New: SHIFZ Info in Russian

Thanks to Sergey Teterin! - he made this translation of some basic SHIFZ Info already back in october ... now i finally put it onto the SHIFZ homepage: link.

Crime in a Robotic State

Quoting Rog-a-matic: "A Police Officer in Ottawa claimed to be in a "Robot-like-state" caused by post-traumatic stress disorder when he snatched a batch of groceries including 5 candy bars. This makes me wonder about the defense strategy that might be used by robot builders when their machine commits a crime. What will happen when the robot's programming is designed to use simple randomization or genetic algorithms to produce emergent, yet illegal behavior? If the courts can't be convinced that the programmer is completely responsible for the robot's behavior, will the robot be put in jail? Will the programmer be sent to jail even if their robot commits a crime that they did not specifically program it to commit? The possibilties of this future legal landscape are fascinating."

... it does truly make you wonder ;)

Smoking Robot

Thank you, YouTube - i wouldn't have been able to embed this video on my own: a short mobile clip of Adrian Dabrowski's Bic-o-mat+, lighting up and force-smoking a cigarette at last year's ROBOEXOTICA, which earned "him" the Award for lighting cigarettes (ignoring the arguments he should be disqualified for smoking them by himself!) ...
embedding didn't work quite right, so here's the link

Update: better quality video

ROBOEXOTICA foto-links

it's about time to publish some ROBOEXOTICA 2005 foto-links.
i "favorited" over 60 of jake appelbaum's fotos on flickr.
then there's my mobile pics on 23hq.
got more? send the link!

fotos of ROBOEXOTICAS 2000-2004 (most fotos are mine, some must be fra's and chris's):
ROBOEXOTICA 2000 / ROBOEXOTICA 2001 / ROBOEXOTICA 2002 / ROBOEXOTICA 2003 / ROBOEXOTICA 2004

La Gondola

I just added a little fotostory on 23hq: on the "flying" cocktail Gondola, which is descreetly hanging on the ceiling at VEKKS all year, until ROBOEXOTICA, when it is "plugged" again, to cocktaildrinkers' delight.

ROBOEXOTICA clip

I put a 1:56min ROBOEXOTICA 2005 mpeg clip (39mb) online - thx puls city tv!

apropos: today i held the first dvd in hands, that contains the 4hrs ROBOEXOTICA program including 3 studio sessions, we produced and broadcast on Okto TV last dec.
- WITH CORRECT HALFFRAMES (so the rolling titles aren't distorted anymore - THX FRA!) so hopefully "sometime soon" all the participants who ordered one will get one!
[so by dec., for roboe 2006 we should have some copies for public use too - no kidding.]

Cuddly Caretaker

This caretaker robot from Japan looks EXTREMELY userfriendly to me - all round edges, almost like a cartoon robot.
It can see, hear, smell and even carry humans!

(via, via)

Barmonkey catches MAKE:blog's attention

A variation of the well-known non-cocktailrobot (as it lacks personality) Barmonkey was featured on MAKE:blog.
Here's the link to barmonkey.net, which is dedicated wholly to barmonkeys.
It's forum has a category on commercial barmonkeys, not listing the Tender One, which was featured at ROBOEXOTICA 2005.

We are all bin:sh

eSeL asked a bunch of people to "impersonate" Simon Haefele aka bin:sh in interviews ... those were cut-up and remixed into a "Ich bin sh" (I am sh) performance given in Graz last weekend.
- the mp3s are available for download on eSeL's page now.
Simon Haefele from the netart group sonance.net decided to be represented this way to explore questions of continuity and structures in a netcultural arena between content and provider.

see also: 23hq

Weird wearable robot: The Parasitic Humanoid

"The Parasitic Humanoid (PH) is a wearable robot for modeling nonverbal human behavior. This anthropomorphic robot senses the behavior of the wearer and has the internal models to learn the process of human sensory motor integration continuously, thereafter it begins to predict the next behavior of the wearer using the learned models. When the reliability of the prediction is sufficient, the PH outputs the errors from the actual behavior as a request for motion to the wearer. Through symbiotic interaction, the internal model and the process of human sensory motor integration approximate each other asymptotically." (NTT Communication Science Laboratories)

"The Parasitic Humanoid consists of over 100 input sensors for body position, eye movement, audio and visual sensors. There are sensors mounted to the fingernails that can measure the pressure applied by the finger. The computations are done on a seperate computer. The robot controls the human through stimulators.
Oscillators in the soles of the shoes can control the walking rate.
Galvanic vestibular stimulation (GVS) electrically stimulates the inner ear control of balance and motion. When stimulated the GVS transducers make the human automatically turn in the desired direction." (Robot Gossip)

RobotChallenge 2006: done

Gaston made us proud today (x), insofar as he did reach the finish line - twice. delivering Irish Coffee rather than longdrinks as the parallel slalom started at 10am.
He wasn't the slowest either! a real nice drilling bot from bratislava was best in being slow. others lost the track and went astray, but not our Gaston.
Sumo was quite a "disaster". i think only one fight was won by a robot pushing the other off. the other fights either timed out, or unlucky bots rolled/fell off the platform on their own.
Tom Heike was there, although without a bot - he failed to finish his bot in time for the puck collecting challenge.


It was a fun surprise to meet Karl Piswanger who presented the show, who i hadn't met in ages, but who i know from when we were 16yr. old punks - he works for the main sponsor of RobotChallenge, BRZ (which literally translates to federal computing center). he is just the guy to present a robot sumo event - especially in the abovementioned circumstances!


... Lots of cameras around. ORF (state TV) and PulsTV (local vienna TV) were there, hungarian press ...
and we too collected hours of video-material to be used for broadcast on Okto Community TV.

my mobile pics (and fotostory) on 23hq

(x) actually it also made me pretty proud how much fotografed he got and people really appreciating the ROBOEXOTICA-spirit we tried to transport to the event by bringing Gaston - so at least we didn't get up that early for nothing!

Finally, a useful "robodog"

What i like best about robt gossip's article on this, is prospector's vision of coming variations of luggage:
"I'm beginning to picture airport baggage claim areas with bags jumping off the carousel and scampering around like a bunch of kids just let out of school, looking for their parents.
Rich people, of course, would bring a big pack of cases that would push their way through the crowd like they owned the place. Some stupid luggage in the corner banging against the wall. Prissy luggage avoiding dirty spots on the floor. Shy luggage. Arrogant luggage."

Hobbyist Rocketeers to be deemed Terrorists

In the US, the sale of a whole list of chemicals is to be prohibited, unless the buyer owns a $1000,- license!
On the list: Aluminum and Aluminum alloys, Magnalium metal, Magnesium metal, Magnesium/Aluminum alloys, Titanium and Titanium alloys, Zinc metal, Zirconium metal.
United Nuclear, who are "Supplying the science hobbyist, industry, government, schools & universities since 1998." are asking for donations to fight this stupid silly action.

... Land of the free, home of the deprived.
(via boingboing)

'Sister Mary' ...

- the robo-doc was announced, already last may, to start making ward rounds at London's St Mary's Hospital ..
she is a teleremoted version of a caretaker robot, running XP with a wireless link and 200+ pound heavy.

".. If a specialist is at a conference in California but their medical opinion is needed for a St Mary's patient or to deliver a lecture to junior doctors the RP6 robot provides an instant and global link at any time of the day or night. ...
Our robots certainly would never replace all doctors on ward rounds, but they are a communication tool which allows a doctor to have direct contact with their patient if they are unable to get to them. ..."

interesting feature: the patient sees the doctor's image on the robots 'face'.

(via robots.net)

World's greatest android projects

Look, look! Barbot by HRL from Linz, who was seen at ROBOEXOTICA 2003, bumming change, buying beer from that and then drinking and drinking more, has made it to Android's World's list of "World's greatest android projects" (#53).