September 07, 2005 —
On Sept. 16, the National Science Foundation (NSF) hosted more
than a dozen robots and their creators to showcase advanced robotics
technology from across the nation — a showcase with a pronounced USC Viterbi
School slant.
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George
Bekey presents the findings of the panel he chaired on the state
of robotics research worldwide. Photo by Patrick Olmert, NSF
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Entitled "Robots: An Exhibition of U.S. Automatons from the
Leading Edge of Research," the event will present the findings of the World Technology Evaluation Center International Study of
Robotics, which looked at robotics research and development in the
United States, Japan, Korea and Western Europe.
Viterbi School professor emeritus George Bekey chaired
the panel of six robotics experts who visited more than 50 research
sites across the globe over the course of two years to create the
report, which was sponsored by NSF, NASA and the National Institutes of
Health.
Bekey presented the findings, and with his five
colleagues answered questions in a live webcast that is now archived at:
http://www.vodium.com/goto/nsf/robots.asp.
The
findings for the United States are not all positive. U.S.
researchers have developed advanced robotics, but national strategies
and coordinated funding efforts in other countries pose a serious
challenge to U.S. competitiveness. While our nation leads in such
areas as robot-assisted surgery and mobile, space robots, foreign
laboratories are developing the state-of-the-art service and industrial
robots — in some cases overtaking the United States in fields we once
dominated.
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Stefab Schaal demonstratates his humanoid head (see detail,leftt) for media and invited children. Photo by Patrick Olmert, NSF
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Similar trends exist across the six different categories of the report:
Robotic Vehicles; Space Robotics; Industrial, Service and Personal
Robots; Humanoid Robots; Robotics in Biology and Medicine; and
Networked Robots.
Following
Bekey's report, a series of live demonstrations took place at the
site, the National Science Foundation National Science Foundation
headquarters at 4201 Wilson Blvd.Arlington, VA .
These included the humanoid head created by the Viterbi School computer
scientists Stefan Kai Schaal and Laurent Itti, which tracks visitors as
they move around a room. The head, says the NSF description, "shares
some functions with human heads. The robot can learn from a human
teacher to perform various motor behaviors and can use visual attention
mechanisms to focus on interesting objects in the environment. The
demonstrated behaviors reflect interdisciplinary research in
neuroscience, robotics and computer vision, and serve as building
blocks for creating autonomous, full-body humanoid robots."
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Schaal's humanoid head tracks movement based on Laurent Itti's suprise algorithm
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