What words do you think of when you think of the word robot? Metal, hard, steel, glowing red eyes, deadly killing machine, soulless automaton? Well maybe some of those, anyways researchers at Tufts University have been working on engineering soft-bodied robots for use across a broad spectrum of applications. The picture at the top here shows one of their prototypes based on a completely soft-bodied animal, the caterpillar. Using systems that mimic biological methods of locomotion will allow robots to attain a much more natural way of moving around in the environment because rather than trying to reinvent the wheel, they are taking their cue from Nature who has had a long time to perfect efficient methods of locomotion. While the caterpillar is just the first start, what other shapes might robots take now that they are not bound to the forms of rigid metal construction? Nobody knows, but I think I have a pretty good guess….

That’s right, deadly FemBots

Hit the link to ScienceDaily for more info

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Recent tests involving the future force warrior program which were carried out at the Fort Bliss military base in texas fielded several new technologies that the army wants to introduce in the coming years. Look closely at this photo.

It appears as though the army is using a modified 360 controller to control a military robot.

So, all I can say about this is, I’m ready to sign up for the army if I can fight from home.

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What follows is a conversation typical of what would one hear listening to Chris and I play Halo.

Ghost: “Jazer, be CAREFUL, they have sniper somewhere toward blue-”

Jazer: “Yeah yeah, I got it all under- UGH!”

Ghost: “Jazer! Jazer! Come in!”

Jazer: “Damn, they sniped me!”

Ghost: “Where did you get sniped from?”

Jazer: “I have no idea.”

Ghost: “Why were you driving the car in circles?”

Jazer: “I don’t know that either.”

The point of this little exchange is not to prove once again that I am terrible at Halo, but rather to point out that when a group of soldiers come under attack from medium to long range weapons, it is not always obvious from what location you are taking fire from. This week’s DARPA project seeks to give soldiers a chance to at least fight back, because when you suddenly see the guy next to you take a round the first objective should be to get some cover, however, where did the shot come from? In what direction should you return fire? CROSSHAIRS would be both a man deployable as well as a HUMVEE mountable system that would incorporate acoustic, optical, and radar sensors to ascertain the direction that the incoming projectile traveled from and trace it back to its point of origination.

Nice right? Now if they could just implement this in Halo 3….

Hit the link for the whole story from DARPA

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Here’s a quote from The Telegraph:

A woman fitted with the world’s first “bionic arm” controlled by thought alone has been given back a sense of feeling.

Claudia Mitchell, 26, a former US marine, regained the ability to carry out simple tasks such as cutting up food when she was fitted with the prosthetic arm last year.

Now doctors have re-routed the ends of arm nerves to a patch of skin on her chest — allowing her to regain the sensation of having her lost hand touched.

A new study of her wrist, hand and elbow function found she could use the artificial limb intuitively and could perform tasks four times quicker than with a conventional prosthesis.

Ms Mitchell, who had her left arm amputated after a motorcycle accident, told doctors: “I just think about moving my hand and elbow, and they move. I think, ‘I want my hand open’ and it happens. My original prosthesis wasn’t worth wearing — this one is.”

In a commentary published in The Lancet medical journal, Dr Leigh Hochberg, a neurologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, said early results for the new operating system for the limb were “an important step forward in the seamless integration of replacement limbs into the body”.

Dr Hochberg said the next stage would be for touch sensors on the artificial hand transmitting signals back to the re-routed nerves, allowing patients to have accurate sensations of touch, temperature and joint position.

How awesome is this?

The thing you have to keep in mind is that these are the first baby steps toward the wholesale replacement of missing or malfunctioning limbs with integrated, brain controlled, robotic devices. Chris may not have to wait much longer for his full robot body replacement unit.

Hit the link for the Full Story

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This is really interesting news, and I’ll try to not get too technical but I do want to cover why this is interesting. Currently, Intel’s state of the art fab is a 65 nanometer process that uses a CMOS transistor. There are a couple problems with this current configuration, the biggest being the gate dielectric or insulator that keeps current from leaking between the electrode, source, and the drain. Why is this a problem? Currently on the 65 nanometer chip that insulating layer is only 1.2 nanometers thick, which is to really say 1.2 nanometers thin or roughly five atomic layers. The thinner the gate dielectric the less efficient it is an insulating layer and what you end up with is a transistor that is never really switched off, like a light bulb that is either on or just dim. This wastes a tremendous amount of electricity and contributes to the waste heat given off by the processor.

The new revolution has come in replacing the silicon dioxide gate dielectric with a hafnium based high-k material that Intel claims reduces current leakage by ten times. And because the hafnium gate dielectric is a more efficient insulator than the silicon dioxide this allows the transistors to shrink even smaller without losing so much electricity. The new transistors require less energy to switch off and on, and consume 30% less power than the last generation chips.

I’ve generalized a lot here, and basically all I’ve done is give a thumbnail of the article on bit-tech, so surf on over there and check out the full story.

bit-tech.net

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Here is the quote from DARPA

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) will hold its third Grand Challenge competition on November 3, 2007.

The DARPA Urban Challenge features autonomous ground vehicles conducting simulated military supply missions in a mock urban area. Safe operation in traffic is essential to U.S. military plans to use autonomous ground vehicles to conduct important missions.

I can’t wait for my car to drive itself.

DARPA GRAND CHALLENGE

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The press release has gone out on the official AACS website, but that’s just the final flower on the coffin, and they are a little late in the announcement. DRM on the the two new high def optical disks formats have both officially fallen to the efforts of dedicated hackzorz Muslix64. So, let me back up for a moment, HD DVD and Blu-Ray both use the AACS content protection system. AACS utilizes a 128 bit encryption system, and no, before any starts to correct me, they haven’t done a brute force crack of the protection, the laws of physics are still safely in place. What has happened is that the fatal weakness in both of the schemes is that for anyone to actually watch a movie, the encryption key has to be available to the player so it can decode the movie and play it on screen, and that is the weak link. There isn’t any need to try a brute force attack on the encrypted data if you can just snatch the keys from memory while the disk is playing.

What do the DRM scumbags AACS have to say about it?

AACS LA has confirmed that AACS Title Keys have appeared on public web sites without authorization. Such unauthorized disclosures indicate an attack on one or more players sold by AACS licensees. This development is limited to the compromise of specific implementations, and does not represent an attack on the AACS system itself, nor is it exclusive to any particular format. Instead it illustrates the need for all AACS licensees to follow the Compliance and Robustness Rules set forth in the AACS license agreements to help ensure that product implementations are not compromised. AACS LA employs both technical and legal measures to deal with attacks such as this one, and AACS LA is using all appropriate remedies at its disposal to address the attack.

Hmm, they sound pissed. We are about to see something pretty interesting I think, in that part of the AACS system allows the revoking of keys, which is nice for stopping piracy, but not nice in that it bricks whatever player was used to tease out the encryption keys. Early adopters be warned, MPAA will stop at nothing, including turning your $1000+ movie player into an expensive paperweight, to protect their content.
Hit the link for the AACS website

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We’ve covered the “active denial” systems on the Unsayable Podcast before, but it appears as though Ratheon Inc. actually has a model ready for production and it is currently being field tested at Moody Air Force base in Georgia. So, what are we talking about here? Basically you have a high voltage power unit, beaming equipment, and a rectangular dish antenna for transmitting the energy. A system like this could be mounted on the back of a humvee, and used to quell nasty rioters and civil disturbers. What is the effect you ask? Let’s get some quote action on here. From the sciam article:

The so-called Active Denial System causes an intense burning sensation causing people to run for cover, but no lasting harm, officials said.

“This is a breakthrough technology that’s going to give our forces a capability they don’t now have,” Theodore Barna, an assistant deputy undersecretary of defense for advanced systems and concepts, told Reuters. “We expect the services to add it to their tool kit. And that could happen as early as 2010.”

Basically what we have here is a big microwave antenna that you can point at people, and instead of heating up your food, it heats up your enemy. Is this good or bad? To be honest, I don’t know.

However, take a look at this guy.

Does he look like he’s having a good time? If they would do this to a journalist who works for Reuters, would they hesitate to use it on you?

I happen to think these these people are the more likely target

I HATE hippies

hit the jump for the full story - SCIAM

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Science Daily has a cool article about a paper that was recently published detailing the work of researchers at the University of the Pennsylvania School of Medicine in creating a biological interface that could communicate between the human nervous system and an artificial limb which could be controlled by thought. Great for patients who have had limbs amputated, people with spinal cord injuries, or this guy

Hey there big fella! See you soon! Hit the link for the full story from ScienceDaily

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The good folks at spaceref have linked to all the sections in the PDF document that describes just about everything you wanted to know about this technological marvel we call ISS.

Here’s the quote from SpaceRef:

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