You might assume that since the occupation of ‘topiarist’ goes back nearly 2000 years (Pliny the Younger 62-100AD was a keen topiarist) it might well go on for another 2000. And it might – but nonetheless, as with many other occupations, professional topiarists might be well advised to keep an eye on new technological developments. […]
Tag: Robotics
Electric tortoise robots – the Bristol originals
If you haven’t come across Elmer and Elsie (c. 1948/49), William Grey Walter’s electric tortoises (or possibly turtles), may we recommend this video ‘Bristol’s robot tortoises have minds of their own’ More info here, courtesy Bristol Robotics Laboratory.
Robots make things funnier
Can robots do stand-up? Or, more specifically, can a robot make manzai (Japanese stand-up comedy) seem funnier? Dr. Jonas Sjöbergh, a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Knowledge Media Laboratory of Hokkaido University, Japan, has been working on the question since 2008. And, in association with colleague professor Kenji Araki, a paper was produced for LNAI 5447, […]
Dogs Tail Wagging (Robotic and Otherwise): an Update
Back in 2010, Improbable reported ongoing investigations regarding tail-wagging in robotic dogs. We can now provide readers with an update, thanks to researcher Stephen Leaver, who has posted a video of Robodog in action via his research lab webpage. The accompanying paper : ‘Behavioural responses of Canis familiaris to different tail lengths of a remotely-controlled […]
An Early (1957!) Robotic Replication Sculptor Machine
For our readers who are wondering (or have at some stage wondered), when the first robotic sculptor mechanism was invented, Improbable cannot give a definitive answer, but can nevertheless point in the direction of this 1957 film about the UK based inventor George Macdonald Reid – who worked intensively (and single handedly) for an entire […]
Another New Chinese Bionic Head
There are currently a number of research teams worldwide working towards the implementation of bionic heads and faces which can attempt to express human emotions, however “… most of them can not express continuous changing expressions effectively, and they just express limited pre-existing emotional state.” explain the developers of a new Chinese Bionic Head. Lun […]
Accent on/in roboticness
A recent study at the Delft University of Technology, in The Netherlands, determined that in some cases, some people would prefer that service robots are not talkative [see: The agreeableness of robotic vacuum cleaners]. If they were to be, however, what kind of accent should they have? Dr. Elizabeth Broadbent and colleagues at the University […]
The agreeableness of robotic vacuum cleaners
What would be the ideal ‘personality’ for a robotic vacuum cleaner? This is a perplexing question, since at the time of writing robotic vacuum cleaners tend to have little or no personality to speak of. Nevertheless, despite (or perhaps because of) the challenges of future-gazing, it has recently been investigated by a research group from […]
Tickling Robots in Siena
“Under what conditions can we engage in a meaningful, expressive interaction with an electronic device?” Say, for example, by ‘tickling’ a robot? This question is examined in a new article by Patrizia Marti, assistant professor and senior lecturer at the Department of Communication Science, University of Siena, Siena, Italy, which features in the latest issue […]
Re-envisioning the Chess-bot
Robotic Chess Players are not new. But robots which play Chess via a touch-screen are. For this reason, the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the National Taiwan University of Science and Technology has just received a US patent for their ‘Board Game System Utilizing a Robot Arm’. The emphasis on the ‘arm’ part is perhaps […]