of these pilots are showing signs of "clinical distress" as drone patrols increased from 10-15 missions at any given time in 2007 to over 60 now. [url]

To discover more interesting tech-related content, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story
]]> urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20110203/05040112942 Tue, 29 Nov 2011 20:02:00 PST Luddite Redux: Don't Kill The Robots Just Because They Replace Some Jobs Andrew Fong http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111123/13243316892/luddite-redux-dont-kill-robots-just-because-they-replace-some-jobs.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111123/13243316892/luddite-redux-dont-kill-robots-just-because-they-replace-some-jobs.shtml Fun fact #1: California prison guards are expensive.

Fun fact #2: South Korea's getting robot prison guards. I'm sure the prisoners welcome their new robot overlords, but I bet the prison guards union doesn't. Or any other union for that matter. And they're not alone. Over the past few weeks, tech industry commentators spent slightly more time than usual wringing their hands over whether technology was killing jobs. I think this video captures the debate pretty well. It might sound paradoxical, but this replacement of humans by machines is actually a good reason to limit secondary liability for the robotics industry. And I'm not just referring to secondary liability in the copyright sense, but to any liability incurred by robot manufacturers because of how others use their robots.

This isn't a theoretical issue. Automation and efficiency have always threatened certain jobs and industries -- and one of the standard reactions is to somehow blame the technology itself and seek to hinder it, quite frequently by over-regulation. Of course, the extreme version of this is where the term "luddite" came from -- an organized effort to attack more efficient technology. Of course, that resulted in violence against the machines. More typical were overly burdensome regulations, such as "red flag laws," that said automobiles could only be driven if someone walked in front of them waving a red flag to "warn people" of the coming automobile. Supporters of this law, like supporters of secondary liability laws for robots, can and will claim that there are "legitimate safety reasons" for such laws and that the impact on holding back the innovation and extending the lifetime of obsolete jobs is just a mere side benefit. But like those red flag laws, applying secondary liability to robotics would significantly hinder a key area of economic growth.

Techdirt has covered the question of a secondary liablity safe harbor for robots before, and Ryan Calo's written a great paper about the legal issues coming out of the robotics arena, but an even more important (and specific) point is exactly why these safe harbors matter for job creation -- even as some continue to argue the other way (that such safe harbors will destroy jobs).

Technology has been replacing human labor since humans invented, well, technology. But while technology may get rid of inefficient jobs, it eventually creates replacements. To cite one commonly-used example, the switched telephone network put operators out of a job, but it created plentiful new jobs for telemarketers (and other businesses that relied upon the packet-switched phone network... including everything built on and around the internet today). The problem is that while it was obvious how many operators would be out of a job, it wasn't immediately clear how lucrative (or annoying) telemarketing could be, let alone the eventual transformation of the phone lines into a vast global information sharing network, and the hundreds of millions of new jobs created because of it.

Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee examine this problem in detail in their book, which I recommend. But much of it boils down to this. Technology creates jobs, yet it's not obvious where the new jobs are, so we need bold, persistent experimentation to find them:

Parallel experimentation by millions of entrepreneurs is the best and fastest way to do that. As Thomas Edison once said when trying to find the right combination of materials for a working lightbulb: "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." Multiply that by 10 million entrepreneurs and you can begin to see the scale of the economy's innovation potential.

This is especially important for robotics. It's obvious how robots make certain jobs obsolete -- e.g. driverless cars don't need drivers -- but it's less clear what new job opportunities they open up. We need to try different things.

Unfortunately, secondary liability creates problems for robot manufacturers who open up their products for experimentation. Ryan Calo explains this in more detail, but the basic problem is that, unlike computers, robots can easily cause physical harm. And under product liability law in most states, when there's physical harm to person or property, everyone involved in the manufacturing and distribution of that product is legally liable.

Ideally, we'd want something like a robot app store. But robot manufacturers would be unwilling to embrace commercial distribution of third-party apps if it increased their chances of being sued. There's evidence that Section 230's safe harbors (and, to some extent, the DMCA's safe harbors) play a key role in facilitating third-party content on the web. Absent a similar provision for robots, manufacturers are more likely to limit their liability by sticking to single-purpose robots or simply locking down key systems. That's fine, if we know exactly what we want our robots to do -- e.g. replace workers. But if we want robots to create jobs, it'd help to limit secondary liability for the robotics industry, open things up, and let widespread experiments happen freely.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story
]]> first,-do-no-harm http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20111123/13243316892