‘Intelligent’ Robots Hold Rich Potential for Korea R2D2 May Soon be Your Household Companion Korea’s Smart Robot Ambitions Catch Int’l Attention October to See Venture Into Space-Age Robot Utopia Korea has developed its own android capable of facial expressions on its humanoid face, the second such machine to be developed after one from Japan. The Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy invited some 60 children to the Kyoyuk Munhwa Hoekwan in Seoul to introduce Ever-1 to the public. The name combines the first human name found in the Bible, Eve, with the “r” in robot.

• Korea Unveils World’s Second Android

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) today announced plans to hold its third Grand Challenge competition on November 3, 2007. The DARPA Urban Challenge will feature autonomous ground vehicles executing simulated military supply missions safely and effectively in a mock urban area. Safe operation in traffic is essential to U.S. military plans to use autonomous ground vehicles to conduct important missions.

DARPA will award prizes for the top three autonomous ground vehicles that compete in a final event where they must safely complete a 60-mile urban area course in fewer than six hours. First prize is $2 million, second prize is $500,000 and third prize is $250,000. To succeed, vehicles must autonomously obey traffic laws while merging into moving traffic, navigating traffic circles, negotiating busy intersections and avoiding obstacles.

• DAPRA Grand Challenge

“LiveScience is reporting on what appears to be the first digital simulation of an entire life form. Researchers created more than a million digital atoms to reverse engineer the satellite tobacco mosaic virus, a relatively simple organism. But is it really a life form? From the article: ‘Viruses are tiny bundles of protein and genetic material that straddle the line between life and non-life. Many scientists prefer to call them “particles” because even though they contain RNA or DNA like other lifeforms, they can only replicate inside other living cells.’”

• Slashdot | First Digital Simulation of an Entire Life Form

“A new robot can recognize the difference between a mirror image of itself and another robot that looks just like it. … The ground-breaking technology could eventually lead to robots able to express emotions.”

Slashdot | Robot Demonstrates Self-awareness

Eh-Wire writes “Roborior, a house-sitting robot armed with a digital camera, infrared sensors and a videophone is on sale in select Japanese department stores. The house-sitting robot can detect break-ins with it’s infrared sensors and then call the owners cell phone and stream video to the tiny screen. At $2600 each the Roborior is not cheap. For those that require something a little more substantial, Tmusk, the manufacturer of Roborior, has produced a four legged version called Banryu. This one is the size of a large dog and sells for around $18,000. It’s not supposed to shed hair or sleep on the furniture which could make it quite popular.”

Slashdot | House-Sitting Robot Hits Store Shelves in Japan

“The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has a story on Peekaboom,
a two-player on-line game in which one player tries to get the other player to guess a word associated with an image, by revealing parts of the image one click at a time. From the article, ‘The process of revealing objects, or highlighting images within the larger context of the photo, is the sort of thing that researchers in computer vision must do to teach computers to see.’”

Slashdot | Teaching Computers to See with Games

Whoa!! My very own droid!!
My happy droids and I wishes all the teams at RoboCup 2005 the best of luck.
* RoboCup 2005 Osaka, Japan

* Slashdot | Ray Kurzweil 2001-2003 essays Available as a PDF

Slashdot | Turing’s Original Test Played First Time Ever