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When we first reported on the Willow Garage PR2 robot, it was just a prototype. Earlier this year, Willow Garage started their beta program, which gave eleven lucky organizations two year access to PR2 robots in exchange for furthering work on open source robotics software. Now we've received word from Willow Garage that the PR2 is officially for sale to anyone who wants it. This is not a toy or hobby robot, of course, so don't expect a small price tag. The full retail price is $400,000 per unit. However, if your organization can demonstrate a proven track record in developing open source software and making contributions to the robotics community, you can get a hefty $120,000 discount on your PR2. For more see our previous stories on Willow Garage and the PR2.

There is a long history of attempts at replicating neural systems either in software or in conventional semiconductors, such as the FACETS project (not to mention the creation of conventional logic gates from lab-grown biological neurons!) According to a USC Viterbi news release, researchers at the BioRC project, whose goal is research on an artificial cortex, have succeeded in creating a functioning synapse from carbon nanotubes. The new research was presented by Alice C. Parker in the paper "A biomimetic fabricated carbon nanotube synapse for prosthetic applications" at the Life Science Systems and Applications Workshop in April 2011. (unfortunately the actual paper is behind a paywall but the abstract is readable). An earlier paper, "A Biomimetic Carbon Nanotube Synapse Circuit", describes the proposed design of synapse including schematics and comparison with biological neural

If you're a long time reader, you may remember our mention in 2008 of Emanuel Diamant's provocatively titled paper "I'm sorry to say, but your understanding of image processing fundamentals is absolutely wrong" (PDF). Diamant is back with a presentation created for the 3rd Israeli Conference on Robotics, with the equally provocative title: "It's Cognitive Robotics, Stupid" (PDF). In it he laments the lack of agreed upon definitions for words like intelligence, knowledge, and information that are crucial to the development of robotics.

Later this month, Carnegie Mellon's CMDragons small-size robotic soccer team will be competing again at RoboCup, to be held in Singapore. CMDragons has tended to find their edge in their software as opposed to their hardware. Their latest software advantage will be their new "physics-based planning", using physics to decide how to move and turn with the ball in order to maintain control. Previous control strategies simply planned where the robot should move to and shoot from, assuming a ball placed at the front center of the dribbler bar would stay there. The goal of Robocup is to create a humanoid robotic soccer team to compete against human players in 2050. Manuela Veloso, the professor who leads the Carnegie Mellon robotic soccer lab, "believe[s] that the physics-based planning algorithm is a particularly noteworthy accomplishment" that will take the effort one step closer to the collective goal.

By now most residents of the Dallas / Fort Worth area are aware of the giant, 35,000 lbs steel robot that towers over DART's Deep Ellum rail station. Robot builders may also be aware of the robot from coverage in Robot Magazine. Now, the rest of the world is taking notice because the prominent art organization, Americans for the Arts, has included the Dallas Robot, known officially as Traveling Man, on its list of 40 Best Public Art Works in the US and Canada. Read on to learn more about Traveling Man and see more photos of the big robot and little chrome friends.So what's the story behind this giant robot? A combination of opportunities and influences led to its creation. Dallas Area Rapid Transit or DART as it's known locally, was expanding into the Deep Ellum area with a new rail line and a Deep Ellum rail station. Deep Ellum is the historic Dallas arts district from which have come a long list of musical and visual artists. The area is also well known for its many public art pieces, many improvised in local do-it-yourself fashion. Painters and sculpters often create art on the exterior of their own or other buildings in the area.

Researchers from Leeds University are working on a camera and drill-weilding robot known as Djedi to solve the mystery of the blocked shafts inside the Great Pyramid at Giza. In 1992 and 2002, remote cameras were sent through the shaft under the watchful eye of antiquities master Dr. Zahi Hawass only to be stopped by limestone doors. Dr. Robert Richardson of the Mechanical Engineering department said their goal is to find out what is beyond the blocks and go as far as possible to discover the purpose of the shafts, all while doing minimal damage to the structure. Final preparations are being made now with hopes of sending the robot in before year's end. Place your bets now!

Researchers at MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research are working on a new mathematical model to mimic the human brain's ability to identify objects. The model can predict human performance on certain visual-perception tasks suggesting it’s a good indication of what's actually happening in the brain. Researchers are hoping the new findings will make their way into future object-recognition systems for automation, mobile robotics, and other applications.

In its latest episode, the Robots Podcast interviews the lead researcher of the Distributed Flight Array and one of my colleagues at the ETH Zurich's IDSC, Raymond Oung. The Distributed Flight Array (DFA) is an aerial modular robot. Each individual module has a single, large propellor and a set of omniwheels to move around. Since a single propellor does not allow stable flight, modules move around to connect to each other. As shown in this video of the DFA, the resulting random shape then takes flight. After a few minutes of hovering the structure breaks up and modules fall back to the ground, restarting the cycle. As most projects at the IDSC, the DFA is grounded in rigorous mathematics and design principles and combines multiple goals: It serves as a real-world testbed for research in distributed estimation and control, it abstracts many of the real-world issues of the next generation of distributed multi-agent systems, and it provides an illustration for otherwise abstract concepts like distributed sensing and control to a general public. For more information on current work, future plans and real-world applications, read on or tune in!

The latest episode of the Robots Podcast looks at the following scenario: Imagine being able to throw a hand-full of smart matter in a tank full of liquid and then pulling out a ready-to-use wrench once the matter has assembled. This is the vision of this episode's guests Michael Tolley and Jonas Neubert from the Computational Synthesis Laboratory run by Hod Lipson at Cornell University, NY. Tolley and Neubert give an introduction into Programmable Matter and then present their research on stochastic assembly of matter in fluid, including both simulation (see video above) and real-world implementation. Read on or tune in!

Researchers at CMU and Intel are attempting to map and understand human brain activity well enough that individual words can be detected. Currently, giant MRI machines are being used but the future holds smaller devices that can be worn like a helmet according to Dean Pomerleau, senior researcher at Intel. The efficiency and productivity of word detection will be superior to existing technology that allows an operator to simply control a cursor. This technology will no doubt make its way into robotic telepresence applications including remote surgery and construction in dangerous environments such as the ocean and space.

The latest episode of the Robots podcast interviews Dr. Alvar Saenz-Otero from MIT on the SPHERES project. SPHERES (Synchronized Position Hold Engage and Reorient Experimental Satellites) are basketball-sized satellites able to fly in and maintain formation at nanometer precision. In the second part of this episode we continue our quest for a good definition of a robot by looking at a well-known definition dating back to 1979. Read on or tune in!

Anthony Daniels, the actor who brought the droid C-3PO to life in the Star Wars movies, visited St. Louis Thursday for a concert to celebrate the music of the popular Sci-Fi series. Joining the 86-piece orchestra will be several movie props including C-3PO's costume which Daniels said was "ouch" every time. He used tin-snips to make modifications during filming because only he knew exactly where all the pokes, pinches and jabs were.

Mahru-Z is the robotic maid that can make breakfast!. Given certain voice commands the robot can perform functions such as working a microwave, delivering toast, and other tasks such as washing clothes. The robots can see with stereoscopic vision and can identify what objects are and even decide what jobs needs to be done with the objects. In the video, one robot appears to be tethered and the other is not making me wonder if they are really self contained. Also, one is wearing a dress and the other not, so are they both maids or is one a butler? Shouldn't they just call them robotic servants or is that redundant? Regardless, although not apparently sentient, these do appear to be advanced robots. I only wonder if they washed their hands before and after handling the food?

Walking, swallowing, respiration and many other key functions in humans and other animals are controlled by Central Pattern Generators (CPGs). In essence, CPGs are small, autonomous neural networks that produce rhythmic outputs, usually found in animal's spinal cords rather than their brains. Their relative simplicity and obvious success in biological systems has led to some success in using CPGs in robotics. However, current systems are restricted to very simple CPGs (e.g., restricted to a single walking gait). A recent breakthrough at the BCCN at the University of Göttingen, Germany has now allowed to achieve 11 basic behavioral patterns (various gaits, orienting, taxis, self-protection) from a single CPG, closing in on the 10–20 different basic behavioral patterns found in a typical cockroach. The trick: Work with a chaotic, rather than a stable periodic CPG regime. For more on CPGs, listen to the latest episode of the Robots podcast on Chaos Control, which interviews Poramate Manoonpong, one of the lead researchers in Göttingen, and Alex Pitti from the University of Tokyo who uses chaos controllers that can synchronize to the dynamics of the body they are controlling.

Until now you can have big elaborate robots or very small microbots but it is very difficult to have both. A blog post from New Scientist (where this video is from) points out the research on microbots, very small machines that will move, navigate and perform simple tasks. The ability to remotely power a microbot, thus eliminating the need for onboard battery or fuel, is already proven and one of the methods is the application of an AC field to a liquid where the robot is located. This microbot is essentially a diode, a one-way electric conductor. The different electric charges at its ends force the neighboring ions to move thus creating a small thrust that propels the bot. The team of Rachita Sharma and Orlin Velev from North Carolina State University developed a method where a controlled application of an additional DC field changes the ion distribution around the microbot and this time the ion field creates a torque that rotates the microbot. The DC field is applied until the completion of a 180-degree turn. Then the microbot moves again, now in the opposite direction. It is only 1.3mm long and as claimed by other scientists like Vesselin Paunov from the University of Hull, UK this arrangement can be further scaled down where it can be useful for diagnostic and localized drug supply applications.

aims at developing swarms of flying robots that can be deployed in disaster areas to rapidly create communication networks for rescuers. Flying robots are interesting for such applications because they are fast, can easily overcome difficult terrain, and benefit from line-of-sight communication.