Kojiro mimics the human body and can handle more complex movements.

Kojiro is a humanoid which is built by the University of Tokyo’s JSK Robotics Laboratory.

Kojiro  musculoskeletal humanoid robot has a detailed musculoskeletal system built to mimic the human body.

via Engadget

To develop control algorithms for Kojiro, the JSK team is using an iterative learning process. This kind of system has lots of nonlinearities and is hard to model precisely.

The main drawback of using a musculoskeletal system is that controlling the robot’s body is difficult. For balance, the robot uses three gyros and a three-axis accelerometer on its head. To keep track of its posture and limb positions, they embedded joint angle sensors on spherical joints and six-axis force sensors on the ankles. To make the robot safer, the researchers built its body using mostly light and flexible materials. The results are transmitted to a computer and displayed on a control screen developed by Takanishi. A driver circuit board automatically adjusts the current fed to the motors based on temperature measurements.

Each motor unit has a rotary encoder, tension sensor, and current and temperature sensing circuit. Its brushless motors are quite small but can deliver a substantial 40 watts of output power. These tendon-muscle structures — Kojiro has about 100 of them — work together to give the robot some 60 degrees of freedom, or much more than could be achieved with motorized rotary joints. However in Kojiro, the motors are lightweight and used to pull cables attached to specific locations on the body, simulating how our muscles and tendons contract and relax. Traditional robots have limbs and torsos powered by DC motors at the joints. In one scientific paper, they wrote: ‘Currently normal humanoid robots are not suitable for working in our daily environment. The team, led by Professor Nakanishi, said this newly developed spine would allow them to manufacture lighter and more flexible robots in the future to serve in the home. Kojiro is an advanced musculoskeletal humanoid robot under development at the University of Tokyo’s JSK Robotics Laboratory, has a detailed musculoskeletal system built to mimic the human body, sporting artificial bones, muscles and tendons to create a robot that is theoretically more light and agile than your regular bot, and which moves in a more natural fashion, and bends and twists via his artificial spine.

More details at Spectrum IEEE org

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Use your Android to find restaurants, shops, new friends, never miss the latest event in your hometown or on your vacations and for sure Socialize

Finding information at the nick of the time is very important. But one cannot get hold of laptop and WiFi connection every time, hence the presence of intuitive smart-phone applications have revolutionized the way people interact with physical location and object, we call it Augmented Reality. Here is a video about Augmented Traffic Views – Android to get an idea.

This Android application list below, is an abstract of local based applications where you need on some GPS functions, or Augmented Reality functionality or the applications we present here on this list are web-based applications, designed for your Droid (R2D2_?)

First of all let us check your GPS status that we can start, when your phone also has Augmented Reality?! [Great]

GPS Start Up

GPS Status displays the information received from the phone’s GPS receiver and other sensors.

In addition to the basic location information it can extract and display the state and location of each visible GPS satellite which is displayed on a simple sky view. The outer circle represents the horizon while the center corresponds to the zenith right above your head. The little blue arrow represents true north, while red means south. In addition there is a little compass needle that always shows the state of the phone’s internal compass (magnetic north/south). Each satellite is represented by a dot, with a size correspondig to its signal strength. Green satellites are used in the GPS fix.

Finding Restaurants, Hotel and places around you

‘Where‘
The ‘Where‘ application for Android-phones-features the most useful GPS-based widgets all wrapped into one native application. ‘Where‘  allows you to quickly launch a mobile experience that puts the people, places and things you look for at your fingertips while on the go. Local content available through ‘Where‘ includes everything from the weather, news, and restaurant reviews, to the closest coffee shop, cheapest gas, traffic updates, movie show times and more. This application also helps you reach your destination with easy to use maps and directions. A homepage style layout makes accessing your local information quick and easy.

Be sure to check out Where-Connect to chat with other ‘Where‘ users in an engaging and safe manner and ‘Where-SMS-local-search‘ “Find anything you are looking for by texting 94373”

‘Where’: Android app review from John Walton on Vimeo.

Location-based go-to activity app. more @ phonedog.com

Happy Cow

HappyCow’s VeginOut Dining Guide is an application made for mobile devices that run the Android system. This app allows you to accesses the restaurant guide easier while traveling and on-the-go.

This app has the option of using your current location, via GPS or Network, OR allows user to enter an address and a radius to search within.
Right now these areas are supported:
USA, Canada, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Bangkok (Thailand), Hong Kong, Japan (Tokyo), some of Malaysia, and Singapore.

Sherpa

Sherpa discovers information about where you are and what you’re looking for. It prevents you from the pain of searching through the web pages. The app automatically learns your likes and dislikes, displaying surrounding restaurants, retailers and attractions that reflect your taste.

Introducing Sherpa

Androinica review

T-Mobile introducing Sherpa

Geodelic partnered with T-Mobile to develop Sherpa, a customized app with our unique learning feature.

Google Places Directory App

Google Places Directory, developed by Google Places Directory Team, allows you to browse nearby places in categories like Restaurants, Movie Theaters, Hotels and Banks. You’ll see distance and directions to the destination, and if you tap on the listing, we’ll show ratings and photos. You can also call the business or view its location on Google Maps. It currently support US English and Chinese. English download

The interface is just like the Yelp application. Google Maps has offered the ability to review my locations for the longest time, and ‘Places Directory’ brings it all together.

Images via Official Google Blog

Open Table

OpenTable allows you to make confirmed restaurant reservations on the go and in an instant at more than 10,000 restaurants nationwide.

“OpenTable for Android allows diners to:

• Find nearby restaurants and see real-time availability
• Display restaurants on an interactive map
• Refine by cuisine, price, points and availability
• View restaurant profile pages with detailed information, including photos, menus and diner reviews
• Send an invite to fellow diners via email
• Get directions to the restaurant
• Earn Dining Rewards Points including 1,000 Dining Points on eligible dining times.”

Where is Open-Table available in the United States

Open-Table Featured Areas

Open Table International areas

See all OpenTable areas

Check the “50 best restaurant bars in the United States”

‘OpenTable’ for Android also leverages the

“Android platform’s unique integration capability between applications.”

via

Yelp

Yelp which was previously available for only iPhone user is finally here for Android mobile.The basics are all there: restaurant and business navigation, ratings and reviews, photos, and direct calling all work just fine. There’s even a new feature that shows you directions from your current location to your destination in separate browser.
The Android version is read-only, meaning that for now you can look at other people’s opinions but not share your own.

Google Maps API and Yelp!

Yelp on Android lacks many of the interactive program features that are present on the iPhone version (Cnet), including the ability to contribute your own photos and tips. We’ll presumably see more functionality in future editions. For now, Yelp is read-only on Android phones.

GoWeb3D Augmented Reality on Layar Reality Browser from Dave Elchoness on Vimeo.

“Dave Elchoness of GoWeb3D demonstrates augmented reality, AR, layers on the Layar Reality Browser from Boulder, Colorado, USA. Layers demonstrated includeYelp, Wikipedia, FlickAR, Eat, Drink. Layers developed by GoWeb3D include Yelp, Wikipedia, FlickAR, Mazda, Eat, Drink, UDR Apartment Search, Syracuse University iSchool.”

Hotels Near Me

“Hotels near me” Android app finds hotels for highly competitive rates and is first worldwide GPS hotel finder for Android. This app lists hotels based on your current location or keyword search. The accommodations can be booked mobile for highly competitive rates and no reservation fees.

Finding Friends and Location around you

Loopt
One of the most popular mobile social networking providers available. The Loopt Android app lets you see where you and your friends are located and display status updates of what you’re all doing.

Loopt makes it easy to connect while on the go and easily share comments, photos, and cool places to visit.

Aloqa
Aloqa is a mobile service that proactively notifies you of interesting places, events, and Facebook friends near you. Instead of having to search, you can just look at your phone and see your favorite hotspots, friends, events of interest, and recommended bargains close by. Whenever You Want. Wherever You Are.

Aloqa – a new mobile recommendation engine (Android)

Aloqa Intro Video (iPhone)

Tripit
TripIt for Android is a free app that keeps your TripIt itineraries at the ready. Get instant access to all the information you might need while you’re traveling, even when you can’t connect to the Internet.

Tripit meats social media and you can also sign in via your Facebook account, Google Mail or Google apps account

LinkedIn’s TripIt Application (Hi-res)

With TripIt for Android, you can:

1. Access your TripIt itineraries right from your Android
2. Get maps and directions and make calls to airlines, hotels, etc. straight from your itinerary with the tap of a finger
3. Use TripIt Pro to see flight alerts and find alternate flight options

About TripIt (Press)

Finding your way (Navigation)

NYC Bus & Subway Maps
Formerly known as NYC Subway Map, it is a very simple application. It allows quick access to the REAL NYC MTA Subway & Bus maps that work offline and it “…has been rated 4 1/2 stars by the Android Market community…”

Or do it the old way

Massimo Vignelli and his 1972 NY Subway map

NYC Bus & Subway Maps was developed for Android by episode6

This can be very useful to any person who is visiting New York for the first time and has no idea about the bus route and timing.

also try DC Metro for free

Wikitude Drive Augmented Reality Navigation

Wikitude Drive – AR Navigation System was developed by the Mobilizy Research & Development group in Salzburg, Austria, to satisfy the curiosity of the developers to see if it was feasible to combine real-time navigation with mobile augmented reality. The result of this quest is Wikitude Drive, a fully-functional, light weight navigational system which overlays point-to-point directions on a camera-view, without the need for maps.

WIKITUDE Drive – AR Navigation

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReH9dmqfOqA

Wikitude Drive has the following features:

• Mobile AR navigation, similar to a heads up display (HUD);
• Fully functional, map-less navigation;
• POI 2 POI navigation;
• Integrated voice commands (additional text-to-speech engine required);
• World wide navigational data which is accessed in real-time from the internet;
• (a mobile internet connection is necessary to access data while in motion)
• Peer-to-peer navigational functions
• Social navigational features will be implemented in future releases
• Interfaces with existing navigational APIs (for example: NavTeq, Map24, TeleAtlas)

This is the time where physical world is painted with digital information to give you more than what you see around.

This is your sixth sense and a guide to better judgment. If you have the right application then you can easily get information about the things around you. The concept of localization is the new way how new applications are being developed and this headline says everything “Yelp and Google? Sure, Local is Everything“ according to the latest rumors Google will buy Yelp

New Smartphone applications have become quite intuitive, which exploits the power of maps and locations. This can be strongly seen inAndroid apps which are strongly connected with Google Maps and Street View.

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Very very impressive 3d business card with augmented reality

At first glance this appears to be a CGI post process.

AR Business Card

AR Business Card from James Alliban on Vimeo.

Video from a previous AR project

AR Particle Beam

AR Particle Beam from James Alliban on Vimeo. more infos about this project via jamesalliban.wordpress.com/2009/04/14/ar-particle-beam/ and via augmented reality competition on the Papervision forum.

I’ve used 3D lighting techniques and physics here to create this beam of light surrounded by strange celestial light particles.

Inspiration via Adobe John Nack

Mobile Phone Augmented Reality on a Business Card

Here is an interesting comment via @vimeo

“Nice work on the video textures. The best looking AR businesscard I’ve seen.

You may also like Daniel Wagners AR BusinessCard. AR is done on a mobile phone with his proprietary StudierStube tracker. 

It uses any image on the card rather than the black-and-white (FL)ARToolKit Markers you’re using:

youtube.com/watch?v=RHsiZtQi8-w

A few months ago, using all open code, I did a vaguely similar thing to Daniel – augmenting a standard, found postcard with video:

vimeo.com/3957693“

via Julian Oliver

Is this real? Could you send me such a card?

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Meet Roboni-i: The unique fusion of interactive gameplay and real world robotics.

Complete your own missions or compete against friends. Program and customize your Roboni-i. You can even create your own games to share with friends! Join the vibrant Roboni-i online world and guide your customized avatar through a virtual lunar world where you can run missions, play intense games, set up tournaments and meet other Roboni-i users.

Robonica, the owner of Roboni-i, is based in Beverly, Massachusetts. Their second office is at Centurion, South Africa. This is what the company says about its project.

Say hi to Roboni-i, the world’s first programmable gaming robot. With nimble 360º movement, 16 sensors and 4 processors, Roboni-i can navigate on its own, avoid obstacles, play games, do tricks – and interact with its environment. It’s easy to customize and loaded with games; play on your own or against friends with similar robots. You can even create your own games, or download games others have created.

• Shoot, scoop, capture and maneuver through single and multiplayer games
• Use the same remote controller offline and online
• Infrared sensors to detect obstacles and interact with other robots
• ZigBee (RF) technology allows different robots to participate in team games.

Watch the Roboni-i move autonomously. See the amazing technology that allows one robot to follow the other. See them dance in perfect choreographed style!

Roboni-i Christmas Connection

What are you doing this Christmas? I will suggest you to go for Roboni-I and make your vacation a life time memory.

Here’s a video saying “All I want for Christmas is a Roboni-i Robotic Game System”. Enjoy it.

Roboni-i SpacePods Tournament

There are various games within the Roboni-I project. It ranges from Pod-Chase to SpacePods.

SpacePods is a thrilling game, similar to soccer, but during gameplay kids can blast each other’s robots with special weapons and effects. Kids absolutely love the competitive gameplay and excitement that Roboni-i games create. It is competitive and the crowd goes wild!

The video says more about it.

Ending Thoughts

I am a Gamer. I love playing all types of games. While at college I use to play soccer, cricket, baseball and basketball; and in job I took my interest to the virtual gaming. I played PC games like Age of Empires, Zeus and Sim City for long, and later moved to online games like Tribal Wars and FarmVille.

Roboni-I is for people like me. Can’t stop now. I am going for Roboni-I this Christmas, and have fun with my family and friends. Kids gonna remember it always.

You might want to consider it too!! Enjoy the vacation. Merry Christmas.

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Six ways

An easy way to show this list via NewScientist with images

I hope I have made it

Keep them in low-risk situations

Image via

Do not give them weapons

Image via

Give them rules like Asimov’s ‘Three Laws of Robotics’

Image via

Program robots with principles

Image via

Educate robots like children

Image via

Make machines master emotion

More Details via Six ways to build robots that do humans no harm

Please comment your ideas for other ways.

Are these all possibilities?

What do you think?

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Everybody can build his own wearable ‘SixthSense’

MIT grad Mistry to make digital ‘SixthSense’ open source [slideshow]

“People will be able to make their own hardware. I will give them instructions how to make it. And also provide them key software…give them basic key software layers. . . they will be able to build their own applications. They will be able to modify base level and do anything”.

Mistry, a PhD student in Pattie Maes’ Fluid Interfaces Group at MIT’s Media Lab

more pictures s i x t h s e n s e - a wearable gestural interface (MIT Media Lab)

sixth-sense technology – a wearable gestural interface

Talks Pattie Maes and Pranav Mistry demo SixthSense

material via Slashdot  “MIT Grad To Make Digital “SixthSense” Open Source”, ZDnet “The importance of Sixth Sense going open source” and the origin source “MIT grad Mistry to make digital ‘SixthSense’ open source”

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XPERO project Research on technology to understand human being [Degrees of freedom]

XPERO’s A.I. is stored in Nao, an autonomous, programmable and medium-sized humanoid robot. This video demonstrates and explains very simple the complexity of the science declared A.I. (artificial intelligence).

4. Degrees of freedom (“…from the data obtained this way, he builds a model that describes what we know as degrees of freedom.”)

A robot explores his environment and learns from his experiences

This is about autonomous robot scholarship by experimentation and gaining insights of the world. The robot has no particular goal but to gain knowledge of as much as possible by forecast and executing experiments in his environment and of course from its knowledge-beginning obtained data. The robot learns relations between its measures and observations.

Degree-Of-Freedom

Conscious that the robot is gifted to move the boxes, it wonders how far it is capable to impulse them. It chooses a box and begins to push it in one command awaiting the box hits a wall. Surprised that the box is out of the blue unmovable, he tries just about it in new directions and succeeds to slide the box down the wall, in anticipation of he reaches a corner.

From the data obtained this way, he builds a model that describes what we know as ‘degrees of freedom’ as shown in the picture

via XPERO read their philosophy

1. Stability

“learns that structures built by placing objects on boxes are stable”

2. Orientation

“learns how the distance and the angle from his orientation to each of the objects change in respect to his movements.”

3. Movability

“using the knowledge from these experiments, he induces the concept of movability”

via xperoROBOTIC channel

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“Daisy Bell” was composed by Harry Dacre in 1892. In 1961

You also might like this post

Do you know other awesome Robot videos History or Futuristic?

like this one

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The synth-playing robot (1984)

Idea via SynthGear “The synth-playing robot”

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The AIDA project (Affective, Intelligent Driving Agent), a collaboration between Volkswagen of America and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (SENSEable City Lab and Personal Robots Group of Media Lab), is a platform comprising of a personal robot and an intelligent navigation system that aims to bring an innovative driving experience.

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“Biped robot that balances dynamically using a human-like walking motion.”

Idea to this post an more videos via FastCompany

Boston Dynamics is a small engineering and robotics firm spun off from MIT in 1982. According to its own Web site it “builds advanced robots with remarkable behavior: mobility, agility, dexterity and speed.” Those parameters sound kinda military-like for a reason: BD has worked with DARPA, the Army, the Navy, and Marine Corps, as well as the more innocuous-sounding Sony. Their current starting lineup:Biped robot that balances dynamically using a human-like walking motion.

Can it be more realistic (scary)?

Comments are appreciated.

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“Everyone needs a gatling gun built into their iPhone.”

Wired Gadget Lab stated Firepower as “Augmented Stupidity Lands on the iPhone”

I’m adapting.

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