DLD09 live

1. About Robots

   Tags: dld· dld09  -  0 comments

   In addition to Oliver's post, I would like to add some notes, pictures and videos to the "About Robots" session.

   "What's better than playing with toys all day?!" asks Amir Shapiro and laughs. It must be fascinating to work with robots, see them act autonomously and interact with each other. Robotic science has come a long way, these days we see robots floating independently in the air, playing soccer against each other at high speed, climb walls and even play instruments. This session featured some fantastic examples of contemporary robot technology,

   Raffaelo D'Andrea from ETH Zürich introduced us to the self-repairing chair (Video on YouTube) and commented on the comments on YouTube about this video. People said "Cure cancer instead!" and "This is useless!", not understanding that this project is part of basic research nobody knows yet to what ends it could lead.

   Kiva systems and their robotic warehouse with distributed intelligence is the next example.

   Sergej Lupashin (from ETH Flying Robots) then shows us their little flying robot.

   Amir Shapiro (BGU Department of Mechanical Engineering) demonstrates a robot snake and finally Roy Roth & Yaal Tevet (Roth-Tevet Experience Design Studio) tell us about the robotic orchestral installation in Jerusalem. 40 robots were put up in a citadell playing music, the audience could experience the installation by walking in between the robots.
   (Video on Metacafe)

   The session closed with a short discussion about where robotics is going? Raffaelo D'andrea states that robustness is key, it is very hard to have autonomous system working all the time without anything going wrong at some point.

   Robot ethics were another subject but not explored further. Nobody wants to develop weapons, still everybody is conscious that the military is highly interested in their resarch results.

   To continue discussion I would like to recommend reading Asimovs three laws of robotics.

   Here is the video from the About Robots session at DLD09:
   

   

   Thomas Praus
   About robots - robot snakes, flying robots, robot orchestras and discussions where all this is going

   January 26, 2009
   01:39 PM