Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with robots

What can I do with an old G4 Mac that involves robots and cameras?

infinitewindow — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 11:26:48 -0800

What should I do with an old 450 MHz Sawtooth G4 Mac running OS X 10.2? Assume that it runs well as-is and that I have $100 to spend on accessories. Bonus points to answers involving robots (for which I don't have materials for) and/or digital cameras (for which I do).

What movie trailers am I thinking of?

PontifexPrimus — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 14:19:03 -0800

Searching for two half-remembered movies (or rather their trailers). One is about killer robots, another about an assassin(?) in a noir SciFi environment... First movie:
This one's quite old (several years), but it has been bugging me for a while. As I remember it it was a CGI(?) or stop-motion(?) sequence of three robots in a bunker-like structure they had to protect; they were supposed to kill a human intruder and played rock-paper-scissors to find out which one got to go, with one robot holding up a bladed hand and complaining "I can only do scissors". It's tormenting me that I cannot find out more about this sequence since the idea of deadly killer robots bickering had struck me as quite imaginative, and I always wanted to know more about where it came from.

Second movie:
A trailer I saw some months ago, focusing on a very Dark City-like setting. The hero(?) wore some kind of white cloth or latex face-mask which tied at the back, covering the full head when worn. It's not Crying Freeman or Cassherrn, although there might have been some acrobatics or fancy shooting involved. And it is definitively not Rorschach from Watchmen.
There was a certain artsyness to the trailer, some element of style that had stuck with me and made me want to see the movie.
Sorry if that's not much to go on, but I keep mixing in memories from different other movies if I try to remember more.

I'd be grateful for any ideas, tips and possible corrections to my feeble recollections...

Lollipop Fields and Robot Makeovers?

thebellafonte — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 01:10:31 -0800

Can anyone identify these cartoons? One about two poor kids who dream of a world made of food, then wake up to a feast in their kitchen. Another about a young couple at a future world/technology expo where they see instant houses, get groomed by robots, and ballroom dance? I had a VHS tape as a kid with a few cartoons on it.
Here's what I remember from the first cartoon:
Brother and sister living in poverty. They stand outside of a baker's (?) window and lick their lips, which the baker sees. Baker goes over and starts whispering to town butcher (?). Mother feeds them cake for dinner, and it's hard so the kids dip it in milk. They ask for more food, but there isn't any. Mom starts crying on table. She tucks them in, their blankets look like swiss cheese. They have this mutual dream in which everything is for eating- lollipop flower fields, possibly some carnival rides made out of cheese wheels and things. They wake up and realize it was only a dream. Then they go to the kitchen and there's a huge table full of delicious things to eat. The baker and the butcher are there. The boy stabs himself with a fork to make sure he isn't still dreaming.
Second cartoon:
Follows a young man and woman as they make their way through some sort of future world expo. There is a bullet train that takes the people to the expo, which is in a tall, rounded skyscraper. Inside, houses are being built very quickly by machines, and a stork flies by and drops a baby in one of the chimneys. The man sits in a robot chair that grooms him- shave, haircut, etc. And the woman steps into some sort of mold that gives her an hourglass shape and a cute dress. I think there's also some robot thing that puts lipstick on her and curls her hair. They go dancing in a ballroom. Oh and I just remembered that they each dance with a robot partner before dancing with eachother. Then they go up to a machine, press a button, and a block falls out. The block unfolds itself and is a totally awesome car. They get in and drive away.

I think about these cartoons more in my adult life than I'm willing to admit.
I'm 23, but I think they're from the 40s. Maybe 50s.

Any help as to identifying them or an idea of where to get a copy would blow me away.

Examples of robot faces/mouths

SouthCNorthNY — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 21:04:19 -0800

Any cool examples of robots (real or fictional) with LED, or LCD faces or mouths? Or any interesting robot faces or mouths that light up?

Where's my robot?

godawful — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 06:12:33 -0800

How can I determine my robot's location reliably and cheaply? I've made a wheeled robot which can communicate wirelessly with my computer. I used Arduino boards, XBee radio modules and the Wiring/Processing languages. The robot also has an ultrasonic rangefinder on the front.

Now I'm in 'What next?' mode.

I thought it would be cool if the robot could roam and communicate distance measurements back to Processing, which could then draw a map of the 2d floor space that the Robot finds itself in. Thinking this through, though, the major obstacle is determining where the robot is and which direction it's facing when it takes a range measurement.

It seems that the direction problem is easy to solve with something like this compass module. That leaves the problem of location.

I suppose you could take a mean measurement of the robots speed along with the direction travelled and take everything relative to the starting point. However, it seems to me that, with different floor surfaces and general variation, the robot's calculations will get progressively less accurate over time, and the map might just tend towards mush.

How would you solve this problem in an ideal world? A set of beacons perhaps? How would you solve it on my budget, which precludes anything over £100/$150?

GODZILLA!!!

god particle — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 15:08:06 -0800

What are some classic, old sci-fi movies? By classic & old I mean films from the 1950s or 1960s. Particularly, I'm looking for films that feature things like monsters (such as Godzilla), robots, aliens, science experiments gone wrong. One that I can think of is "The Day the Earth Stood Still". I'd prefer them to be good films rather than MST3K fodder.

And if such a place exists (these films might be old enough to be in the public domain), where can I watch these online?

Should I get a Robomower?

geoff. — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 10:32:35 -0800

Does anyone have experience with RoboMower or other robotic mowers on the market? Is my dream a reality or do these things not really work as advertised? I'm looking for anecdotes, stories or reviews of whether this actually works or is an expensive toy. I don't anyone who has one, they're not crazy expensive, so this is sort of throwing up warning flags. Is the future here or not? I'm not tied to Robomower, just using it as an example.

A robot short haunts us.

Coatlicue — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 11:55:27 -0800

About 9 years ago, my brother and I saw a short animated film on the Independent Film Channel (he says). It was about floating robot-things residing in a place similar to that of the one Homer went to the time he slipped into the third dimension. Our heads are exploding, because we cannot figure out what this freaking short was named, or anything else about it. The plot kicked off with two robot-things travelling by floating in the air, side by side as if they were in a car. BUT THERE WAS NO CAR!

Suddenly, the "driver" stops. The "passenger" asks, "Why have you stopped?"

Driver: Something is in the way.
Passenger: What is in the way?
Driver: I do not know.

There is nothing in the way of these robots, but they're acting as if there is. The passenger then asks the driver some question I don't remember, and the driver lets an overlong pause go by before answering, "Yes".

Then we meet two other robots. If I remember correctly, they were the same type of robots as the previous two. But these two are making fun of the other robots on this plane, by mocking their conversation, right down to the extended pause before the driver-robot-thing says "Yes". My brother and I got the impression that these guys were bored sentry types with a capability to make jokes and be bored (and understand anything) that the other inhabitants of this plane didn't have.

What the hell was this short? Neither my brother nor I have had any luck digging it up since we suddenly became curious about this a few years ago.

Also, by "animated", I mean that it was either animated by means of COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY, or that such an effect was simulated.

Robot-themed sci fi recommendations?

olinerd — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 15:25:31 -0800

What are some good sci fi novels/short stories that focus on robots? Difficulty: no Asimov. I'd love to read some recent sci-fi -- books or short stories -- centered around the theme of robots and AI. I'm less interested in Asimov or Philip K. Dick and more interested in more modern stuff that hasn't been made into movies. For reference, "classic" authors I like are Asimov, Niven, and Vonnegut. More recent types I like are Octavia Butler, Neal Stephenson, and Douglas Adams. I'd like to stay away from Crichton-esque beach reading unless it comes highly highly recommended.

So what have you got? I need some reading material!

Need help hiding my name online!!

giddygirlie — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 11:47:38 -0800

Keeping my name private on my website - can robots.txt help? I only use my first name on my website, for privacy concerns, but my husband is a public person (professional comic book artist) so he uses his full name.

I just noticed today that if I google my own name, my website comes up as #1 on the search listing. I think this is because I have linked to my husband's site (the URL is his name) so now google is finding my first and last name together and referencing my personal website.

Is there a way to write a robots.txt file that will discourage robots from finding my name on the site? My alternative is to replace all instances of linking to his site with a tinyurl link instead and hope that google refreshes its cache soon.

I don't keep any content that is offensive, I just don't like work people spying on my personal life. :)

'Fsockopen', Plus A Couple of Googlebot Questions

WCityMike — Fri, 30 May 2008 12:38:40 -0800

Website help: I'm asking for some input on (1) straightening out a problem with Google and its "description" for each page of my blog; (2) constructing a robots.txt exclusion for certain types of archive pages; and (3) the reason why something is looking for page URLs that have "function.fsockopen" at the end of them. (1)
Google seems to be using the first bit of text from my blog — its subtitle and a phrase "Skip to content" which I don't see anywhere — as opposed to what is in the META description tag. (Results in which I see this.) I prefer it to index the latter, since the META description is an excerpt from the page and thus is better for search engines.

For some pages, it's appropriately indexing the META description. But for many more (probably the majority), it still has the blog's subtitle.

Is this merely a case of the pages with subtitles not having been visited by the Googlebot spider recently? If so, is there anything I can do to get Google to respider the whole site? I'm registered with Google Webmaster Tools. I don't have access to setting a faster crawl rate.

Or is it something wrong with the page's tagging or code? If so, what's wrong with it?

(2)
I have been trying to exclude archive pages from search engines; the post's entire content is reproduced there and Google doesn't like duplication. I do have lt;meta name="googlebot" content="noindex,noarchive,follow,noodp" /> in the archive headers, but I had also tried to exclude it via robots.txt.

Unfortunately, my attempt at doing so ended up excluding a good handful of sites it shouldn't've. My attempt was:
Allow: /200*/*/*/*/
Disallow: /200

The idea was to allow URLs in this format — http://www.[sitename].com/2008/09/11/blog-post — but to disallow all other posts that began with 200 — which would cover all the archive pages.

Can I just invert the two (put the disallow before the allow) to fix that? Or is there another way to do it? This is my site's robots.txt file.

(3)
I'm told that Googlebot could not find about 18 pages that were mentioned "either in your Sitemap or by following links from other pages during a discovery crawl." 7 of them are quirks or links I had to fix, but 11 of them were in this format:

http://www.[sitename].com/2004/10/25/blogger-1025-0648-pm/function.fsockopen

I have absolutely no idea what's causing this. Is it something on my end? These "fsockopen" listings are not in my sitemap (I double-checked). I'm really not even sure where to begin researching this one. I do have this in my htaccess file, if it's a possible cause:

AddType application/x-httpd-php5 .php
AddHandler application/x-httpd-php5 .php

Maybe I have been drinking...

Large Marge — Fri, 02 May 2008 22:39:17 -0800

What happened to that giant Michael Jackson Robot that was being built to shoot lasers at planes in the desert near Las Vegas. I haven't heard about that recently and I really want that to happen- any new info, o mighty hivemindius?

Robot flea circus

Krrrlson — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 10:16:10 -0800

Who first came up with the concept of lots of small (though not necessarily nanoscale) robots performing useful tasks collectively? I know Feynman is credited with introducing the concept of nanotechnology, but he was not really emphasizing robotics, while terms like "swarm robotics" are relatively new. Surely these ideas have appeared somewhere before (probably in science fiction)?

Help me find the title to this novel?

bradth27 — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 11:40:25 -0800

A novel about a computer that attempts to create art? Help me identify this sci-fi book. I'm a librarian, but sci-fi is not my genre... and this one has stumped me. A patron needs to know the name of a story/novel that he read as a kid. The novel involved a computer that became self-aware - after the earth was no longer inhabited by humans. He attempts to creat a work of art, and only comes up with a cube. So then he copies another work of art from his database - an old lady? And he finally leaves in frustration, without noticing that he has created a statue of an old lady crying over the cube... which, in itself, the author argues, is a work of art.

Anyone?

How do I make a robot skeleton?

markovich — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 09:17:35 -0800

I'm trying to build a robot and I need some help creating the support that all the motors and what not are going to rest on. Also, any other tips on mechanical engineering for this electronics guy would be very helpful. I'm building a robot head which is basically a round ball sitting on a platform. The ball has to spin circularly, but also tip up and down. I'm a digital circuit fellow, so I'm fine with all that part, but I have very little idea how to deal with the mechanical portion of the robot.

I'm thinking to buy a plastic globe and mount all the machinery I will need inside. The problem there is that all my servo motors and so on have to be inside this plastic ball. For that, I will need to keep them in position using some type of framing system.

I'm thinking wood, because it's basically the only material I know how to cut and form. Is there anything better than that?

I also thought of using something like the old erector style screw on metal rods, but those do not seem to be created anymore. I have very little idea about mechanics, so I'd really appreciate any helpful tips in this direction.

Lego mindstorms or any other prefab kit is not an option because I have a particular design in mind that will not fit into any predefined mould. I need the freedom to basically create the skeleton myself with minimal hassle.

Thanks!

Please help me learn how to build my robot

Your Time Machine Sucks — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 03:07:38 -0800

Robotics question: simple and high-payoff project, don't have the time/leet skillz/rationale to jump in the deep end of the pool (i.e. academic smartypantses building attack vehicles), don't want to spend the money on/deal with the physical bulk of the shallow end (Mindstorms et al). What is in the middle? Can you recommend sites/communities where I can go and get smart about basic robotics and look at some beginner projects that don't include a multi-hundred-dollar investment in legos, or, alternately, access to the campus machine shop? I have googled but I feel like I keep ending up at these two outcomes and thought it might be time to see if I could get some human guidance. My robot is going to be an eye and a three-position switch which a script decides what position to put in based on the info seen by the eye. Pretty much the bare minimum which qualifies as robotics.

My non-leet applicable skills are soldering, enjoyment of linux and a willingness to compile OSS, any c-like scripting, well-stocked real-life toolbox, ability to read. I have made my own circuit boards in the past with decidedly mixed results, and I am willing to continue that proud tradition. I am secretly hoping that I can control my little friend using busybox linux since I have a tiny device already running it (thank you dd-wrt), but I guess we'll see about that.

Thank you!

Looking for a wind up robot

studentbaker — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 11:45:05 -0800

Is there a specific name for the plastic toy robots that look like this? Bonus points for telling me where I can find them in Atlanta, GA.

That one day, robots shall call out from the mountain tops!

markovich — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 01:18:23 -0800

I have a dream! A dream of a robot laboratory. What steps can I take towards one day achieving my dream? I'm a good programmer, finishing up my study in applied robotics. I'll easily get a job working in my area. But long term, let's say in the next 15 years, there's something I want to do.

I want to own a airplane hanger engineer factory, with a bunch of engineers working on experimental and practical robots. In the middle will be the showcase robot, large, permanently half complete and where all advances in speech recognition and AV processing can be tested.

I have never wanted to do anything else but build robots. I like the machinery, I like the AI and I'm technically savvy enough to do this stuff.

The question is - how do I progress from an employee into starting a business like that? Considering that I have 15 years to plan this out from an idea into reality, and considering the capital intensive nature of this dream, what is a practical way to go about making sure this translates into reality in the future?

Sex with Robots?

chinese_fashion — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 19:10:34 -0800

What to ask David Levy, author of Love & Sex With Robots? I am doing an e-mail interview with David Levy, the author of the new book "Love + Sex With Robots." He's an accomplished AI researcher who asserts that in the future, people will use highly developed robots as sophisticated sex toys, therapeutic partners, and may in fact fall in love and marry these remarkable machines.

I'd like to ask him things that haven't been asked of him before, and he's had a little bit of press already in Wired, New Scientist, the New York Times and more. But I'd like to do something newer, a little less direct. Do you have suggestions for this piece, or questions you'd like to ask a man who has probably spent WAY more time thinking about actual sex machines than the rest of us?

Thanks in advance ...

What's the name of the piece of music at 12:29 in TempBot?

lonemantis — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 20:06:57 -0800

What is the piece of music used at 12:29 in the Neill Blomkamp short "Tempbot," at around 12:29? (link to the short movie within) It's a melancholic piece for strings... I know I have heard it in a mainstream feature film, but I can't for the life of me remember what film it was in.

It's not Steve Reich, it's not Philip Glass (as far as I am familiar). I have written to TenMusic (the providers of the original music for the short, but of course, no reply). I sincerely hope someone can help. Thank you.

Since the MeFi link to Tempbot is dead, here's a direct link to the movie on the web: Tembot (mov) The piece of music is at 12:29, if your player doesn't have elapsed time, fast forward to when you see the sign in the office "COFFEE 50¢ per cup..."

Here's the previous metafilter post containing Blomkamp's TempBot and others: Do Androids Dream of Light Clerical Duty

Upgrade parts for humans

V-Turn — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 06:49:19 -0800

A few years ago I stumbled on a website that proposed (very likely fake) upgradeable human parts for sale : added memory, bionic eyes, legs, etc. I can't recall this website and can't find it on Google, does that ring a bell to anybody?

A game where you write software to solve problems...?

ostranenie — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 23:22:06 -0800

What was this fascinating shareware video game? It involved writing LOGO or BASIC-like code to guide a ladybug on a tree branch past obstacles to a goal. About 7-8 years ago I was showed an interesting game by a friend of mine that involved writing code for a ladybug "robot" to guide it to a destination. It was something like The Incredible Machine, but instead of placing objects you'd write some script commands, then hit a "play" button to run your code and see if your ladybug got to the goal. If you screwed it up, your bug would fall off the branch or crash into the obstacle and you'd have to start over. There were a few (2? 3?) levels available in the "demo" version but the game was available online for purchase. Your bug had sensors of some kind that you could 'test' (like in C Robots) and turn or stop based on if there was something detected by the sensors.

At first I thought the game was called "Brainbug" but apparently that's just the name of a techno music band..I think it may have been called something similar.

I'm also very interested in any other games of this type as well where you have to write software (in a proprietary language or a well-known language like C) to solve a series of preexisting problems. Thanks!

What would Steve Austin have listened to?

spaceman_spiff — Tue, 01 May 2007 11:43:16 -0800

Where can I find music with a positive perspective on robots, cyborgs, and the like? Robots, cyborgs, and transhumanistic themes in pop culture tend to be negative - robots taking the working man's job, cyborgs without emotion, trans/post humanism as stealing, well, our humanity.

I'm looking for songs that take the opposite perspective - that this sort of change is (or can be) positive. Where are the songs written from the cyborg's perspective? Transhumanistic music? Music about personal augmentation? Where are the songs that get you excited about the future?

Can Robots Use Chopsticks?

qbxk — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 11:09:25 -0800

Can robots use chopsticks? Over lunch, I wondered if we've yet programmed a robot to use chopsticks. Could this be an Iron Turing Test?

Use of chopsticks on any object are acceptable, images or movies are preferred. Bonus points for anthropomorphic robots captured in the act of "eating".

robo-tourism

logicpunk — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 08:40:17 -0800

I'm thinking about taking some time off between jobs to travel around the U.S., and I'd like to see some robots. I've been working in robotics/machine learning as a grad student (and now postdoc) for the last 5+ years, and I'm a little burned out on the field. I always get a kick out of telling people what I do because almost everybody is immediately enthusiastic about robots, and it's fun to talk about without all the academic baggage. So what I'd like to do, as part of my get-re-excited-about-robots initiative, is to go around the country and talk to people who are building interesting robots for the fun of it.

I'm aware of most of the super-serious robot researchers in the country, which I'm not so interested in seeing. I'm more interested in the garage hobbyist who came up with something neat, or moxie-ridden high schoolers. Things of that sort. Also welcome is information about robot displays, events, museums, etc.

Also, since I'd like to see a bit more of the U.S. at the same time, anything not on the east or west coasts would be a plus.