Email : press@gostai.com

About Gostai: http://www.gostai.com

Twitter: http://twitter.com/gostai

The walking robot unveiled for the first time

Myon is an 1.25 meters humanoid robot, whose body parts can be removed and reattached without loosing full functionality. It was revealed to the public for the first time at the International Design Festival DMY and the Institute for Advanced Study Berlin (Wissenschaftskolleg Berlin) and it caused an extremely high interest.

The robot is the final product of a collaboration between Bayer MaterialScience AG and the Neurorobotics Research Laboratory (NRL) at the Humboldt University in Berlin, Cologne-based design studio Frackenpohl Poulheim. The outer shell that gives the human-like appearance to the robot is a polycarbonate called Makrolon® from Bayer MaterialScience, that also protects the electronics inside it.

The eight-year-old-sized robot is meant to interact with humans, “that’s why we wanted Myon to project a friendly, positive persona even though it’s obviously not actually a person,” said André Poulheim, one of Myon’s designers, to BayNews. “Otherwise robots can seem a bit threatening if, say, their shoulders are made too broad.”

The European research project ALEAR (Artificial Language Evolution on Autonomous Robots), carried out by Dr. Manfred Hild and his team at the NRL studies how autonomous robots move. Walking, for example, is a very complex process that depends on the body’s structure, and so the six autonomous body parts of the robot are a major advantage, as movements can be developed individually and lead to an overall behavior.

Dr. Lorenz Kramer, the project’s supervisor and responsible for the Robotics section at Bayer MaterialScience explained that “the robot’s esthetic design and degree of mobility presented particular challenges when it came to selecting materials. The material must not impede the overall functionality and it must be suitable for the creation of specific shapes.” After tests, the glass-fiber reinforced polycarbonate Makrolon® 9425 and the transparent Makrolon® ET3113 were the materials chosen for Myon.

This robot is just an example of the technological advancements nowadays. Scientists are working on several robots can could, in a near future, help the elders in care homes and hospital, as it is currently happening in Japan.

Myon will also be presented at K 2010 in Düsseldorf from October 27 to November 3, 2010.

via Myon the Friendly Humanoid Robot – The walking robot unveiled for the first time – Softpedia.

By David Gelernter

What does it mean to think?  Can machines think, or only humans? These questions have obsessed computer science since the 1950s, and grow more important every day as the internet canopy closes over our heads, leaving us in the pregnant half-light of the cybersphere.  Taken as a whole, the net is a startlingly complex collection of computers like brain cells that are densely interconnected as brain cells are.  And the net grows at many million points simultaneously, like a living or more-than-living? organism.  Its only natural to wonder whether the internet will one day start to think for itself.Or is it thinking already?

Read more: Edge: DREAM-LOGIC, THE INTERNET AND ARTIFICIAL THOUGHTBy David Gelernter.

You may be able to buy gold from vending machines, but you certainly cant have it for dessert. If you have a sweet tooth, look no further than the MooBella Ice Creamery machine that instantly aerates, flavors and flash freezes ice cream. You pick either the premium or light version, select one of the 12 different flavors and any one of the three mix-in ingredients using the touchscreen. By the time youve read up to here, your custom-made treat is ready for you, all in under 40 seconds. According to the manufacturer, the ingredients for the instant ice cream maker are shipped in aseptic packaging which requires no refrigeration, making it more cost-effective to transport and less damaging to the environment. These machines are currently built for high-volume purposes such as college campuses and hospitals in the US, and are able to dispense 200 servings before they need to be refilled. Which means you wont be able to get one of these for your home. The cost of each serving is about US$2.85. The modular design of the machines makes it easy for maintenance and the company expects to roll out credit/debit/card payment methods later this year. It also plans to further expand on the technology to spit out yogurts, sorbets or even cosmetics in the future.

via Ice cream on demand in 40 seconds – Lifestyle – Crave – CNET Asia.

After the “underwear bomber” incident on Christmas Day, President Obama accelerated the deployment of new airport scanners that look beneath travelers' clothes to spot any weapons or explosives.

Fifty-two of these state-of-the-art machines are already scanning passengers at 23 U.S. airports. By the end of 2011, there will be 1,000 machines and two out of every three passengers will be asked to step into one of the new machines for a six-second head-to-toe scan before boarding.

About half of these machines will be so-called X-ray back-scatter scanners. They use low-energy X-rays to peer beneath passengers' clothing. That has some scientists worried.

via Scientists Question Safety Of New Airport Scanners : NPR.

Jake Carroll finds the depth behind the 3D screen, and explains how it all works.

Movies have a pretty powerful effect on popular culture. It’s no surprise that the movie industry also has a tendency to drive technological innovation and create consumer demand. What we see in today’s movies ends up feeding into the technology that we have sitting in our GPUs at Christmas time the next year. It probably isn’t a coincidence that this year, the movie industry pushed 3D cinema back into our line of sight, and as a result, a torrent of 3D display panel technology, consumer video card driver enhancements and strange looking eyewear has popped up. This month, we’re all about the third dimension. Hopefully it’ll jump off the page at you.

via 3D Cinema – Entertainment – Geek – Features – Atomic MPC.

Contact lenses have traditionally been engineered to help the visually impaired see the world around them more clearly–to attain perfect, or close to perfect, vision.

But why not super vision? Why not a lens that could superimpose holographic driving control panels over a pilot’s otherwise normal view? Enable Web surfing on the go? Provide a virtual world for gamers that covers their entire field of vision instead of just a plasma screen?

Engineers at the University of Washington have been asking just that as they manufacture first-gen versions of the bionic eye in the form of contact lenses with an imprinted electronic circuit and lights.

(read more @ cnet News & IEEE Spectrum)

A staple of backyard barbecues and summer time snacks, watermelon is also a promising new source of renewable energy.

According to a new study, leftover watermelons from farms’ harvests could be converted into up to 9.4 million liters (2.5 million gallons) of clean, renewable ethanol fuel every year destined for your car, truck, or airplane’s gas tank.

(read more @ Discovery News – btw, the shoes in the picture are a special 2009 Spring edition by Vans and unfortunately they’re no longer available)

Very impressive indeed.

(read more @ Hacked Gadgets)