Suspicious eyes, Dad’s superpower, Poo proofs, Apple-a-day

This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has four segments. Here are bits of each of them: Suspicious eyes — In the year 2001, US president George W. Bush foreshadowed a hope that decades later would pervade the robotics industry. Bush stood next to Russian president Vladimir Putin at a press conference in Slovenia […]

Robotic Barbery on the Lawn: Hedghogs

Peace has yet to be attained between robotics, lawn care specialists, and hedgehogs. This study wades into the vexatious arena: “Wildlife Conservation at a Garden Level: The Effect of Robotic Lawn Mowers on European Hedgehogs (Erinaceus europaeus),” Sophie Lund Rasmussen, Ane Elise Schrøder, Ronja Mathiesen, Jeppe Lund Nielsen, Cino Pertoldi, and David W. Macdonald, Animals, […]

De-humanizing Humanoid Robots [study]

Humanoid robots are often experienced as unnerving, a psychological phenomenon called the “uncanny valley.” The Uncanny Valley is quite a problem for ‘humanoid’ robot designers – who currently struggle to make their robots 100% convincing. A newly proposed solution involves ‘dehumanizing’ ‘humanoid’ robots. By, for example, removing the robot’s face to expose bare electronic circuit […]

Recent progress in robotic topiary

The ever expanding list of professional activities that are in imminent danger of replacement by AI and/or robots has a new addition – Topiarists. A topiary-bot is currently under test at Wageningen University, The Netherlands, as part of the the university’s TrimBot2020 project. Which is seeking to “advance the robotics and computer vision technology needed […]