robot

MIT's Media Laboratory’s Personal Robots Group has developed a new system which merges technology and play to stimulate young minds: The Playtime Computing system is aimed at children between 4 and 6 years old and allows them to get up and about instead of sitting around and getting bored, a hot topic at the moment given Michelle Obama's Let's Move campaign.

Alphabot, a cube-shaped robot with infrared emitters at its corners, is tracked by ceiling-mounted cameras. A virtual landscape is projected onto the panels and floor to blur the barriers between reality and the artificially-created world. To further add to the illusion, as Alphabot disappears into a hole in the panel and some robotic foliage closes behind, the image projected onto the panel appears to show it continuing its journey into the virtual world.

The MIT team says that the current prototype was put together using off-the-shelf parts at a cost of just a few hundred dollars, and believe that mass production for home use is a viable possibility.

The Robolift Conference is coming up in 3.5 months. We will have the founder of the MIT Personal Robots Lab Dr. Cynthia Breazeal as a speaker! Join us in Lyon and grab your ticket.

Frederic Kaplan, a researcher and robot designer from the Swiss Institute of Technology (Lausanne) talks about the need to invent new kind of computer interfaces adapted to more causal situations,without mouse and keyboard that one can use while continuing doing other thinks.

We're pleased to announce a new speaker: game-industry veteran Bruno Bonnell. Founder and CEO of video game publisher Infogrames Entertainment for 24 years, he recently started a new venture in robotics.

Bruno will give a talk in the "stories session", describing his perspectives and projects about mass-market robotics.