Merry Christmas!

Sorry the post is late (still within the the twelve days though), but I loved this retro-Christmas robot picture when I found it. Merry Christmas!

New Blog Header

As you have noticed, Robotics Under the Stole has a new header. The art was done by my pal, Ben, a.k.a., Mr. Austin, over at Robot Portraits. It all began with the sketch above and ended up with the finished drawing at the left. To see a video of the header being drawn, click here. The title of sketch is 113-Whit-v2 because it the second one I've had done. If you like it, go visit Robot Portraits and get one yourself. The prices are very reasonable!

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving from Robotics Under the Stole. Hope you had some turkey, some time with family and some time to play with your favorite robot!

Back to School

Next week, my kids and I begin a new school year. Fifth grade for my son and Seventh grade for my daughter. I will be back doing morning chapel services, teaching middle school religion and heading up the robotics club again.

Here is a video about a new student at Carnegie Mellon University - home of one the country's best robotics' departments. For more information about CMU's robotics, see here.



Note - Cognitive Learner is actually a short film made in the Art, Animation, and Technology class at Carnegie Mellon University. That means that this is just clever animation and not a real robot.

A Sheet of Stamps

Everybody who has ever seen a program about how the U.S. Treasury prints sheet of bills knows how impressive a sheet of uncut bills looks. I had a similar experience this summer when I travelled to Parallax in Rocklin, California. There, on one of the tables, was a uncut sheet of fully assembled BASIC Stamps.

Across the room, I got to see the cutter, where they are cut by hand to ensure a very high finish on the edges. I'd love to have an uncut sheet of bills, but more than that, I'd like to have a beautiful uncut sheet of BASIC Stamps!

Photo - Picture of a sheet of BASIC Stamps from the August issue of The Parallaxian (top) and a picture of a sheet of $20 bills from Life Magazine (bottom).

The First Church of Robotics

My friend Stacey e-mailed me the following from The New York Times:

OPINION
August 09, 2010

Op-Ed Contributor: The First Church of Robotics

By JARON LANIER
The concept of artificial intelligence clouds our view of the world.

 
Stacey said in the e-mail, "don't have time to read this but Church and Robotics are your subject!" It was very interesting and got me thinking.
 

Jaron Lanier is the author of You are Not a Gadget. He lives in Berkeley, California and his homepage is here. Lanier is and innovator and technologist himself, but is also a harsh critic. In the Op-Ed piece, he asserts that, at times, those working in the fields of robotics and artificial intelligence approach their work with a religious zeal that encourages the belief that our machines can can become like us - or more than us - or replace us. Lanier believes that this also leads us to think of ourselves in less human terms and more like the machines we build. This degrades our uniqueness as human beings. We should not confuse what is human with what machines can do. Lanier believes that this way of thinking is a new sort of religion or belief system.
 
The article expresses a fear of technology or rather a fear of the way we think of our technology, that is different from the standard - Robots are going to take over the world! - motif. It did get me thinking about something that I noticed on our summer vacation though and until his article, I never thought of myself as working for competing camps!
 
So, I decided to write him. I explained that I was a priest and roboticist. Here is a portion the an e-mail I sent to Lanier:

 I recently felt the tension expressed in your article though while on our family vacation this summer. We traveled from Louisiana to California so that I could officiate at the wedding of a former youth group member. On our return trip, we took our children to Disneyland. In Tomorrowland, there was an Honda ASIMO demonstration presentation. ASIMO brought in the paper, played with the kids, helped out around the house and so forth. I remember feeling frustrated by the presentation. I knew ASIMO could not do those things in reality. I also knew that so much of what ASIMO really can do was not presented. The amazing technology of the real robot was not shown, and instead a vision of a C-3PO like helper was demonstrated. Your article wrestles with these issues and points toward some of what I was feeling.

I hope that religion and technology are not competing fields, but can be partners. But as you point out, we must first be honest about what is actually possible and the limitations and areas of expertise of each field.

I do understand though a generation of technologists and engineers who long for a robotic companion and workmate. The vision that they (we?) saw in Star Wars as children may spur them to get us closer to that reality some day. Our love of such machines, like our love of cars, says more about who we as human beings are than about the machines themselves.

He will probably think I am a goof-ball. His article and these ideas are definitely some things to think about! Maybe doing so will make us better human beings and better roboticists.

Photo - Lanier from his homepage.

Update - I just got a reply from Jaron Lanier. It said:

thanks much and good luck to you in all your roles- jaron

Lab Expansion and Reoganiztion

For those of you who follow Robotics Under the Stole, you will remember when I first made my lab. See here. Then I expanded it a bit - see here. It is great to have a dedicated space to work.

Well, I've been at it again this summer! I expanded and reorganized my lab. These photos show the changes. If you look closely, you can see that I added some plywood on my table top to provide a better surface on which to solder. I also reoriented my bookshelves (to the rear above my glass dood storage cabinets) and gained some more space for books.

Now, if I can only keep the junk from piling up!

Photos - Show the work side (top) and the storage side (bottom).