THREE CHEERS FOR INTERNET

New on the blogroll: Robot Gossip. I was linked via Engadget’s coverage of India’s new plan for building a gigantic robot army. While I was trying to think of a tech support joke, though, I found a whole page full of much more interesting tidbits.

For instance, this guy:

which can manipulate otherwise awkward objects with the all the agility of an elephant’s trunk. See video of him in action here. Oh, DARPA, your moral ambiguity just makes me love you more.

Also, this:

Generated by a cute little robot with its own aesthetic criteria. I’m glad more of these are coming out, since it forces the issue.

The algorithm combines initial randomness, positive feedback and a positive/negative increment of ‘color as pheromone’ mechanism based on a grid of nine RGB sensors. Also the ‘sense of rightness’ – to determine when the painting is ready – is achieved not by any linear method, time or sum, but through a kind of pattern recognition system. |Link|

The best part, just like the filmmaking robot, is that it signs its own name: