[Tyler]

Random Robot Roundup
     

While I've been away having fun at Maker Faire, the robot stories have
been piling up in the robots.net inbox. Let's see, first off, I finally
got the rest of my Austin
Maker Faire photos uploaded and many even have captions, so you'll
know what you're looking at. David Wiley let us know about the 2008 Halloween Robot Terror event, a robot
costume contest which happened last weekend. Sorry that I didn't get the
news out in time! It sounds like fun, here are some
photos. Sylvain Calinon wrote to tell us about Salvador DaBot, a
portraitist robot from EPFL who can draw your picture. There's also a YouTube video of
Salvador DaBot in action. The CMU Robotics Institute has published
an interesting
study (PDF format) on introducing robots in the classroom as an
educational tool. Jennifer Skene of PBS affiliate KQED in San Francisco
let us know about two videos on robots and AI they've made available
online: Artificial
Intelligence: Think Big and A
Dose of AI. Roland Piquepaille has been busy posting stories on
a robot that destroys
breast cancer cells, robot flowers, an
improvising musical robot named Jambot, and one on Marvin the mobile
autonomous Australian robot (you thought I was going to say Marvin, the
Paranoid Android, didn't you?). Our own Swirling Brain has been busy
too, digging up stories on a floating
Mars robot, a robot
planter with legs that keeps your plants in the sunlight, a coffee
serving robot, an article on the vision
system of the robot that won the UK Grand Challenge, more Mars robots,
even more Mars
robots, an autonomous
Toyota Prius, and a US
Navy robot designed to deliver "auto-snort podules" that will sniff
out illegal drug traffickers and terrorists. Know any other robot news,
gossip, or amazing facts we should report? Send 'em our way please.
   

http://robots.net/article/2676.html