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HUMAN BRAIN PROJECT OF EUROPE

ROBOTIC MAGAZINE IS NOW DIGITAL TOO !!! WELCOME TO OUR FIRST ISSUE !!!

A GAME CHANGER IN SURVEILLANCE,

VIDEOS, GAMING AND DEFENSE:

DRAGONFLY ROBOT

ROBOTIC BAT WING ROBONAUT 2 3D PRINTED ROBOT IMPROVING IBM WATSON

UPCOMING MAJOR EVENTS

DARPA ROBOTICS CHALLENGE

DIEGO-SAN: INFANT ROBOT

SPRING 2013

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REAL

ANDROIDS

ARE

COMING

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Welcome to first edition of

our digital and print version

Robotic Magazine Robokingdom LLC

Inside this issue

European Human Brain Project ... 3

Dragonfly Robot .......................... 4

Measuring Temperature with Arduino ....................................... 5

Robotic Bat Wings ....................... 6

Darpa Robotics Challenge ........... 7

Upcoming Robot Events .............. 8

Diego San—The infant Robot ...... 9

Contact information:

For general inquiries, please contact:

editor@roboticmagazine.com

From the Editor

W hen we started Roboticmagazine.com in 2008, we knew that our

passion for robotics and our determination for success would

make us one of the most visited websites in the world about robots. We have

achieved that goal long ago. Now we are happy to meet you here, with the first

edition of our digital and print medium.

In Robotic Magazine, we cover all areas of robotics, all robot types, user made

robots and robotics events too. Now that we are on digital, we will have our

selected news topics available to you, at no charge, at even greater depth.

Yes, our digital version is also completely free of charge. We only rely on our

supporters in order to continue bringing you the best news in Robotics.

Happy to see you here and enjoy your visit….

Topics we cover in this issue In this issue, we have complied selected news from previous months and added

some more details, in order to cover them at greater depth. The first topic we

have is the Human Brain Project of Europe. It is an ambitions, multi year project

that involves hundreds of scientists in Europe, which aims to uncover secrets of

Human Brain. Then we have the Dragonfly Robot, which is a project funded by

US military and aims to be a game changer in Surveillance, as well as having

many domestic uses. As we will always do, we will talk about some of the most

important upcoming robotics events in the following months. We also have a

user section, where we will try to connect with our robot hobbyist readers, by

providing them useful information with a how-to section. The other news topics

you can find in this issue are, Robotic Bat Wings, Darpa Robotics Challenge, The

infant Robot Diego-San.

Roboticmagazine is owned and operated by Robokingdom LLC of NJ, USA.

Spring 2013 Volume 1, Issue 1

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A major study for Artificial Intelligence and NeuroScience,

called the Human Brain Project (HBP), which aims to replicate

the human brain on a supercomputer, has recently been approved

in the EU. 87 universities and hundreds of scientists from leading

research institutions across Europe will participate in the study, but the

project has some important Japanese and North American partners, as well.

The project will continue for 10 years, from 2013 to 2023, and will cost

around 1.2 billion Euros.

The human brain consists of 100 billion neurons, which are connected by

hundreds of thousands of billions synapses. This makes the human brain the

most complex machine we know of. The project brings the fields of

Neuroscience, Medicine, and Electronics together, in order to tackle

challenges in each field for artificially replicating the brain, as well as treating

brain diseases. It will, for example, enable us to understand the DNA

mutations that cause many brain diseases, and even to test drugs without

using animals on something that approaches the human brain . The project

may have an enormous impact in the field of computing. It may also provide

valuable insights into the treatment of brain related diseases, which account

for a very high percentage of diseases overall, more than cancer, heart

diseases, and diabetes combined.

The project is coordinated by Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

(EPFL) in Switzerland. Researchers will examine the neurons and the data collected from all institutions. They will then be

consolidated by high powered computers using data mining techniques. Upon deciding which parameters may be brought

into the simulation, they, in turn, will be integrated into building a massive supercomputer that will try to replicate the

human brain. The ultimate goal is to allow neuroscientists to follow the clues taken from genes, molecules, and cells to

better understand human cognition and behavior.

Simulating the human brain requires supercomputers that are 1,000 times more powerful than those oftoday, which, in turn,

means that the project will also stimulate the development of new supercomputers. By understanding how cognition works,

it will aid in designing new electronic devices called neuromorphic computers. This will combine the power of

microelectronics with the cognitive power of the human brain.

The human brain project aims to put Europe at the forefront of neuroscience. Another major study recently approved by the

U.S. is also on the way, which we had posted recently here.

Source and official site: http://www.humanbrainproject.eu/

Official press release can be found here.

Caption of the image at cover page: Zoom into a 3D reconstruction of a human brain based on Polarized Light Imaging,

Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany. © FZJ

A 3D model of a neuron: reconstructed from

lab data. The “sprouting” protuberances are

“pre-synaptic terminals” – the points where the

neuron will form connections (“synapses”) with

HUMAN BRAIN PROJECT OF EUROPE

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It would be considered a

game changer if you had

a flying robot that could

relay information to you

from anywhere you want,

and at the same time

being undetectable by

people, because it is

identical to a natural

insect. Well, now you

have it. The dragonfly

robot, developed by

TechJect Inc., is a flying

robot insect which can fly

like a bird or an airplane or hover in the air like an insect. It weighs less than 1 ounce (28 grams) and continues

to be smaller and lighter in weight with each upgrade. The research began with a $1,000,000 grant from the

U.S. Air Force. The robot is being developed by Georgia Tech. University, but many professors throughout

universities around the world are also contributing to the effort.

Dragonfly robot is also highly modular and this enables it to be customized for different purposes, ranging

between a hovering and a gliding version. For instance, for a gaming application, you could choose a faster

version or for an outdoor photography application, you could choose a version which has more endurance. The

robot can be controlled in many ways, including wifi or gps connection or by phone or ipad. The robot has 20

environmental sensors, cameras, and GPS sensors and can be used to track literally anything indoors or

outdoors. For instance, it can be used inside for home security and report anything from inside or outside a

house. It can be used to track an athlete or a skier outdoors. Another obvious use would be in the military or on

a police force. The use of these robots would also eliminate the necessity of a helicopter to track things from the

air, in most cases (well, except if you are shooting a Hollywood movie and need a very high resolution and zoom

camera). A helicopter is literally thousands of times more costly to operate, in comparison to operating this

small insect robot.

If you like to order one of these, you will need to wait until July of this year, as the development of the robot is

still being finalized. Different ordering options are available depending on your planned use. You can visit the

official sites at:

http://www.indiegogo.com/robotdragonfly

http://www.techject.com/dragonfly.html

Photo Credit (Including the dragonfly photo on coverpage): Techjet Inc.

DRAGONFLY ROBOT

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Measuring temperature with LM35 and Arduino

Hello friends,

In this application, we will make a simple temperature

measurement by using LM35 and Ardino UNO and then view

these measured values on Arduino's Serial Monitor Section. But

first, lets get to know LM35 heat sensor a little bit:

1-LM35 heat sensor measures 1 deg. C heat at every 10mV

2-The measurements are linear

3-LM35 has three connection pins. These are positive, negative

and signal pins (first pin is positive, the middle pin is the signal

pin, and the third one is the negative). The positive and

negative pins are fed directly through Arduino. The signal pin

is connected to the analog 0 byte of Arduino UNO.

The calculation part is actually very easy, as you will see

shortly. The values that we obtain from Arduino are between 0

and 1024 and the maximum voltage value is 5 volts. When the

analog value equals 1024, we can understand that our voltage

value is 5 volts, 5000Mv, in other words our heat value is at its

maximum. This is the way we follow in order to measure the

heat.

If the 1024 analog value is 5 volt, (5000 mV), then the value

we read from analog 0. byte is how many mV? Here after

finding the voltage value as mV, then we make a simple

proportion.

We know that our LM35 heat sensor makes 1 Celcius

measurement at every 10mV, therefore we can calculate the

new temperature value based on the voltage we read.

If you like, instead of viewing the temperature values on the

monitor, you can use a 2x16 LCD screen. In the future posts,

we will also teach the same application using LCD.

Below see the codes that were used.

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A robotic bat wing has been developed by the researchers of Brown University. Thanks to their research, a great deal

of information was gathered about the flight of bats. Bat flight is quite different from that of birds and insects. The

role of bows, the stretchiness of a bat’s skin, the muscular and skeletal structure, and the moves are rediscovered in

this research. There is a broad archive based on the data gathered during experiments in wind tunnels and

outdoors. Test results showed that the robot wing could overcome retarding force and carry the mass of the test

model. So effectively, it was successful in replicating a bat’s flight.

With this knowledge, designing smaller aircrafts will be possible, for instance. The project was funded by the

United States Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the National Science Foundation for this reason.

It is basically a physical model of a bat’s wing with its

shape and movement. The wing is attached to a force

transducer. This force transducer can store the

information about the aerodynamics data during a

flight in a wind tunnel. Looking at the aerodynamic

forces, researchers assess the energy that the wing

requires to move.

The robot is 8″ long. There are three servos and seven

joints on the wing. The bones are made of plastic and

was made with a 3D printer. The skin is a silicone

elastomeric material.

Although it is not possible to imitate a bat’s wing

exactly, it is not necessary either as the current model

is sufficient with its features. Experimenting with

different materials for the wing is considered as the

next objective by the researchers. More information is available about the research in the journalBioinspiration and

Biomimetics. Obviously, there will be more papers about the experiment on the wing soon.

Photo Credit: Breuer and Swartz Labs / Brown University

ROBOTIC BAT WINGS

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U nder its Maximum Mobility and Manipulation (M3) program, DARPA is trying to achieve advances in

robotics that will enable better design and fabrication of robots, which will have enhanced mobility

and manipulation in natural, undefined environments. Another goal is improve the capabilities of

robots by better design tools, fabrication methods and control algorithms.

More details about the program can be found here.

By its DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) program, all these goals will be put to test. This is a competition where

robotics companies will compete to come up with the best robot control system, in order to satisfy the requirements

set by DARPA, for a better robot that can respond to disasters, can be manipulated by untrained people, can work

in undefined natural environments with ease, and

at the same time manipulating objects and even use

other tools around them while performing their

tasks.

The timeline for the competition started in October

2012 and will continue for 27 months. The first

track of the robotics challenge, track A, is a virtual

competition, will take place in June of 2013. Later

will follow tracks B and C in December 2013 and

December 2014 respectively.

Currently, Government Furnished Equipment

(GFE) is being developed by Boston Dynamics Inc.

and the platform will be provided to qualifying

competitors for later phases of the competition.

(Tracks B and C). This GFE is basically a hardware,

in other words the various components of the body

of the robot, the torso, arms, legs and the head,

which will be given to qualified competitors who do

not have enough capabilities to come up with their

own hardware. In addition, the teams will have

access to an open source robotics simulator

furnished by the government, in order to test the

robots. The hope here is that the availability of an

affordable and open source virtual test

environment will contribute to the development of

robotics technology by allowing the new hardware

and software designs to be evaluated without the

need for physical prototypes. Here is the GFE that

is currently being built by Boston Dynamics, which

was chosen among the other proposed humanoid platforms.

DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) program

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UPCOMING ROBOTICS EVENTS

ICRA 2013—International Conference on Robotics and Automation

International Conference on Robotics

and Automation is an annual,

worldwide known robotics event,

sponsored by the IEEE Robotics &

Automation Society. IEEE (Institute

of Electrical and Electronics

Engineers, Inc.) is a non-profit,

technical professional association of

more than 377,000 individual members in 150 countries. ICRA

2013 edition will take place for five days, from May 6th to

May 10th in Karlsruhe, Germany, the city in which Heinrich

Hertz discovered the electromagnetic waves in 1888 and which

gave birth in 1844 to Karl Benz – the inventor of the gasoline-

powered automobile. The event will include two days of

workshops/tutorials, three days of technical presentations with

six plenary talks, exhibitions, technical and non-technical

tours, attractive social events, as well as RA society meetings.

http://www.icra2013.org/

Logo Credit: icra2013.org

Robocup 2013

Robocup is one of the

most famous robotic

soccer competitions

around the world. The

event has the goal of

making a soccer

playing robot team

which will be able to

beat human world

champion by the year 2050. The use of soccer as the means to

improve technology helps many people get interested in the

subject. The event hosts a Soccer League, which is divided into

Small Size, Middle Size and Humanoid events. This year's

Tournament will take place in Eindhoven, Holland, between 26

-30 June 2013, with over 2500 participants.

http://www.robocup2013.org/?lang=en

Logo Credit: robocup.org

AAAI (Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence) 2013

The 27th AAAI

(Association for the

Advancement of

Artificial Intelligence)

Conference will be held

July 14–18, 2013 in

Bellevue, Washington,

USA. The goal of this yearly event is to promote research in

artificial intelligence (AI) and scientific exchange among AI

researchers, practitioners, scientists, and engineers in affiliated

disciplines. It is one of the most widely accepted organizations

in the world in the field of Artificial Intelligence. AAAI-13

will have various technical subjects, student abstracts, poster

sessions, invited speakers, and exhibit programs, all selected

with great scrutiny and strictest review standards. The event

welcomes submissions on mainstream AI topics as well as

novel crosscutting work in related areas.

http://www.aaai.org/Conferences/AAAI/aaai13.php

ICAI'13 - The 2013 International Conference on Artificial Intelligence

One of the most noted conferences on Artificial

Intelligence, ICAI 2013 will take place between

July 22-25 in Las Vegas, Nevada. The Congress is

the largest annual gathering of researchers in

computer science, computer engineering and

applied computing. 2,100 or more attendees from

over 85 countries are anticipated to be there. A

wide variety of subjects will be discussed such as:

Machine Learning,

Expert Systems,

Brain Models / Cognitive Science,

Knowledge Discovery and Problem Solving,

Intelligent Tutoring Systems,

Neural Networks and Applications,

Intelligent Databases,

Emerging Technologies,

Decision Support Systems,

Natural Language Processing, http://www.world-academy-of-science.org/worldcomp13/ws/

conferences/icai13

Logo Credit: World Academy of Science, Worldcomp

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H is name is Diego-san and he is an android infant developed by the Institute for Neural Computation’s

Machine Perception Laboratory, based in the UCSD division of the California Institute for

Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit). Taking a year old baby as a model, the

head was designed by Hanson Robotics which sells a line of expressive robots called Robokind. The

body of Diego-san was designed by the Japanese Kokoro Co. which built the android infant CB2 for Osaka

University beforehand.

The purpose was creating a research platform in order to study

the cognitive development of children while reading and

mimicking facial expressions and how children learn to use their

body and to communicate with others. Dr. Javier Movellan sums

up the objectives in the Japan-based PlasticPals blog: “The

project’s main goal is to try and understand the development of

sensory motor intelligence from a computational point of view. It

brings together researchers in developmental psychology,

machine learning, neuroscience, computer vision and robotics.

Basically we are trying to understand the computational

problems that a baby’s brain faces, when learning to move its own

body and use it to interact with the physical and social worlds.”

Diego-san is designed to learn and develop sensory-motor skills such as reaching, grasping and communicative

skills such as pointing and smiling similar to a year old infant.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=knRyDcnUc4U#!.

With its 4 feet 3 inches (130cm) height and 66 pounds (30kg) weight, Diego-san is obviously bigger than an infant

due to the fact that being small size would have cost much more. It has 44 pneumatic joints altogether while only

its head has 27 parts that enable different facial expressions. The sensors and actuators enable the complexity in

dymamics of human muscles. Thanks to these characteristics, Diego-san is one of the most realistic robots of its

kind. This project is very important considering its potential contribution to computational study of infant

development and the understanding of developmental disorders such as autism and Williams syndrome.

Machine Perception Technologies (MPT) is now looking for undergraduate interns and postgraduate programmers

in expression recognition technology. There will be more information about the research in scientific publications

soon. Furthermore, there will be friends available for Diego-san within a few months such as Roboy.

Diego-san with different facial expressions

Source: UCSDNews PressRelease

Diego San—The infant Robot to study cognitive