Video: The Fastest Robot Hands In The East

From Popular Science:

Ishikawa Komuro Laboratory, the same folks that developed the pitcher 'bot in last week's baseball-playing tandem, have also developed an incredible robotic hand can bounce balls at furious speed, toss and catch cylindrical objects in a standing upright position, and even twirl a rod between its fingers as easily as a person plays with a pencil.

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Could Robots Unite Under One Operating System?

Robots Unite: Patch my operating system to 3.0 now, human! Warner Bros.

From Popular Science:

A common robot operating system could lead to a robotics revolution -- scientifically speaking, of course.

Today's robots represent islands unto themselves that don't share either software or hardware with each other. But researchers have begun developing a common operating system that could revolutionize robotics and permit easier collaboration with less reinvention of the proverbial wheel. The change could rival that which rippled through the PC industry when Microsoft's Disk Operating System (DOS), and later Windows, burst onto the scene and became standard.

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Step Toward Quantum Computers: Sustained Quantum Information Processing

NIST physicists demonstrated sustained, reliable quantum information processing in the ion trap at the left center of this photograph, improving prospects for building a practical quantum computer. The ions are trapped inside the dark slit (3.5 millimeters long and 200 micrometers wide) between the gold-covered alumina wafers. By changing the voltages applied to each of the gold electrodes, scientists can move the ions between the six zones of the trap. (Credit: J. Jost/NIST)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Aug. 10, 2009) — Raising prospects for building a practical quantum computer, physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have demonstrated sustained, reliable information processing operations on electrically charged atoms (ions). The new work, described in the August 6 issue of Science Express, overcomes significant hurdles in scaling up ion-trapping technology from small demonstrations to larger quantum processors.

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Brain Power And Computers

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My Comment: This is so cool.

Robot Chefs Run a Restaurant

From Live Science:

The FuA-Men - Fully Automated raMen restaruant in Nagoya, Japan features a chef and assistant - both fully autonomous robots. The robots perform all of the cooking tasks needed to make eighty bowls per day, serving the customers who come to their small shop.

When asked, customers seem to feel that there is little difference between noodle dishes prepared by real, human chefs, and meals prepared by autonomous robots. For those who appreciate precision in food preparation, you can't beat robot chefs.

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Scaling Up a Quantum Computer

Photo: Shine on, ions: Beryllium ions are trapped inside the dark slit on the left side of this chip. When researchers focus lasers on the ions, the ions can be used to perform quantum calculations. Credit: J. Jost at NIST

From Technology Review:

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Boulder, CO, have demonstrated multiple computing operations on quantum bits--a crucial step toward building a practical quantum computer.

Quantum computers have the potential to perform calculations far faster than the classical computers used today. This superior computing power comes from the fact that these computers use quantum bits, or qubits, which can represent both a 1 and a 0 at the same time, in contrast to classical bits that can represent only a 1 or a 0.

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Micro Flying Robots Can Fly More Effectively Than Flies

RoboFly a robot model of fruit fly wings that is 100 times larger than a fruit fly. It is submerged in oil to simulate the viscosity of the sticky air around the wing of a real fruit fly. (Credit: Dickinson lab)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Aug. 6, 2009) — Engineers have long been stymied in their attempts to fabricate micro aerial robots that can match the amazing flight capabilities of nature’s most advanced flying insects ¾flies. Such robot flies -- if they could be made efficient enough for long missions -- could be used for a variety of tasks, from spying, to mine detection to search and rescue missions in collapsed buildings.

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