Wired For War

Just, last night, started reading, 'Wired for War" which is about robots being deployed in the battlefield. So many questions come to mind as some of these products have "kill" capability. They cannot really identify friend and foe at this stage. A microcontroller sends a logic True output on a certain pin. The pin drives a solenoid which pulls the trigger on a 50 cal sniper rifle. The processor can't know it may be doing a bad thing, nor can the solenoid. Do we need to start thinking about this?

Robot Controllers

Robot controllers are microprocessor, small computers, that are used to create small robots. At this point there hundreds on the market. Some are very simple and cheap while others are complex and expensive. Some are a mix of both.
The big players in the field are Lego and Vex. Both companies produce kits that are relatively inexpensive, fairly easy to program, have very good curriculums for teaching and are accessible to school systems and hobbyists. The Lego Mindstorms NXT has several processors inside but the main processor is a 32-bit ARM computer. The language that comes with the kit is called NXT-G and is a graphical language that uses icons to create the program. It is easy to teach younger kids how to use the language in a very short time. For the more sophisticated user, there are quite a few options. RobotC was developed at Carnegie Mellon University and is a nice C-like language that teaches the basics of C coding while being easy to use. Cost is pretty minimal for individuals and educational institutions. At this time, it is $30 bucks for a single license and $265 for a 12-seat classroom. I was able to use it to do a very short class with high school students and have them program the robot to make turns around a tape maze in less than an hour's time.
Here is the link to Lego.
RobotC link.

Robots in Japan

It seems to be a given that the Japanese are ahead of us in robotics. There are bright spots here though. The people at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, are doing great things with robots and trying to share their knowledge and experience with others.
Check this giant robot this giant 'bot being built in Japan. I don't think it does much but is sure is cool looking.

This will be a link where you can learn about Robots, Engineering and new technologies. There will be some tutorials, how-to's and links to other sites that have cool and neat tech things. There will be ideas that you might be able to develop to use technology to improve the world that we live in.