AIC-AI Cookingrobot, developed by Fanxing Science and Technology Co. Ltd in Shenzhen, China, is able to cook delicious Chinese cuisine. Sichuan, Shandong and Canton cuisines are all programmed and ready to eat.

AI-AIC Cooking robot is ready to take on tasks like Chinese steaming, baking, frying, boiling and sautéing. Chinese fast foods like Mongolian beef BBQ, Chow Mein, fried rice, fried wonton, Spring Rolls, and so on are produced as fast as humanly possible by the robot. At a cooking show held by the company this weekend, the robot cooked a dish of beautifully-flavored, attractive-looking shrimp in five minutes.

technovelgy

A raised eyebrow, quizzical look or a nod of the head are just a few of the facial expressions computers could soon be using to read people’s minds.

An “emotionally aware” computer being developed by British and American scientists will be able to read an individual’s thoughts by analyzing a combination of facial movements that represent underlying feelings.

“The system we have developed allows a wide range of mental states to be identified just by pointing a video camera at someone,” said Professor Peter Robinson, of the University of Cambridge in England.

He and his collaborators believe the mind-reading computer’s applications could range from improving people’s driving skills to helping companies tailor advertising to people’s moods.

“Imagine a computer that could pick the right emotional moment to try to sell you something, a future where mobile phones, cars and Web sites could read our mind and react to our moods,” he added.

Five European research institutes are collaborating on the NEW TIES project to create a world populated by randomly generated software beings, capable of developing their own language and culture.

The multidisciplinary team has a dual goal: to study natural processes (like language development), and to advance the construction of collective artificial intelligence.

For the linguists and sociologists, the main motivation is to study existing processes in societies and languages. The computer scientists on the other hand want to develop and study machine collaboration, with an eye on future applications in robotics.

ist

For the first time, a robot surgeon has carried out a long-distance heart operation by itself.

The 50-minute surgery, which took place in a Milan hospital, was carried out on a 34-year-old patient suffering from atrial fibrillation. Dozens of heart specialists attending an international congress on arrhythmia in Boston also watched.

science daily

A Japanese researcher demonstrated in Tokyo Wednesday a pair of robotic legs that can negotiate stairs and could eventually find use as a wheelchair substitute.

“Elderly people using wheelchairs cannot get up and down stairs,” said Atsuo Takanishi, an engineering professor at Tokyo’s Waseda University. “We wanted to create a robot that could do that and walk around rough surfaces.”

Takanishi has been working on the machine since 2003 in conjunction with robot manufacturer tmsuk Co. Their goal has been to create a two-legged robot that can fully operate in a human environment—specifically, one with features such as stairs that they can climb as homo sapiens do.

The latest version of the robot, the WL-16RIII, can manage the mechanically difficult feat. At the demonstration in Tokyo, one of Takanishi’s students rode the robot—which bears some resemblance to the mechanical “Wrong Trousers” of Wallace and Gromit fame—up and down a staircase and along a pebbly path outdoors.

msn

Spanish engineer Jose del R. Millen has recently been elected by Scientific American as one of the research leaders in 2004 for his experiences that allowed a small robot to move around a model house, while the bot itself handled time-sensitive maneuvers such as avoiding obstacles.

Each user chooses three mental states that produce distinguishable brain-wave patterns and trains the system in a few hour-long sessions. These states are then used as “forward,” “left” and “right” commands.

Millen is currently leading the MAIA project to come up with a mind-controlled wheelchair, and a mind-controlled robotic arm that could be be used for future prosthesis. Don’t hold your breath: the scientist doesn’t expect the mond-controlled wheelchair to be ready before 2015.

wmmna < research paper.pdf

South Korea, the world’s most wired country, is rushing to turn what sounds like science fiction into everyday life. The government, which succeeded in getting broadband Internet into 72 percent of all households in the last half decade, has marshaled an army of scientists and business leaders to make robots full members of society.

By 2007, networked robots that, say, relay messages to parents, teach children English and sing and dance for them when they are bored, are scheduled to enter mass production. Outside the home, they are expected to guide customers at post offices or patrol public areas, searching for intruders and transmitting images to monitoring centers.

If all goes according to plan, robots will be in every South Korean household between 2015 and 2020. That is the prediction, at least, of the Ministry of Information and Communication, which has grouped more than 30 companies, as well as 1,000 scientists from universities and research institutes, under its wing. Some want to move even faster.

“My personal goal is to put a robot in every home by 2010,” said Oh Sang Rok, manager of the ministry’s intelligent service robot project.

NYTimes