Architecture under CCTV (image from the BMW Welt Munich).

The G-20 protests have generated a lot of geeky news. In additional to the usual tear gas grenades and stun grenades, this year's G-20 protest marked the first public use by the government of a 150 DB sound cannon against civilian protesters. The result was a call for a DIY HERF gun that protesters could use to disable the sound cannons. Next, the FBI arrested Elliot Madison for using twitter to describe police movements during the protests. (the EFF has just obtained the legal documents for the Madison case) Now, we've heard that the CMU Machine Learning Lab has put on their own G-20 protest, demanding attention be given to important AI and robotics issues with such punchy slogans as "free variables", "support vector machines", "repeal power laws", "Baysians against discrimination", "end duality gap", "ban genetic algorithms", and of course, "Map reduce, map reuse, map recycle". Arthur Gretton shot some nice photos of the protest, one of which is included above.

We've previously reported on some robots taking part in plays, including for example an acting robotic desk lamp. Now a theater play in Switzerland has cast three mobile robots in lead roles. The Robots podcast has taken the opportunity to talk to both, the artist directing the play and the roboticist in charge of building the three acting robots. Christian Denisart describes what inspired him to do a play featuring robot actors and shares his experience with directing the play. Nicola Tomatis, whose company Bluebotics used its well-known expertise in navigation solutions and mobile robotics to create three very different robot actors, discusses the technical challenges. Tune in!

Photo: Laura Bentley

This marks the beginning of a new series of posts under the title of  "How To:_____". Instructional playlists for the most important events in your life. For this post I bring one of the most important moments in a person's life, meeting up with a Robot. Remember when you met a robot? Was there a soundtrack in the background to enhance the experience? No? Figured as much. Here's where I come in and help you enhance those lively, unforgetable moments that should go down in our hearts in all 5 senses.

I was sitting by my window early this morning going over images in my head, over and over, like a slideshow, and the image above hit a note, I'd seen it the other day while looking for visual stimuli. That of course led me to fantasize about a meeting with that charismatic little fellow, which inevitably lead to me searching my iTunes for songs that would accomodate the moment, which inexplicably led me to the kitchen with a sudden urge for tuna fish and rice, but that's another story altogther. At first I could not decide between if I wanted this robot to bounce up and down at a pulsating electronic dance mix, with his halogen eyes beating to an hypnotizing bass line, his arms flying all krump style or stretch out his arms in warm glitch sounds, the lights in his chest slowly turning on and off, like breathing. I guess I had to stick with neutral territory.

I'd love to receive suggestions from you guys on themes for these How To playlists.

-

01. Pornophonique - Sad Robot
(8-bit lagerfeuer, 2007)
02. I Monster - Hey Mrs. (Glamour Puss Mix)
(Neveroddoreven, 2005)
03. Air - How does it make you feel?
(10,000 Hz Legend, 2001)
04. Japanese Seizure Robots- Alone in A Crowded Room (Extended Version)
(Knobtweakers Best of 2005, 2005)
05. Casiotone for the Painfully Alone - Half Ghost
(Twinkle Echo, 2003)
06. I am a Robot and Proud - Places We're Trying to Find
(The Electricity In Your House Wants to Sing, 2006)
07. Prefuse73 - Página 5
(Reads the Books EP, 2005)
08. Larvae - Raindelay
(Dead Weight, 2006)

Flickr-User Meifembot lädt nichts anderes hoch, als Fotos von jungen Roboter-Damen (die meisten anscheinend von Worth1000). Wir hatten heute erst eine kurze Diskussion im Büro darüber, ob das Sexleben von Robotern nicht eigentlich völliger Unsinn ist. Das ist es natürlich nicht. Sexbots werden früher oder später selbstverständlich Realität und wenn man diese nun mit einer künstlichen Intelligenz versieht, kann ich mir sehr gut vorstellen, dass Roboter in Zukunft auch so etwas wie Befriedigung empfinden. Träumen Roboter von elektrischen Orgasmen? Wie auch immer, ein wunderbarer und auf eine (noch) sehr strange Art sehr sexy Flickr-Stream.

Fotostream von meifembot (via Minds Delight)

A robotic teddy bear developed at MIT combines robot interactivity with a kind of weird telepresence. The bear, called the "Huggable," has 1,500 skin sensors, actuators for movement, microphones in its ears, cameras in its eyes and a speaker in its mouth. Inside is a PC connected to the Internet over Wi-Fi. It can operated in fully autonomous mode, where it interacts without human intervention. More interestingly, it has a semi-autonomous mode, where it serves also as a conduit for interaction with someone over the Internet. People see and hear over the Internet what the bear sees and hears, plus control it remotely like a creepy puppet.