An elegant, sophisticated humanoidfor developers

Speecys SPC-101C
An elegant, sophisticated humanoidfor developers
22 degrees of freedom include the ability to tilt thetorso backwards and forwards and rotate its wrists.by Lem Fugitt, www.robots-dreams.com

For years, Tomoaki Kasuga worked at Sony as a key member of the AIBO development team. He had a challenging and fulfilling job and was involved in one of the most well known and most highly respected robot projects in the world. But he wanted to do more. He had a dream.More than anything, he wanted to create a humanoid robot that would be completely open, an easy application development platform and could move around and actively communicate and interact with its environment. He wanted to design the type of robot that, as a software developer, he had always wanted to have but could never find on the market.Finally, his passion became so compelling that he struck out on his own, quit his job at Sony, obtained investment capital and established a new company, Speecys, which is dedicated to making his dream robot a reality. We had the opportunity to spend several weeks evaluating Kasuga's new SPC-101C robot and can say frankly that it is exciting, unique and a pleasure to work with.

22 Degrees of Freedom

Like many of the popular humanoid kits on the market, the robot stands 33cm (13 inches) tall and tips the scales at 1.5kg (3.3 pounds). But that's where the similarity ends. The SPC-101C has expanded the typical 16to 17 number of servos (degrees of freedom) to 22. The additional servos provide much more realistic motion and give the robot the ability to mimic human body language very closely. For example, the robot can tilt its torso backwards and forwards at the hips just like a human. This capability saw practical use during our testing when we needed the robot's built-in camera to look at an object on the floor directly in front of it without losing its balance.
The video camera, mounted in the head, provides surprisingly good image quality. The camera can be panned using the head servo and adjusted up and down by tilting the torso at the waist. Dual stereo speakers are built into the torso sides and provide quite good voice and sound quality when the robot is still. Unfortunately, the whine generated by moving servos sometimes tends to degrade the overall audio experience a bit.

The SPC-101C features 22

servos, stereo speakers,

unique LED displays and

a video camera that put it in

a class by itself.

Specially designed LED arrays in the hands and chest provide the ability to display characters, text, or block graphics such as a big red heart under program control. Think of them as robotic emoticons. Speecys needed the mechanical design to be highly reliable and dependable, so they work- ed very closely with Futaba and selected theproven RPU-50 CPU robot controller and RS301C servos. The controller and servos use RS485 Serial Communication that provides for querying the servos' positions, torque load, temperature and other parameters. The robot is powered by a Futaba 7.4V 780mAh Futaba LiPo battery, or, for extended programming sessions, it can be operated while plugged into the charger. It was great to be able to run a long test sequence without having to constantly worry about running out of battery power.
To get new users started, the ITR Motion Editor for Speecys ships along with the robot and features an interactive 3D editor display window, timelines, the integration of audio and voice files, control of the integral LED displays and a broad library of poses and motion files to chose from.

Wireless and Platform Independent

The robot's basic specifications are extremely competitive, but that's just the beginning of the story. Surprisingly, the robot's operating system is NetBSD, and it communicates using a USB Wireless Lan IEEE802.11G module. It even supports its own IP address. That makes the robot truly platform independent. As long as your system can send it commands and data in the correct formats, it doesn't matter whether you run on Windows, or Mac OS, or Linux, or your application is written in Visual Basic, C#, Java, or any other development language.
And as long as the robot has wireless connectivity to the Internet, it doesn't matter whether you operate it from 5 feet or 5,000 miles away. One of our tests involved operating the robot from a remote room on a different floor in the building, and it passed with flying colors. Along the same lines, Speecys has developed proof-of-concept remote presence applications utilizing Skype to allow the transmission of the robot's video feed along with control commands.

Open Source Software Development Kit

To actively stimulate application development for the robot, Speecys developed an SDK appropriately named “Open Roads.” The SDK can be downloaded from their website and is completely royalty-free, even for commercial applications. The underlying SDK approach is surprisingly simple: you communicate with the robot using TCP/IP socket data streams, and each command has its own basic data packet format that's very logical and easy to understand. Almost all of the data file formats are flat ASCII text, but there are a few exceptions such as the audio files.With simplicity often comes power. The open SDK and data formats facilitate the use of a wealth of well established, proven application libraries. For example, the Microsoft .Net 3.0 System Speech libraries can be used to add voice recognition and synthesized speech to the robot. Video capture, object recognition and tracking and other advanced functionality can also be added using the same approach.

A great deal of attention was paid to the robot design, including layout, circuit boards and wire routing.

Grant Imahara VEXPlorer robot Challenge Winners!

The First Place winner, CHEMBOT.

In our last issue, we announced the Grant Imahara VEXplorer Robot Challenge, sponsored by Revell, Innovation First, Inc. (IFI), Solidworks Corporation and Robot magazine. The contest, which was broadly announced on robotics news websites, gave 25 robot enthusiasts a chance to compete for a $5,000 scholarship grand prize and a $2,000 second-place prize. Ten more contestants were given a chance to win $200 gift certificates redeemable at www.vexrobotics.com. Many dozens applied, and we selected 25 to build their robots.

The Second Place winner,

Walking Quadruped Dinosaur.The contest entailed using the VEXplorer kit and any additional robotics parts (up to a limit of $100) from www.vexrobotics.com to create a unique and original application, which then had to be posted as a video on YouTube by June 1. These limitations set a level playing field (minor additions such as masking tape, glue, string, paper towels, etc,. to complete the application were deemed to be within the scope of the rules). Contestants were given additional points for the use of SolidWorks software and for good videography. “Mythbuster” Grant Imahara picked the winners.
We are pleased to announce the overall winner: Gustavo Goretkin’s ChemBot took first place. Gustavo, congratulations on winning the $5,000 scholarship prize! In second place were Jared Schwartz and Tom Lundberg with their Walking Quadruped Dinosaur. Although the second prize was initially set at $2,000, Grant and the contest sponsors were so impressed by Tom and Jared’s robot that they awarded each a $2,000 scholarship. We thank all who applied and all 25 contestants for the tremendous effort and fantastic creativity shown in their entries. See them all at www.vexrobotics.com. Contestants who did not make the winner’s list will be given a free one-year subscription to Robot in appreciation of their entries. Original applicants who did not make the contestant cut and those who are not listed as winners, will be sent complimentary copies of the SolidWorks Student Edition.
CHEMBOT 1ST—$5,000 SCHOLARSHIP GRAND PRIZE!Gustavo Goretkin, a student of the Broward Virtual School, has participated in the FIRST robotics program of Dillard High School for the past three years. He has also mentored a FIRST Lego League team at Hallandale Elementary for two years. His interests lie in computer intelligence, robotics engineering and in technology, generally. Chembot can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/swf/l.swf?video_id=La9j5eEnEvU
Gustavo notes “Chembot is remotely operated and designed to conduct experiments from a safe distance from the experimenter. The onboard camera allows the robot to relay images of the materials it is manipulating and allows the researcher to observe the experiment. The robot’s arm assembly is mounted on a Cartesian coordinate system. The base moves in a single axis (both sides of the drivetrain are linked by an axle), and a linear slider system is mounted perpendicularly to the base’s axis. The shoulder, which is mounted on the sliding base, supports the rest of the components.
“A wrist was added; it provides the gripper with two additional degrees of freedom. The tilting angle of the wrist allows the gripper to always remain parallel to the horizontal plane so that materials are not spilled while moving from one vertical position to another. The rotational degree of freedom rotates about the grabbing axis, and it allows the robot to pour materials from a container.”

FMTC - Flanders' MECHATRONICS Technology Centre

FMTC - Flanders' MECHATRONICS Technology Centre

Flanders' MECHATRONICS Technology Centre vzw (FMTC) is an initiative of Agoria, the Belgian multisector federation for the technology industry, and 14 leading mechatronic companies in Flanders.

The Flanders' MECHATRONICS Technology Centre has the mission to jointly develop new and improve existing generic mechatronic competences and technologies and in so doing strengthen the competitive edge of its member companies. For achieving this, the centre executes industry driven research projects.

To realize its mission FMTC closely cooperates with the Production engineering, Machine design and Automation division (PMA) of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and with Sirris.

For its operation, the centre is supported by the Flemish government (via the IWT).

The latest annual report of FMTC is available here

ComingSoon...

Intel Announces Intel® Atom™ Brandfor New Family of Low-Power Processors

Intel's Smallest Processor Built Using World's Smallest Transistors Designed for New Internet Devices, Low-Cost PCs, is coming soon!
The Intel Atom™ processor will be the name for a new family of low-power processors designed specifically for mobile Internet devices (MIDs) and a new class of simple and affordable Internet-centric computers arriving later this year. Together, these new market segments represent a significant new opportunity to grow the overall market for Intel silicon, using the Intel Atom processor as the foundation. The company also announced the Intel Centrino Atom™ processor technology brand for MID platforms, consisting of multiple chips that enable the best Internet experience in a pocketable device.
The Intel Atom processor is based on an entirely new microarchitecture designed specifically for small devices and low power, while maintaining the Intel® Core™ 2 Duo instruction set compatibility consumers are accustomed to when using a standard PC and the Internet. The design also includes support for multiple threads for better performance and increased system responsiveness. All of this on a chip that measures less than 25 mm², making it Intel's smallest and lowest power processor yet.1 Up to 11 Intel Atom processor die -- the tiny slivers of silicon packed with 47 million transistors each -- would fit in an area the size of an American penny.
Intel® Atom™ processor
Intel® Centrino® Atom™ processor technology
These new chips, previously codenamed Silverthorne and Diamondville, will be manufactured on Intel's industry-leading 45nm process with hi-k metal gate technology. The chips have a thermal design power (TDP) specification in 0.6-2.5 watt range and scale to 1.8GHz speeds depending on customer need. By comparison, today's mainstream mobile Core 2 Duo processors have a TDP in the 35-watt range.
"This is our smallest processor built with the world's smallest transistors," said Intel Executive Vice President and Chief Sales and Marketing Officer Sean Maloney. "This small wonder is a fundamental new shift in design, small yet powerful enough to enable a big Internet experience on these new devices. We believe it will unleash new innovation across the industry."
With personal computing increasingly going mobile and the computer industry rapidly developing new classes of products to connect the next billion people to the Internet, the Intel Atom processor offers customers the unique ability to innovate around the new low-power design. In addition to the MID opportunity, Intel believes the demand for a new category of low-cost, Internet-centric mobile computing devices dubbed "netbooks" and basic Internet-centric desktop PCs dubbed "nettops," will grow substantially over the next several years. The Intel Atom processor is perfectly suited to meet these new market segments.
Intel said the Intel Atom processor also has potential for future revenue opportunities in consumer electronic devices, embedded applications and thin clients.
Intel Centrino Atom Processor TechnologyThe Intel Centrino Atom processor technology brand represents Intel's best technology for MIDs. Formerly codenamed "Menlow," Intel Centrino Atom processor technology includes the Intel Atom processor, a low-power companion chip with integrated graphics, a wireless radio, and thinner and lighter designs. Together, these components are designed to enable the best mobile computing and Internet experience on these new devices.

New promising Pioneer SE-DRS3000C digital wireless headset

The name of new Pioneer digital wireless headset may seem to be extremely long to remember, but quality and features pack is also solid.This new Pioneer SE-DRS3000C gadget comes with wireless transmitter and headset.New Pioneer headset is not among the smallest world gadgets, it is compatible with Dolby NR, Dolby Digital, DTS-ES, range of frequency is from 10Hz to 24kHz, working radius 30meters, weight is 720 grams. In fact this latest Pioneer model has a very successful predecessor SE-DIR2000C. Thus after some improvements it appears on market again, so lets see what exactly was done to make it even better. First of all they upgraded wireless medium to 2.4 Ghz frequency in order to provide with more stable and full transmission. New Pioneer headset comes with integrated 5.1 channel simulation with Pro LogicII, DTS, Dolby Digital and other models. This wireless gadget will be ideal for home entertainment, for example if you like to watch TV in the night, and you do not want to disturb anybody. The stylish, comfortable and light weigh gadget is perfect for long wearing. 30 meters transmission is what you need for home needs. Beyond all doubts it is a great digital wireless gadget perfect quality and great comfort. High quality surround sound, great look and comfortable soft ear-pads for long wear, with rechargeable battery, working for 30 meter distance. DH setting allow to set your headset sound settings accordingly with room size (DH1-small room, DH2 average room, DH3 will create the necessary acoustic for small home cinema theater). read more

NEW ELECTRONICS TECHNOLOGY

MCUs feature fast floating-point for real-time control

The TMS320C2834x Delfino floating-point controllers target real-time control applications requiring high performance calculations and optimized control peripherals. The 300-MHz MCUs include 516 Kbytes of single-cycle access RAM and precision PWM modules with 65-ns resolution.
The IC family has CAN, I2C, SPI, and serial communication interface (SCI) peripherals and an external A/D converter interface. The devices are supported by the modular DIM100 and DIM168 controlCARD tools to aid development of real-time control applications such as servo drives, renewable energy, power-line monitoring, and driver assistance. (From $8.95 ea/volume qty — samples available now.) Texas Instruments, Dallas, TXProduct Information Center 800-477-8924http://www.ti.com/

The MicroFlex 82B gives you plenty of horsepower without draining your savings.

A powerful, fully equipped value-oriented system, the MicroFlex 82B sports a 3-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 CPU, 2GB of memory, a 250GB Serial ATA hard drive, and Windows Vista Business. Unlike many budget PCs, the MicroFlex 82B ships with a dedicated graphics card--an nVidia GeForce 8800GT that carries 512MB of video memory. Thanks to its speedy processor and dedicated graphics, the MicroFlex 82B achieved a WorldBench 6 score of 117. While that doesn't quite reach high-end gaming PC territory, it makes this machine ideal for everyday computing tasks and even some gaming, too.

Our test unit's $799 price (as of August 8, 2008) included the cost of a 17-inch Samsung 740BX display. The bundled Microsoft keyboard and mouse are about what you would expect from a budget system: good but not extraordinary. Despite its generic-looking case, the MicroFlex 82B has plenty of features to like, such as a total of eight USB ports, gigabit ethernet, and S/PDIF digital audio input. In addition, the 82B supports up to 7.1 surround sound.
The MicroFlex 82B is very expandable too, with a total of two PCI and five PCI Express slot (four of which are open), plus a good number of open drive bays. This is one budget PC with plenty of growing room. I also found the system to be reasonably quiet.
The documentation left something to be desired, though. Though the PC comes with documentation for various pieces of the system, there is no user's guide for the entire package. A hardware installation guide provides instructions for installing or replacing certain components, but the instructions are somewhat lacking in detail.
All things considered, however, the MicroFlex 82B does enough right for it to be a very good option for anyone needing a budget PC.

Dell XPS 630 Gaming Desktop PC Review

by Danny Allen
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May 23, 2008 - Dell's XPS 630 is a stylish and competitively priced mainstream gaming PC that can be souped up with extras such as an Ageia PhysX accelerator, a Blu-ray Disc drive, and up to 4GB of DDR2-800 Corsair Dominator memory. And though Dell recently integrated its XPS and Alienware development teams for future products, a spokesperson confirmed that the company will fully support current XPS notebooks and desktops (such as the high-end 730 H2C, the multimedia-themed XPS 420, and the iMac-rival One) for the remainder of what is typically a 12-month life-cycle for these products. The company declined to confirm when the first Alienware/Dell hybrid systems are likely to appear.

Blu-ray technology already in the aviation

Rockwell Collins for over 70 years holds leader positions in design, supportive new technologies in communication, production and supply with latest electronics for aviation world wide. This company is a perfect example of wise balance as commercial and governmental supplier. Aviation is field where all gadget, equipment

Equipments

Water strider robot uses water tension to move on water

Bluetooth Headset that can be Hidden Inside a Phone

Aluminum Sledge of New Generation

Fetal Doppler

and devices are very important, only best quality and durability is accepted here. Next generation systems and equipment is something usual for aviation.Rockwell Collins' doing its work perfect what concerns equipment for pilot cabins, as displays system to ease and improve work of flight team, audio and video on demand, electronic moving maps, internet access and all what is necessary for smooth work during flights. In end of 2008 Rockwell Collins announced new separate gadget for aviation Blu-Ray Disc player created for business jets. Gadget will be available for all business jets in end of summer 2009. Thus we can to say that in time made decision is placing RC in leading position in aviation as well about Blu-ray technology development. It is promising gadget which will please board crew with 1080p video playback, high definition and best quality, together with on-line capabilities of blu-ray standard. This player is great example how new technology in entertainment helpful for all spheres of life even in cabins of business jets.New Rockwell Collins Blu-ray gadget can be connected directly to Internet and access all interactive features (BD Profile 2.0). With 1080p high definition blu-ray playback and surrounding sound, compatibility with standard DVDs and CDs this gadget is a universal and necessary innovative device for Rockwell Collins Venue TM cabin systems of management. Having this example we can understand that blu-ray technology is entering in all spheres of life, where necessary to have the best and reliable.

TuneUp for your iTunes

TuneUp is an iTunes software that uses Gracenote database to fix incorrect music meta data. It plugs right into iTunes to automatically clean your incorrectly labeled music. It finds your missing album cover art, it lets you know when your favorite bands are performing in concert, and provides you with the best music content on the Web."Your music's new best friend"Available for both Mac and PC.After you've installed TuneUp and logged in / registered, you'll notice it has 4 tabs : Clean, Cover Art, Now Playing, and Concerts. Clean Tab:Drag and drop 'dirty' tracks from iTunes onto TuneUp to start cleaning them. What qualifies as a 'dirty track'? Anything with missing metadata or artwork.On average, TuneUp will correctly identify about 85-90% of your music library. Here are a few strategies to quickly find your most troublesome tracks:- Sort by track name, artist, or album and then scroll to songs that are missing that information- Search for tracks labeled "Track", "Untitled" or "Various"- Switch to cover flow/grid view and drag anything that's missing cover art into TuneUp"Matches" are 99% correct. "Likely Matches" are 80-90% correct on average. For each album, click the drop down arrows at left to see a track-listing and album art options.Not sure about the song’s original info? Click the play button next to a track to hear it and see its original info in iTunes.When you're happy with it, hit save.Cover Art Tab:Cover Art displays possible matches for every song missing cover art in your library.Hit save next to any cover art you want to keep.Click an album to see 4 possible matches, select your favorite one, then hit save in the top box to save that cover to your album.Now Playing:Now Playing presents the web’s best content for any playing track. Find your favorite song in iTunes and hit play; TuneUp automatically displays related music videos from YouTube (click the video play button to watch them within TuneUp), upcoming local concerts by that artist, artist news, Amazon song and album recommendations, and eBay merchandise.Concerts:Use concerts to see which bands in your collection are coming to town and buy tickets to the show.Additionally, TuneUp has analyze, undo, and purchasing functionality, but the simple steps above are the easiest way to get on your way to a much cleaner music collection... read more

Liquid crystal display

Color displays

A subpixel of a color LCD

Simulation of an LCD monitor up close

Comparison of the OLPC XO-1 display (left) with a typical color LCD. The images show 1×1 mm of each screen. A typical LCD addresses groups of 3 locations as pixels. The XO-1 display addresses each location as a separate pixel.

In color LCDs each individual pixel is divided into three cells, or subpixels, which are colored red, green, and blue, respectively, by additional filters (pigment filters, dye filters and metal oxide filters). Each subpixel can be controlled independently to yield thousands or millions of possible colors for each pixel. CRT monitors employ a similar 'subpixel' structures via phosphors, although the electron beam employed in CRTs do not hit exact 'subpixels'.

Color components may be arrayed in various pixel geometries, depending on the monitor's usage. If the software knows which type of geometry is being used in a given LCD, this can be used to increase the apparent resolution of the monitor through subpixel rendering. This technique is especially useful for text anti-aliasing.

To reduce smudging in a moving picture when pixels do not respond quickly enough to color changes, so-called pixel overdrive may be used.

[edit] Passive-matrix and active-matrix addressed LCDs

A general purpose alphanumeric LCD, with two lines of 16 characters.

LCDs with a small number of segments, such as those used in digital watches and pocket calculators, have individual electrical contacts for each segment. An external dedicated circuit supplies an electric charge to control each segment. This display structure is unwieldy for more than a few display elements.

Small monochrome displays such as those found in personal organizers, or older laptop screens have a passive-matrix structure employing super-twisted nematic (STN) or double-layer STN (DSTN) technology—the latter of which addresses a color-shifting problem with the former—and color-STN (CSTN)—wherein color is added by using an internal filter. Each row or column of the display has a single electrical circuit. The pixels are addressed one at a time by row and column addresses. This type of display is called passive-matrix addressed because the pixel must retain its state between refreshes without the benefit of a steady electrical charge. As the number of pixels (and, correspondingly, columns and rows) increases, this type of display becomes less feasible. Very slow response times and poor contrast are typical of passive-matrix addressed LCDs.

High-resolution color displays such as modern LCD computer monitors and televisions use an active matrix structure. A matrix of thin-film transistors (TFTs) is added to the polarizing and color filters. Each pixel has its own dedicated transistor, allowing each column line to access one pixel. When a row line is activated, all of the column lines are connected to a row of pixels and the correct voltage is driven onto all of the column lines. The row line is then deactivated and the next row line is activated. All of the row lines are activated in sequence during a refresh operation. Active-matrix addressed displays look "brighter" and "sharper" than passive-matrix addressed displays of the same size, and generally have quicker response times, producing much better images.

Intel® Core™2 Quad Processors The ultimate multi-core performance

Introducing the Intel® Core™2 Quad processor for desktop PCs, designed to handle massive compute and visualization workloads enabled by powerful multi-core technology. Providing all the bandwidth you need for next-generation highly-threaded applications, the latest four-core Intel Core 2 Quad processors are built on 45nm Intel® Core™ microarchitecture enabling faster, cooler, and quieter desktop PC and workstation experiences.

Plus, with optional Intel® vPro™ technology, you have the ability to remotely isolate, diagnose, and repair infected desktop and mobile workstations wirelessly and outside of the firewall, even if the PC is off, or the OS is unresponsive.

Product information

• View Intel® Core™2 Quad processor performance benchmarks
• Download the processor product brief
• Learn about processor numbersΔ

Features and benefits

With four processing cores, up to 12MB of shared L2 cache¹ and 1333 MHz Front Side Bus the Intel Core 2 Quad desktops processor delivers amazing performance and power efficiency enabled by the all new hafnium-based circuitry of 45nm Intel Core microarchitecture.

Whether you're encoding, rendering, editing, or streaming HD multimedia in the office or on the go, power your most demanding applications with notebooks and desktops based on the Intel Core 2 Quad processor.

Plus, with these processors you get great Intel® technologies built in²:

Intel® Wide Dynamic Execution, enabling delivery of more instructions per clock cycle to improve execution time and energy efficiency

Intel® Intelligent Power Capability, designed to deliver more energy-efficient performance

Intel® Smart Memory Access, improving system performance by optimizing the use of the available data bandwidth

Larger Intel® Advanced Smart Cache, optimized for multi-core processors, providing a higher-performance, more efficient cache subsystem.

Intel® Advanced Digital Media Boost, accelerating a broad range of multimedia, encryption, scientific and financial applications by significantly improving performance when executing Intel® Streaming SIMD Extension (SSE/SSE2/SSE3) instructions.

Intel® HD Boost³, implementing new Intel® Streaming SIMD Extension 4 (Intel SSE4) instructions for even greater multimedia performance and faster high definition video editing and encoding.

Intel® Virtualization Technology (Intel® VT)², enabling greater security, manageability, and utilization.

Future ready, designed to perform in highly threaded programs with powerful Intel® multi-core technology.

• Buy an Intel® Core™2 Quad processor-based desktop or notebook PC today

Δ Intel® processor numbers are not a measure of performance. Processor numbers differentiate features within each processor family, not across different processor families. See www.intel.com/products/processor_number/ for details.

¹ Up to 6M of Intel® Advanced Smart Cache per core pair.

² Intel® VT not available on all Intel® Core™2 Quad processors.

³ Available with Intel® Core™2 Quad processor SKUs based on 45nm Intel Core microarchitecture. Performance improvements require applications optimized to take advantage of the new Intel® SSE4 instructions.