| Bomb-sniffing robots ready for US Army
WASHINGTON: As it increases its use of robots in war zones, the military will begin using an explosive-sniffing version that will allow soldiers to better detect roadside bombs, which account for more than 70% of US casualties in Iraq.
Fido is the first robot with an integrated explosives sensor. Burlington, Mass.-based iRobot Corp. is filling the military's first order of 100 in this southwest Ohio city and will ship the robots over the next few months.
There are nearly 5,000 robots in Iraq and Afghanistan, up from about 150 in 2004. Soldiers use them to search caves and buildings, detect mines and ferret out roadside and car bombs.
The government will spend about $1.7 billion on ground-based military robots between fiscal 2006 and 2012, said Bill Thomasmeyer, head of the National Centre for Defense Robotics, a congressionally funded consortium of 160 companies, universities and government labs.
CMSC 110 Students to Demonstrate Robots at Tuesday Ribbon-Cutting ...
On Tuesday, April 17, Bryn Mawr computer science students will show off their work with robots at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the College's Microsoft-funded Institute for Personal Robotics in Education, which the Bryn Mawr Computer Science Program co-sponsors with Georgia Tech (see related story). The event will start at about 2 p.m. Students will demonstrate their robots between 2:30 and 3:30 p.m. A wine-and-cheese reception will be followed by a talk by Jane Prey, program manager at Microsoft Research, between 4 and 5 p.m. IPRE's mission is to encourage interest in computer science, especially among women and underrepresented minorities, by incorporating robotics into the core computer-science curriculum, using a broadly applicable robotics programming language developed at Bryn Mawr by Associate Professor of Computer Science Douglas Blank.
Motor releases Unhuman
The two British artists from Motor are set to release in May their second album on Nova Mute. The album features eleven tracks carries on from the age old themes explored by Fritz Lang's Metropolis, Isaac Azimov's Laws of Robotics and Kraftwerk's cybernetic interface. .
Highly-Speculative Case Study: Homosexuality in Androids
We here at Underwire are big fans of the hilariously un-PC pilot for Gay Robot. Based on a track from Adam Sandler's album Shhh…Don't Tell, the show was never picked up, but it's still making the rounds on YouTube. Sure it riffs on almost every idiotic, distasteful stereotype in the book, but that's kind of what makes it funny. Plot Synopsis: Gay Robot, created when a wine cooler was spilled on him during development, hangs at a frat house. When Gay Robot can't nab a date for a formal, the brothers build him one out of a vacuum cleaner, bucket and plunger (they dub their creation “R2Steve2"). Gay Robot then tries online dating. More hilarity ensues… This show got us thinking… Is Gay Robot the first bot to come out of the closet? An Ellen DeGeneres for droids everywhere? Maybe so.
|
