The Paraswift is a base jumping robot that might save your life one day. The robot can climb walls and then jump off by itself. The robot can carry a camera that shoots video on the way down, which is probably why Disney has a stake in the project.
Via Geeky Gadgets
We’re entering an age where robots are beginning to think and act for themselves. Many have even become celebrities such as ASIMO. Programming is no longer necessary for them to do every little task. They can learn. And now, apparently, they can teach.
The South Korean government has announced its plans for robots to being teaching in pre-school classed by 2012. They won’t be the sole teacher just yet. However, the robots will be responsible for things such as reciting stories and even acting as a portal into the class room so parents can check up on their kids.
This will start off as a trial and if it proves successful they will expand the program and bump it up to Kindergarten level also.
I think it will be many years until it advances further though. At the moment, robots can only act a a supplement or a teacher for the most basic and least interactive of tasks and need human guidance. Crucial tasks such as helping kids with their problems and teaching new material to children can only be done by trained professionals.
Its been well-known for decades that robots are replacing humans in many work-fields. The most obvious would be in manufacturing such as in car plants or food factories. But what about the humble barkeep? Could his days be numbered too?
Well students from Middlesex University think so. They recently showed off their Heineken Bot at the Kinetics Art Fair in London the other day. What the little beer toting fella does is wheel around in a pre-programmed path and serve people glasses of Heineken whenever they want one as you can see in the video below.
He’s basically just a walking keg with a few sensors but I think this is really cool. It might be a few more years before these things are common place (that beer looked a little too foamy for my linking in the video), but I like the principal of Robots serving us beer. Hopefully it’s not just a ploy to get us all drunk and take over the world during our epic hangovers!
Asimo has be hailed as the world’s cutest robot. He has been in development by Honda now for over five years and has evolved repeatedly from his original state which restricted him to basic, pre-programmed tasks.
Now, they’ve taught him how to dance and sing. Actually, they’ve taught him how to ‘learn’ how to dance which is crucial when making humanoid robots.
When a song is played,it is analysed by Asimo and then signals generated from the beat of the music are sent to his limbs which enable him to move in a fluid motion – just like humans dance.
The singing is done much in the same manner. Words are recorded and analysed. As are the pitch and tone of the voice. Asimo will then be able to convert this into his own voice and sing along with the song!
While this may seem like a pretty basic task, I must stress that the important aspect of this is that the robot learns how to do this for itself. Nobody pre-programmed words, songs and movements for it.
Maybe in a few years we’ll have thousands of Asimos serving us tea and getting us the newspaper without any aspirations for world domination and the extinction of their creators.
