From My Scary Friends at Parallax

The Taco Pinata Project - Parallax says, "If you like Halloween and you like tacos, then you’ve come to the right place my friends! In this tutorial I do a “show and tell” of how I made a crawling piñata taco. Since the parts you end up using may vary (depending on whether you have access to a laser cutter) this tutorial is more of a guide rather than a step by step instruction manual. Let's get started!" Here is the link - https://learn.parallax.com/tutorials/language/blocklyprop/taco-pinata-project?fbclid=IwAR0lmtQnMDjZqVKFsvreegrqk7RN1CMTkcu33r47jPOPOaO9hj2OahlmcdM

Stuff like this is why I love the folks and products Parallax! Fun, creative, and educational.

My Next Puppy?

Boston Dynamics' Spot Robot Dog is now for sale...

Their YouTube channel says,

"Spot is an agile mobile robot that you can customize for a wide range of applications.  The base platform provides rough-terrain mobility, 360 degree obstacle avoidance, and various levels of navigation, remote control and autonomy.   You can customize Spot by adding specialized sensors, software and other payloads.  Early customers are already testing Spot to monitor construction sites, provide remote inspection at gas, oil and power installations, and in public safety.  Spot is in mass production and currently shipping to select early adopters.  Find out more about using Spot in your application by visiting us at https://www.BostonDynamics.com/Spot."

Atlas

Incredible progress!

On their YouTube channel, Boston Dynamics says... "Atlas uses its whole body -- legs, arms, torso -- to perform a sequence of dynamic maneuvers that form a gymnastic routine.  We created the maneuvers using new techniques that streamline the development process. First, an optimization algorithm transforms high-level descriptions of each maneuver into dynamically-feasible reference motions.  Then Atlas tracks the motions using a model predictive controller that smoothly blends from one maneuver to the next.  Using this approach, we developed the routine significantly faster than previous Atlas routines, with a performance success rate of about 80%. For more information visit us at https://www.BostonDynamics.com "

Bless U-2 Robot Priest

Bless U-2 is a Robot Priest that will forgive your sins. Read about it here in Popular Mechanics.  According to the author, Avery Thompson, "This holy robot questions the future of technology and the church!"

Kyoto Temple Has Robot Priest

The robot is based on the Buddhist deity of mercy.  The robot leads services at the Kodaiji temple in Kyoto.

“This robot will never die; it will just keep updating itself and evolving,” said priest Tensho Goto.

The robot was developed between the Zen temple and robotics professor Hiroshi Ishiguro at Osaka University.

Hat tip to Chief Robot - See here.

Oodles of Robots Bowl

Oodles of Robots Bowl - A Kickstarter project to make big, fine-quality porcelain bowls festooned with oodles of robots. Click here.

Project Pope

One of my college classmates posted the following on Facebook - "Going through some of my old science fiction books, I found this. Wondering if you had ever read it?"

Amazon says:

Robot believers at the far end of the galaxy endeavor to create a true religion, but their efforts could be shattered by a shocking revelation.

Far in the future, on the remote planet End of Nothing, sentient robots are engaged in a remarkable enterprise. They call their project Vatican-17: an endeavor to create a truly universal religion presided over by a pope, whose extreme godliness and infallible artificial intelligence are fed by telepathic human Listeners who psychically delve into the mysteries of the universe. But the great and holy mission could be compromised by one shocking revelation that threatens to inspire serious crises of faith among the spiritual, truth-seeking robotic acolytes while tearing them into warring religious factions.  For the Listener Mary is claiming that she has just discovered Heaven.

 There are those among the Clifford D. Simak faithful who consider Project Pope his masterpiece. But whether the crowning literary achievement of a multiple Hugo and Nebula Award–winning science fiction Grand Master or merely another brilliant novel of speculative fiction to stand among his many, Simak’s breathtaking search for God in the machine ingeniously blends science and spirituality in a truly miraculous way that few science fiction writers, if any, have been able to accomplish.

My kind of book! Though the new cover (I got the Kindle version) is not nearly as cool!

Full report to follow here on R.U.S. Thanks, Don!

P.S. - Another added to the list...