The Darpa Robotics Challenge is all about building robots that can operate in a human environment robust enough to do useful work during emergencies, to aid and supplement first responders. Whether the emergency is man made or natural, the robots need to operate human devices, such as doors, stairs, tools and vehicles, as well as recognize and asses their environments for emergency context. If you have been waiting for your chance to shine as a robotics engineer, this might be your kind of challenge. Tracks A and B have already been selected, Track C for software control systems, and Track D for combined hardware and software, are both still open. The initial work should be developed and submitted with the GFE Simulator package, which is the robot simulation software from the Open Source Robotics Foundation. Even if you don’t think your skill set is quite up to entering a competition of this caliber, if you have any interest in developing your own robots you should download this free software suite and try out your hand at design and development. If you do enter, and you are selected to continue past the entry level, at the next stage you may be eligible for some funding to develop your design. Our next Evil Robot Overlord could be one you made yourself! Thanks to the folks at Popular Mechanics for the heads up on this one, and check out their article for lots more detail. And yes, I did just install Ubuntu 12.04 specifically so I could get the best build of GazeboSim installed and running.
Oops! Had to fix a bad video link; this one is from the Blender Foundation, so it should stay good. If you haven’t seen it before, Big Buck Bunny was made as a Blender project a few years back, more I think to prove that you could indeed get professional grade animation out of free open source software than any other reason. In the process they made a wonderful little video about a a friendly rabbit gone Rambo and the evil squirrels you will not soon forget. Grab your own free copy of Blender and start creating today!
Or was it? Arpan Jolly of Sheridan college built this wonderful little video animation of the moment Sir Issac Newton figured out how gravity worked, and gave it a little twist. This was created in 2010, and is a wonderful example of what you can do with a good story and some animation skills.
Tomorrow is the day that MetroCAF 2012 takes place: the annual SIGGRAPH event honoring the best animation talents that NYC-area schools can muster. This year’s jury has selected four outstanding achievement pieces to be honored at MetroCAF, but even the least of these entries are amazing bits of work. If you have ever built computer animations yourself, you know how much work goes into these kinds of projects, and how much time even the simplest of steps can actually take. Watch the trailer, and prepare to be amazed. And even if you don’t know how to do this stuff, you should be able to appreciate the results.
A tasty little animation put together as a class project by Mitchell Counsell using Maya mostly and composited with After Effects.
It seems if you fill a classroom with robots that make mistakes, the kids get smarter. According to this New Scientist Report, a Nao Robot was operated by humans in the next room during an English class in a Japanese school. Yes, that is Telepresence rather than true robotics, but the kids didn’t know that. They played a learning game where the English name for a shape was given, and the robot and kids would draw that shape. It appears the kids learned faster when the robot made mistakes, and the children would have to teach it to draw the correct shape to go with that word. Which is just scientific backing for the old adage The best way to learn is to teach. Not only that, but the kids then wanted to continue learning with the Robot, and would carry on studying longer and learning better as they did so. The results will be presented at Ro-Man this year, the 21st IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication, which will run from tomorrow, September 9th through the 13th in Paris, France. The event is all about real world results of humans and robots working and communicating together, and every year contributes tremendously to the further development of robotics on both the software and hardware fronts. Take a look at their scheduled presentations to get an idea of the scope of this event. If you were thinking of building your own robot, this is a great place to absorb some real understanding of what is possible today and coming for tomorrow.