Robotic Research Platform and the End of Talking Robots

One of the small problems I have had over the last year is not having a robot to work with. I posted a brief video in the projects section of controlling a RC car using the PWM board that I made.

Unfortunately it looks like one of my favorite podcasts will be coming to an end. Talking Robots has been a great source of general information on the topic of robotics since I started listening to it a year or so ago. Its awesome that the EPFL funded this. It appears that they will be moving on to another show called RobotsPodcast. Dario Floreano said that they are going to try and make this show more accessible. I certainly hope that means that they aren't going to dumb down the topic. I have often found that even if you are not well versed in an area, to hear someone speak of it in detail allows you to be able to locate areas of future study.

In the last episode of talking robots, they did a "man on the street" type segment interviewing every day people. It was pretty interesting to hear what non-experts said. I think often times people really interested in a topic get so engrossed in it that they create things that may work in the laboratory but not in the public. I think it may have been Cynthia Breazeal that mentioned something to that effect in her talking robots interview. One of the main reasons I have continued my own education in robotics has been the hope of some day building a robot that could assist my mom in the care of my grandfather. The real problem with this is the extreme complexity of the problem. Robots.net recently posted a link to a video of Newton from the 1980s. This thing does a lot of the junk that people still think you could sell a commercial robot for. Personally I think there are products that could be much more simple, but still encompass portions of the technology.

Finally, in the latest Futures in Biotech Dr. Michio Kaku briefly talked about the influence of art and fiction on real science. My experience originated in the area(s) of art and I have to say that the process for building electronic devices, creating a (good) video, creating a targeted website, or creating a (good) piece of graphic design all seem to be quite similar in the broad sense of things. I have always derived some inspiration to work in technology from sources of fiction like Star Trek and Star Wars. Unfortunately I don't think there is any hope for humankind to build a SDF-1 Macross in my life time, but its nice to dream. At least I can still enjoy Macross Frontier.