DARwIn-OP Robot Can Imitate Human Motions

The proposed system can perform full-body imitation of human motion by humanoid robot. A humanoid robot has potential to support people in various environments such as homes, hospitals, offices, etc. However, if a robot has to work in a real environment, actions based on various motions, which should be input by humans, are essential. The motion-capture is one of the easiest ways to generate humanoid motions. However, there are lots of problems. Often it requires offline process for building motion database. High computational cost is also a big problem in a small-sized humanoid. Moreover, because of the difference between human and robot kinematic structure, the original captured human motions are often infeasible movements for humanoid robot.

Launching The first 3D printed robot - STEM BOT 3D

RobotsLAB, the educational robotics company, recently launched a new robotics curriculum- STEM BOT 3D, during the FETC conference in Orlando, FL

'Robot Olympics' 17 Cyborg Athletes to Vie for Glory in DARPA Challenge

We look forward to DARPA challenge, awesome robots are coming! But with all due respect to DARPA challenge, the real Robot Olympics game is the ' NAO Olympics' . RobotsLAB has crated a series of sport challenges with the NAO robot. Check it out, game on!

NAO is the first robot that goes to Mars

On January 18, 2014, Aldebaran’s NAO Robot stood where no robot has gone before, and RobotsLAB was responsible for training his seven human companions in the finer points of his programming. NAO will be the only robot in an analog astronaut crew  ascending into the Mars Society’s, Mars Desert Research Station in the the high desert of Utah. Anyone familiar with the high desert can appreciate the analogy--at this time of year the high desert is nearly as barren, dry, sandy and cold as the surface of Mars!  

Professor Peter Stone Can't Get Enough Of NAO Robots Playing Soccer

The World Cup, the pinnacle of soccer, starts this June in Brazil. NPR science correspondent Joe Palca will be one of those obsessed, screaming fans. It's not often Joe gets to do a story that mixes science and soccer, but as part of his new project, Joe's Big Idea, he found a computer scientist who actually studies soccer using robots as players. So Joe felt compelled to investigate.

I love watching soccer matches. I really do. I get it why soccer is called "the beautiful game". It's played

 with a mixture of speed, skill, and cunning. Robot soccer, on the other hand is not quite so beautiful. Alison is a two foot tall robot. She’s made of white plastic and looks like a robot. By robot standards, she's a scoring machine. There's a right foot kick, and the ball is heading, and goal. Oh, that was exciting. As I watched, Alison scored several times into an empty net. But by human standards, well, how do I put this gently, I've seen toddlers do better. She got up, she fell, she tripped over, she took oh, she's got a little balance problem. Despite the clunkiness, Professor Peter Stone thinks robot soccer is also a beautiful game. Professor Stone is a computer scientist at the University of Texas at Austin. He has built an indoor soccer field in his lab where he puts his robot players through their paces.

5 Tools Everyone In The Educational Robotics Industry Should Be Using

Of course the first answer to the question posited by the title of this piece is a facetious one--lots of money! So let us qualify the question a bit more by asking, "What are 5 tools everyone in the educational robotics industry should be using that most of us in the industry can afford?"

Since learning to code is so important to any STEM discipline, the first tool everyone in the educational robotics industry should be using is the online community and programming language called Scratch. This innovative site helps kids learn its namesake programming language and create interactive stories, games and computer animations. This outstanding tool is actually free!

Since math is basic to any scientific endeavor, the ability to interest and engage students in math is crucial to the educational robotics industry. Our second tool that everyone in the industry should be using, the RobotsLAB BOX, has proved its ability to interest and engage kids in math with an innovative combination of robots and tablets in many progressive school districts. The old teaching standbys like the book and the whiteboard can’t compete with "cool" robot helicopters demonstrating quadratic equations in real-time on a tablet.

NAO Robot is not alone anymore - it can learn from his friends!

The great German psychologist Carl Jung believed that a substrata of knowledge existed beneath the consciousness of the individual, a great reservoir of information shared by every member of every species. He called this the vast reservoir of insight, instinct, and a-priori knowledge, the “collective unconscious.” He believed It is always there when needed by the individual seeking answers to questions not provided by his experience.

The existence of the collective unconscious in humans is still being argued over by psychologists and philosophers, but wouldn’t it be great if we really had some way of finding answers to questions outside our experience? You know, like books--and most recently, the Internet.

And what about that most recent addition to the flora and fauna of our planet, the robot? Wouldn’t it only be fair if it too could call upon a reservoir of knowledge beyond its own RAM? The Internet is there as a conduit for this knowledge; now all that is needed is a storage facility.

That storage facility that is actually being tested this week in the Netherlands. It is called RoboEarth and its goal is to see that every individual service robot has a means of identifying and manipulating objects it has never come across before. Service robots are autonomous robots that will someday perform everyday tasks in common human environments like the home and office. These tasks might be as simple as shoveling your snow-covered walk and as challenging as creating a nutritious meal for old guys like me.

Robotics competition draws students from all over Texas

It makes me proud as an expatriate Texan to find that the state of Texas is one of those states that realizes STEM learning is important and is doing something to ensure that its students meet the educational requirements of the new millennium in science, technology, engineering and math.
The Vex competition at Roosevelt high school in San Antonio is a good example.
One of the teams in the event sponsored by the U.S Army was a Vex team from an all-girls robotics club at the school.
So seriously does the state of Texas view these competition that recently the Texas Workforce Commission funded a startup grant to help 400 new Vex robotics teams in Texas.
Sounds like a lot of teams, does it?  
Well countrywide 9000 Vex robotics teams are expected to compete in the USA this year.
Texas intends to have its share.

If you find yourself wondering what a Vex robotics team is, the VEX Robotics Design System is centered around the VEX Clawbot Kit.
The Clawbot is similar to the LEGO NXT in that assembly and disassembly is made simple with assorted pieces easily fitted together.  
Some say that the Clawbot is cheaper.

Would you consider NAO Robot as a Looney? Prof. Hunter Lloyd has a surprise for you!

Montana is considered to be deep in the heart of "flyover country". You know, that part of the United States that people traveling back and forth to the East and West coasts look down at from a curved window at 35,000 feet and wonder if anyone really lives there.  Those people don’t think of Montana as a high tech state.

But they would be wrong! Montana, Bozeman, Montana in this case, settled between the Bridger Mountains and the Tobacco Root Mountains in the southeast part of the state and home of the University of Montana, boasts one of the most formidably competitive robots in this or any country. I’m talking about LOONEY, winner of six medals in the recent (2013) RoboGames in San Francisco. Oh, and he was winner of new fewer than five medals in the previous games, 2012 .

The FIRST EUROPEAN MUSEUM ONLY ABOUT ROBOTS OPENS IN SPAIN

Did you know that the largest Robot Museum in Europe is located beneath the Juegetronica games store in central Madrid? When I first stumbled across this interesting bit of robo news I was a little surprised that a continent as technology conscious as Europe would have its biggest robot museum in the basement of a store. In this country we have museums featuring robots in nearly every major city. Most appear sponsored by various universities like The Robotics Institute (RI), a division of the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. We even have them in out-of-the-way but well-known entertainment parks like Wisconsin Dells, deep in the Wisconsin countryside.

I needn't have worried: first of all the Juegetronica is not just some small game shop in a Madrid strip mall-- online images display a game store on steroids; secondly,  the owner of the Madrid Robot Museum further described his place as "perhaps the only dedicated robot Museum in Europe outside of universities and training centers where we can see this technology of the future."  Which is to say the museum is independent of any big European institution. Maybe a bit like our own Wisconsin Dells? And like Wisconsin Dells, it is a big f

avorite with kids.