If robotics interest you, you HAVE to see this.....

[lwien]

What was once science fiction is now here. THIS is a game changer and the path that this takes us down is both exciting and a bit scary at the same time when one considers future applications.

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50137987n

 

[scottio19]

I'm pretty sure I read an "AMA" ('Ask Me Anything' interview) from this woman on reddit. Remarkable!

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/15oa8w/i_can_control_a_robotic_arm_with_the_power_of_my/

I'm just getting into robotics and electronics. Buying an Arduino kit for a christmas present to myself!

 

[lwien]

What I was just blown away with was when she said that she doesn't even have to think about picking up a cup, or shaking hands or feeding herself. She just did it, just like you or I would do, that is, without thinking about it, without thinking about moving her arm or fingers. And it virtually took no training. When the scientist behind this amazing breakthrough said that he sees in the very near future, how this same technology would be applied to sight as well, that just floored me. They've already figured out how to give the wearer a sense of touch. Simply.........amazing.

 

[TriiKLe]

I see brain powered avatars of ourselves doing all the work. Wireless rechargeable personal maid/assistant/slave laborer.

Oh Man, the possibilities!

Such a great time to be alive.

 

[madnezz344]

Biomedical engineering is the way of the future.

 

[kingofnull]

Robots can't be trusted.

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology may have made a terrible, terrible mistake: They’ve taught robots how to deceive.
It probably seemed like a good idea at the time. Military robots capable of deception could trick battlefield foes who aren’t expecting their adversaries to be as smart as a real soldier might be, for instance. But when machines rise up against humans and the robot apocalypse arrives, we’re all going to be wishing that Ronald Arkin and Alan Wagner had kept their ideas to themselves.
The pair detailed how they managed it in a paper published in the International Journal of Social Robotics. Two robots — one black and one red — were taught to play hide and seek. The black, hider, robot chose from three different hiding places, and the red, seeker, robot had to find him using clues left by knocked-over colored markers positioned along the paths to the hiding places.
However, unbeknownst to the poor red seeker, the black robot had a trick up its sleeve. Once it had passed the colored markers, it shifted direction and hid in an entirely different location, leaving behind it a false trail that managed to fool the red robot in 75 percent of the 20 trials that the researchers ran. The five failed trails resulted from the black robots’ difficulty in knocking over the correct markers.

“The experimental results weren’t perfect, but they demonstrated the learning and use of deception signals by real robots in a noisy environment,” Wagnersays. “The results were also a preliminary indication that the techniques and algorithms described in the paper could be used to successfully produce deceptive behavior in a robot.”
When asked about whether this was really a good idea, bearing in mind the events of Terminator 2, Arkin added: “We have been concerned from the very beginning with the ethical implications related to the creation of robots capable of deception and we understand that there are beneficial and deleterious aspects. We strongly encourage discussion about the appropriateness of deceptive robots to determine what, if any, regulations or guidelines should constrain the development of these systems.”

Is it important that computers and robots tell us the truth? Or should they learn to lie - like their human makers?
In an experiment performed in a Swiss laboratory, 10 robots with downward-facing sensors competed for "food" - a light-colored ring on the floor. At the other end of the space, a darker ring - "poison" - was placed. The robots earned points for how much time they spent near food as opposed to poison.
The experimenters, engineers Sara Mitri and Dario Floreano and evolutionary biologist Laurent Keller, also gave the robots the ability to talk with each other. Each robot can produce a blue light that can be seen by the others and which can give away the position of the "food" ring. Over time, the robots evolved to deceive each other about the food ring.
Their evolution was made possible by the artificial neural network that controlled each of the robots. The network consisted of 11 "neurons" that were connected to the robot's sensors and 3 that controlled its two tracks and its blue light. The neurons were linked via 33 connections - "synapses" - and the strength of these connections was each controlled by a single 8-bit gene. In total, each robot's 264-bit genome determines how it reacts to information gleaned from its senses.
Researchers devised a system of rounds in which groups of ten robots competed for "food" in separate arenas. After 100 rounds, the robots with the highest scores - the fittest of the population, in the Darwinian sense - "survived" to the next round..
At the start, the robots produced blue light at random. However, as the robots became better at finding food, the light became more and more informative and the bots became increasingly drawn to it. The red ring is large enough for just eight robots, so they had to jostle each other for the right to "feed". The effects of this competition became clear when Mitri, Floreano and Keller allowed the emission of blue light to evolve along with the rest of the robots' behavior.
As before, they shone randomly at first and as they started to crowd round the food, their lights increasingly gave away its presence. The moresuccessful robotsbecame more secretive. By the 50th generation, they became much less likely to shine their lights near the food than elsewhere in the arena.

On a serious note, watched the video; Amazing.