Entries tagged with robot - Channel 10

Microsoft’s New Robotic Receptionist

sarahintampa — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 14:50:00 GMT

Last week, Chief Research and Strategy officer Craig Mundie demonstrated a software-based robot that uses both visual and voice recognition as well as speech synthesis to handle some basic tasks. The robot will be put into place on Microsoft’s campus to act as sort of a “robotic receptionist” that will handle shuttle requests from visitors. In the video Mundie played at the Financial Analysts Meeting (FAM), two Microsoft employees walked up to the robot and it asked “Which building do you want to go to?” They responded, and then the robot, after double-checking their request and confirming some details, announced that the shuttle “should be here in four minutes.” Says Mundie, “This is what a natural user interface is all about and it won't be just a receptionist. This is just the tip of the iceberg."

Interview about i-Robot Basics

nuric — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 04:06:00 GMT

In this video interview we are chatting with a robotics enthusiast Burak Sarica. He is the program manager of S2B in Microsoft Turkey but he is also a fan of iRobot Create. He explains us what is iRobot, what can we do with iRobot and of course he makes a live demo. I also asked him about Microsoft Robotics Studio and can we use MSRS to program iRobot?

My robot life comes full circle

Paulfo — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 20:24:05 GMT

27 years ago (or there abouts) as a young lad, I desperately saved to buy a Heathkit Hero Jr. Hero Jr was the little brother of the Hero 1 (which featured in an American TV serious and got me hooked on robotics). By the time I had enough money to phone Maplin and order a Hero Jr they had discontinued them :-(. This was a major blow to my robotic dreams. I managed a few lowly robots after this, religiously purchased the various early robot magazines but never managed to build a robot with all the features of the Hero range.

27 years later, I saw the White Box Robotics 914 PC Bot. It was still in proto-type and they were looking for 'pioneers' to order the first batch. A risk but also an opportunity. I immediately placed my order.

During the following 12 + months I kept the faith and waited patiently, lapping up any little nugget of information on the device. During this time, the EU passed the RoHS directive, the 914 was assembled in Canada - North American doesn't have similar laws. So even while my 914 was ready for delivery I had to engage the government to find out the detail - could I import my 914 without RoHS certification. After a short delay the response was positive - a personal import was fine.

And now to yesterdays announcement (13th). Heathkit producers of the original Hero 1 and White Box Robotics are in a multi-year strategic agreement under which 'Heathkit will produce, manufacture and distribute an educational version of the robot to be known as the HE-RObot'!!

So full circle, I missed my Hero Jr, got my 914 PC Bot, and now so have Heathkit :-) Wow, the children of our time are going to have some fun.

Read more at Heathkit and White box robotics.

Technorati Tags: Paul Foster, White Box Robotics, 914 PC Bot, Heathkit, Hero 1

PAVE on MSRS makes DARPA Grand Challenge

Paulfo — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 11:18:05 GMT

Are you watching the DARPA Grand Challenge progress? If not you should be. This is the cutting edge of autonomous vehicle development. There are plenty of exotic tools and technologies coming into play - although more off the shelf parts are now available compared to the first 2004 Grand Challenge when teams had to fabricate so much more.

The DARPA Grand Challenge has been getting tougher and tougher each year. In 2004 it was completing a 142 mile desert course, 2005, a 132 mile desert course in under 10 hours. In 2007 the autonomous vehicles must now demonstrate that they can drive in the urban environment, integrating with the flow of traffic and avoiding obstacles.

There are many really cool things about the Princeton University Urban Challenge Team, not only have they made it as one of the 36 semi-final teams, not only are they all undergraduates, but they are also using Microsoft Robots Studio as their development and execution platform.

Running across their five dual-core servers, 25 MSRS services are controlling the vehicles sensors, actuators and decision logic. This is the largest public demonstration of the MSRS platform I have seen and demonstrates the awesome potential of MSRS which spans Lego robots to autonomous vehicles leading R&D.

The team have a great website here with two videos of their most recent run.

The challenge semi-final - called the Urban Challenge National Qualification Event (NQE) - takes place at Victorville, California on the 26-31 October 2007.

I'm certainly supporting these guys and will be watching them compete in October. Go Princeton!

Maker Fair: RoboWars

Laura — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 17:30:00 GMT

What's cooler than one robot playing soccer? TWO robots playing soccer! I went down to maker faire and found these robots with a huge crowd surrounding them. They can flip, roll and fight. Check out this video and see how it's done.