I just returned from the Computer and Robot Vision conference in Kelowna, BC. This meeting was, as usual, held in conjunction with two other conferences: Artificial Intelligence, and Graphics Interface. As always, the refereed submissions are complemented by about nine invited talks (three from each conference). This year Jim Little from UBC gave an interesting talk on the Semantic Robot Vision competition over the last few years, and some of the issues involved in building a mobile vision system that can drive around and identify objects.
Junaed Sattar from our lab won an award for the best robotics paper that I co-authored with him. This award was based on the scores from the reviewers. The paper discusses the computer system design and software architecture for our Aqua vehicle family which allows the robot to track and interact with a human operator.
The conference took place at the Okanagen campus of the University of British Columbia (where the general chair, Yves Lucet, is a professor). The campus is quite impressive with a slew of recently-constructed buildings, and a hist of buildings currently under construction. Getting to an off-campus restaurant, however, is a major undertaking.
2009
2009
No country on earth likes robots more than the Japanese, and they're also in contention for the most technically adept. Thus, what better place to see extreme household robotics than at the International Food Machinery and Technology Exhibition in Tokyo?
There was also a robot with an end effector made to look like a human hand. It moved pre-prepared sushi around on a plate and has been mis-reported (e.g. by engadget) as a sushi-chef robot. See the picture here [reuters].
When in Japan I have had sushi that was made from shrimp that was living just minutes before it hit my plate. I doubt a robot device has anywhere near the dexterity and sensing ability required to really compete with a human sushi chef in the foreseeable future, but pancakes? No problem!
In contrast, the Okonomiyaki robot from Toyo Riki Co. actually mixes pancake batter, pours it and flips the pancake. I don't have any idea how accurate or reliable it is, but is does seem to actually do the whole job (although not the subsequent cleanup, which is probably the part you would most like to offload).
You can read a little more about it at this web page [Japan Times Online]. As with many such demos, you need to be very wary about how smart the system really is and how much is just rote playback. I don't know the answer in this case.
Also, from EPFL, this robot uses rote playback to perform cooking-like tasks. I think it's using a sophisticated head, but the music downplays the seriousness of the work.
2009
What's our robot up to soon? It's going North, way up North to be used in a Mars analogue site where it will be used in Astrobiology experiments. More on This later.
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