We knew it would eventually happen, someone at Realdoll called the guys at robo-lab!! Heck! In a few years I’ll buy a couple myself!

“An android could get away with it for a short time, 5-10 seconds. However, if we carefully select the situation, we could extend that, to perhaps 10 minutes,” - Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro, Osaka University, Japan.

jolyon writes “The BBC is reporting that Japanese scientists have unveiled the most human-looking robot yet devised - a “female” android called Repliee Q1. ‘She’ has flexible silicone for skin rather than hard plastic, can flutter her eyelids, move her hands like a human and even appears to breathe. She can only sit though at present, so we’re a long way from Blade Runner yet.”

* Slashdot | Japanese Develop ‘Female’ Android

/. deepexplorer writes “Japan wants to gain the fastest supercomputer spot back. Japan wants to develop a supercomputer that can operate at 10 petaflops, or 10 quadrillion calculations per second, which is 73 times faster than the Blue Gene. Current fastest supercomputer is the partially finished Blue Gene is capable of 136.8 teaflops and the target when finished is 360 teraflops.”

* Slashdot | Japan Wants to Build 10 Petaflop Supercomputer

* CNN | Japan to build world’s fastest supercomputer

museumpeace writes “News.com has posted its second story in a week on a hopeful Grand Challenge contender. Standford’s Stanley, a VW Taureg run by 100000 lines of code can hit 40 mph and has now traversed all but 3 miles of last year’s desert course without problems. A few days earlier, CMU’s Team Red announced that its Sandstorm, a modified Hummer, had run 200 miles without any problems though on a closed track. DARPA cut the field to 40 in June and will cut it to 20 before the race in October.”

* Slashdot | DARPA Grand Challenge A Real Race At Last?

See previous post:
* Stanford and Volkswagen Create Autonomous Vehicle

The Day That Changed Everything

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

/. Ryan MacCarthy writes “When Google and Yahoo
released their map API’s last week they unleashed a horde of hungry developers eager to integrate their data with the user-friendly maps. Brilliant hacks like Chicago Crime and Craigslist Real Estate are in the midst of switching over to the new API, while sites like MetroFreeFi use the new API to make it easier to find free wi-fi locations in US cities (San Francisco, for example). Imaginative developers, like Alan Taylor (Transparency concept), are digging deep into experimentation to dream up new uses for the maps. It’s great to see the innovation when hacks turn to apps.” I want to see Los Angeles maps of the action in James Ellroy’s novels, and a national map of the worst, funniest tourist traps across the U.S.

* Slashdot | Maps on Path to Mass Innovation