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Toddlers entranced by humanoid robot
ALAN DECKER
Technology PLAY NICELY WITH THE NEW KID
ROAD tunnels may have to be redesigned if the hydrogen economy takes off. Cars fuelled by hydrogen have been touted for their potential to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Now Yajue Wu of the University of Sheffield, UK, has built a computer simulation of a hydrogen car crashing inside a tunnel. Unlike gasoline, which pools and ignites on the ground, escaping hydrogen would create a high-velocity “jet flame” stretching upwards for many metres. In a paper to appear in Transportation Research C, Wu found that this 2000 °C flame would seriously damage tunnel ceiling structures and wreck fire sensors and sprinklers. A spokesman for BMW says that in crash tests the fuel tank on its prototype hydrogen car has never been breached.
50 gigabytes. The quantity of “error report” data sent to Microsoft on a typical day by users whose Windows programs have crashed
–If you pat me, do I not giggle?–
Warning over stun-proof suits
SOURCE: THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Hydrogen cars’ tunnel hazard
increased in quality over several months. As well as patting the robot more, the toddlers touched QRIO mostly on the arms and hands, as they do with each other, rather than on the head or legs. They also hugged it more than a similar-looking inanimate robot. For this age group “the amount of touching is a good predictor of how you are doing as a social being”, Movellan says. When QRIO was programmed to dance repetitively, however, the children soon lost interest (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0707769104). The findings will encourage researchers developing robots for use in classrooms or to help autistic children, says Takayuki Kanda of the Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute in Japan.
The “$100 laptop” has ended up costing $188 to make, and sells for $200, including delivery $10 OVERHEADS
$63 LCD, BATTERY, AC ADAPTOR, WI-FI, CAMERA
Fed up with stiff-looking clothes in Second Life? Researchers at the Toshiba Cambridge Research Laboratory in the UK can make a computer model of real clothes. First they video the wearer while shining three different coloured lights onto them from three different angles. From the way the colours are reflected, software calculates the shape and texture of the clothes, and builds a model that could be used to dress an avatar.
$1 ADMINISTRATION
$73 MOTHERBOARD $41 PLASTICS, HINGES AND SCREWS
CLOTHING designed to protect people from stun guns may in fact put them in more danger. Stun weapons such as the Taser shoot barbed darts into a victim, delivering a series of 50,000-volt electrical pulses. Last week inventor Gregory Schultz of Arizona was granted a patent (US 7284280) on jackets, T-shirts and other garments that incorporate
a layer of conductive foil, which dissipates this paralysing charge. Schultz argues that with Tasers now available to the public in the US, police will increasingly come across Taser-equipped criminals and need protective garb. Steve Wright, an expert on non-lethal weapons at Leeds Metropolitan University in the UK, says this will prompt increasingly dangerous Taser use: “People armed with Tasers will now aim at the head – the officer may end up blind.”
GIZMO
CHEAP, BUT NOT THAT CHEAP
SOURCE: ONE LAPTOP PER CHILD
Robots are funky, but they tend to lose our interest pretty quickly. But make one sophisticated enough and toddlers are entertained for months – they even bond with it and treat it like a peer. So found Javier Movellan and colleagues at the University of California, San Diego. They put a humanoid robot called QRIO (pronounced “curio”), developed by Sony, into a classroom of 18 to 24-month-old toddlers. The 60-centimetre-tall robot walks around, waves and giggles when patted on the head. Sensors help him to avoid bumping into people or walls. “We expected that after a few hours the magic was going to fade,” says Movellan. “That’s what has been found with earlier robots.” To his surprise, QRIO won the kids over. In fact, the interactions between the children and the robot gradually
A vibrating body suit created at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab could teach you how to dance or play golf. In a special studio, the movements of a teacher dancing or swinging a club are recorded, then a student wearing the suit has a go. When their movements don’t match the teacher’s, the suit vibrates at key locations around the joints to encourage them to make the correct ones.
“Oh, holy moly – deliverance!” Andrew, a San Francisco-based rail commuter, on how he felt after using a pocket-sized radio-frequency jammer to cut off a fellow passenger’s cellphone conversation. Jammers are illegal in the US, but every month hundreds are ordered from overseas (The New York Times, 4 November)
www.newscientist.com
10 November 2007 | NewScientist | 29
Technology PLAY NICELY WITH THE NEW KID
ROAD tunnels may have to be redesigned if the hydrogen economy takes off. Cars fuelled by hydrogen have been touted for their potential to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Now Yajue Wu of the University of Sheffield, UK, has built a computer simulation of a hydrogen car crashing inside a tunnel. Unlike gasoline, which pools and ignites on the ground, escaping hydrogen would create a high-velocity “jet flame” stretching upwards for many metres. In a paper to appear in Transportation Research C, Wu found that this 2000 °C flame would seriously damage tunnel ceiling structures and wreck fire sensors and sprinklers. A spokesman for BMW says that in crash tests the fuel tank on its prototype hydrogen car has never been breached.
50 gigabytes. The quantity of “error report” data sent to Microsoft on a typical day by users whose Windows programs have crashed
–If you pat me, do I not giggle?–
Warning over stun-proof suits
SOURCE: THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Hydrogen cars’ tunnel hazard
increased in quality over several months. As well as patting the robot more, the toddlers touched QRIO mostly on the arms and hands, as they do with each other, rather than on the head or legs. They also hugged it more than a similar-looking inanimate robot. For this age group “the amount of touching is a good predictor of how you are doing as a social being”, Movellan says. When QRIO was programmed to dance repetitively, however, the children soon lost interest (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0707769104). The findings will encourage researchers developing robots for use in classrooms or to help autistic children, says Takayuki Kanda of the Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute in Japan.
The “$100 laptop” has ended up costing $188 to make, and sells for $200, including delivery $10 OVERHEADS
$63 LCD, BATTERY, AC ADAPTOR, WI-FI, CAMERA
Fed up with stiff-looking clothes in Second Life? Researchers at the Toshiba Cambridge Research Laboratory in the UK can make a computer model of real clothes. First they video the wearer while shining three different coloured lights onto them from three different angles. From the way the colours are reflected, software calculates the shape and texture of the clothes, and builds a model that could be used to dress an avatar.
$1 ADMINISTRATION
$73 MOTHERBOARD $41 PLASTICS, HINGES AND SCREWS
CLOTHING designed to protect people from stun guns may in fact put them in more danger. Stun weapons such as the Taser shoot barbed darts into a victim, delivering a series of 50,000-volt electrical pulses. Last week inventor Gregory Schultz of Arizona was granted a patent (US 7284280) on jackets, T-shirts and other garments that incorporate
a layer of conductive foil, which dissipates this paralysing charge. Schultz argues that with Tasers now available to the public in the US, police will increasingly come across Taser-equipped criminals and need protective garb. Steve Wright, an expert on non-lethal weapons at Leeds Metropolitan University in the UK, says this will prompt increasingly dangerous Taser use: “People armed with Tasers will now aim at the head – the officer may end up blind.”
GIZMO
CHEAP, BUT NOT THAT CHEAP
SOURCE: ONE LAPTOP PER CHILD
Robots are funky, but they tend to lose our interest pretty quickly. But make one sophisticated enough and toddlers are entertained for months – they even bond with it and treat it like a peer. So found Javier Movellan and colleagues at the University of California, San Diego. They put a humanoid robot called QRIO (pronounced “curio”), developed by Sony, into a classroom of 18 to 24-month-old toddlers. The 60-centimetre-tall robot walks around, waves and giggles when patted on the head. Sensors help him to avoid bumping into people or walls. “We expected that after a few hours the magic was going to fade,” says Movellan. “That’s what has been found with earlier robots.” To his surprise, QRIO won the kids over. In fact, the interactions between the children and the robot gradually
A vibrating body suit created at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab could teach you how to dance or play golf. In a special studio, the movements of a teacher dancing or swinging a club are recorded, then a student wearing the suit has a go. When their movements don’t match the teacher’s, the suit vibrates at key locations around the joints to encourage them to make the correct ones.
“Oh, holy moly – deliverance!” Andrew, a San Francisco-based rail commuter, on how he felt after using a pocket-sized radio-frequency jammer to cut off a fellow passenger’s cellphone conversation. Jammers are illegal in the US, but every month hundreds are ordered from overseas (The New York Times, 4 November)
www.newscientist.com
10 November 2007 | NewScientist | 29