President Obama Meets and Plays Soccer with Honda's ASIMO Robot

. A few decades ago, interactive robots with human-like motion capabilities were only a figment of imagination, but technology has progressed quiet a distance since then. During his visit to Japan, U.S. President Barack Obama saw this firsthand after meeting up with Honda's humanoid robot ASIMO at Tokyo's National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation (known as "Miraikan"). ASIMO, which stands for Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility, greeted the president in English: "Mr. President, I am ASIMO, a humanoid robot. It is a pleasure to meet you." And that's not all, as ASIMO chit-chatted and even kicked a soccer ball to President Obama who said he was "impressed" with the robot – though, from the CNN video, it does seem that ASIMO's jumping act was a little bit…awkward. "I keep training every day so that someday in the future I can help people in their homes," ASIMO told the president. By John Halas, Source:  Carscoop...

Read More........ → April 24, 2014

U.S. Army is considering to replace some soldiers with robots to cut size of brigade

The United States Army is considering cutting down a brigade by 25 percent and replacing those soldiers with robots. General Robert Cone, head of the US Army’s Training and Doctrine Command, spoke at the Army Aviation Symposium last week about how the Army is considering cutting the size of a brigade from 4,000 to 3,000 soldiers. CHIMP, the CMU (Carnegie Mellon University) Highly Intelligent Mobile Platform, carries a fire hose to connect it to a wall spigot. The robot from the Tartan Rescue team, CHIMP came in third overall in the competition. Source: Articl...

Read More........ → January 24, 2014

Terminator axed? France calls for ban on killer robots

International committee to consider asking nations not to develop autonomous killing machines WHEN Hollywood invented the Terminator - a killer robot played by Arnold Schwarzenegger - it was pure science fiction. But now, France is calling for an international ban on developing exactly that: fully-autonomous killing machines. On Friday, nations will vote on whether to consider imposing a ban, at the annual Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW) in Geneva, says Sky News. How real is the prospect of a self-guiding robot attacking human targets with lethal force? Who is developing autonomous military robots? The US, UK, Israel and South Korea are all already flying armed drones with some degree of autonomy. On the ground, the US is developing battlefield robots including the remarkable Big Dog - though there is no indication they would ever be weaponised. According to the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots: "Several nations with high-tech militaries, including China, Israel, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, are moving toward systems that would give greater...

Read More........ → November 14, 2013