Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Inside Google

Wired has an excellent article on how the Google search engine works and it's continued development. 

What strikes me about this article is how many times the core Google search engine has been revised - 5 major changes to the fundamental search architecture over the last 13 years.  Also, the details about how Google handles "bi-gram breakage" are awesome.  This kind of processing requires an very high level of 'understanding' of the human world, and Google is doing it extremely efficiently. This is the kind of system that is going to wake up one morning and take over it's own development.

Just like Mombot used to Make

 A New York Times article about food preparation and snack delivery robots.
 BreakfastBot is ready to use his tiny, tiny hands to scramble your eggs.

Monday, February 22, 2010

Made by Robot Hands

A small stack of factory robot videos from the Singularity Hub.  My favorite is the extremely awesome FANUC robot with a ridiculous array of tools:

Thursday, February 18, 2010

MARV the Robotic Vibraphone




Meet MARV!

Build your own hub motor

From Hackaday: Build your Own Hub Motor

Artificial Flight from a Birds' Eye View

Artificial Flight and Other Myths (a reasoned examination of A.F. by top birds)

An essay mocking Strong AI detractors, from Dresden Codak (whose comic "Hob" is fantastic):

Gliding simplifies our lives, and no bird (including myself) would discourage advancing this field, but it is a far cry from synthesizing the millions of cells within the wing alone to achieve Strong A.F. Strong A.F., as it is defined by researchers, is any artificial flier that is capable of passing the Tern Test (developed by A.F. pioneer Alan Tern), which involves convincing an average bird that the artificial flier is in fact a flying bird.
 Alan Tern, The Great Orator.

Mechanical Wooden Clocks

Clayton Boyer designs sweet wooden clocks, and he also sells plans so that you can build your own.

Atlas V Shock Wave





A video of an Atlas V rocket launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida breaking the sound barrier.

AWESOME.

Welcome!

Welcome to the new UAT Robotics and Embedded Systems blog!  My name is Ryan Meuth, and I am currently a professor at UAT in the Robotics and Embedded Systems program.  I plan to use this space to post student projects and assignments, my own projects, and any sweet robotics news that I come across.