Robot of the Week! - Self Image

This one is really neat:



This piece of robotic awesomeness come courtesy of Cornell University.

The starfish like robot starts out with no internal model of itself. It goes through a series of self-directed motions which it uses to figure out what kinds of pieces it has, where its joints are, how many limbs it has, how it can possibly move, etc. Then it uses the knowledge it has gained to figure out a way to walk, and it walks. When the engineers later remove a piece, it senses the lost portions, re-configures its self image, and tries to devise an alternate method of walking.

Printing Objects in Three Dimensions

I came across a great article today on Ars Technica about a do-it-yourself personal fabrication machine.

What's a fabrication machine? It's this:



Basically, Evan Malone, a mechanical engineering grad student at Cornell University, has designed a rapid prototyping 3D printer that you can build for yourself for under $3,000.00.

The article linked above points out that this is an equivalent cost range to early personal computing. I don't know how much this will bear out as an analogy, but if the flexibility, robustness and sophistication of this machine compounds anywhere near as quickly as those early computers did, this could well be one of the first signs of a true revolution in the way things are done!