Nyasar di Jalan, Robot Tanya Pejalan Kaki

Jerman - Kian lama, tingkah robot kian mirip manusia saja. Kala nyasar di jalanan, si robot pun tidak segan-segan menanyai orang-orang untuk mencari arah yang benar.

Kemampuan itu disematkan pada robot canggih bernama Autonomous City Explorer (ACE) ini. ACE dibuat para ilmuwan di Jerman, tepatnya para akademisi di Technical University of Munich.



Para ilmuwan membiarkan si robot berjalan dari universitas menuju sebuah tempat di tengah kota Munich dengan jarak sekitar 1,5 km. Untuk diketahui, ACE tidak dibekali perangkat penunjuk arah seperti sistem GPS.

Dengan demikian, sang robot harus bertanya pada orang-orang di dekatnya untuk mencari jalan menuju tujuan. Untuk itu, ACE dibekali dengan kamera dan software agar dapat mendeteksi keberadaan manusia di sekitarnya.

Dikutip detikINET dari Times of India, Jumat (15/5/2009), ACE mengandalkan speaker untuk menanyai para pejalan kaki. Kemudian, jika orang tersebut mau menolong, ia bakal diminta menyentuh layar sentuhnya untuk menujukkan arah.

Sesudahnya, si robot tak lupa mengucap terima kasih pada manusia yang mau membantunya sebelum nyelonong pergi ke tempat tujuannya. Setelah berinteraksi dengan 38 orang dalam periode waktu 5 jam, ia baru bisa mencapai tujuan.

ACE juga sempat nyasar karena ada orang yang salah menunjukkan arah. Namun meski cukup kepayahan, keberhasilan ACE sampai ke tujuan disambut gembira para penciptanya. Ia pun sukses menuruti petuah yang lama diajarkan pada kaum manusia, malu bertanya sesat di jalan.
( fyk / ash )

DARPA working on "Silent Talk" telepathic communication for soldiers

We're no strangers to crazy DARPA projects around here, but this one especially strikes our fantastic fancy. The agency's researchers are currently undertaking a project -- called Silent Talk -- to "allow user-to-user communication on the battlefield without the use of vocalized speech through analysis of neural signals."

That's right: they're talking about telepathy. Using an EEG to read brain waves, DARPA is going to attempt to analyze "pre-speech" thoughts, then transmit them to another person. They first plan to map people's EEG patterns to his / her individual words, then see if those patterns are common to all people.

If they are, then the team will move on to developing a way to transmitting those patterns to another person. Dream big, that's what we always say!

Boston Dynamics-designed RiSE V3 robot climbs poles, haunts dreams

The folks at Boston Dynamics have already made quite a name for themselves in the world of creepy robotics, but it looks like they're not ones to keep all their know-how to themselves, and they've now lent the University of Pennsylvania's Kod*lab a hand with this new RiSE V3 pole-climbing robot.



That, as you've no doubt surmised, is a followup to RiSE V1 and V2, which were developed without the help of Boston Dynamics and were more suited to climbing flat surfaces than poles. In addition to a vastly different leg mechanism, this latest model also makes use of some brushless DC motors that increase the power density to let it climb poles at rates up to 22cm per second, which the researchers say make it well-suited for a wide range of tasks.

As you can see for yourself, the bot mostly seems to work remarkably well, although it's obviously not quite ready to tackle critical jobs all by itself just yet.