Our Robot Future - Rodney Brooks

Rodney Brooks, former iRobot CTO, describes the limitations of today's "stiff" factory robots. Looking forward, Brooks envisions a future where people interact with robots in the same way we now work with computers.

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Heartland Robotics Chairman and CTO Rodney Brooks asks: What will it take for robots to be added to the toolchest of the makers of American manufacturing, so that they can increase productivity, provide better jobs for American workers, and compete even more strongly in our globalized world?

Following on President Obama's call to "begin again the work of remaking America," Maker Faire 2009 was organized around the theme of Re-Make America. Held in the San Francisco Bay Area, Maker Faire celebrates what President Obama called "the risk takers, the doers, and the makers of things." - Maker Faire 2009

Dr. Rodney Brooks is a robotics entrepreneur and Founder, Chairman and CTO of Heartland Robotics, Inc. He is also a Founder, Board Member and former CTO (1991 - 2008) of iRobot Corp (Nasdaq: IRBT) and the Panasonic Professor of Robotics (on leave) at MIT. Dr. Brooks is the former Director (1997 - 2007) of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and then the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). He received degrees in pure mathematics from the Flinders University of South Australia and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University in 1981. He held research positions at Carnegie Mellon University and MIT, and a faculty position at Stanford before joining the faculty of MIT in 1984. He has published many papers and books in computer vision, artificial intelligence, robotics, and artificial life.

Dancing robo spider

We are proud to present the best of dance compilation from the 4th Hexapod Championship held in April 2009. The best dancing robot ever shocking and jaw dropping moves.

Dell owns Alienware

Here is the review for the Alienware Area-51 ALX. Alienware's new desktop pc, has the latest processor, RAM etc. Just for the update, Dell is discontinuing its XPS line and is going to advertise Alienware for gaming PC's, (for some of you who don't know, Dell owns Alienware) Dell has agreed to purchase gaming PC maker Alienware, in a rare acquisition designed to improve Alienware's supply chain and boost Dell's standing among PC enthusiasts. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Alienware will also continue to offer PCs that use processors from both Advanced Micro Devices and Intel, he said. Dell has an exclusive relationship with Intel, but that will not affect Alienware's relationship with both chipmakers.

"I can't speak for [Dell's product plans], but from our vantage point, nothing has changed there," Gonzalez said.
About Alienware Area-51 X-58:
                             The Alienware Area-51 x58 is part of a class of computers that are above most. Using very high quality components, you can drive up the price tag of this computer to over six thousand dollars. If you can somehow find it within yourself to make do with "only" a Core i7 920 and "just" one graphics card, you can net yourself a pretty outstanding gaming machine for substantially less money.
Alienware's computers, despite what the critics say, are high quality machines built with care and great design. While the style may not be to everyone's taste, you can't deny that it stands out, and when you're spending this much money on a computer, that's just as important as its speed. If you have the money to spend, you'll probably have a great time, and if you don't, you'll wish you did.

FIRST EVER CHESS PLAYING COMPUTER PROGRAM

Programming computers to play games has been central to Artificial Intelligence research since its early days back in the fifties. By now, most of us have heard of IBM's Deep Blue supercomputer defeating world chess champion Garry Kasparov in the game of chess and becoming the first ever computer to defeat man in this very complex game. Less than 3 years ago, we wrote about Jonathan Schaeffer's unbeatable checkers program known as Chinook; it took the researchers in Schaeffer's group 18 years to explore enough of the search space to solve the game of checkers. The same group is now trying to develop expert poker playing programs and recently they organized the first ever man-machine poker challenge (man was the winner of this first encounter.)

However, few people know about the first ever chess playing program.

This program was designed by no other than the famous British mathematician and computer pioneer Alan Turing. Starting in 1948, Turing wrote the program in collaboration with D.G. Champernowne, a former undergraduate colleague of his. Four years later in 1952, when it was time to have a match against a human opponent, Turing had no access to a computer fast enough to execute his state-of-the-art program and so he did what every one of us would do in the same situation; he simulated the program using pen and paper requiring half an hour of computation for each move!

The game was won by the human participant Alick Glennie who was another of Turing's colleagues. Alick defeated the computer in 29 moves playing the black pieces.

If you are a chess enthusiast, you can check out the full game here. The image at the top of this post shows the board at its conclusion.