A team of four Seaford children is set to compete in a Lego robotics world competition in St. Louis after winning the Long Island championships Sunday.

The Seaford Sea Lions will advance to the First Lego League Championship in April after beating out 39 other teams of children. The young competitors, ages 8 through 14, had to build motorized Lego robots that complete skill tasks, and propose ways to improve interactions between humans and animals.

Im shaking Im so excited, said Ashley Rice, a 10-year-old winner.

About 400 children tested their robots skills in the 13th annual competition held at Longwood High School in Middle Island and themed, animal allies.

The Sea Lions Ashley, Jivan Ramesh, 8, Sarah Baker, 14, and her brother Sammy Baker, 12 built a functional robot, designed a database and website for educating the public about possums, and studied whether education impacts perception of an issue. They presented their research wearing sea lion hats knitted by Sarah and Sammys grandmother.

Other teams studied how to prevent pets from chewing on wires, scare away coyotes, and warn wild animals about approaching humans.

With 15 prize categories, teams were judged not only on their technical skills, but also on their ability to work as a team and show gracious professionalism.

Runners-up from the competition will be selected to participate in the First Lego League World Festival in St. Louis, as well as invitationals at LEGOLAND in San Diego, and at the University of Arkansas.

A team of Jericho children, ages 6 through 9, will also participate in the World Festival after being selected from 69 teams that presented Lego models and research about animals at other events on Saturday and Sunday.

More than 255,000 competitors from more than 80 countries participate in Lego competitions hosted by FIRST, a nonprofit that seeks to get children interested in technology.

Linda Bernard, who coached a team from Buckley Country Day School in Roslyn, said the competition shows kids they can make a difference. Bernards group designed a drone that seeks to divert elephants away from areas with humans in the wild and plans to have her relatives in Malawi and Zimbabwe test the prototype.

The project aspect of it is so important because it gives us a chance to learn about whats going on in the world, said Bernard, head of the Upper School at Buckley.

Other teams also went beyond just doing research by building prototypes and volunteering for organizations that help animals.

Lorie Siegel said her sons team, the Goosebusters, has been talking with Huntington officials about ways to remove goose droppings from town parks and plans to help plant flowers in Heckscher Park.

Its amazing . . . to see them grow and change and become involved in their communities, said Siegel, who coached the team.

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Seaford students advance to Lego robotics world competition - Newsday

The object of the game for the 60 teams of high school students was to pick up stars and cubes and deposit them in their opponents' territory.

And they had to do it with robots they had built themselves.

The students were participating Saturday in the VEX Robotics Competition, a statewide competition held at Dundalk High School and Sollers Point Technical High School. The event aims to expose students to engineering design while teaching them other skills, such as communication, team building and strategic development. Those who got to compete Saturday had won other local competitions.

"It's about engineering design, but it also teaches them many other valuable skills," said Katrina M. Hill, regional support manager for the Mid-Atlantic region of the Robotics, Education & Competition Foundation, which hosted the competition.

The teams spent the day playing rounds of a game called Starstruck. The highest- scoring teams advanced to the next rounds and then to the finals.

Using remote controls, the students drove robots that they designed, built and programmed over several weeks. They maneuvered their robots to pick up the stars and cubes, which they then dropped over a white fence onto their opponents' side. The more objects they got on the other side, the higher their points. Cubes were worth twice as many points as stars.

The game was designed by VEX Robotics Inc. and students used parts built by the company.

There are rules they have to follow when building their robots. For instance, the students can only use a certain number of batteries or sensors. The robots also have to be a certain size.

Chris Putnam, a Hereford Middle School teacher who helped organize Saturday's competition, said that the students end up building several versions of their robots to get them to do what they want.

"They keep building and testing and rebuilding," he said. "If they make it this far, they've worked hard. A lot of kids don't have the patience to keep it up."

The teams wore matching shirts emblazoned with names like Rebel Robotics. One team wore white dress shirts and bow ties.

The crowd was raucous at times as the competition occasionally became intense. One team would throw a star over, just to have their opponent throw one right back.

David Ahmed, a senior at Eastern Technical High School in Essex, said he has been interested in robotics since middle school and wants to one day study computer science. The robotics competition is preparing him for that, he said.

"They force you to think," he said. "They force you to be creative and come up with unconventional ideas."

Anthony Arroyo, a junior at Patapsco High School and Center for the Arts, said he has always liked to build things.

"I feel like this competition brought that to life," he said.

Fifteen teams from Saturday's competition will go on to compete at the VEX Robotics World Championship. Towson High School won the Excellence Award, the day's top prize.

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High school students compete in robotics - Baltimore Sun - Baltimore Sun

The Crosby-Ironton High School robotics team was doing better in the competition on Saturday than it did on Friday, team members reported. This year is the team's second year in existence. The students were trying to improve using what they learned during last year's competition and were doing better than they did last year, 10th-grader Walker McKee said.

In this year's challenge, teams needed to build a robot that could pick up and put balls into a "boiler," move gears and pull themselves up a rope.

Michael Serfling, an 11th-grader at Crosby-Ironton, explained that he learns skills while building the robot that he doesn't learn in school.

The team focused on building a robot that could move the gears and kept coming up with new ideas to test out, McKee said. Serfling explained that creating a robot that could climb a rope was difficult, and they burned out a motor while testing their robot. McKee added that it's a lot of trial and error and readjusting different parts of the robot until it works.

The challenge was "very different" this year, but the Iron Mosquitoes robotics team from Northeast Range School in Babbitt didn't have to create an entirely different robot compared to robots they've built in previous years, 12th-grader Chad Wills said.

The Babbitt team did well in its inaugural competition two years ago, but this year was harder because there were more aspects to the challenge, he said.

"The climbing seemed like it would be the hardest thing, but that was our top priority, and we got that working pretty early," he said.

As a relatively new team, the Iron Mosquitoes are trying to learn and improve with each year.

"It's taken three years to do it, but we're getting a hold on it," Wills said.

The Rock Solid Robotics team from Two Harbors High School spent the first week of this year's season getting a grasp on the game because this year's challenge was so different, 10th-grader Kristin Haveri explained. From there, they designed and built the robot, but the different aspects didn't mean they needed to construct a robot that was vastly different from previous years, she said.

The most challenging part of building the robot was getting it to climb the rope, Two Harbors 10th-grader Navah Swoverland said. The competition started out rough for the team, but the robot climbed during the team's last three matches, and the team won its last two matches, Haveri said.

This was Two Harbors' fifth year of competition, but they have a young team this year and the lack of older, experienced students on the team added a level of difficulty, Haveri said.

"The best part was working with a team because we're such a small team, but everyone knows each other. We all are friends and get to work together," she said.

Hibbing High School's robotics team focused on building a robot this year that could move the gears and climb the rope because those two aspects were worth the most points, 11th-grader Maria Valentini said.

"It's just different games (each year). They're all pretty challenging; there are just different aspects," she said.

The most challenging part of the season was sorting through all of the ideas to come up with the design for the best robot, she said.

She's enjoyed the camaraderie of Hibbing's team this year, she said, adding, "There are a lot of really hard challenges, and it was nice to see the things we worked hard on working out for us."

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Robotics teams climb to new heights at regionals in Duluth - Duluth News Tribune

The hype surrounding the robotics industry continues to grow as we see more and more interest from retail investors in robots and robotics stocks. Robots are already changing the global labor marketand as time goes by will have a direct effect on our livelihoods. Besides the fact that we are happy to see household helperstaking over our apartment and Granny being able to walk easily again, our main question is how can we get a piece of the action as retail investors? Maybe if we make some money by investing in robot stockswell have something to live on when all the jobs are gone to the fourth industrial revolution. Basically there are 4 ways to invest in robots and robotics for retail investors:

ETFs

Weve already covered the Robo Global Robotics & Automation Index ETF (NASDAQ:ROBO)in a previous article, which is a well diversified listed fund holding 85 companies, the largest company weight being below 2%. This also means not all holdings are pure play robotics stocks the pure play part (so-called bellwether stocks) is about 40% of the fund, and has approximately double the weight of non-bellwether stocks.The fund has a 3 year track record and boasts a rolling1 year performance of +34% (vs. Nasdaq return of +24%) and a return of +27% since it was created (vs. Nasdaq +48% return). Here a look at their not-so-impressive performance so far:

Robo Global charges you about 1% a year (95 bps) for managing the ETFso its not cheap. In terms of exposure, ROBO is exposed 45% to the US and 25% to Japan, and mainly invests in Industrials with 51.8% weight in Machinery, Equipment and Components.

A direct competitor to ROBO launched on Nasdaq in September 2016: the Global X Robotics & Artificial Intelligence Thematic ETF (NASDAQ:BOTZ). With 28 holdings, BOTZ is more concentrated than ROBO, the largest constituent weight is 8.45%. BOTZ constituents overlap significantly with ROBO, with only four stocks not held by ROBO. Since inceptionBOTZ returned +13.2% and charges a management fee of 68 bps.BOTZ has a different country breakdown where Japan takes the first place with 48% exposure and US is second with 25%. Again we see a heavy concentration inIndustrials at +70%.

iShares, the ETF platform of the worlds largest asset manager, Blackrock also launched a robotics themed ETF in September 2016. The iShares Automation & Robotics UCITS ETF (LSE:RBOT) is another diversified fund with 92 holdings and a more balanced geographical exposure (US is 34%, Japan is 27%) than the other two. RBOT is heavily investing in Information Technology (69.6%) with companies like STMicroelectronics, NVidia and Microsemi Corp. Return is +16% since inception, and more of this return is made available to the investor with the lowest expense ratio of the three at 40 bps. The ETF is currentlyregistered to be sold in Western Europe, but not in the US.

The three above ETFs all offer a different take on the global robotics opportunity in terms of concentration, geographical focus and industry weights.

Mutual Fund

If you dont necessarily want to stick to listed ETFs, the CS (Lux) Global Robotics Equity Fund is a mutual fund offering from Credit Suisse for retail investors sold in Western Europe and Singapore. Launched in June 2016, the fund description claims they are only investing in companies which have at least 50% of their exposure attributable to robotics, automation or AI, which is good news for pure play investors. The composition does lack most of the large conglomerates weve seen in the other ETFs with largest holdings being Intuitive Surgical, Thermo Fisher Scientific and Tecan Group (though the latter two aremedical/biotech companies).Its country composition is US-heavy with 50%+, and investments are balanced almost 1/3rd each between activities in productivity improvement, performing dangerous tasks and improving quality of life. Performance since inception is+12%similar to the above mentioned ETFs.On the other hand, it has been discussed and proven that in over 80% ofcases, active managers cannot consistently outperform the market, especially in the equities space. Would you pay the 160 bps management fee of the fund for that? Fcuk no.

Stock Picking

As all of these funds hold a large number of stocks, it is inevitable that with certain holdings, exposure to robotics is derivative at best. If youre looking for pure play investments, you can still pick stocks yourself. While were constantly hunting for new investment opportunities in the field to share with you, here are the robotics stocksweve covered so far:

One thing to note here is that you could make an argument for autonomous cars and drones being included in robotics but were keeping these two themes separate from this article.

Motifs

Stock picking can get you closer to pure exposure, but it is also a risky endeavor to put all your eggs in one basket you can see the cycles of volatility on the performance of the above robot stocks. There is an in-between solution for investors offered by Motif Investing. Motif allows retail clients to customize a basket of US stocks (these are called motifs) and trade this basketat $9.95 a trade (its like your onw mini-ETF). We set up our own motifwith the below stocks that are all U.S. bellweather robotics stocks found in the ROBO ETF:

Motif Investing also serves as a mechanism to track certain investing themes, like robotics. So far our Nanalyze Robot Stocks motif has returned a respectable +37.1% over the past year as seen below:

So there you have 4 ways to invest in robots and robotics stocks. The above vehicles and the number of recent launches show the increasing demand for this kind of investment is being recognized by the industry. All the successful startup funding rounds and the appetite of retail investorsmake us hopeful to see additional IPOs and product launches coming our way as well. Stay tuned.

You can open a Motif Investing account for free with no deposit required so you can create your own baskets of stocks and also take a look at our many Nanalyze "motifs" which cover various disruptive technology investing themes.

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How to Invest in Robots and Robotics Stocks - Nanalyze

GREENVILLE, N.C. (WNCT) 30 high school teams from across North Carolina are in Greenville for the weekend to compete in a robotics competition at South Central High School.

The weekend event is the first of four district competitions leading up to the state finals at Campbell University in April.

Teams from as far away as Charlotte are competing this year in Greenville. Two teams are representing Pitt County.

Emma Tripp from Farmville Central High School said the competition is great,but competing in your home county is even better.

Theres a ton of scholarship opportunities involved, and you get to meet a lot of people, and youre exposed to stressful situations where you have to make decisions quickly and act effectively, Tripp said.

In all, more than $50 million in scholarships are available nationwide for students who compete in the robotics competition. Eventually, 15 teams will advance from North Carolina to the international finals in Houston in April.

There is an average of 30 members per team.

FIRST Robotics is holding the competition. Teams started competing in North Carolina back in 2010.

The event is free and open to the public. Qualifying matches are scheduled from 11 a.m. until 7 p.m. Saturday, and then 10:30 a.m. until 12:30 p.m. Sunday.

Playoff matches and the finals will be held Sunday from 1 p.m. until 4 p.m.

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Teams from across NC converge on Greenville for robotics competition - WNCT

17 Photos

A Toshiba engineer watches a small robot with two CCD cameras during its press preview at a Toshiba factory in Yokohama on June 30, 2015. The robot was developed to investigate the interior of the primary containment vessel of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station Unit 2.

TOSHIFUMI KITAMURA/AFP/Getty Images

TOKYO The head of decommissioning for the damaged Fukushima nuclear plant said Thursday that more creativity is needed in developing robots to locate and assess the condition of melted fuel rods.

A robot sent inside the Unit 2 containment vessel last month could not reach as close to the core area as was hoped for because it was blocked by deposits, believed to be a mixture of melted fuel and broken pieces of structures inside. Naohiro Masuda, president of Fukushima Dai-ichi Decommissioning, said he wants another probe sent in before deciding on methods to remove the reactors debris.

Unit 2 is one of the Fukushima reactors that melted down following the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

The plants operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., needs to know the melted fuels exact location as well as structural damage in each of the three wrecked reactors to figure out the best and safest ways to remove the fuel. Probes must rely on remote-controlled robots because radiation levels are too high for humans to survive.

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Despite the incomplete probe missions, officials have said they want to stick to their schedule to determine the removal methods this summer and start work in 2021.

Earlier probes have suggested worse-than-anticipated challenges for the plants cleanup, which is expected to take decades. During the Unit 2 probe in early February, the scorpion robot crawler stalled after its total radiation exposure reached its limit in two hours, one-fifth of what was anticipated.

We should think out of the box so we can examine the bottom of the core and how melted fuel debris spread out, Masuda told reporters.

Probes are also being planned for the other two reactors. A tiny waterproof robot will be sent into Unit 1 in coming weeks, while experts are still trying to figure out a way to access the badly damaged Unit 3.

TEPCO is struggling with the plants decommissioning. The 2011 meltdown forced tens of thousands of nearby residents to evacuate their homes, and many have still not been able to return home due to high radiation levels.

Cleanup of communities outside of the plant is also a challenge. The cost has reportedly almost doubled to 4 trillion yen ($35 billion) from an earlier estimate. On Thursday, police arrested an Environment Ministry employee for allegedly taking bribes from a local construction firm president, media reports said.

2017 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Fukushima cleanup chief says better robotics could help - CBS News

Robotics Innovation Facilities, or RIFs, are robotic labs, financed via the ECHORD++ project by the European Commission. They offer access to high-tech robotic equipment and expertise at zero risk; using the RIF is not only free of charge, they also safeguard their users intellectual property.Companies, institutions, and organisations can apply to use RIFs.

Currently, there are three RIFs within the ECHORD++ project located in Italy, France, and the UK. Two 360 Lab Tours are now available, the last video will be released late March.

The Bristol Robotics Laboratory is a joint lab of the University of the West of England (UWE, Bristol) and the University of Bristol, and is the largest academic centre for multi-disciplinary robotics research in the UK. View the 360 Lab Tour:

The BioRobotics Institute is a research park created by Scuola Superiore SantAnna to house the research activities of outdoor and indoor settings. It is located at the Polo SantAnna Valdera, near Pisa. View the 360 Lab Tour:

The Interactive Robotics Laboratory in Saclay is located within the premises of CEA LIST, about 20km southwestern from Paris. The 360 Lab Tour video will be available late March.

About ECHORD++ (The European Coordination Hub for Open Robotics Development)

The aim of ECHORD++ is to strengthen the knowledge transfer between scientific research, industry and users in robotics and to stimulate their cooperation. The EU-funded project with a runtime of five years (2013 2018) funds small-scale research projects called experiments, Public end-user Driven Technological Innovation (PDTI) and established Robotics Innovation Facilities (RIFs), open labs which provide state-of-the-art robotic hardware and software as well as scientific and technical support.

More information on the RIFs is available on the ECHORD++ website.

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Sneak peek inside two Robotics Innovation Facilities (RIFs) in Europe - Robohub

CHARLEVOIX The Charlevoix Middle/High School Robotics Team are preparing for two upcoming competitions, taking place on March 16 and April 6.

They have been in the process of constructing a robot to compete in the games assigned to the matches and with six weeks of building time, these students have dedicated themselves to creating a quality robot.

We went through prototype after prototype, said four-year member and two-year team captain Marlo Schwartzfisher. And after we had found the best choice, we made a final version of it. After a few things went wrong with the last version of the robot something always breaks we finally had our final product.

All robots must not exceed the weight limit of 120 pounds, according to competition rules, so the students needed to be sure that everything attached had a purpose.

The robot was programmed by the students to climb a rope, crabwalk, catch gears, shoot and dump the balls into their proper place in the game. With unique wheels, an adjustable ramp and a battery that can hold 15 to 30 minutes of driving time, the Charlevoix team members are on the road to victory.

Last year the team was only six points away from qualifying for the state competition. This year is looking promising.

For this upcoming competition we are on schedule and more organized than previous years, Schwartzfisher said. From the beginning, we all wanted to build the same type of robot; we just needed to figure out how we were going to make it happen.

The Charlevoix Robotics team is small and structured, with about 10 students involved. Charlevoix High School students present all ideas and do the building. The students often partake in thoughtful discussions with each other about what is best for the robot.

It gets your mind thinking in a different way than school. Robotics is about challenging you, your mind, and your physical abilities, Schwartzfisher said. Its a big commitment, dont get me wrong, but its a way to open yourself up to new things.

The students must apply incredible teamwork to ensure everything runs smoothly. When you enter their workshop, it is easy to see the passion they hold for their team.

The Charlevoix Robotics program is a real asset to our community; its an incredible opportunity for the students of the high school to expand upon themselves as a well-rounded person.

This program has taught me leadership skills that I couldnt have gotten anywhere else, Schwartzfisher said. Leadership skills that got me a full ride to Michigan Tech. I dont know where Id be if I didnt have robotics.

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Charlevoix robotics team prepares for upcoming competitions - Petoskey News-Review

Vision Systems Design

China is rapidly making robots that will one day manufacture ... Quartz China is getting serious about manufacturing's robot revolution. On Feb. 28, its statistics bureau released an annual report that summarizes the economy's ... International Federation of Robotics: Bill Gates' idea of taxing robots is wrongVision Systems Design The Future of Technology: Robotics in the home and beyondBT.com Hacked robots could be used to kill people, poison pets and help thieves rob homes, experts revealBelfast Telegraph The Merkle -Guiding Tech (blog) -Networks Asia all 22 news articles »

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China is rapidly making robots that will one day manufacture ... - Quartz

If you go

What: St. Vrain Valley VEX Robotics Showcase

When: 5:30 to 8 p.m. Thursday

Where: Boulder County Fairgrounds' Exhibit Hall, 9595 Nelson Road, Longmont

Cost: $5 for adults, $3 for children, includes spaghetti dinner from Longmont's Ragazzi Italian Grill

More info: tinyurl.com/hjzel3r

Students at Longmont's Central Elementary School are testing, changing and retesting the robots they've worked on since the start of the school year as they get ready for a state VEX Robotics competition this weekend.

From left: Fifth-graders Fiona Glynn and Willa Conlin use a laptop to program a series of commands for their robot Thursday at Central Elementary School in Longmont. (Matthew Jonas / Staff Photographer)

"We're never really done," fifth-grader Anna Kragerud said as her team worked to make their robot turn. "There's always something to modify."

They must "drive" the robots around an arena using a remote control and program them to move on their own, completing tasks that involve hexagon-shaped balls to earn points. They also earn points in a teamwork challenge that requires them to work with a second team.

"It's really cool," Kragerud said. "You get to program a robot to do what you want it to do. You get to use your imagination to build the robot. It's not already built for you."

Classmate Erik Swanson is in his fourth year building and competing with robots, working mainly as a programmer. His team is first in the state for robot skills this season, with a goal of qualifying for the world competition for the third year.

"This is a growing world of technology," he said. "The better you are at technology, the better of you will be."

To celebrate students' accomplishments and give the community a firsthand look at its robotics program, St. Vrain Valley is hosting its first robotics showcase and fundraiser on Thursday.

About 300 students from 28 schools are expected to attend to demonstrate the problem-solving, collaboration and construction required.

Plans include "build" activity stations with unassembled or partly-built robots so participants can experience building a robot, while "programming" stations provide an opportunity to use computer language. "Drive" stations also will offer completed robots to try.

The fundraiser portion, which includes a silent auction, has a goal of raising $10,000 to pay to send teams to out-of-state national and international competitions and for ongoing support of the program. The event is supported by the Education Foundation for the St. Vrain Valley.

St. Vrain also is hosting a state VEX IQ tournament Saturday at Trail Ridge Middle School. So far, 38 teams are registered, with most of them from St. Vrain.

Altogether, St. Vrain has hosted 12 competitions this year, with six middle school teams expected to compete in the U.S. Open Robotics Championship in April in Iowa. Another six or seven elementary teams are expected to compete in VEX Worlds in April in Kentucky.

Axel Reitzig, robotics and computer science coordinator at St. Vrain Valley's Innovation Center, said about 26 district schools have almost 200 teams involved in competitive robotics, up from five schools competing four years ago.

Two dozen high school students working on robotics at the Innovation Center also serve as mentors, supporting clubs and running tournaments.

"The growth has been huge," Reitzig said.

The district used its four-year, $16.5 million federal "Race to the Top" grant to start robotics programs, he said. Now that the grant is ending, the fundraiser is a way to help sustain programs.

He said the district likes the VEX program because it creates an authentic, real-world engineering experience.

"Students are applying a whole wide range of STEM skills," he said. "There's computer-aided design, programming, collaboration, project management, documentation and presenting to judges."

Middle school students can choose robotics as an elective at many schools. At the elementary level, competitive robotics is often an after-school club.

Cyrus Weinberger, principal at Erie's Red Hawk Elementary, said competitive robotics extends classroom learning for students passionate about computer science and programming.

"Kids can really push themselves," he said.

Red Hawk has six teams, with five qualifying for the state competition.

"The kids really learn a lot about collaboration and teamwork and sportsmanship," Weinberger said. "There's no one solution. It's very engaging. It gets their minds just really ticking and problem-solving."

Westview Middle School teacher Danny Hernandez leads teams at both Central and Westview. Four teams from Westview are heading to nationals, as are two Central teams.

Westview, in its fifth year of VEX robotics, was among the first schools to try the program.

"We've been getting more and more competitive," Hernandez said. "It's kind of like a competitive sport. You have to try out here to make the team."

His students have bins full of metal pieces bolts and other parts to use as they build their bots plus a large arena to practice and test them. Part of the need for the fundraiser, he said, is to help other schools start what can be an expensive program.

"We have schools that can order all the supplies and schools that can't," Hernandez said. "We want kids at other schools to benefit. It's an awesome program."

Westview students said they like that what they learn through robotics is preparing them for future careers in technology or engineering.

Seventh-grader Kaia Wing noted her team spent a lot of time researching different designs before starting to build. They also learned coding basics.

Teammate Sierra Bindseil added that she's become better at working with a group, something that's carried over in other classes. At competitions, she said, there's also a lot of collaboration, with other teams always willing to lend a part or help solve a problem.

Plus, she said, building robots is just really fun.

"You get to create something, and there aren't really any limits," she said.

Amy Bounds: 303-473-1341, boundsa@dailycamera.com or twitter.com/boundsa

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St. Vrain Valley schools to host competitive robotics showcase, fundraiser - Boulder Daily Camera

Palm Beach Post (blog)

North County students compete in robotics contest Palm Beach Post (blog) MARS (Mega Awesome Robotic System) Team 1523 students from Palm Beach Gardens, Jupiter and William T. Dwyer High Schools, as well as private and home-schooled students, today and Saturday are participating in the at the FIRST Robotics ... High School Students Are In Town For The Hub City Regional Robotics CompetitionEverythingLubbock.com all 2 news articles »

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North County students compete in robotics contest - Palm Beach Post (blog)

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Toys always grab the attention of the children. When the students of the College of Engineering Trivandrum went to Christ Nagar International School to introduce them to the world of technology, they carried with them some cool toys. These toys are no ordinary ones. RoboCet, the robotics club of CET made robotic arms that mimic hand gesture, snakebot that moves like a reptile, a smart phone controlled car etc. The response they got from the kids was amazing.

Define box before telling us to think out of the box? said Adhitya, a seventh standard student. The googly was aimed at team Drishti. The presenters faced a volley of questions about robots and their functioning. Scientific findings are the result of imagination and experimentation. Presenter Abhishek P James told them to focus on imagination and not to worry about the theory behind it. Among the students, the team found a meticulous mind in Hari Govind who solved a puzzle, one of connecting nine dots, in his 12th attempt.

When the students of class seven and eight assembled in the classroom on the second floor of the school, they thought it would be another lecture session with slides. All sat in the class with a bored look.

It took ice breaking sessions using puzzles to get enthusiastic responses from students. At this juncture, the presenters introduced robots and the entire class came forward crowding around it. Some of them quenched their curiosity by getting their hands on it. Finally when the session got over the students gave a 11 on a scale of 10 to the Drishti team.

The team will meet selected students during the summer vacations. Selection will be based on their eagerness to learn technology. The idea is to technically adopt a high school in Thiruvananthapuram for one year and conduct sessions on basic technology. A Drishti club will be formed in the school, said Shilendra.

The year-long project will have monthly classes for students of classes 8 and 9. At the end of the year the kids will be encouraged to come up with their own project. These projects will then be included in the school expo for the next years Drishti.

#drishti_to_school

It is a campaign initiated by students of CET to inspire school kids to create innovations using technology. The campaign has been organised as part of their annual tech fest Drishti.

The objective of this campaign is to introduce technology and its potential to school students. It also aims to identify the creative spark hidden inside each child.

Sushmitha S Das, Shilendra Soman and Abhishek P James, final year students of the college from electronics and mechanical engineering departments are the minds behind the initiative. They were assisted by the members of RoboCet- Don Dominic, Sebin, Ashike Thomas and Balu Sadanandan. The event was photo documented by Rohit Punnen.

Link:

Toying with robotics - The New Indian Express

Photo: Cobalt Robotics Cobalt Robotics' security robot uses advanced sensors and AI to navigate autonomously and look for suspicious activity.

Finding a viable business case for a commercial mobile robot is very tricky. At this point, the most you can realistically expect from a reliable and affordable autonomous platform is the ability to navigate in a semistructured premapped environment, which Savioke (to take one example) has managed to do with its delivery robots for hotels. Despite the fact that robots can do work for businesses, its been difficult to identify use cases where they can be valuable enough that said businesses will pay money to use them.

Today, Cobalt Robotics (a startup based in Palo Alto, Calif.) is announcing an autonomous mobile robot designed for indoor security applications that can work alongside human guards to provide better security than people can do alone.

The key realization here is that security guards spend the vast majority of their time doing almost nothing, and even in a worst-case scenario (like someone trying to break in, or a fire or other serious problem), their primary responsibility is making the right phone call as quickly as possible as opposed to dealing with the situation directly. In general, a security guard needs to be able to walk around a building checking on things, occasionally interact with humans in a limited capacity, and (this is the most important thing) notice if anything unusual is going on and tell someone about it.

Cobalts robot is able to do all of these things. It can navigate around premapped areas in buildings, it can recognize people and read badges, and it has a pile of sensors (day-night cameras, lidar, microphone array, RFID and badge readers, andeven smoke and CO2 detectors) that helps it to recognize potential security issues (unauthorized people, open doors and windows) and hazards (suspicious items, moved items, water leaks) and flag them for review.

Cobalt was founded by Erik Schluntz, a former engineer at SpaceX, and Travis Deyle, whos written for IEEE Spectrum in the past and comes from Georgia Techs Healthcare Robotics Lab by way (most recently) of Google X. TheCobalt teamhas enough background and experience with robots to know thatwhile autonomy is important, having the option for a human in the loop can solve a lot of problems, so its easy for a remote operator to hop into the robot and control it via telepresence whenever necessary.

We should note that there are other robots in this space alreadynamely, Knightscope, which makes a very imposing security robot. Knightscope is taking a bit of a different approach, with a large and heavy platform that uses minimal HRI (human-robot interaction) elements and isif that Velodyne on top is any indicationquite expensive. Knightscope can operate outside, which is certainly an advantage, and it seems more likely that it might scare away any baddies, but Cobalt isnt really interested in the scare factorfor Cobalt, its more about detection and then making sure the right people know whats going on in a timely manner, and having a robot that people will be comfortable working around.

Comfort is another key differentiator that Cobalt has been working on. The overall form and appearanceof the robot come from Swiss designer Yves Bhar, who came up with something that (rather refreshingly) incorporates a lot of soft, tactile fabric rather than plastic and metal. We decided that the robot should not adopt a humanoid personality, Bhar said in a statement. Instead, it should aesthetically align with the furniture and dcor of the office environment.

As with any robot intended to do the same kind of job that a human can do, theres a concern here that Cobalts platform will be taking jobs away from humans. And, well, yeah, if you just go and replace a security guard with a Cobalt robot, then thats what happens, and it may make sense for some businesses to do this. However, there are a few other things to consider here. First, Cobalt may be an option for companies who want security but cant afford a human guard, or cant afford one for all hours. Second, Cobalt says that their robots can work sort of like force multipliers, working alongside existing guards to help them be more effective at their jobs. Cobalt will also be creating new jobs for robot monitors, who will be remotely managing multiple robots from a central location.

And lastly, we should keep in mind that security is one of those utterly dull jobs that does not take advantage of the talent or creativity that humans have to offer, and long term, finding jobs for people that are more interesting and engaging is probably better for everyone, if we can make it happen.

For more details on Cobalt, we asked Deyle, the companys CEO, a few questions over email:

Why is indoor security an ideal application for a mobile robot?

One major, traditional function of indoor security is observe and reportlooking for anomalies or intruders, and contacting the authorities if andwhen anything bad happens. Using extremely capable sensors (including night vision cameras, lidar, thermal) combined with recent advances in computer vision and deep learning, robotscan provide superhuman capabilities and consistent operation around the clock without getting bored, sleepy, or losing focus. Our robot has eyes on the back of its head, can see in pitch black, and never needs to sleep. And when it finds something, it can skype in a highly trained pilot to make hard decisions,or talk to anyone in the space.

Mobility affords robots a number of unique benefits. First, robots can reposition themselves to get an infinite number of vantage points, including opportunistically relocating themselves to obtain additional information. This isnt possible with stationary security cameras; to quote one of our customers, No matter how perfect you think your security camera setup is, when something happens you always wish you had a different view or angle.Second, many security policies do not allow guards to put themselves in harms way to confront would-be intruders; mobility allows the robot torespond immediately to a would-be intruder and reduce intruder time-on-premises. A third thing is that a mobile robot roaming the premises serves as an active deterrent to undesired behavior.

Why havent mobile robots been used in indoor security in the past? Or, whats special about Cobalt that youre able to deploy robots in these semistructured environments?

Its partially about timing. Many of the component technologies (AI, machine learning, sensing, computation, communications, etc.) are now sufficiently mature to make this product feasible. Those components continue to make big gains due to investment in other areas of robotics and AI.

Its also partially about fortuitous encounters between experts in otherwise-disparate fields (robotics and physical security). Theres a famous quote from world-renowned computer scientist Alan Kay that says, A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points. Cobalt was founded by technologists and roboticists with many years of experience working with indoor robots. We spent a substantial amount of time speaking with forward-looking visionaries in the physical security industry who became our close advisors, initial customers, and biggest champions. While other people may have looked at robot security, we happened to look at it from the right perspective:our customers perspective.

What are some unique challenges that your robotswill have to deal with, and how are you handling them?

Indoor security is about more than deterring and detecting intrudersits also about making employees feel safe and comfortable. We focused heavily on industrial design and human-robot interaction to make our robot as easy to interact with and as pleasant to be around as possible. We use warm materials like fabric and anodized aluminum that would normally be seen in a high-end office, rather than the plastic and steel of an industrial robot. The centerpiece of our robot is a touch screen to let people interact with the robot and video chat with our pilots.

Another challenge was providing consistent security coverage for an entire night shift, or even an entire 48-hour weekend shift. We realized that the robot should never turn off while its rechargingits always on, looking for unusual activity and ready to respond. Its just like a guard standing watch at the front desk between patrols.

Can you describe how Cobalt is mixing autonomy and telepresence by having the option for a human in the loop?

We fundamentally believe that robots should interact with and around people. Cobalt provides a solution that dovetails advanced autonomous functionality with human telepresence capability. So sometimesthe robot will autonomously respondfor example, navigating up to a person and requesting badge credentials. In other situations, the robot will video call with a pilot for human-level cognition and response.

Is the security solution that Cobalt is offering both reliable and cost-effective relative to a human? How expensive are the robots, and how much money would a company be saving over employing humans?

Security is necessary, but its often cost prohibitive for companies to provide 24-hour security presence. This is a real problem with real needs and real budgets. Cobalt can provide security coverage where there are currently major gaps at one-fifth to one-third the cost of a traditional solution.

Security personnel work with a fleet of robots to provide a more reliable and more cost-effective service. Robots help with the dullest, hardest parts of security (like night-shift patrols) without falling asleep, and they will alert the rest of your security staff only if theres something worthy of note. Each robot pilot can oversee tens of robots, which allows guards to cover more ground and have visibility exactly when and where they need it. Plus, all of the sensors and components of the robot are becoming remarkably cheaper thanks to other industries, such as self-driving cars!

Cobalt will be starting pilots very soon, and were very much looking forward to seeing autonomous mobile robots out in the world doing useful things.

[ Cobalt Robotics ]

IEEE Spectrum's award-winning robotics blog, featuring news, articles, and videos on robots, humanoids, drones, automation, artificial intelligence, and more. Contact us:e.guizzo@ieee.org

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Cobalt Robotics Introduces a (Mostly) Autonomous Mobile Security ... - IEEE Spectrum

Image: IEEE Spectrum; Robot photos: Cobalt, Aethon, Simbe, Savioke, Diligent Droids, and PAL Robotics Companies developing indoor robots for commercial spaces include [from left] Cobalt, Aethon, Simbe, Savioke, Diligent Droids, and PAL Robotics.

This is a guest post. The views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not represent positions of IEEE Spectrum or the IEEE.

Venture funding for robotics has exploded by more than 10x over the last six years and shows no signs of stopping. Most of this investment has been focused on the usual suspects: logistics, warehouse automation, robot arms for manufacturing, healthcare and surgical robots, drones, agriculture, and autonomous cars.

But after looking into the robotics industry as I set out to launch my own robot company, Cobalt, founded last year and which came out of stealth today, I became convinced thatthere is a new emerging segment about to become one of the fastest-growing in coming years: Autonomous indoor robots for commercial spaces.

For many years, autonomous indoor robots meant one of two domains: 1.Manufacturing or material handling robots in factories and warehouses; or 2.Simple home robots. These robots sit on opposite ends of the structured spaces spectrum:

In years past, robots in factories and warehouses required extremely structured environmentsessentially, automation engineers modified the environment and kept people at arms length so that the robots could perform repetitive tasks in relative isolation. With advances in compliant manipulation (e.g. Rethink Robotics and Universal Robots) and mapping (e.g. Fetch Robotics), this equation is slowly changingbut thats a story for another day.

On the opposite end of the structured spaces spectrum is the home. Homes are notoriously unstructured and dynamic. Homes can change moment to moment and they have extremely high variability, lots of people (adults and children alike), pets, clutter, stairs, and unreliable communications. Of course, wed all love to have a general-purpose home robot (i.e. Rosie from The Jetsons) to clean, do the laundry, feed the pets, etc. But its pretty obvious that inexpensive appliances (like Roomba) and robot toys (look at CES this year) are the only viable home robots at this time: The home is hard!

But theres a massive, untapped market that sits between these two on the spectrum: Commercial spaces such as hotels, hospitals, offices, retail stores, banks, schools, nursing homes, schools, malls, and museums.

Commercial spaces could serve as a great stepping stone on the path toward general-purpose home robots by driving scale, volume, and capabilities. Commercial spaces have a number of key advantages compared to the home:

Owing to these factors, weve started to see a number of autonomous indoor robots for commercial spaces popping up in the last few years. To name just a few:

In fact, each of these companies is building what amounts to an autonomous car,but with different form-factors, value propositions, and customer segments. So while billions of dollars are being spent on autonomous vehicles for R&D and production at scale, these new applications reap the benefits (tech advances and cost savings) on sensors, computing hardware, algorithms, AI, machine learning, and open-source software.

However, indoor robots present some of their own unique challenges. Unlike autonomous cars, indoor robots are required to interact closely with and around people and integrate seamlessly into brand-conscious enterprise organizations. Because of this, factors such as industrial design, human-robot interaction, and psychology become increasingly important. Therefore, it is increasingly important for companies in this new market segment to engage experts in these fields early on (that was certainly the case at Cobalt).

Im excited about the prospect for this new market segment. These companies are eschewing the classic roboticist temptation to building sexy robots for the sake of robots. Instead, they are solving real, diverse problems with real, paying customers. Many, if not most, of the companies mentioned are already starting to deliver robots in the field, so keep an eye out for them. If my intuition is correct, there will be a lot of these robots very soon!

IEEE Spectrum's award-winning robotics blog, featuring news, articles, and videos on robots, humanoids, drones, automation, artificial intelligence, and more. Contact us:e.guizzo@ieee.org

Sign up for the Automaton newsletter and get biweekly updates about robotics, automation, and AI, all delivered directly to your inbox.

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Why Indoor Robots for Commercial Spaces Are the Next Big Thing in Robotics - IEEE Spectrum

Four years ago, there were no robotics teams at Brentwood Academy. This Saturday, March 4, the school will be hosting the VEX Robotics Tennessee State Championship, where six BA teams, collectively known as the Iron Eagles, will compete against 38 teams from 21 different Tennessee schools.

The electric pace of robotics surging popularity at BA is a testament both to the intellectual precocity of the schools students and to the acumen of dedicated teachers who first saw in robotics a unique learning opportunity.

Because competitive robotics is not just about competition. Its not just about gears and fuses and batteries and wires. Its about constructing a sense of community and instilling a passion for curiosity and practice. Its about different parts learning to work together for a common purpose.

Wendy Stallings was not a competitive robotics expert when she first thought up the idea. The physics teacher simply thought that building robots could be a stimulating, rewarding experience for her students.

I had a group of students who were very into computer programming and mechanical engineering, Stallings said. I asked if they wanted to build a robot, and they said yes and the next thing we knew we had unintentionally won state and started an official robotics team.

It really did happen almost that quickly. BAs first robotics team consisted of five people and was formed in the fall of 2013. The following spring that team was in the world championships in Anaheim, California. The next year, 40 students signed up to be on robotics teams.

We opened it up to the whole school just to see, and it really exploded, Stallings remembered.

In its second year, the program was even more successful than in its first. At the world finals, one BA team won the design award, the second highest award that VEX, the company that organizes robotic competitions, gives out. Another placed 4th out of 450 teams in the tournament phase of the contest.

Stallings currently considers herself the head coach emeritus of BAs teams. She has passed along most of the day-to-day coaching duties to her former assistant coach, Chris Allen, BAs Computer Technology Director.

They are both consistently impressed by the dedication of BAs Iron Eagles, noting how some students will spend up to 40 hours a week in the summer coming to school to work on their robots. Allen estimates that many robotics team members work 600 to 800 hours a year on their machines, including weekends and holidays oftentimes.

Its not that they are required to do so. In fact, Stallings mentioned how sometimes she had to intercede to get students to work less on robotics, but they just love it so much they dont seem to want to stop.

Allen is currently overseeing six teamsteams A through F that will participate in Saturdays state championships. Each team has between three and five students who build a robot each year to compete in whatever contest VEX has designed. This year the game is Starstruck and involves teams trying to get their robots to place Stars and Cubes on their opponents side of a separating barrier.

Brady Cole is a junior on BAs Team E. Hes been doing robotics for two years now, although for one year prior to that he acted as the schools tournament DJ, traveling and playing music while other students competed. Its a lot of 8-bit music and movie soundtracks, is how he describes his ideal robotics playlist.

After all the DJing, Cole sensed that he had more contribute to the robotics program.

I found that I had a knack for the designing process, he said.

That knack has resulted in Cole designing a wildly unorthodox robot for the state championships. Audrey II, named after the man-eating plant from Little Shop of Horrors, is a behemoth of a robot that separates into two parts connected by a tether, and which can extend from 18 to 52 long. Coach Allen said hes never seen anything like it in competition before.

Freshman Katie Ann Edgeworth and senior Will McClellan are on Team C. Edgeworth is a math and science fan who, as a prospective enrollee on a tour of Brentwood Academy, saw a robotics trophy on the wall and immediately wanted to know more.

McClellan is a three-year veteran of the team who got into robotics on a lark. It was kind of just an opportunity I saw, and I just decided to jump on it, he said.

As educators, Stallings and Allen have in mind certain things that they hope these three students, and all of their robotics compatriots, will get out of the program.

For Stallings, the science teacher, that hope revolves around the demystification of science from some sort of abstract, imposing subject to a practice that can be accessible and even thrilling.

I think one of the greatest benefits of a robotics program is providing students insight into how engineering and science really works, with the whole plan, test, rebuild, process, she said. We have a lot of students who might not normally be interested in something like science or engineering because they feel like they dont get good enough grades or they feel like theyre not smart enough, but when they get involved in the process of building and they learn how creative science and engineering fields are, they learn how fun science and engineering can be, and then they learn that anybody can do it. Its about hard work and not text book grades.

Allen sees other potential benefits as well. For example, robotics, he believes, will not only make students smarter, but also help them cultivate practical skills they can use in their day-to-day lives.

Id say the other in terms of skills would be communication skills, time management skills and then social skills, too, he said. Theyre having to work on a team thats maybe not structured like a football team per se, where its a more intimate setting.

For their part, Cole, Edgeworth and McClellan trace their enthusiasm for robotics to a number of factors.

Edgeworth, for instance, especially enjoys the satisfaction that comes with knowing that her hard work is going towards a definable goal and will likely pay off one day.

The more time you put into it, the more you get out of it, she said.

McClellan appreciates that aspect of robotics as well, but also expressed his appreciation for the way tournaments have expanded his understanding of the differences and similarities between different cultures.

It kind of shows how robotics crosses national boundaries, he said. You get to worlds and you see people from all across the world and youd assume itd be so different, but everyone there is committed to a common goal.

Then theres the community part of it as well. Robotics made McClellan feel like he really belonged.

I came onto the team as a sophomore with really low self-esteem and didnt think I could do anything, he said. And before I knew it, I had been to two world competitions and won state tournaments and everything, and it really boosted my self-esteem to have that and to have that group of friends that I could rely on who are not only funny and nice to talk to but who are smart too.

That social side of robotics really stands out for Cole, too.

I enjoy the community, he said. Its a very nice group of people. Whenever things go wrong were always all there more as a school. It sounds really cheesy but we always say, Were all Iron Eagles, andbefore your individual team comes your school. When we need to, we all come together, and its a really nice, close-knit community.

The VEX Robotics Tennessee State Championship will be held all day Saturday, March 4 at Brentwood Academy.

Read more:

Robotics are big at Brentwood Academy, where the state championship will be held on Saturday - Nolensville Home Page

The high school competition has fast-paced action on the field plus the excitement of a big sporting event with high-energy music revving up the cheering fans and team mascots, but this game has a twist, a technical twist. This game is played by robots.

Since early January, high school students around the world have been designing, constructing and testing their robots, and this week the 2017 FIRST Robotics Competitions begin.

FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics has been dubbed "the varsity sport for the mind." Event founder Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway, hopes this program can help "to transform our culture by creating a world where science and technology are celebrated and where young people dream of becoming science and technology heroes."

This year's game is called Steamworks. The premise of this game is that two adventurer clubs, which are alliances of three teams and three robots, are preparing for a long-distance airship race. They need to collect fuel, represented by balls shot into a target, or the "boiler," deliver gears to engage rotors, and then climb aboard by having their robot ascend a rope.

Over 3,000 teams from around the world are participating in events through the World Championships in April. These events are fun, free and open to the public. Sixty-seven teams from Indiana are competing, including the Robodogs from Crown Point High School.

"Everyone first saw the video of this year's game on kick-off day back in January. Then our team spent the day determining our strategy. What were our objectives? Did we want to build an offensive or a defensive robot?" said BC Spear, an engineer and returning volunteer mentor for the team. "One thing the team agreed on is that they hope to make it to the World Championships this year."

With that goal in mind, the team of three seniors, four juniors, two sophomores and two freshmen has worked with their volunteer mentors and parents, often five days a week plus Saturday, and even some Sundays. Spear described the robot they constructed as an offensive robot that can deliver gears, shoot balls into the high (and high point) boiler, and climb the rope at the end of the round.

"There's a lot going on with this robot, and we made it fast so we can do more and score more points each round," said Trina Vargo, a Crown Point junior in her third year on the team.

Vargo is the team's build captain.

"I stay in the pits and do repairs between rounds," Vargo explained. "We try to make the robot perfect, but things happen. Another robot might accidentally bump into it, or something jams or falls off. We have tools and parts in our pit area. We also try to help out our teammates from other schools, even when they're our competitors later on. My favorite part of all this is cheering on a really good team. Even if you're not in the finals, you want a robot that's built right to win."

FIRST has a term for that spirit of competing, and yet assisting, enabling and cooperating whenever you can "coopetition." Participants are also encouraged to display "gracious professionalism" by competing hard yet working with integrity and showing sensitivity.

A culture of safety is another important part of FIRST Robotics.

"Actually the safety captain is the only team position required by FIRST," according to Noah Clark, a Crown Point junior who is this year's safety captain for the Robodogs.

"Everyone needs to wear safety glasses, have their hair tied back and there are different precautions with certain tools when we're building or doing repairs. We have a smaller team so everyone has to take on more than one role, which is good experience. The last couple years I was part of the drive team that would drive the robot on the floor at the competition."

"The competitions are the best part," Clark said. "You see firsthand your work in relation to other teams. It's so interesting to see so many different designs and strategies to achieve the same goal, and the competition is exciting. There's cheering. They play great music. Your adrenaline's pumping."

Their advice to first-time spectators is to first watch a few rounds to become familiar with the game. Then, talk to participants between rounds, and definitely grab a pair of safety glasses and go into the pits. Each team has a 10-by-10 foot pit area with their tools, robot and students and mentors who, time permitting, would be happy to talk about their robot.

The Robodogs and 37 other teams, including Munster HorsePower, and RoboBlitz from Michigan City, are registered for this weekend's Tippecanoe District. This event will run from 9:30 a.m. to approximately 6 p.m. on Saturday, and 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Sunday, with awards to follow, at Harrison High School, 5701 North 50 West in West Lafayette.

Two other Indiana district events are scheduled before the Indiana State Championship on April 6-8 in Huntington, Indiana.

Team Hammond will join the other local teams plus 30 others from Indiana and Michigan at the St. Joseph District on March 10-12 at Penn High School in Mishawaka. The Perry Meridian District will take place in Indianapolis on the weekend of March 23-25.

Robots and fans will pack the UIC Pavilion in Chicago for the exciting Midwest Regional on March 29 to April 1.

Details can be found online at http://www.firstinspires.org, including links to each team website. Admission is free to all of these events.

Also free is Team Hammond's open house and robot demonstration at 2 to 3:30 p.m. Sunday at the Area Career Center, 5727 Sohl Avenue in Hammond. Enter through Door H at the back of the building and take the stairs to the right.

Team Hammond, the Beast, has the distinction of holding the most World Champion titles in FIRST Robotics history with four titles, earned in 1997, 2001, 2002 and 2004. The team has students from Hammond, Clark, Gavit and Morton high schools and the ACCU-Area Career Center.

Best wishes to all of our local teams in the upcoming FIRST Robotics competitions.

Joan Dittmann is a freelance columnist for the Post-Tribune.

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Robotics competition on tap this weekend - Chicago Tribune

Get used to hearing a lot more about artificial intelligence. Even if you discount the utopian and dystopian hyperbole, the 21st century will be defined not just by advances in artificial intelligence, robotics, computing and cognitive neuroscience, but how we manage them. For some, the question of whether or not the human race will live to see a 22nd century pivots upon this latter consideration. While forecasting the imminence of an AI-centric future remains a matter of intense debate, we will need to come to terms with it. For now, there are many more questions than answers.

It is clear, however, that the European Parliament is making inroads towards taking an AI-centric future seriously. Last month, in a 17-2 vote, the parliaments legal affairs committee voted to begin drafting a set of regulations to govern the development and use of artificial intelligence and robotics. Included in this draft proposal is preliminary guidance on what it calls electronic personhood that would ensure corresponding rights and obligations for the most sophisticated AI. This is a start, but nothing more than that.

If you caught any of the debate on the issue of electronic or robot personhood, you probably understand how murky the issues are, and how visceral reactions to it can be. If you have not caught any of it, now is a good time to start paying attention.

The idea of robot personhood is similar to the concept of corporate personhood, which allows companies to take part in legal cases as both claimant and respondent that is, to sue and be sued. The report identifies a number of areas for potential oversight, such as the formation of a European agency for AI and robotics, a legal definition of smart autonomous robots, a registration system for the most advanced ones, and a mandatory insurance scheme for companies to cover damage and harm caused by robots.

The report also addresses the possibility that both AI and robotics will cause massive job losses and calls for a serious assessment of the feasibility of a universal basic income as a strategy to minimise the economic effects of mass automation of entire economic sectors.

We, Robots

As daunting as these challenges are, lawmakers, politicians and courts are only beginning to skim the surface of what sort of problems, and indeed opportunities, artificial intelligence and robotics pose. Yes, driverless cars are problematic, but only in a world where traditional cars exist. Get them off the road, and a city, state, nation, or continent populated exclusively by driverless cars is essentially a really, really elaborate railway signalling network.

AI is predicted to be humanised through real emotions

I cannot critique here the feasibility of things such as general artificial intelligence, or even the Pandoras Box that is Whole Brain Emulation whereby an artificial, software-based copy of a human brain is made that functions and behaves identically to the biological one. So lets just assume their technical feasibility and imagine a world where both bespoke sentient robots and robotic versions of ourselves imbued with perfect digital copies of our brains go to work and Netflix and chill with us.

It goes without saying that the very notion of making separate, transferable, editable copies of human beings embodied in robotic form poses both conceptual and practical legal challenges. For instance, basic principles of contract law would need to be updated to accommodate contracts where one of the parties existed as a digital copy of a biological human.

Would a contract in Jane Smiths name, for example, apply to both the biological Jane Smith and her copy? On what basis should it, or should it not? The same question would also need to be asked in regard to marriages, parentage, economic and property rights, and so forth. If a robot copy was actually an embodied version of a biological consciousness that had all the same experiences, feelings, hopes, dreams, frailties and fears as their originator, on what basis would we deny that copy rights if we referred to existing human rights regimes? This sounds like absurdity, but it is nonetheless an absurdity that may soon be reality, and that means we cannot afford to laugh it off or overlook it.

There is also the question of what fundamental rights a copy of a biological original should have. For example, how should democratic votes be allocated when copying peoples identities into artificial bodies or machines becomes so cheap that an extreme form of ballot box stuffing by making identical copies of the same voter becomes a real possibility?

Should each copy be afforded their own vote, or a fractional portion determined by the number of copies that exist of a given person? If a robot is the property of its owner should they have any greater moral claim to a vote than say, your cat? Would rights be transferable to back-up copies in the event of the biological originals death? What about when copying becomes so cheap, quick, and efficient that entire voter bases could be created at the whim of deep-pocketed political candidates, each with their own moral claim to a democratic vote?

How do you feel about a voter base comprised of one million robotic copies of Milo Yiannopolous? Remember all that discussion in the US about phantom voter fraud?Well, imagine that on steroids. What sort of democratic interests would non-biological persons have given that they would likely not be susceptible to ageing, infirmity, or death? Good luck sleeping tonight.

Deep thoughts

These are incredibly fascinating things to speculate on and will certainly lead to major social, legal, political, economic and philosophical changes should they become live issues. But it is because they are increasingly likely to be live issues that we should begin thinking more deeply about AI and robotics than just driverless cars and jobs. If you take any liberal human rights regime at face value, youre almost certainly led to the conclusion that, yes, sophisticated AIs should be granted human rights if we take a strict interpretation of the conceptual and philosophical foundations on which they rest.

AI provides a fear of the loss of individual human identity

Why then is it so hard to accept this conclusion? What is it about it that makes so many feel uneasy, uncomfortable or threatened? Humans have enjoyed an exclusive claim to biological intelligence, and we use ourselves as the benchmark against which all other intelligence should be judged. At one level, people feel uneasy about the idea of robotic personhood because granting rights to non-biological persons means that we as humans would become a whole lot less special.

Indeed, our most deeply ingrained religious and philosophical traditions revolve around the very idea that we are in fact beautiful and unique snowflakes imbued with the spark of life and abilities that allow us to transcend other species. Thats understandable, even if you could find any number of ways to take issue with it.

At another level, the idea of robot personhood particularly as it relates to the example of voting makes us uneasy because it leads us to question the resilience and applicability of our most sacrosanct values. This is particularly true in a time of fake news, alternative facts, and the gradual erosion of the once-proud edifice of the liberal democratic state. With each new advancement in AI and robotics, we are brought closer to a reckoning not just with ourselves, but over whether our laws, legal concepts, and the historical, cultural, social and economic foundations on which they are premised are truly suited to addressing the world as it will be, not as it once was.

The choices and actions we take today in relation to AI and robotics have path-dependent implications for what we can choose to do tomorrow. It is incumbent upon all of us to engage with what is going on, to understand its implications and to begin to reflect on whether efforts such as the European Parliaments are nothing more than pouring new wine into old wine skins. There is no science of futurology, but we can better see the future and understand where we might end up in it by focusing more intently on the present and the decisions we have made as society when it comes to technology.

When you do that, you realise we as a society have made no real democratic decisions about technology, but have more or less been forced to accept that certain things enter our world and that we must learn to harness their benefits or get left behind, and, of course, that we must deal with their fallout. Perhaps the first step, then, is not to take laws and policy proposals as the jumping-off point for how to deal with AI, but instead start thinking more about correcting the democratic deficit that exists onwhether we as a society, or indeed a planet, really want to inherit the future Silicon Valley and others want for us.

To hear more about the future of AI and whether robots will take our jobs, listen to episode 10 of The Conversations monthly podcast, The Anthill which is all about the future.

Christopher Markou, PhD Candidate, Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge. This article first appeared on The Conversation (theconversation.com)

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Robots and AI could soon have feelings, hopes and rights we ... - The Independent

North Marion High School adds three more robotics teams to its competitive stable

The President's Day weekend was a busy one for the North Marion Voltmasters.

Three new robotics teams, and their robots, joined the North Marion High School roster: Teams C (The Claw), D (DumDum), and E (The Beast), along with Team B (Scorpion), attended the rookies-only tournament on Feb. 18 at Dallas High School.

Though the varsity squad didn't enter its robot, Juggernaut, some of the team members traveled to Dallas to support the younger teams.

The Scorpions made their way through the qualifying rounds and when it all over, Samantha Patton was the last member standing, alone in first place. And with that finish, she had the first choices in selecting other teams to join her alliance heading into the quarterfinals. Her alliance would make it to the finals before falling, earning a second place.

Teams C, with members Daniel Gonzalez, Brice Ferrell, and Grace Bramel, finished in seventh place, while Team D's Hunter Wierstra and Beau Wilson managed to take 10th.

But the newbie tourney wasn't the end of the robotics weekend.

All North Marion robots attended the rescheduled Sandy tournament on Feb. 20 "and most performed respectably against far more experienced teams," said adviser Sherie Moran. "For some members that had been unable to attend the rookie tournament, it was a bit overwhelming, but they still put in a solid showing."

Teams C and E were able to select their own alliances going into the quarterfinals and although none of the teams made it to the semifinals, "a lot was learned about engineering, robotics, and computer science," said Moran. "Now that everyone better understands the challenges, they are eager to return to the classroom to make modifications to their robots, their programs and their strategies as they look toward their home tournament on Feb 25."

North Marion is looking for volunteers to fill in as judges, referees, field setters, greeters, and other helping hands to set up, manage, and tear down. To help, email Moran at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

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Robotics Growth - Pamplin Media Group

Inside the Depot in downtown Minneapolis Tuesday evening, several dozen young women some with dyed pink hair showed off robots they had built, sometimes using everyday objects.

Their audience was engineering professionals at the Robotics Alley Conference and Expo.

Izzie Mack, a member of girl group the Rubies, used game controllers to drive the groups 18-cubic-inch robot down the aisle of the convention space.

The Rubies and the Ponytail Posse, from St. Paul, were the only lady-centric groups that participated in Tuesdays March of the Robots event at the conference.

Its important to break the stereotype that women are not interested in the engineering field, said Mack, a 10th-grader at Southwest High School.

Girls dont get into science or they think its too nerdy, said Nancy Koshy, a member of Ponytail Posse.

Participating in industry events and seeing robotics at play in everyday life inspire these teens to continue studying science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).

The Robotics Alley Conference and Expo, an annual event held in the Twin Cities, was created to spur public and private partnerships in the worlds of robotics and automation.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who greeted conference attendees via video, said that robotics technology will transform the workforce and economy.

The statement resonated as industry professionals spoke about cybersecurity, 3-D printing of the human body, the future of agriculture and self-driving vehicles.

This is so empowering ... this is the future, said Mitra Kian, a ninth-grade student at Southwest High School and member of the Rubies.

Kian and the other girls were adamant about making a career in the STEM fields. They also are excited about the future: What might their careers could look like in 10 or 20 years?

When the Ponytail Posse demonstrated its robot Stacy, one of her creators proudly showed how they had used part of a standard dresser drawer to help their mechanical teammate make up-and-down movements.

Drawer slides as a lift mechanism, she said. Who would have thought to do that?

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Girls help shatter stereotype at robotics industry expo - Minneapolis Star Tribune

The Klamath Coyotes robotics team will compete in the FTC Western Super-Regional Championship tournament next weekend after winning the Innovate Award for their robot design at the State Championship in Portland last weekend.

The team, made up of nine students from Klamath Union High School and one from Ponderosa Middle School, competed against 48 teams for two days at Benson Polytechnic High School in Portland to secure their place, playing five matches and an elimination match, which knocked them out.

I am thrilled for them, co-coach Betsy Neuman said. They are learning so much more than robotics and engineering, including, teamwork, problem solving abilities, stress management and gracious professionalism. They are gracious competitors and thats a great skill they take with them in sports and school.

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The team has been together for five years, starting out as a FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) LEGO League tasked with researching and developing a solution to real-world problems, such as food safety, energy and recycling; and designing, building and programming a robot to compete with others in the same field.

Last season the team moved up to the FIRST Tech Challenge and have competed at various tournaments across the country, including the World Championships in St. Louis, Mo. in 2016. This is the second time the team will attend the Western Super-Regional Championship.

Inside the groups den in downtown Klamath Falls, they came together on Tuesday to discuss some of the robots imperfections that need fixing, ways to make it stronger for the upcoming competition and fundraising methods to cover the competitions admission cost of $500.

Using a homemade replica of the competition ring, students directed the robot, KCHOWL5B, via a wireless internet connection between a smartphone on the robot and two video game controllers connected to another smartphone manned by the team.

The Coyotes are the only team from Southern Oregon and one of 13 teams of around 500 in the state to go to the Western Super-Regional Championship in Tacoma, Wash. on March 10 through March 12, co-coach Mike Neuman said, adding the team has a one-in-three chance of making it to the World Championship for the second year in a row.

Im excited, team member Seth Gebauer said. It was a close call though, we almost didnt make it and state is super competitive.

The team is looking forward to interacting with other teams from various states at the tournament, including, Alaska, Hawaii and California, and said they enjoy seeing familiar faces from previous years and other competitions.

The game is more than robots, Neuman said. Its about connecting with other players and forming relationships.

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Robotics team carves path for success - Herald and News