Hard to get iRobots

I've decided to use the iRobot Create on my project, even my advisor approved the platform, what is great!
But I simply can't buy them...
The Brazilian vendor ignore my e-mails and the international sales office automatically redirects my e-mails to the Brazilian office.

This situation is killing me.

"Plant Neurobiology" : Smart vegetables

I've recently watched prof. Stefano Mancuso, from LINV, on TED.
He studies plant neurobiology, not sure if it's cosidered a "field",formaly speaking, but it sure deserves to be. He shows evidence of a collective intelligence in plants by analyzing electric signals an plant reactions, actions, networks etc.

Social Behavior on bacteria

A nice TED talk about bacterial communication by Bonnie Bassler. She studies how bacteria can communicate with one another, through chemical signals, to act as a unit. Her work could pave the way for new, more potent medicine.

Modular robotics now for sale

A very cool project from Cornell with modular articulated joints self-organizing robot now have a commercial similar version!
Check the video:


The commercial version is called Cubelets!

Complexity

Sorry for the long delay on posting, I'm kinda busy right now with several parallel projects and demands reaching deadlines (I hate those)...
Well, I'm really into complexity lately, found a nice book about complex systems (complex in a "standard" way, not the "mathematical" way with complex variables) talks about complexity on various kinds of dynamical systems: from thermal to demographics and economics, going through statistical physics!
My interest on complex systems is how the simple elements are organized (or self-organize) to give birth to their complex behavior, or how to develop agents with simple behaviors capable of control (or simple interact on a controlled way) with those systems.

Also, found a nice animation about our future and trillions of computers that has a proto-idea of "layered complexity", not very deep on this subject but I liked it:

Trillions from MAYAnMAYA on Vimeo.

Termites as constructors, not destroyers

People tend to hate termites (I would hate to have my house eaten too!) but they show us one of the most beautiful examples of emergent behavior, collective work and decentralized task management: the termite nest.

built of mud, sand, shi... well, soil. they are tall pillars that rise from the ground, they have inside fungus gardens, deposit chambers and even a royal chamber to the queen. But the most impressive is the air recycling system! totally emergent from construction (or do you think there is a special "architect" type of termite?! Or more basic, if they even know why they build in this way!)

Here is a youtube Video from a documentary that shows one of those marvels of insect world:

The Wild World of Robots

A nice image found at online schools :

Funny yet informative (on an useless way, but still...)

Eco-Tech, some say swarm is it's biggest triumph

Reading some tech news I've found an Autoworld entry about swarm technology.

It's kinda funny see that car industry is the most excited about swarm technology, but they have their point.

Here is the link to the article, very basic, but still interesting : http://blog.autoworld.com.my/index.php/2009/02/26/swarm-technology-the-biggest-contribution-to-eco-tech/

Off Topic: Robot Motion

This is a little off topic, but motion control on industrial manipulators is an awesome area too so it deserve some space =).

It's quite hard to achieve precision and speed simultaneously, most because of inaccurate position sensors (the most common technique to remove the dependency of speed is a dynamic linearization, or better, a linearization of the robot dynamics by feedback from sensors)

This is a demo by ABB robotics posted originally at Hack a day some months ago...

Behold awesomeness:

Warming up

This blog is an attempt to register the development of my MSc degree thesis on swarm robotics.
So expect little tutorials, news about robotics and some desperate calls for help when I get stuck!
Ah! Just in case, you can know more about me and my research at the links on the sidebar.

Not too much by now, but I expect this to be useful for someone! (It will be for me =])

Just to give a taste, one of my preferred swarm robotics projects. the Swarm-Bots :