CWL

Dances from Around the World: Children learn to program using KIWI robots

A robotics curricular unit integrating themes of dance, music, and culture with engineering, building, and programming. A research project directed Professor Marina Umaschi Bers at the DevTech Research Group at Tufts University.

The KIWI robotics construction set is designed to work with CHERP software (Creative Hybrid Environment for Robotic Programming). CHERP is a hybrid tangible/graphical computer language designed to provide an engaging introduction to computer programming for children in both formal and informal educational settings. CHERP was designed at Tufts University by the DevTech Research Group (NSF Grant No. DRL-0735657).

(Ready For Robotics)

‘Smart Skin’ Transistors Give Robots “Sense of Touch,” Better Interaction With Touch Screens for Humans

The creation of an array of piezotronic transistors using nanowires that convert mechanical motion to electronic controlling signals means we will now have better touch-screen interactions with our tablets and smartphones—but also robots that have “a sense of touch.”

The arrays contain about 8,000 touch-sensitive transistors called taxels that are thin, clear, flexible sheets that wrap around a robotic limb like our skin.

“When we [humans] touch fire, we know it’s hot. [This technology] can allow robots to have that human sense - in other words, make robots more like humans,” lead researcher Zhong Lin Wang told TechNewsDaily.

The achievement of mimicking touch through electronic devices came through measuring changes in resistance caused by mechanical touch.

“Any mechanical motion, such as the movement of arms or the fingers of a robot, could be translated to control signals. This could make artificial skin smarter and more like the human skin. It would allow the skin to feel activity on the surface,” said Zhong Lin Wang, from the Georgia Institute of Technology and one of the study authors.

“This is a fundamentally new technology that allows us to control electronic devices directly using mechanical agitation,” Wang added in a news release. “This could be used in a broad range of areas, including robotics, MEMS, human-computer interfaces and other areas that involve mechanical deformation.”

The study was published in the journal Science.

Martin Luther King: Science Advocate

As a young atheist, I was fascinated by religious philosophy that attempted to square the circle that is modern science. And although my personal atheism hasn’t softened over the years, I have grown to understand that science and faith aren’t mutually exclusive. Which is why, when I first encountered the following quote by Dr. Martin Luther King, I don’t think it resonated for me quite the same way it does today:

“Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power; religion gives man wisdom which is control. Science deals mainly with facts; religion deals mainly with values. The two are not rivals. They are complementary. Science keeps religion from sinking into the valley of crippling irrationalism and paralyzing obscurantism. Religion prevents science from falling into the marsh of obsolete materialism and moral nihilism.”

And although I disagree that without religion, human beings are condemned to an amoral existence, I don’t believe that this was the point of Dr. King’s words. He didn’t say that religion prevents people from moral nihilism, he said that religion prevents science from such a fate. This is an important distinction. Science is the investigation of the natural world, and it often involves a manipulation of nature and development of new technologies. Both efforts have the potential to be beautifully informative, creative, and inspirational. But, unchecked, the potential for destruction and detriment cannot be ignored.

Martin Luther King understood this concept fully, and he cautioned against the frighteningly awesome power that new technologies were bringing to the hands of men, especially in the wake of the Vietnam War:

“Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.”

Science is an interesting paradox, because it is, fundamentally, thought to be devoid of outside influence. Science is the investigation of nature. And as we all know, nature just is. But, science is a verb, an activity. Being so, it is carried out by people. It does not—it cannot—exist in a vacuum. And hard as we may try, human beings are simply incapable of any behavior that carries no bias, no moral or political persuasion.

In the early sixties, Martin Luther King knew that the fearful men in power—the amoral majority—were bending “scientific findings” to suit their political ideologies. He was a champion of skeptical thought, and cautioned the public at large to be wary of such claims:

“So men conveniently twisted the insights of religion, science, and philosophy to give sanction to the doctrine of white supremacy…they will even argue that God was the first segregationist. ‘Red birds and blue birds don’t fly together,’ they contend…they turn to some pseudo-scientific writing and argue that the Negro’s brain is smaller than the white man’s brain. They do not know, or they refuse to know, that the idea of an inferior or superior race has been refuted by the best evidence of the science of anthropology. Great anthropologists, like Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead, and Melville J. Herskovits agree that although there may be inferior and superior individuals within all races, there is no superior or inferior race. And segregationists refuse to acknowledge that there are four types of blood, and these four types are found within every racial group.”

He further writes that:

“Slavery in America was perpetuated not merely by human badness but also by human blindness…Men convinced themselves that a system that was so economically profitable must be morally justifiable…Science was commandeered to prove the biological inferiority of the Negro. Even philosophical logic was manipulated [exemplified by] an Aristotelian syllogism: ‘All men are made in the image of God. God, as everyone knows, is not a Negro. Therefore, the Negro is not a man.’”

Similar to sentiments communicated by Charlie Chaplin, when he mocked Adolf Hitler in The Great Dictator, Dr. Martin Luther King taught us that the power of humanity lies not only in its scientific capabilities, but in its moral sensibilities:

“Through our scientific and technological genius we’ve made of this world a neighborhood. And now through our moral and ethical commitment we must make of it a brotherhood. We must all learn to live together as brothers—or we will all perish together as fools. This is the great issue facing us today. No individual can live alone; no nation can live alone. We are tied together.”

I believe that Dr. King would be inspired by the ever growing collection of modern scientific studies evidencing our singular human ancestry. We are all children of Africa. In his honor, today, let us celebrate brotherhood, sisterhood—humanhood—and the scientific spirit that allows us to learn about the wonders of the universe as one unified people. — Cara Santa Maria

technology is changing the way we interact

Open-Sourcing Outer Space: 3-D Printing Meets Rocket Science

From 3D printed moonbases to architectural wonders more to down to Earth, as we saw what awesome mixture 3D printing and architecture could bring, I was left wondering about what other technologies we could be remixing 3D printers with. Partially answering my curiosity, Wired highlights an exciting new world of Rocket science.. now 3D print compatible? Apparently so! Read on:

Sure, a 3-D printed car is cool, but it doesn’t go to space. And there’s probably a good reason for that, but now a competition is aiming to launch the newest manufacturing fad into the final frontier by challenging people to design 3-D printed rocket engines.

As in many other fields, 3-D printing is the latest DIY obsession in space, with people looking to print everything from moon bases to astronaut meals. The 3D Rocket Engine Design Challenge asks competitors to envision an engine capable of sending a small payload, like a 10-kg nanosat, into orbit. Designers will work in an online environment called Sunglass and can collaborate with others around the world. The plan is to print the projects in a stainless steel 3-D printer, and the top three designs will share $10,000 in prizes. The competition will officially open at SXSW on Mar. 9.

The sponsors behind the 3-D rocket engine challenge, Sunglass and a company called DIYRockets, hope to spur innovative ideas for space travel and bring down manufacturing costs. Whether the contest will actually produce something or is just another buzzword-filled presentation at SXSW remains to be seen.

Bringing 3-D printing to rocketry isn’t entirely new. NASA has some 3-D printers working to reduce the cost of new parts for its upcoming giant heavy-lift rocket, the Space Launch System. Using laser beams, their engineers fuse fine layers of metal powder to create a fully functioning part. A small company called Rocket Moonlighting has built and fired petite engines made from a 3-D printer. Hobbyists are also harnessing 3-D printers to make traditional toy rockets with firecracker engines, some of which look like they sprung from the imagination of a pulp sci-fi writer.

Of course, this is rocket science. Designers for the 3-D rocket engine challenge will need to have a good understanding of fluid dynamics, heat flow, engineering, and physics to make sure their finished models don’t explode in a tiny, adorable fireball. Because of this, the competition hopes to call on a wide variety of people and, using Sunglass, allow them to work on different designs together.

For Full Details Head On Over To Full Article

Can Technology Benefit From Spirituality?

Like the title of one of my favorite Alan Watts books suggested, we live in an age of anxiety. Lots and lots of wonderful information and people who are genuinely interested in promoting this information but not enough importance on what the information does to us. How do we take in these new discoveries? What should we actually be worrying about? Sometimes we learn things that can either make us appreciative of life, or feel lonesome in a vast universe if not expressed correctly.

Other times people focus so much on acquiring data and recognition from the communities at large that they lose themselves, lose their sense of identity and how much good they can do in the world without this way of thinking. When the world seems so fast paced, so rushed, there’s this looming feeling over our heads that makes us feel confused and sometimes even makes it difficult to enjoy momentary happiness, ‘the little things’, or as they say; stopping to smell the roses. We are constantly worrying either about what’s in store for us next or how we acted in the past without ever really living in the present.

Enter Wisdom 2.0 a panel discussion bringing ideas of mixing technology and spirituality as expressed among leading members of the technological world like Google VP Bradley Horowitz, Ford CEO Bill Ford, Twitter co-founder Evan Williams, Huffington Post editor-in-chief Arianna Huffington and members of US congress Tulsi Gabbard and Tim Ryan to name a few. Their main concerns voice these very troubles that come with an ever expanding, fast paced society relying on technology while ignoring key aspects of making humanity more bearable. These are very important topics we really should be discussing if we’re to wash away these feelings of emptiness and separation as we march into a new age of technological advances:

For many people the question, “what can technology learn from spirituality?” will meet with the flat out answer, “nothing”. Our secular society has learned to question spiritual teaching with the same skepticism we might bring to discussions of the supernatural and mysticism. But the success of Wisdom 2.0 suggests that its mission — to explore how we live with greater presence, meaning, and mindfulness in the technology age — is relevant to a growing audience. Technology confronts all of us with many challenges to our well being, from dealing with the “always on” work patterns facilitated by mobile technology, to managing the fragmented global communities of social media. As Wisdom 2.0 conference organiser Soren Gordhammer wrote in his 2009 book of the same title; technology is not the answer, but neither is it the problem. What matters instead is awareness, engagement and wisdom.

For spiritual teachings to become relevant to our modern lives, we first have to separate them from the supernatural and mystical baggage that makes them difficult for us to accept. In his 2007 talk at Google, Wisdom 2.0 speaker Jon Kabat-Zinn outlines the technique of mindfulness and its value in modern life. As Professor of Medicine Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts he talks from a wealth of experience. Kabat-Zinn defines mindfulness as “paying attention in a particular way; on purpose, in the present moment”. Mindfulness training helps patients connect directly to their present, and in turn reduces stress and suffering caused by dysfunctional thought processes. In the schema of mindfulness, pain is not the problem, but our response to pain is.

The medical benefits of mindfulness training are now widely acknowledged. Kabat-Zinn’s early work on the Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction programme helped patients suffering from severe and enduring pain and even terminal illness. The programme also forms the basis of Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy, a leading treatment for anxiety disorders and depression. Mindfulness training is now widely employed in education, as a technique for calming and improving the concentration of students. Perhaps more surprisingly mindfulness training is also being actively employed in business to improve productivity, in sports to improve performance, and even in the military with both frontline and recovering combatants.

(Recommended full read: Technology and spirituality: can they be happy bedfellows?)

So will we continue to blindly progress with technology as our humanity is lost? Or will we begin to think of the now and merely think of the past as a point of reference and the future as promises of things that could be and not what should be. We are only beginning to realize as a society that science and technology is of great importance to us, but will we abandon the wisdom of spirituality and its helpful aspects all in the name of blind skepticism? There is a negative and positive to almost everything, and in order to succeed I think we need to combine these tools of life or at least learn how to make them co-exist with one another. What do you think?

Storytelling Could Change Thanks to Wearable Technology

Side Note: If you’ve been following for long enough you probably know about my pet peeves with our reliance on technology especially screens and how long it takes many to get off them. So it’s no surprise that I would admire the thought and usability behind this technology. Why? Well because as mentioned in the article “Wearable technology is interesting because it releases people from screens”. The ideas raised here are very interesting considering how interactive they are, it also involves more of your body depending on the software being used or story being played. Definitely worth keeping an eye on wearable tech and its progress. Would be pretty cool if in the near future you or your kids could both be a part of a story using gadgets to use whole environments to tell a story.

The following Wired article pretty much highlights ideas raised by CEO and co-founder of Six to Start (one such company manufacturing and promoting wearable technology), Adrian Hon. Claiming wearable technology can actually make storytelling even better! Read on:

He was talking about devices such as Pebble, iWatch and activity tracking armbands, as well as Google Glass and EEG headsets.

“These can be great devices for health but can also be very interesting for storytellers to be able to judge the emotional impact of stories on people,” Hon told the audience at the Economist’s Technology Frontiers conference. “Storytellers can then learn how to optimise their stories.”

He said that until now, digital storytelling had been largely about taking existing media and putting it online — so movies are now streamed online and books can be read in ebook format. Even with this approach, the stories can have an enormous impact on people. He made reference to a phenomenon known as the “CSI Effect”, whereby exaggerated portrayals of forensic science on TV shows such as CSI warp the trial process because members of the public (the jurors) expect to see a higher level of evidence presented to them in criminal trials. Hon goes on to say that stories have the power to influence how we view the war on terror (Homeland), US politics (House of Cards) and even gay people (Will & Grace).

He went on to talk about the role of storytelling in fundraising for Obama’s 2012 campaign by breaking down how experiments were conducted with email fundraising campaigns to see which subject lines were most effective in terms of open rate and money raised. It turned out that messaging made a huge difference — when 12 different emails communicated broadly the same thing, some raised $2.5 million (£1.6 million) and others just $400,000 (£265,000). All of this was analysed using analytics tools and A-B testing.

“As we start getting more data, optimising how we make an impact is possible,” Hon said. One example of this is Six to Start’s Zombie Run fitness app, which uses GPS and accelerometers to generate a dynamic story where you are running away from zombies. “We always think about the medium when we are telling the stories.”

Kogoro Kurata Talks about His Robot Suit Creation

Want to ride your own huge robot that resembles a futuristic starship trooper? You can thank Kogoro Kurata, an artist who channels the spirit of both superhero inventor Tony Stark and a blacksmith from Japan’s feudal samurai era.

Kurata built his eponymous robot suit, called Kuratas, with a group called Suidobashi Heavy Industry. A new video — discovered by robot blog Plastic Pals — shows him describing his creation as more like an armored trooper from the Japanese anime series “Armored Trooper Votoms” rather than the giant human-piloted robots from “Mobile Suit Gundam.”

“The point is that AT Votoms doesn’t need any specially trained pilot,” Kurata said in the video. “Anyone can ride.”

Kuratas allows human pilots to control its movements and nonlethal joke weapons through its cockpit. But it also enables remote control through smartphones or motion control technology similar to Microsoft’s Xbox Kinect — even featuring a “smile shot” feature that activates its BB Gatling gun.

The robot suit’s accessibility to untrained pilots echoes the spirit of a “Star Wars” hover vehicle made by the California-based Aerofex. But whereas Aerofex has no intentions of selling its hover vehicle anytime soon, Suidobashi Heavy Industry plans to offer customized versions of Kuratas for sale in the very near future — assuming you can afford the $1.35 million starting price tag.

How 3D Printers Could Build Futuristic Moon Colony

The technology behind 3D printing has allowed users to craft musical instruments and prosthetic limbs, and now European scientists are taking a serious look at printing their own moon base.

Image: In this artist’s rendering, a 3D printing robot pours layer after layer of hardened lunar dirt and dust onto an inflatable dome shell, 3D printing a lunar base. Credit: ESA/Foster + Partners

The European Space Agency (ESA) study is investigating how practical constructing a manned base on the moon only using 3D printing technology could be, given that it would rely primarily on lunar dirt for building materials.

“Terrestrial 3D printing technology has produced entire structures,” Laurent Pambaguian, who heads the project for ESA, said in a statement. “Our industrial team investigated if it could similarly be employed to build a lunar habitat.”

A moon base with style

Pambaguian’s team partnered with the London-based architecture firm Foster + Partners to draw up ideas for a 3D-printed moon colony.

“As a practice, we are used to designing for extreme climates on Earth and exploiting the environmental benefits of using local, sustainable materials,” Xavier De Kestelier of Foster + Partners said in a statement. “Our lunar habitation follows a similar logic.”

Foster + Partners’ 3D printed design is a simple four-person moon base that can be made completely out of repurposed moon dirt, which scientists call “regolith.”

Because the entire design is made primarily from indigenous lunar materials moon, there is no need to transport costly materials from the Earth into space. The base would be built using a robotic printer roving over an inflatable dome.

“3D printing offers a potential means of facilitating lunar settlement with reduced logistics from Earth,” Scott Hovland of ESA’s human spaceflight team said. “The new possibilities this work opens up can then be considered by international space agencies as part of the current development of a common exploration strategy.”

Hollow moon dirt walls

The base would have a cell-like but strong frame resembling the structure of bird bones that will protect lunar residents from gamma radiation and micrometeorites that could destroy a less robust build.

ESA and the agency’s partners have already built part of the base. Using a mixture of silicon, aluminum, calcium, iron and magnesium oxides meant to simulate regolith — a mixture of dust and dirt — found on the moon, ESA and its partners printed a 2,205-pound (1,000 kilograms) piece of what part of the home could look like.

“The planned site for the base is at the moon’s southern pole, where there is near perpetual sunlight on the horizon,” officials for Foster and Partners said in a statement.

The firm has started trying out the 3D printer in conditions similar to those on the surface of the moon. The team has started printing various structures inside a vacuum chamber.

This isn’t the first time a space agency has considered 3D printing a lunar base . Last year, NASA officials challenged researchers at Washington State University in Pullman, Wash. to 3D print the ceramic-like simulated lunar regolith into smooth, cylindrical shapes to test the strength of the material.

Foster + Partners is also partnering with other firms to build the first private spaceport in the world. Known as Spaceport America, the $209 million base will serve as a hub for commercial spaceflight. The spaceport should be completed later this year.

neurosciencestuff:

IBM: Computers Will See, Hear, Taste, Smell and Touch in 5 Years

Today’s PCs and smartphones can do a lot — from telling you the weather in Zimbabwe in milliseconds, to buying your morning coffee. But ask them to show you what a piece of fabric feels like, or to detect the odor of a great-smelling soup, and they’re lost.

That will change in the next five years, says IBM. Computers at that time will be much more aware of the world around them, and be able to understand it. The company’s annual “5 in 5” list, in which IBM predicts the five trends in computing that will arrive in five years’ time, reads exactly like a list of the five human senses — predicting computers with sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch.

The five senses are really all part of one grand concept: cognitive computing, which involves machines experiencing the world more like a human would. For example, a cognizant computer wouldn’t see a painting as merely a set of data points describing color, pigment and brush stroke; rather, it would truly see the object holistically as a painting, and be able to know what that means.

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electricspacekoolaid:

Further Up Yonder: A Message To All Humankind

davidreese:

Artist/programmer/designer Marcin Ignac used software to track, measure, and visualize his computer use every day for 2.5 years. The result: This beautiful, simple look at one of the most prominent aspects of daily life in the 21st century. Each line is a single day, with colors representing which app was being used at the time of day. (So, for example, your line might be red during this time, signaling that you’re using your browser.) The black sections are times when he had his computer off—meaning that blacked-out section in every day is probably night.

MIT Builds Tiny Robot Precursor to Actual Transformers

A tiny robot capable of bending and flexing into a huge range of shapes could pave the way for real-life Transformers.

The milli-motein — so called because it is essentially a millimetre-scale motorised device inspired by the natural complex folding of biological protein molecules — uses watchmaking techniques to reorganise itself into different forms.

“It’s effectively a one-dimensional robot that can be made in a continuous strip, without conventionally moving parts, and then folded into arbitrary shapes,” said Neil Gershenfeld, head of MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms, in a press release.

To power the little robot the team also invented a new system called an electropermanent motor, which pairs a powerful magnet with a weaker one. The direction of the weaker magnet’s magnetic field can be changed electronically meaning the operation of the more powerful magnet can be cancelled or boosted as necessary and with a far smaller energy requirement than if the motor was powering the stronger magnet directly as energy is only needed to change shape, not to hold it.

“This result brings us closer to the idea of programmable matter — where computer programs and materials merge to form a new kind of matter whose shape and function can be programmed — not unlike biology,” said Hod Lipson, an engineering professor at Cornell University, in the press release. “Many people are excited today to learn about 3D printing and its ability to fabricate any shape; Gershenfeld’s group is already thinking about the next episode, where we don’t just control the shape of objects, but also their behaviour.”

Perfecting a cheap and resilient modular chain which can reconfigure itself as needed would allow for a flexible robot workforce as well as the possibility of a one robot/near-infinite object creation product model.