swmopacket.org

Okay, I guess the question is, “Has this robot used performance enhancing drugs?”

http://www.manapotions.com/robopult.html

Thanks to a new alliance between Jingle Networks and Dial Directions, it looks like your cell phone will soon be able to get you where you’re going.

To get driving directions to a listing, callers need only speak their starting address – such as ‘2594 Broadway’ or ‘16th and Washington’—and instantly receive turn-by-turn directions by text message. The service will be available in SF Bay Area, Chicago and Los Angeles starting March 1, with nationwide availability 30 days later.

Links

Dial Directions

Jingle Networks

ESPN has made BattleBots an offer: BattleBots will hold a Collegiate BattleBots Championship, featuring robots built by students enrolled in institutions of Higher Education. The Collegiate BattleBots competition will air as a series on ESPNU and ESPN2. This competition will be open to Colleges and Universities, and Student Teams who are enrolled in institutions of Higher Education. This will be a middleweight (120 pound) competition as governed under the current BattleBots rule set—But, BattleBots is allowing an additional 40 pounds to be added as bonus weight, thus making the total weight 160 pounds! So get creative.

We would like to film this competition in the San Francisco Bay Area as soon a June 2008, but we need your input before any final dates are set. See full announcement.

BigDog is the alpha male of the Boston Dynamics family of robots. It is a quadruped robot that walks, runs, and climbs on rough terrain and carries heavy loads. BigDog is powered by a gasoline engine that drives a hydraulic actuation system. BigDog’s legs are articulated like an animal’s, and have compliant elements that absorb shock and recycle energy from one step to the next. BigDog is the size of a large dog or small mule, measuring 1 meter long, 0.7 meters tall and 75 kg weight.

www.bostondynamics.com
BigDog has an on-board computer that controls locomotion, servos the legs and handles a wide variety of sensors. BigDog’s control system manages the dynamics of its behavior to keep it balanced, steer, navigate, and regulate energetics as conditions vary. Sensors for locomotion include joint position, joint force, ground contact, ground load, a laser gyroscope, and a stereo vision system. Other sensors focus on the internal state of BigDog, monitoring the hydraulic pressure, oil temperature, engine temperature, rpm, battery charge and others.

So far, BigDog has trotted at 3.3 mph, climbed a 35 degree slope and carried a 120 lb load.

BigDog is being developed by Boston Dynamics with help from Foster Miller, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the Harvard University Concord Field Station. Development is funded by the DARPA Defense Sciences Office. (From Boston Dynamics web site)

Take a 3rd grader with an idea, a Nuts & Volts article, and a technodad, and what do you get? Check it out here!

If you’ve built any clever/cool electronics projects with your kids, send us a or link, and we’ll post them here for others (kids and parents) to be inspired by. If they came from the pages of Nuts & Volts, so much the better.

Here’s a thought. How about a contest? Maybe we could cough up a few items from the Nuts & Volts store as prizes for the best projects? If there’s enough interest, we’ll put together some simple guidelines and make it official.

Ideas/Comments?

Okay, so when your kids ask how it was done before computers…

Here’s more on Mathias Wendel’s marble adding machine.

http://woodgears.ca/marbleadd/

Boeing announced today that it has, for the first time in aviation history, flown a manned airplane powered by hydrogen fuel cells.

The recent milestone is the work of an engineering team at Boeing Research & Technology Europe (BR&TE) in Madrid, with assistance from industry partners in Austria, France, Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States.

“Boeing is actively working to develop new technologies for environmentally progressive aerospace products,” said Francisco Escarti, BR&TE’s managing director. “We are proud of our pioneering work during the past five years on the Fuel Cell Demonstrator Airplane project. It is a tangible example of how we are exploring future leaps in environmental performance, as well as a credit to the talents and innovative spirit of our team.”

A fuel cell is an electrochemical device that converts hydrogen directly into electricity and heat with none of the products of combustion such as carbon dioxide. Other than heat, water is its only exhaust.

A two-seat Dimona motor-glider with a 16.3 meter (53.5 foot) wingspan was used as the airframe. Built by Diamond Aircraft Industries of Austria, it was modified by BR&TE to include a Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) fuel cell/lithium-ion battery hybrid system to power an electric motor coupled to a conventional propeller.

Three test flights took place in February and March at the airfield in Ocaña, south of Madrid, operated by the Spanish company SENASA.

During the flights, the pilot of the experimental airplane climbed to an altitude of 1,000 meters (3,300 feet) above sea level using a combination of battery power and power generated by hydrogen fuel cells. Then, after reaching the cruise altitude and disconnecting the batteries, the pilot flew straight and level at a cruising speed of 100 kilometers per hour (62 miles per hour) for approximately 20 minutes on power solely generated by the fuel cells.

According to Boeing researchers, PEM fuel cell technology potentially could power small manned and unmanned air vehicles. Over the longer term, solid oxide fuel cells could be applied to secondary power-generating systems, such as auxiliary power units for large commercial airplanes. Boeing does not envision that fuel cells will ever provide primary power for large passenger airplanes, but the company will continue to investigate their potential, as well as other sustainable alternative fuel and energy sources that improve environmental performance.

BR&TE, part of the Boeing Phantom Works advanced R&D unit, has worked closely with Boeing Commercial Airplanes and a network of partners since 2003 to design, assemble and fly the experimental craft.

The group of companies, universities and institutions participating in this project includes:

* Austria—Diamond Aircraft Industries

* France—SAFT France

* Germany—Gore and MT Propeller

* Spain—Adventia, Aerlyper, Air Liquide Spain, Indra, Ingeniería de Instrumentación y Control (IIC), Inventia, SENASA, Swagelok, Técnicas Aeronauticas de Madrid (TAM), Tecnobit, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, and the Regional Government of Madrid

* United Kingdom—Intelligent Energy

* United States—UQM Technologies.

For about $30 in parts for the core amplifier and a weekend of soldering, you can enjoy premium audiophile sound through your MP3 player or iPod.

Subscribers can read this article in Nuts & Volts online!

Probo may look like a simple cuddly toy, but this little piece of green artificial intelligence is no toy.

Several years in the making and a huge investment by the Brussels region, the project of the Robotics and Multibody Research Group at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Brussels Free University) is a fully-functioning robot with the ability to read your emotions and respond in kind. Called Probo, the 60-centimetre tall “huggable robot” will debut at the end of this year in the children’s ward of the university hospital.

Brussels Anty Foundation, which works to improve the experiences of kids in hospitals, came to the university a few years ago with a proposal to create a robot that could comfort children by understanding their emotional and physical traumas and even explain medical procedures to them. Probo is equipped with cameras in his eyes and with audio programmes, so it can actually assess a child’s emotions. “Vision analysis is used to recognise facial expressions and then translate those into emotions,” explains Jelle Saldien, an engineer working on the project. “Audio analysis can identify the intensity and pitch of a child’s speech. If you combine the two, you have some idea of the emotional state – if a child is calm or angry.”

Probo will also be able to respond to children appropriately with its own facial expressions and speech that correspond to happiness, sadness or confusion. “There are no real words, so it’s not really a language,” says Saldien. “But it can communicate emotions with sounds – like the Teletubbies do.” Through the use of artificial intelligence, programmers can actually train the robot to improve its recognition and response skills.

Speaking of Teletubbies, the Brussels’ robot will also be fitted with a screen in its stomach to show children videos explaining medical procedures they will undergo and “which crazy, scary machines they will see,” says Saldien. “The robot can prepare the children so we can reduce their fear before medical examinations.” Kids will also be able to play computer games on Probo, and older kids can surf the internet. Eventually, you could have a Probo sit in a classroom and focus on the teacher and the blackboard and relay the images to the child in the hospital, so he or she could continue with school.

But can an expensive robot really perform services that medical staff can’t? “You have to give children information in a special way,” explains Saldien. “When they are really young, they are living in a fantasy world. You have to sustain that world, even when they are in the hospital. Otherwise, it can be really traumatic for them.”

Hence Probo’s look and feel. To children, he is a big stuffed toy. The name is derived from the Latin proboscidea, a zoological order that includes a number of extinct species and now includes only elephants. Of course, “robo” refers to its own modern species, making Probo a mix of an ancient past and a technological future. Kids get a kick out of such a fantastical creature.

Currently, robotics are being employed in other parts of the world to perform tests, particularly with autistic children. Probo is only one of two in the world, though, that is “huggable” – Japan has a baby seal version they are using with children and the elderly.

The ultimate goal is to have Probos scattered throughout hospitals in Belgium. But only one is expected to be serviceable this year. “Then we need to build more prototypes and do a lot of testing and see what is working, what isn’t, what could be improved,” says Saldien. “The vision and audio software will be upgraded gradually, so the robot becomes more and more autonomous. But for now, the main aspect is really just safe interaction.”

Online

http://anty.vub.ac.be/info/Probo

The new PR4404 from PREMA Semiconductor is a LED driver providing more than 150mA out of one battery cell and up to 300mA from two batteries for one to three power LEDs. A hold input allows controlling the LED brightness via a PWM signal or switching the LED from a microcontroller.
You need only a few components to realize applications like flash lights, blinking lights or LCD backlighting in a cost-efficient way with small board sizes.

LED DRIVER PR4404
Low Voltage Boost Driver PR4404
for 0.5W / 1W Power LEDs

The PR4404 is a step-up converter for white LEDs, operating with single battery cell supply (1.2/1.5V) at up to 150mA LED current or dual cell supply 2.4/3.0V) at up to 300mA LED current.
A minimum part count allows compact and cost-efficient solutions.
The converter can be switched on and off with a logic signal, which is useful e.g. for PWM control, timer circuits etc.

Features
• minimum startup voltage 1.0V
• supply by one or two battery cells
• low number of external components
• battery deep discharge protection

Applications
• LED torches
• LCD panel backlighting
• home lighting
• toys

Typical Application Circuit

Full Data Sheet