"GaagleBot is a 'home crawler' consisting of a vacuum Roomba
    with an on board webserver and camera. While the vacuum goes
    about its business, it extracts text from the images it takes."

Extracts text from images?

Gaaglebot.com::Home Page

[04 March 2010, top]

The resolution came from Pennsylvania (Michael Doyle [democrat]) with co-sponders from Pennsylvania (2); Wisconsin; Texas; Georgia (2); Massachusetts (2); Connecticut; Alabama; New Hampshire; and California.

   "Whereas the second week in April each year is designated 
    as 'National Robotics Week', [...]"

GovTrack.us::H. Res. 1055

[02 March 2010, top]

PopSci.com::South Korean Robot English Teachers Are Go

[24 February 2010, top]

   "Boston Dynamics is an engineering company that specializes in 
    building dynamic robots and software for human simulation. The 
    company began as a spin-off from the Massachusetts Institute 
    of Technology, where National Academy of Engineering member 
    Marc Raibert and his colleagues first developed robots that 
    ran and maneuvered like animals. They founded the company in 
    1992, and their ground-breaking work continues to inspire 
    several of the company's activities."

I learned a bit about Boston Dynamics after receiving the following tweet from @DARPA_News on 2010.02.01.

   DARPA's new LS3 program: Develop an autonomous walking 
   quadruped to carry equipment: http://bit.ly/51tJcP
   or watch http://bit.ly/9EPbnm

The following at copied from DARPA.mil.

   "The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) awarded 
    a contract on January 26, 2010, under the Legged Squad Support 
    System (LS3) program. Boston Dynamics of Waltham, Massachusetts, 
    will receive $32 million for a 30-month phase that includes trade 
    studies, detailed design work, and building of initial prototypes.
    The LS3 program is a joint effort between DARPA's Tactical 
    Technology Office (TTO) and the U.S. Marine Corps Warfighting 
    Lab (MCWL). The program goal is to develop a walking quadruped 
    platform that will augment squads by carrying traditional and 
    new equipment autonomously. These platforms will be capable 
    of managing complex terrain where tactical vehicles are not 
    able to go--lightening the load of Marines and Soldiers and 
    increasing their combat capability. LS3 will carry 400 pounds 
    or more of payload, and provide 24 hours of self-sustained 
    capability over as much as 20 miles of maneuver. LS3 will 
    weigh no more than 1,250 pounds (including its base weight, 
    fuel and payload of 400 pounds)."

[01 February 2010, top]

   "PETA proposes robotic groundhog for Pa. festival"~AP headline 
   Blogs.PETA.org http://ow.ly/110L4

[side-bar] Punxsutawney Phil is a groundhog who lives in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. On Groundhog Day, Phil comes out his home and if he sees his shadow, then the U.S. will have six more weeks of winter; otherwise, spring will arrive early.

The Wikipedia states: "Of 112 predictions on record so far, Punxsutawney Phil has predicted an early spring 14 times. According to the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club Inner Circle, he is 100% accurate. However, according to the StormFax Weather Almanac and records kept since 1887, Phil's predictions have been correct just 39% of the time."

Similar, yet different Robot YottaFiler posting from late last year (2009.11.25)...

   Title: University of Georgia Needs a New Bulldog
   It's the 21st century and it makes sense for universities 
   to start using robotic mascots.

   "People for Ethical Treatment of Animals has a suggestion 
    for the University of Georgia, which is looking for a 
    replacement for Uga VII, the Georgia Bulldog mascot who 
    died last week in Savannah: PETA says the University 
    should use what it calls an 'animatronic dog.'"

1340wgau.com::1340wgau.com::PETA: Replace UGA VII With a Robot

[27 January 2010, top]

   "Korea is currently developing robots conceptually similar to 
    the avatar humanoids as demonstrated in the movie 'Avatar,' 
    a science-fiction blockbuster directed by James Cameron."

KoreaTimes.co.kr::Robots for Surgery, Farming and Valet Parking

[16 January 2010, top]

I clicked the Slashdot hyperlink primarily because I wanted to learn who the robotics professor was (and it's Noel Sharkey at Sheffield University).

Silicon.com::Video: Artificial intelligence: Noel Sharkey on the inexorable rise of robots

[15 January 2010, top]

Online.WSJ.com::Israeli Robots Remake Battlefield

[13 January 2010, top]

   Kudos to iRobot (nasdaq: IRBT) for selling over 5M home robots. 
   (pr) http://ow.ly/SVtg

On 2009.01.04, IRBT closed at $17.96.

[05 January 2010, top]

   "It may be years before you can purchase a genetic clone 
    of yourself, but robotic ones are already on sale in Japan."

SingularityHub.com::Robot Look Alikes Go On Sale in Japan

[04 January 2010, top]

   "Engineers develop radioisotope MEMS power source for insect spy program."

If we're living in the Sensor Age right now, then I think it is rapidly approaching.

Does having sensors to sensor sensors make any sense?

Spectru.IEEE.org::Nuclear-Powered Transponder for Cyborg Insect

[03 January 2010, top]

Pelletier's robot posting includes a timetable for robotic advances and the first entry is for the year 2015.

Smart robot is becoming less and less an oxymoron.

Examiner.com::Robots arouse concerns over how smart they may become

[03 January 2010, top]

I kept putting off and off and off, but there's no more putting it off--I needed to start blogging about robots. So on 8 June 2008, the Robot YottaFiler blog was created.

Yotta- is a metric prefix that implies 10 raised to the 24th power (1024), which when written as a whole number is 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. One YottaFiler equals one septillion. The symbol for Yotta- is 'Y'. The multiplicative inverse for Yotta- is yocto- (i.e. 'y'). My initial name for this blog was PetaFiler, but that term Googled too well. One YottaFiler is one million Petafilers.

M-W.com (Merriam-Webster Online) gives the following definitions for file: [transitive verb] "to arrange in order for preservation and reference" and [intransitive verb] "to place items in a file." A filer is one who files.

I used the Wikipedia to get the following "definition" for robot: "A robot is a mechanical or virtual, artificial agent." The term bot typically refers to software agents. Nanorobots are nano-sized robots and nanobots are very, very, very small bots.

One of my favorite quotes comes from Ray Kurzweil...

   "The future is biotech, nanotech, and, ultimately, robotics."

Robotics, in a nutshell, is the "science and technology of robots, their design, manufacture, and application."

In this blog, we're going to file yotta-bits of information about robots, bots, robotics, nanorobots and nanobots.

Robot YottaFiler Archives: 2009 | 2008

[01 January 2010, top]