Holistic and Integral Education

Educating for a future that is already here

I've been looking at Sony's latest robot - QRIO. Susan Greenfield showed a video of a group of school girls having a very human-like conversation with QRIO at the July Thinking Conference.

The Sony web site has lots of info. These animations are pretty good - in Flash - see the second and fourth.

At this site there are more vids - one of QRIO throwing a ball ... and one with a group of QRIOs dancing ...

QRIO is a Science Ambassador for UNESCO and is touring the world.

Pity he is not yet for sale...

In May 2001, working as a high-power lineman 54 year old Jesse Sullivan was electrocuted so severely that both of his arms needed to be amputated.

Jesse now has bionic arms. See story and video clip.

Doctors took nerves that used to go to the arm and moved those nerves onto chest muscles. The nerves grew into the chest muscles, so when Jesse thinks “close hand,” a portion of his chest muscle contracts and electrodes that detect this muscle activity tell the computerized arm when to close the hand. So when he thinks “close hand” and his artificial hand closes.

enon, a service robot, comes in Citrus Yellow, Lily White and Lavender Blue for just $72,000.

10 of the robots have already been ordered by shops to provide guidance, escort guests, transport objects, and do security patrols. We could have one on campus: “You are late for class. Please move on before I SMS your teacher, the security guard, your parents...“ :-)

The price is expected to more than halve within a year and robot production is predicted to be a 1.2 billion dollar industry within 5 years.

Last week the robot car Stanley won $2,000,000 for crossing the finish line first in a US desert. It is not remote controlled - a computer does the driving.

Stanley was built using a diesal powered Volkswagon Touareq R5.

See a video-clip of Stanley on the downloads page at http://www.grandchallenge.org/

There was even a driverless motorcycle - Ghost Rider Robot - http://www.ghostriderrobot.com/

2005 is certainly THE year for robotics! What does this mean for students and the curriculum?

One way to engage students is through Robocup Junior where the challenge is to build robots that can dance to music, rescue someone in distress or kick a soccer goal. Robocup junior is inspired by Robocup International where the challenge is to "develop a team of fully autonomous humanoid robots that can win against the human world soccer champion team" by 2050.

Labels: 21stCentury

posted by Roger Stack @ 9:43 AM