Robots

Jerry Lockenour couldn't predict what lay ahead for him 25 years ago when he stashed the Los Angeles Times' Magazine on a cabinet shelf. The April 3, 1988, magazine's cover illustration showed bubble-shaped cars traveling in "electro lanes" on a double-decked, high-rise-lined 1st Street in downtown's Civic Center area. The cover's headline was "L.A. 2013: Techno-Comforts and Urban Stresses - Fast Forward to One Day in the Life of a Future Family. " Inside was a lengthy essay that described a day in the life of a fictional Granada Hills family in April 2013.

The aggressive red fire ant Solenopsis invicta has become a scourge of the southern United States, spreading like wildfire and delivering burning stings to unfortunate victims. Now, researchers spying on the ants' underground chambers have learned that their tunnel-building follows a simple, perhaps universal, rule. The discovery, published Monday by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could provide insight for engineers building search-and-rescue robots. Native to the Pantana wetlands of South America, the ants somehow hitched a ride to Mobile, Alabama about 80 years ago. From there they spread throughout the Southeast and then jumped to other  countries through the United States.

Robots have moved out of the realm of science fiction. Today, these human-like machines can retrieve books for library patrons, assemble products for manufacturing companies, assess damage in radioactive accidents and investigate the wonders under the sea and in outer space. Explore the world of robots and learn about their history, uses and construction through the direct links on The Times' Launch Point Web site: http://www.latimes.com/launchpoint.

For a sense of the random oddities that dot Daft Punk's strange, funky, cosmic new album, "Random Access Memories," consider a partial discography of the musicians employed by the two Frenchmen in service of its creation. The duo, Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, are best known for their use of robot helmets to mask their physical identities but employed prominent men whose résumé includes work for, among others, Michael Jackson, Jim Henson and Miles Davis. Not a list you'd expect from a pair of Parisian human robots whose sophisticated, tech-savvy onstage performances atop a digital pyramid still sparks twinkles in the eyes of anyone lucky enough to witness it firsthand or whose three previous albums featured hard, fast, strong electronic rhythms crafted mostly on machines and to be consumed by a generation devoted to house and techno.

In my previous post, I described the potential for a new era of automated manufacturing in which it's easier for entrepreneurs to create products but harder for workers to find jobs on the assembly line. A contrary note was sounded, ironically, by a robotics executive, who insisted that the next generation of smart machines would make human employees more valuable, not more dispensable. The executive, Rethink Robotics' Rodney Brooks, didn't offer any concrete examples to support his argument.

Paro may be the most famous companion robot around today, but he's likely to have some competition before too long. Here are a few others currently in the works: The "emotion bear. " It laughs. It sneezes. It waves. It strikes up a conversation. And if nothing much is going on, it falls asleep. A concept currently being tested by Fujitsu in Japan, the "emotion bear" can sense when people are near and turn to face them. And when it gets to know people well enough, it can tell what mood they're in - and behave accordingly.

Combine a land shark with a paddle-wheel boat, spice it with servo motors and radio transceivers, mix with water and what have you got? At Caltech, you have the year's biggest sporting event. At Tuesday's competition, engineering students at the Pasadena campus operated hand-built robots and maneuvered them through an obstacle course that included concrete walkways, a shallow pond and a finish line atop an arching bridge.

If I remember the Popular Science and Mechanix Illustrated magazines of my youth correctly, by the end of the millennium we are supposed to relax in our easy chairs while robots mow our lawns, wash our windows and vacuum our rugs. Well, the year 2000 is nigh upon us, and around my house, humans are still the only robots doing those chores. But while I still have to mow my own lawn, there is a growing chance that if I ever need brain surgery, a robot will do the job.

A Torrance hospital held a baby shower this week for an unlikely addition: A 7-pound robotic baby named Simantha. The $35,000 baby "born" May 30 will serve as an educational tool for students and staff members in the clinical skills lab at Torrance Memorial Medical Center. Simantha joins three robotic adults: Stan D. Ardman (a play on the phrase "standard man"), Brittnay and Jake, who is called Jessica when staff members use her as a female. John Edwards, the clinical skills simulation technician who runs the lab and maintains the robots, was beaming like a proud father at the baby shower, he said.

Robotics expert Robert Finkelstein has had a company in the field for nearly a quarter of a century without controversy. He never paid attention to blogs, didn't have a company website until last year and never felt the need to issue news releases about his work. That is, until blogs and news sites feasted on his EATR project. EATR, for Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot, is a robotic ground vehicle that Finkelstein's small company is designing with U.S.

Harvard scientists have introduced what may be the cutest flying robots ever: a bio-inspired insect-sized aircraft dubbed RoboBee that pushes flight-worthy craft into their smallest wings yet. “To our knowledge this is the smallest flying robot so far,” said Pakpong Chirarattananon, co-lead of the paper in Science describing the 80-milligram robot with a 3-centimeter wingspan that's hardly bigger than a penny. Building such a tiny flying robot required marshaling an enormous amount of ingenuity -- and several engineering breakthroughs -- to overcome the challenges of working on the sub-millimeter level.

Flies' multifaceted eyes have long allowed them to elude frustrated swatters from all directions. Now, inspired by insects' vision, researchers have built a digital camera with an array of tiny lenses lining a bulging eyeball, allowing an undistorted, nearly 180-degree view. The new camera, described in the journal Nature, could one day guide miniature spy planes, search-and-rescue vehicles and even endoscopic procedures.  All vertebrate animals (including humans) possess single-lens, rather flat eyes that are great at picking up light and offering high spatial resolution.

Have you loved R2-D2 and C-3PO since you were a kid? Do you have a soft spot in your in your heart for WALL-E? Did you used to play with Furbies and care for a Tamagotchi digital pet? Can the sight of a Roomba roaming your living room bring a tender smile to your face? Attention all you robot lovers: Scientists are here to tell you that your affection for these machines is normal. In fact, when we see people interacting with robots, our brains react in much the same way as when we see people interacting with each other.

Long before the age of computer-generated special effects, Marcel Vercoutere helped create a scene widely considered among the most terrifying in movie-going history. In "The Exorcist," the 1973 horror film that became a pop-culture phenomenon, the head of a helpless young girl twists completely around as a young priest battles the demon that inhabits her body. With its wild, animated eyes, the life-size robot used as a stand-in for actress Linda Blair was built by Vercoutere, the film's special effects director, with help from its chief makeup artist, Dick Smith.

At the height of the wars in the Middle East, AeroVironment Inc. - a drone maker based in Monrovia - soared into the public limelight. In the last decade, AeroVironment became the Pentagon's top supplier of small drones. Its financial balance sheet prospered, its drones delivered results and its technology landed on the cover of Time magazine as one of the year's best inventions in 2011. But these days, not so much. Over the last month the company's shares have plummeted more than 18% as federal spending begins to dry up and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan come to an end. It lowered its revenue guidance by nearly one-third, to $230 million to $250 million from $348 million to $370 million.

Which is smarter: a swarm of brainless mini-robots with clockwork guts, or a colony of ravenous, half-blind Argentine ants? If you answered mindless robots, you're right - but just barely. Researchers studying the problem-solving abilities of foraging ants enlisted the aid of 10 sugar-cube-sized robots to determine whether the real-life insects had to put any thought into deciding which direction they should go when they came to a fork in the road or an obstacle in their path.

Robots aren't known for their soft side. They build cars and defuse bombs; they don't, as a rule, make friends or deal with feelings. But a few groups of researchers around the world are working to build robots for an unusual purpose: Making emotional connections with autistic children who often struggle to interact with humans. There's something about machines that really seems to resonate with many kids with autism, says Maja Mataric, co-director of the Robotics Research Lab at USC. These children often have trouble reading human emotions and social cues - complexities they don't have to worry about when they're around a mechanical being.

Meet Cyro, the latest robotic jellyfish to emerge from the engineering labs at Virginia Tech. Cyro measures 5 feet, 7 inches across and weighs in at 170 pounds. Its design was based on the real-life species Cyanea capillata , one of the largest jellyfish in the world. (Cyro is an amalgam of “Cyanea” and “robot.”) When submerged in a pool, the robot flaps its eight arms and swims gracefully.  “Our goal with this robot is to copy the natural jellyfish,” Alex Villanueva, a grad student at Virginia Tech's college of engineering, explains in the video above.

Traversing slippery terrain can be a tricky game for a Martian rover -- or any wheeled robot, for that matter. Now, Georgia Tech researchers have built a biologically inspired robot that can speedily navigate slippery, sandy terrain. The 2004 Mars rover Spirit discovered the disadvantages of wheeled travel the hard way when it became stuck in loose soil after six years of navigating all types of terrain. The six-legged robot, described in Friday's edition of the journal Science, could provide a solution for such exploratory vehicles while navigating “flowable” ground.