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How to Survive a Robot Uprising is the title of a very funny book, an associated website, and apparently the working title of a possible robot comedy by Paramount Pictures. Author Daniel H. Wilson is a robotics specialist & doctoral candidate at the Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University, and so should know a thing or three about the subject at hand.

1. How to spot a rebellious robot servant [Answer: sudden lack of interest in menial labor, or constant talk of human killing].

Following is a pointer to a hilarious interview that the author gave to the Washington Post. The discussion ranges from techniques for ingratiating yourself to your new robot overlords [Speak in binary], to the possiblity that your hairdryer will jump in the tub if you happen to be bathing when the robots decide to attack.

Transcript: How to Survive a Robot Uprising – Washington Post, November 18, 2005

Posted in Robots ~ 4 Comments

Wired Magazine has just published a list of the best robots around. The list consists of 50 bots, some real and some fictional. Appearing at number 1, as well as being the best “real” robot, is Stanley, the driverless car that won the DARPA Grand Challenge for 2005. Stanley is regarded as a paean to recent advances in AI for having autonomously navigated a 131.6-mile obstacle course in the middle of the Mojave Desert in under 10 hours. The Stanford Racing Team at Stanford University built Stanley, and was awarded DARPA’s two million dollar prize for their winning efforts on October 9, 2005.

At third place on Wired’s list of best robots are the Spirit and Opportunity Mars rovers. [Second spot was actually awarded to that fictional animated Japanese crime-fighting robot, Astro Boy - so one could argue that the twin rovers are in fact the second best "real" robots. ]

Spirit and Opportunity were designed and built by NASA’s superlative Jet Propulsion Laboratory, launched in the summer of 2003 and both landed safely on Mars in January of 2004. The fact that both rovers remain nearly-fully-functional after enduring two Martian winters is a testament to JPL’s outstanding build quality, and hints at the probability that both machines were somewhat over-spec’d.

The image shows Opportunity’s self-shadow in the Martian sun of July 26, 2004. It must be embarrassing to to have your $820M program be bested by a cartoon character.

The 50 Best Robots Ever – Wired Magazine, January 2006 Issue

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Here are some more views of that Xbox-themed car from Nissan that we made note of late last year. The unique feature of this concept car is the integration of the car’s controls with the game console’s controls. Gran Turismo and similar racing games can be controlled by the car’s steering wheels and brake and acceleration pedals.

The next step ought to be to project the game onto the windshield, side windows and rear-view mirror. And they they should drop that silly restriction that only allows the game to be played while the car is in ‘Park’.

Posted in Automotive ~ No Comments

Now showing at the North American International Auto Show, we have, and apparently for the first time, a car with a built-in espresso maker, and that car is the Audi Roadjet.

Audi Roadjet Concept at the NAIAS Detroit – Classic Driver, Jan 12 2006

Posted in Automotive ~ 1 Comment

Canon and Toshiba have been working on their surface-conduction electron-emitter display (SED) technology for several years now, and have demonstrated it recently at CES 2006. This new TV display panel approach looks promising and may well give pause to manufacturers of LCD and Plasma screens over the next few years. Although they are not yet available, SED-based TVs are flat like LCD and plasma panels, but offer a number of advantages over them.

According to Canon and Toshiba, SED bests both LCD and Plasma in the areas of image fidelity, contrast, power consumption and pixel response time. If so, it looks like there will not be much left for LCD & Plasma to compete over, except maybe price. SED production will begin this year and Canon/Toshiba expect to be profitable by 2010.

SED now joins that alphabet soup of electronic display acronyms, namely CRT, DLP, LCD, PDP, OLED, FED, LCoS, 3LCD, etc.

Canon SED Display Homepage

Posted in TVs & Monitors ~ 4 Comments

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has just announced their list of top 10 patent receivers for 2005. As usual, IBM continues to dominate the list, however their productivity has slipped about 10% compared to last year – they’re down to 2,941.

1. IBM – 2,941 preliminary patents issued in 2005.
2. Canon – 1,828
3. HP – 1,797
4. Matsushita – 1,688
5. Samsung – 1,641
6. Micron – 1,561
7. Intel – 1,549
8. Hitachi – 1,271
9. Toshiba – 1,258
10. Fujitsu – 1,154

Interesting that Micron continues to best mighty Intel.

USPTO Releases Annual List of Top 10 Organizations Receiving Most U.S. Patents – USPTO Press Release, January 10, 2006

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Here’s an iPod dock with a difference. The Griffin TuneCenter connects the iPod to your home entertainment system and displays the iPod’s entire control interface on the TV and lets you manage all the controls via the 14 button remote.

TuneCenter plays the iPod’s music on your stereo, and displays photos and movies from the iPod on your TV. Also receives Internet streaming radio, provided you have WiFi/802.11b. Not bad. $99.99.

Griffin Announces TuneCenter for iPod – Griffin Press Release, January 11, 2006

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Of the thousands of products on display at CES 2006 in Las Vegas this year, CNet has selected the Creative Zen Vision:M to receive it’s “Best of Show” award. CNet stops short of calling the Vision:M an iPod killer, but touts a number of advantages that the Vision:M has over the Video iPod, such as:

-brighter screen
-18-bit color vs. 16-bit color for the iPod
-FM tuner and recorder with voice recording
-subscription music support
-video battery life – 4 hrs vs. 2 hrs for the iPod

The reviewers downplay the larger physical size of the Vision:M, as well as the unit’s higher cost. It seems highly unlikely that Creative will unseat the iPod in the marketplace, but they just might do so in the courts.

Creative Zen Vision:M gives the iPod a run for its money – CNet Review, January 04, 2006

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Apple announced it’s Intel-centric notebook the MacBook Pro yesterday at Macworld 2006 in San Francisco. This is the first use of Intel chips in an Apple product. Specifically, the high-end MacBook Pro uses the 1.83GHz Intel Core Duo with 2MB shared L2 Cache. The display is 15.4-inch 1440×900 LCD. The MacBook Pro comes with 1GB of memory, a 100GB 5400rpm hdd and graphics provided via a ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 GPU with 256MB.

According to Apple, these specs deliver a 4x performance improvement over the PowerBook G4. No word on battery life as yet.

While the MacBook is visually virtually indistinguishable from the previous-gen PowerBook, Apple has made some small changes. They’ve dropped the internal modem and the FireWire 800 port, and added something they call the MagSafe power connector. A good side-by-side comparison of PowerBook vs. MacBook features can be found at this link.

MacBook Pro – product homepage

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In a sign of the times, camera manufacturer Nikon has just announced that it will stop making film cameras entirely, in order to focus on digital ones…at least in the U.K.
Good to be able to avoid that nettlesome film loading process…

Nikon prepares to strengthen digital line-up for 2006 – Nikon Press Release, January 11, 2006

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