780141
submission
qeorqe writes:
The Robot Block Party
will feature an assortment of robots July 19-20, 2008
at the Carnegie Science Center in Pittsburgh.
This is being held in conjunction with
Robot 250,
of which other
events
have been discussed
elsewhere on Slashdot.
A story
by Anamika Singh can be found at Robotics.TMCnet.com.
Another article
may be found at Webwire.
Some of the featured robots include:
- Al — from Alcoa
- Battling Bots — student built battling robots
- Boss — autonomous car from CMU and winner of the DARPA Urban Challenge
- Hazmat Robots — from Nuvision Engineering
- Quasi — from Interbots
featured at ESPN's Super Bowl XLI festivities
- Red Rover — from Astrobotic Technology
being developed for the Google Lunar X Prize
- RHex — from Bossa Nova Concepts and CMU
- Scarab — part of a
lunar rover initiative
from CMU
- Zoë — designed to look for life on other planets from CMU
772781
submission
qeorqe writes:
As part of Pittsburgh's 250th anniversary CMU and Pitt are hosting Robot 250,
scheduled July 11-27, 2008.
It is a citywide collection of
art exhibits,
events, and
activities employing or relating to robotics.
Eleven more of the larger outdoor exhibits are called Bigbots.
One Bigbot exhibit by Keny Marshall is "Crickets" or
"prototype for an infinite array of semi-autonomous percussive devices". A garden at The Mattress Factory Museum is filled with small robotic creatures that make sounds, activating and deactivating themselves in accordance with the rules for John Conway's "Game of Life".
The garden has 25 robots in a 5x5 wrap around logical space.
Another Bigbot exhibit by Osman Khan is "Mower", a herd of robotic sheep that roam and mow the lawn at Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens.
"You're #1"
by Ian Ingram is another Bigbot exhibit.
It is a 15 foot hand on the roof of The Andy Warhol Museum that interacts with people that high five it from various outposts around the city.
764069
submission
qeorqe writes:
As part of Pittsburgh's 250th anniversary CMU and Pitt are hosting Robot250 July 11-27, 2008.
It is a citywide collection of art exhibits employing or relating to robotics.
Some of the larger outdoor exhibits are called Bigbots.
One of the Bigbot exhibits by Osman Khan is "Mower", robotic sheep that mow the lawn at Phipps Conservatory.
Another Bigbot exhibit by Keny Marshall is "prototype for an infinite array of semi-autonomous percussive devices" or "Crickets". It is a garden full of small robotic creatures that make sounds, activating and deactivating themselves in accordance with the rules for John Conway's "Game of Life".
Another Bigbot exhibit by Ian Ingram is "You're #1".
It is a 15 foot hand on the roof of The Andy Warhol Museum that interacts with people that high five it from various outposts around the city.
436620
submission
qeorqe writes:
PNC has been calculating
the cost of "The Twelve Days of Christmas"
since 1984.
They calculate all occurrences of all items in the song for 2007 at US$78100
(up 4% from 2006).
One day's worth of each item is US$19507.
They also did a calculation for buying everything on the internet at US$128886.
That is US$50786 extra.
They explain,
"In general, Internet prices are higher than their non-Internet counterparts
because of shipping costs."
Their valuation of
a beer
was missing.
362459
submission
qeorqe writes:
Tartan Racing Team from CMU has been declared the winner of The Urban Challenge. Autonomous (unmanned)robot cars competed in tasks in an urban setting. Professional human drivers drove on the course as moving obstacles. Vehicles were penalized for violating the California driving laws, collisions, hitting the curb, and various other restrictions.
DARPA sponsored the competition. Tartan Racing Team (CMU) won the $2 million first prize with their entry "The Boss" based on a Chevy Tahoe. Stanford Racing Team won the $1 million second prize with their entry "Junior" based on a Volkswagen Passat. VictorTango (Virginia Tech) won the $1/2 million third prize with their entry "Odin" based on a Ford Escape.
Junior had line honors being the first to cross the finish line. The Boss finished shortly after Junior. Because starts were staggared and penalties were applied for errors, a corrected time was used to determine the winner.
MIT's car cut off and hit Team Cornell's car during the competition. Both cars were eventually able to resume.
Congratulations to all participants and especially Tartan Racing Team.
Is there any chance of The Boss leading a victory parade through the streets of Pittsburgh?
Some other coverage may be found at WIred and itwire.
Earlier slashdot coverage can also be found.
262117
submission
qeorqe writes:
A new term was coined at Pittsburgh PodCamp 2.
"Bacn" is e-mail you want, but not now.
The official site is bacn2.com (embedded flash).
There is a PSA explaining bacn on YouTube and
thisisportable.com has a blog about bacn's origins.
229529
submission
qeorqe writes:
Does this seem like Deja Vu?
No we are not back in 1988.
The Swiss won their defense of the America's Cup in 2007 in one of the closest AC matches in history.
Since Switzerland is inland, the venue was Valencia Spain.
Upon winning, the Swiss accepted a challenge from the Spanish for the next America's Cup.
The venue will probably again be in Spain.
The Spanish seem to have conceded most terms of the competition.
The Swiss have declared major changes. They are eliminating the current boat design in favor of a new larger design. They are also giving themselves the option to compete in the challenger series.
Larry Ellison (Oracle CEO) is
threatening court action
according to Stuart Alexander of "The Independent".
"Ellison said that the Spanish challenge was invalid and issued his own."
"Ellison's challenge would be for a 90ft-long boat to challenge in just 10 months' time. His challenge also makes the yacht 90ft wide, indicating a catamaran again. What Ellison really wants, however, is to lever Bertarelli into negotiations."
222439
submission
qeorqe writes:
A robot is being developed at CMU that walks on water.
It is modeled after the basilisk lizard.
Information about the robot can be found in
a pdf file. They have done both computer simulations and experimented
with test models. External counter weights were used with the models.
Information about why you can't walk on water is in
a ppt file
and also converted to
an html file in the Google cache.
171299
submission
qeorqe writes:
An art exhibit titled "To Get to The Other Side" opened 5/11/07 at
CMU's
Regina Gouger Miller Gallery.
One of the art pieces had
an interactive computer component
dealing historically with government violation
of The United States Bill of Rights.
The interactive component is available at
limitedrights.us. Beware it uses flash.
It shows the Bill of Rights.
When an era is selected some phrases become obscured.
Scrolling over the Bill of Rights magnifies that portion.
Clicking an obscured portion produces an explanation of the violation.
Below is an example from the Civil War era.
Article the Sixth
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a
xxxxxx xxx xxxxxx
trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.
The x's represent "speedy and public".
Clicking would reveal "1861 President Abraham Lincoln suspends Habeas Corpus and 13,000 people are held without trial."
171291
submission
qeorqe writes:
An art exhibit titled "To Get to The Other Side" opened 5/11/07 at
CMU's
Regina Gouger Miller Gallery.
One of the art pieces had
an interactive computer component
dealing historically with government violation
of The United States Bill of Rights.
The interactive component is available at
limitedrights.us. Beware it uses flash.
It shows the Bill of Rights.
When an era is selected some phrases become obscured.
Scrolling over the Bill of Rights magnifies that portion.
Clicking an obscured portion produces an explanation of the violation.
165787
submission
qeorqe writes:
For the tenth anniversary of Deep Blue's victory over the world chess champion Garry Kasparov,
Wired has an interview with Murray Cambell, one of the developers of Deep Blue.
- PC beats Kramnik
- current cell processor as powerful as Deep Blue
- no future in man vs machine chess matches
Recent reports have discussed Garry's recent arrest for participation in a political march in Russia.
165771
submission
qeorqe writes:
For the tenth anniversary of Deep Blue's victory over the world chess champion Garry Kasparov,
Wired has an interview with Murray Cambell, one of the developers of Deep Blue.
Recent reports have discussed Garry's recent arrest for participation in a political march in Russia.
77928
submission
qeorqe writes:
As reported at Google Blogoscoped there seems to be something strange going on with the google.de domain name. It may resolve to a non-google page such as goneo.de and the whois may list a non-google domain holder such as "favo".
More comments and speculation may be read in a forum on that blog.
77918
submission
qeorqe writes:
As reported at Google Blogoscoped their seems to be something strange going on with the google.de domain name. It may resolve to a non-google page such as goneo.de and the whois may list non-google owners. More comments and speculation may be read in a forum on that blog.
39022
submission
qeorqe writes:
Podcamp Pittsburgh
has concluded.
Podcamp West
will be held November 18-19, 2006 in San Francisco.
Upcoming events in other cities may be found at the
http://podcamp.pbwiki.com/PodCamps page.
Pittsburgh hosted a meeting of bloggers, podcasters, video podcasters,
subscribers and potential future podcasters.
The program included sharing of expertise and experience from diverse areas.
Recaps may be found at
chrisbrogan.com
and
the wiki feedback.
Below is a very small sampling of the diverse video and audio podcasts represented.
Check
the program
and
attendees list
for more.
Information on the many services and tools available to podcasters is also
available in the program.
- Sample Video Podcasts:
aliveinbaghdad.org,
54hours.com,
STBD (something to be desired),
tikibartv.com/tikibar_podcast.html (flash site)
- Sample Audio Podcasts:
podcast411.com,
italyjules.blogspot.com (live) ,
thegspod.com