In the video below, Le Trung demonstrates Aiko’s internal operating system, which gives the robot many abilities, including the ability to speak two languages (English and Japanese), solve high school math problems, communicate the weather forecast, understand more than 13,000 sentences, sing songs, identify objects, focus on objects or people of importance, read newspapers and other materials, and mimic human physical touch.

As Le Trung explains, in some ways the BRAINS software is even more powerful than a human brain because it can link to infinite sources of data. Similar to a human brain, the software is designed to interact with the surrounding environment, process it, and record the information in its internal memory. Once the internal memory is at full capacity, the information can be transferred into a server database. The information can then be shared with current and future robots.

With the BRAINS software, Aiko (whose name means “beloved one”) has the potential for many applications. For example, in the home, Aiko could help elderly people by reminding them when to take their medicine and helping them read the newspaper. It could also help kids with their math homework. In work and public environments, the robot could be used at information desks, where it could give directions and inform people when and where events take place. Le Trung also suggests that, with Aiko’s ability to detect 250 faces per second, it could be useful in airports to quickly scan and filter faces, as well as answer questions regarding flight times and gate locations. In addition, Aiko’s sensitivity sensors and humanlike appearance offer the potential for its use as a companion robot.

“The most recent improvement with Aiko is the BRAINS software,” Le Trung said. “I have just finished re-architecting the BRAINS software to have triple threads, which will make the software run a bit smoother and process about 15% faster for 3D recognition. As a result, Aiko can distinguish the difference between a $20 Canadian bill and $20 American bill. Aiko also has new improved facial expressions with 21 recognition points. Aiko will know when you are angry, happy, etc. Finally, the BRAINS can now process newspaper reading much faster and more accurate.”

Le Trung, whose background is in microbiology and chemistry, was originally inspired to build Aiko after watching “Chobits,” a Japanese manga that explores the relationships between humans and personal computers. While he hopes to continue to improve Aiko’s software, he currently faces a hardware limitation, as the CPU is currently at 99% capacity. Le Trung hopes to raise funds to upgrade the CPU.

In the future, Le Trung hopes to enable Aiko to achieve further skills, such as making tea, coffee, and a breakfast of eggs and bacon; cleaning a human’s ears with a Q-tip; giving a neck massage; writing; and cleaning windows, shelves, and bathrooms. He also hopes that, one day, he will be able to mass produce sister copies of Aiko for an estimated cost of about $17,000 – $20,000.

“Future improvements include making the voice with more emotions and feelings when speaking, improving the silicone material on her face so that she can do facial expressions like humans, and redesigning the body and arm system to move more naturally and carry heavier things,” Le Trung said.

More information:

• www.projectaiko.com
• A Perfect Female Companion: Project Aiko

August 25, 2009 by Lisa Zyga

Robots have been used in laboratories and factories for many years, but their uses are changing fast. Since the turn of the century, sales of professional and personal service robots have risen sharply and are estimated to total 5.5 million in 2008. IFR Statistics estimate 11.5 million in the next two years. The price of robot manufacture is also falling. With robots 80% cheaper in 2006 than they were in 1990, they are set to enter our lives in unprecedented numbers.

Service robots are currently being used in all walks of life, from child-minding robots to robots that care for the elderly. These types of robots can be controlled by a mobile phone or from a PC, allowing input from camera “eyes” and remote talking from caregivers. Sophisticated elder-care robots like the Secom “My Spoon” automatic feeding robot; the Sanyo electric bathtub robot that automatically washes and rinses; and the Mitsubishi Wakamura robot, used for reminding people to take their medicine, are already in widespread use.

Despite this no international legislation or policy guidelines currently exist, except in terms of negligence. This is still to be tested in court for robot surrogates and may be difficult to prove in the home (relative to cases of physical abuse).

Professor Sharkey urges his fellow scientists and engineers working in robotics to be mindful of the unanticipated risks and the ethical problems linked to their work. He believes that robots for care represent just one of many ethically problematic areas that will soon arise from the increase in their use, and that policy guidelines for ethical and safe application need to be set before the guidelines set themselves.

He said: “Research into service robots has demonstrated close bonding and attachment by children, who, in most cases, prefer a robot to a teddy bear. Short-term exposure can provide an enjoyable and entertaining experience that creates interest and curiosity.

“However, because of the physical safety that robot minders provide, children could be left without human contact for many hours a day or perhaps for several days, and the possible psychological impact of the varying degrees of social isolation on development is unknown.

“At the other end of the age spectrum, the relative increase in many countries in the population of the elderly relative to available younger caregivers has spurred the development of elder-care robots. These robots can help the elderly to maintain independence in their own homes, but their presence could lead to the risk of leaving the elderly in the exclusive care of machines without sufficient human contact.”

Source: Science Daily
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081218141724.htm

Prototypes of some of these robots showing mid-term project results will be exhibited at ICT 2008, Europe’s leading information and communication technologies event, which will take place in Lyon from 25-27 November 2008.

The project, FEELIX GROWING (FEEL, Interact, eXpress: a Global approach to development With Interdisciplinary Grounding; funded by the Sixth Framework Programme of the European Commission, aims to develop autonomous robots which will be capable of interacting with humans in everyday environments, and will learn and develop emotionally, socially and cognitively in accordance with the needs and personalities of the individuals with which they associate.

“The aim is to develop robots that grow up and adapt to humans in everyday environments,” said Dr Cañamero. “If robots are to be truly integrated in humans’ everyday lives as companions or carers, they cannot be just taken off the shelf and put into a real-life setting, they need to live and grow interacting with humans, to adapt to their environment.”

At ICT 2008, Dr Cañamero and the project’s international team of researchers will explain and demonstrate this approach using live interactive demonstrations and videos. Live demonstrations will include a baby pet robot learning to control its stress as it explores a new environment helped by a human caregiver, several robotic heads that show facial emotional responses to humans’ faces and voices, humanoid robots that learn to execute simple tasks by observing and imitating humans, and an interactive floor that responds to human touch and movement with different light and sound patterns. Videos and demonstrations will also show how non-human primates (chimpanzees) react to some of these robots.

The other players in the FEELIX GROWING project are: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France; Université de Cergy Pontoise, France; Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland; University of Portsmouth, UK; Institute of Communication and Computer Systems, Greece; Entertainment Robotics, Denmark; and SAS Aldebaran Robotics, France.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/11/081120111622.htm

Adapted from materials provided by University of Hertfordshire, via AlphaGalileo.

A world of robots may seem like something out of a movie, but it could be closer to reality than you think. Engineers have created robotic soccer players, bees and even a spider that will send chills up your spine just like the real thing.

They’re big … they’re strong … they’re fast! Your favorite big screen robots may become a reality.

Powered by a small battery on her back, humanoid robot Lola is a soccer champion.

“The idea of the robot is that it can walk, it can see things because it has a video camera on top,” Raul Rojas, Ph.D., professor of artificial intelligence at Freie University in Berlin, Germany, told Ivanhoe.

Using the camera mounted on her head, Lola recognizes objects by color. The information from the camera is then processed in this microchip, which activates different motors.

“And using this camera it can locate objects on the floor for example a red ball, go after the ball and try to score a goal,” Dr. Rojas said. A robot with a few tricks up her sleeve.

German engineers have also created a bee robot. Covered with wax so it’s not stung by others, it mimics the ‘waggle’ dance — a figure eight pattern for communicating the location of food and water.

“Later what we want to prove is that the robot can send the bees in any decided direction using the waggle dance,” Dr. Rojas said.

Robots like this could one day become high-tech surveillance tools that secretly fly and record data … and a robot you probably won’t want to see walking around anytime soon? The spider-bot.

ABOUT ROBOTICS: Robots are made of roughly the same components as human beings: a body structure with moveable joints; a muscle system outfitted with motors and actuators to move that body structure; a sensory system to collect information from the surrounding environment; a power source to activate the body; and a computer “brain” system to process sensory information and tell the muscles what to do. Robots are manmade machines intended to replicate human and animal behavior. Roboticists can combine these basic elements with other technological innovations to create some very complex robotic systems. There are plenty of robots doing manual work on factory assembly lines, but while those machines can manipulate objects, they do the same thing, along the same path, every time. Other robots are designed to play soccer, or to drive vehicles without human input.

ABOUT A.I.: Robots and computer networks are always evolving intelligent consciousness in popular science fiction. But while modern scientists have made great strides in building computers that can mimic logical thought, they still haven’t cracked the code of human emotion and consciousness. There are two prevailing schools of thought on artificial intelligence. Proponents of “strong AI” consider that all human thought can be broken down into a set of mathematical operations. They expect that they will one day be able to replicate the human mind and create a robot capable of both thinking and feeling, with a sense of self — the stuff of classic science fiction. Think of the robot Number Five from the 80s movie Short Circuit, who suddenly realized, frightened, that he could be “disassembled” by the scientists who made him. “Weak AI” proponents expect that human thought and emotion can only be simulated by computers. A computer might seem intelligent, but it is not aware of what it is doing, with no sense of self or consciousness.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/videos/2008/0707-the_future_of_robots.htm

However, robotics in the real world has trouble striking a workable balance between these two requirements. Robots can perform tasks efficiently in controlled environments away from humans, or they can interact with humans if properly equipped with sensors to avoid any harm. But that degree of ‘sensing’ also creates complexity and a lack of robustness to hardware and software failures which, in turn, affects safety. Of course, robots could be safe if they move slowly enough, or work far away enough from humans – but then, their dexterity and effectiveness are dramatically reduced.

“Despite the scenarios science fiction has been depicting for decades of concrete human-robot interactions, we are still a long way from that reality,” says Antonio Bicchi of the University of Pisa’s Faculty of Engineering. “Most robots today can only work safely if segregated from humans, or if they move very slowly. The trade-off between safety and performance is the name of the game in physical human-machine interactions.”

Building solid Phriendships
Bicchi coordinates the EU-funded Phriends project to create a new generation of robots which is both intrinsically safe and versatile enough to interact with humans. “The most revolutionary and challenging feature of Phriends is designing and building robots capable of guaranteeing safety in physical human-robot interactions (pHRI),” the robotics specialist explains.

For Phriends, safety means ensuring no accidents occur, even in the event of programming bugs, sensor glitches, or hardware and software failure. But creating a robot that is both completely safe and can perform useful functions requires what Bicchi calls a “paradigm shift” in approach.

This involved going back to the drawing board and rethinking how robots are designed and function. “The classical robotics approach is to design and build robots with a specific task in mind,” Bicchi notes. “The robots developed by Phriends will be intrinsically safe, since the safety is guaranteed by their very physical structure, and not by external sensors or algorithms that can fail.”

The project has worked on developing new actuators – the devices which move and control the robot – concepts and prototypes; new dependable algorithms for supervision and planning; as well as new control algorithms for handling safe human-robot physical interactions. These components are then integrated into functionally meaningful subsystems, and evaluated and tested empirically. The project is also contributing to ongoing international efforts to establish new standards for collaborative human-robot operation.

Flexing design muscle
Before we get carried away at the idea of having android friends and colleagues working beside us at the office or even at home, it should be pointed out that Phriends is taking what could be described as a one limb at a time approach.

The project’s main focus is on robot arms and the partners have turned to nature for inspiration in developing a prototype Variable Stiffness Actuator (VSA). Just as human and animal muscles move in opposite directions to move limbs, the VSA achieves simultaneous control of the robot arm by using two motors antagonistically to manipulate a non-linear spring which acts as an elastic transmission between each of the motors and the moving part.

One of the Phriends partners, the E Piaggio Centre for Robotics and Bioengineering at the University of Pisa (IT) has developed a second version of the VSA which uses a more sophisticated antagonistic concept to move robot joints directly.

“This approach makes the robot arm lighter because its structure is ‘soft’ when the robot moves fast and can collide with humans, and it becomes ‘hard’, or tensed, when performing tasks requiring precision,” describes Bicchi.

Crash courses in safety
Phriends, which received more than €2 million in funding from the EU’s Sixth Framework Programme for research, has followed both a proactive and reactive approach to accidents. It has designed its robots to anticipate potential collisions with humans and avoid them. But in the unpredictable world we live in accidents will happen, and collisions may occur anywhere along the arm.

Two of the project’s partners – DLR in Germany and the University of Rome in Italy – have developed an ingenious solution which, like humans, relies on ‘proprioception’ to determine the relative position of neighbouring components using special sensors. Such ‘self-awareness’ enables the robot to react promptly to collisions or crashes and resume safe operations.

But even a rapid correction may be no good if the robot is heavy and solid, as industrial arms traditionally are. Phriends has explored a number of ways to make impacts gentler, including lightweight robot design, soft visco-elastic covering on the links, and mechanically decoupling the heavy motor inertia from the link inertia.

Shockingly complex simplicity
In the greater scheme of things, Phriends is one small step for robotics, but one massive leap for pHRI. “The real challenge for the future of robotics is not to do something shockingly complex, but to do even simple things in a way that is safe, dependable, and acceptable to ordinary people, thus making human-robot coexistence possible,” remarks Bicchi. “The economic impact of safe and dependable robots in manufacturing is huge in terms of simplifying plant layouts, increasing the productivity of workers and machines, and for overall competitiveness.”

The project has already elicited industry interest. Germany’s Kuka Robotics, one of the world’s leading manufacturers of industrial robots, is a partner in Phriends. Kuka will release a new robot arm in 2008 which incorporates some features developed by Phriends.

Outside the EU, companies in Japan and South Korea, which are also working on similar technologies, have contacted Phriends requesting their assistance in developing new technologies and products.

The technology the project has developed also has potential applications in other fields, including in sports training and physical rehabilitation.

http://cordis.europa.eu/ictresults/index.cfm/section/news/tpl/article/BrowsingType/Features/ID/90001

source: ICT Results

The machine has been dubbed RepRap, which is short for replicating rapid-prototyper.

The goal is to eventually build a robot that can produce individual processors and circuit boards so people can build their own computers, according to Zack Smith, director of the RepRap Research Foundation.

“It’s a printing press for the digital age,” Smith told Computerworld. “The goal is to have one on everyone’s desk. If it could build circuit boards, someone could design and build their own at home. Open-source electronics is a movement that’s really taking hold.”

While 3D printers have been commercially available for about 25 years, RepRap is the first that can essentially create its own structural parts, said team member, Vik Olliver, in a written statement.

Smith explained that unlike a regular printer that uses ink, RepRap heats up plastic and then squeezes it out into a line. The lines are built up into usable forms as they solidify. So far, the robot has made everyday plastic objects, like door handles, sandals and coat hooks. The machine has also successfully copied all of its own structural pieces.

For a full replication of all its own parts, Smith said that might be as far away as 20 years down the road. “Being able to replicate a computer chip would take a whole lot of precision,” he added. “For me, the exciting part is we’re building a tool that can build other things.”

“… when there are robots that have also emotions, personality, consciousness. They can talk to you, they can make you laugh. They can … say they love you just like a human would say ‘I love you’, and say it as though they mean it …”

Robots as sex toys should already be on the market within five years, predicted Levy, “a sort of an upgrade of the sex dolls on sale now”.

These would have electronic speech and sensors that make them utter “nice sounds” when a human caresses their “erogenous zones”.

But to build robots as real partners would take a bit longer, with conversation skills being the main obstacle for developers.

Scientists were working on artificial personality, emotion and consciousness, said Levy, and some robots already appear lifelike.

“But for loving relationships – that is something completely different. In loving relationships there are many more things that are important. And the most difficult of all is conversation,” said the author.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/HealthSci/In_2050_your_lover_may_be_a_robot/rssarticleshow/3148524.cms