This article appears in the June 4th, 2012 issue of Forbes Magazine.

The Pentagon wants to build a robot army. Nelson Paez of DreamHammer hopes to make it as easy to operate as possible.

The Pentagon has a big command-and-control problem. not insubordination among the troops. It’s that unmanned systems for land, air and sea—for which the military spent $6 billion-plus last year—can’t “talk” to one another. Every drone contractor builds proprietary control systems, making it impossible to integrate different machines or for the military to tinker with existing systems. “It can only be described as byzantine,” says retired Lieutenant General Dave Deptula, once the Air Force’s first deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, and thus in charge of drones that have been deployed to devastating effect in Afghanistan, Iraq and Yemen.

That’s great for drone builders. the unique software codes and operating features lock the Pentagon into an exclusive and expensive relationship.

Nelson Paez is trying to break that lock. his company, DreamHammer, has spent $5 million building an operating system, Ballista, that can link and control any kind of drone or robot, armed or unarmed. if the military adopts it, dronemakers like Northrop Grumman and Boeing would have to license Paez’s software so their unmanned systems could be plugged into the military’s.

“We’ve been working with the government for the past three years on this,” says Paez, a tall Californian who, Men in Black-style, sports wraparound sunglasses and a dark suit. “When I first told Defense officials about Ballista, they stood up and said, ‘That’s what we’ve been waiting for for years.’”

Ballista’s system is so simple it can be run from a tablet. the software interfaces with a drone via an application programming interface, a.k.a. API. Each drone’s unique software codes, operational hardware protocols and data transmissions flow into Ballista’s central command system to be translated and displayed in a video­game-like user interface. the system streams thermal imaging information from cameras, geolocating data and flying controls for surveillance drones—and serves as a trigger for armed ones. Drones that can’t now be networked could then communicate with one another.

DreamHammer CTO Chris Diebner compares it with a smartphone OS—on which drones and features for those drones can be run like apps. of course, Ballista is doing something on a much larger scale. It means that it takes fewer people to fly more drones and that new features can be rolled out without the need to develop and build a new version of a Predator, for example.

Now 38, Paez spent the late 1990s doing IT security work for the Defense Logistics Agency. He cofounded Dream-Hammer in 2000 to provide identity management systems and IT security to companies like Country Financial, Pfizer and Best buy. Today it’s a 75-person shop out of Santa Monica, Calif., Honolulu and Arlington, Va. doing only government work. It has a current backlog of $23 million in U.S. contracts and netted 15% on revenue of $6.9 million last year.

THE ROBOT who can fetch a beer from the fridge is known simply as PR2.

The hi-tech helper, acquired by the UTS robotics department, will be named through a public competition run by the university.

PR2 not only brings beer but can play pool and buy a sandwich, all of which can be viewed on YouTube.

Robots are fun, according to UTS research and development associate dean Mary-Anne Williams.

“Robots are exciting to work with because they are autonomous,” Prof Williams said.

“They can sense their environment and respond with physical action.

“Robots today can play soccer, open doors, retrieve physical objects and cook pancakes for breakfast.”

PR2 is a service robot, able to undertake all kinds of tasks including cooking meals, tidying up, using a mobile phone, opening the door, delivering mail and even turning off appliances when they are accidentally left on.

“In the future we’ll have robots driving cars and undertaking work that might be dangerous or boring for people,” Prof Williams said.

Anyone who thinks they have the perfect name for PR2 can visit the UTS website at robotics.uts.edu.au.

In the future, when our kids’ kids are studying the origins of cybernetic humans, they will learn that one of the first pieces of the anatomy to be invented was the butt.  And they will learn that the first robot butt was named Shiri, and its creators wanted it to be happy.

Inventors at the University of Electro-Communications in Tokyo are responsible for this bulbous, quivering achievement. As strange as it sounds, Shiri (the “buttocks humanoid robot”) may actually represent a big step forward in replicating physical human sensation (or, in the words of the inventor, it “expresses various emotions with organic movements of the artificial muscles”).

According to the University, the project is meant to “advance the innovative use of robotic technology and its purpose,” and “to raise the argument as to what perceptions will be manifested in the minds of people who communicate with Shiri.”

Clear enough?  If not, then maybe you should just watch the video below.

The originator of this and a growing list of similar inventions is graduate student Nobuhiro Takahashi, who grabbed a few headlines last year for inventing the “e-kiss” simulator that allows people to french kiss across the internet.  CNET reports that he’s also working on a self-hugging machine.

Shiri, in case you are wondering, is Japanese for “Buttocks.”

Follow me on Twitter @neuronarrative and visit my website, The Daily Brain. 

Humans are generalists. We’re adaptable. If there’s a task we can’t do on our own, we find ourselves a tool to help us. Robots aren’t usually like this, because it’s very hard to design a robot that implements all the different tools that might conceivably be useful to it. Roboticists at ETH Zurich are trying to get around this problem by designing a robot with just one tool, but the tool they’ve chosen is a hot glue gun that their robot can use to manufacture any other tools that it needs to.

ETH has some experience with robots and hot glue (which they call Hot Melt Adhesive, or HMA). Last year, for example, we wrote about one of their robots that uses HMA to climb up walls, but HMA can be used as much more than just an adhesive. by building up layers of HMA material, you can construct simple shapes, and ETH has designed a robot that uses this technique to create a tool from scratch that enables it to complete a task that it wouldn’t otherwise be capable of: transporting water from one place to another.

That might have been a little hard to see, but here’s the sequence of events:

1. The robot uses HMA to construct the base and sides of a cup, one layer at a time. This takes about half an hour to complete. The construction surface is aluminum, covered in a thin layer of oil to keep the HMA from sticking too much.
2. While the cup cools (and solidifies), the robot builds a small bar out of HMA nearby and allows it to cool.
3. When the bar has cooled sufficiently, the robot places a heating element against the bar, melting the bar onto itself. The heating element is turned off, and when the bar has cooled, the robot pulls it off of the construction surface.
4. The robot adds a little dollop of HMA to the side of the cup, and then sticks the other end of the bar onto the cup and lets the HMA bond to itself.
5. Finally, the robot pulls the bar and the attached cup off of the construction surface, and gets to work.

At this point, you’ve probably noticed the similarities between this process and 3D printing, which is much faster and provides a lot more detail. The reason this robot can’t just 3D print a cup is that the thermoplastic materials don’t provide any good ways of bonding objects to the robot itself, which would mean that the robot would have complex manipulators and deal with grasping, and the whole point (or part of the point) of the HMA is to make complicated things like that unnecessary.

While the actual execution of this task was performed autonomously by the robot, the planning was not, since the robot doesn’t yet have a perception process (or perception hardware, for that matter). This is something that the researchers will be working on in the future, and they fantasize about a robot that can adaptively extend its body how and when it deems fit. they also suggest that this technique could be used to create robots that can autonomously repair themselves, autonomously increase their own size and functionality, and even autonomously construct other robots out of movable HMA parts and integrated motors, all of which sounds like a surefire recipe for disaster if we’ve ever heard one.

Robotic Body Extension Based on Hot Melt Adhesives, by Luzius Brodbeck, Liyu Wang and Fumiya Iida from the Bio-Inspired Robotics Laboratory, ETH Zurich, Switzerland, was presented on Thursday at ICRA 2012 in St. Paul, Minnesota.

[ ETH Zurich Bio-Inspired Robotics ]

In addition to learning that lead generation is the top marketing priority for tech marketers, IDC's 2012 Tech Marketing Barometer Study asked them about their perceived effectiveness at lead nurturing. In reponse to the 22% who said they use regular nurturing touches geared to buying stages that include more than email and web-based multi-step campaigns, Kathleen Schaub, VP-research, CMO Advisory Service at IDC, said:

“I don't believe this, or people don't understand what nurturing means,” Schaub said. “I talk to a lot of our clients and people in the industry, and I know for sure that people are not nurturing well.”

Based on what I've seen, I agree with her. Kathleen also made the comment,

“A lot of people look at nurturing as, "now we can program our campaign system to deliver six emails in a row.'"

Hence the need for this post. Yet again.

Lead nurturing is not about sending out emails on a regular schedule just because you can. Or just because you think that constant communication (regardless of relevance) will help you sell something. it won't.

And it's evidence that marketers have missed the point.

Lead nurturing is about providing education, expertise, and evidence that help prospects learn what they know during each stage of the process and build the confidence to make a buying decision in your favor — or to gain the consensus from those involved in the decision to get the deal done. It's about positioning your company as an expert that can bring more value to the project than the product would alone.

Let's face it, perceived value, expertise and credibility are the true differentiators in today's marketplace. Otherwise it would just be a price war.

Stringing together 6 emails as a set-it-and-forget-it program won't do this. Don't misunderstand. It's not about the number 6, but the laziness behind the robotic campaign that sets my teeth on edge. Based on the length of the buy cycle, 6 touches may do the trick — if they're relevant and build the right story.

The problem with robotic email campaigns is that they:

I can probably think of more, but you should get gist.

Please understand that this has nothing to do with marketing automation. I think every marketer should have it. It's what you do with it that counts.

Lead nurturing is a process. It's the unfolding of a story that helps the buyer understand why they need to solve a problem, options for solving it, why they should change and why they should choose you to do so. It's never about buying a product. at least not overtly.

This takes thought, planning and the establishment of a lead management process that's managed to goals and objectives.

And it takes the chops to develop outstanding content designed for buyers.

It also means that you need to think outside the Inbox. Lead nurturing happens with every asset your prospects come in contact with in whatever channel they're using. whether they see a Tweet and click to read a blog post or receive an email with a link to an article or white paper, or find your infographic using search, the result should be the perception of value and time well spent.

So before you go hook up 6 emails in a row to send out on a schedule, take some time to think about the experience you're creating for your buyers. if you need more motivation, review the list above highlighting the consequences of using robotic emails.

Picture courtesy of Robot Pictures

Last April, for the first time since she became paralyzed 15 years ago, a 58 year-old woman was able to get herself a drink of coffee – she did so via a robotic arm, which was controlled by her thoughts. Although that rather astounding feat took place over a year ago, it was just made public today, in a report published in the journal Nature. the woman was a volunteer test subject, in a clinical trial of the experimental BrainGate neural interface system. Although still very much in development, the system could someday restore mobility to people who have suffered paralysis or limb loss.

The trial was a collaborative effort of the Department of Veterans Affairs, Brown University, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and the German Aerospace Center (DLR). it had two participants – the woman and a 66 year-old man, identified only as S3 and T2, respectively. both of them had lost the use of their limbs years ago, due to brainstem strokes. they manipulated two different robotic arms, designed by the DLR Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics, and DEKA Research and Development Corp.

The business end of BrainGate, however, is a silicon microelectrode array that was implanted in each subject’s motor cortex (a part of the brain that’s associated with voluntary movement). that array is described as being about the size of a baby Aspirin, and contains 96 separate electrodes. An output cable leads from that array, to an external port on top of the user’s head.

The BrainGate implantable microelectrode array

When the participants thought of their arm performing a certain action, neurons adjacent to the array fired accordingly. due to the subjects’ paralysis, this did not result in the movement of their arm, which it would do in a non-handicapped person. the electrical activity of the neurons was, however, picked up by the electrodes. This data was fed (via the cable) to a linked external computer, which translated the activity into instructions for the robotic arm.

Over the course of four days, the woman and man used this setup in a series of exercises. some of these involved trying to grab foam targets, within 30 seconds of their popping up in different locations. when using the DEKA arm and hand, which has a wider grasp, the woman was successful 66.7 percent of the time, while the man managed a figure of 62.2 percent. both subjects experienced much higher success rates when it came to simply touching the targets.

According to a press release from Rhode Island’s Brown University, where BrainGate was developed, “The study represents the first demonstration and the first peer-reviewed report of people with tetraplegia [also known as quadriplegia] using brain signals to control a robotic arm in three-dimensional space to complete a task usually performed by their arm.”

As mentioned, the woman went a step further than grabbing the foam targets, and used the arm to grasp a bottle of coffee from a table, move it over to her face, and then tilt it so she could sip the coffee through a straw. she subsequently had the arm return the bottle to the table. the researchers were impressed both that the motor neurons in her brain were still active after 15 years of essentially being “disconnected,” and that her microelectrode array still functioned properly five years after being implanted.

The system still needs to refined – it would definitely be preferable to make it wireless, for instance, so that users didn’t have to be hard-wired to a computer through the top of their head. nonetheless, the scientists are enthusiastic about what has been accomplished so far.

“Our goal in this research is to develop technology that will restore independence and mobility for people with paralysis or limb loss,” said lead author of the report, Dr. Leigh Hochberg. “We have much more work to do, but the encouraging progress of this research is demonstrated not only in the reach-and-grasp data, but even more so in S3’s smile when she served herself coffee of her own volition for the first time in almost 15 years.”

A video of that moment can be seen below.

Sources: Brown University, NINDS

When the creators of the robotic Butt were busy making the product, they were not thinking of it as a medical accessory or even a therapeutic device but a weird practical consideration. it is basically just a twitching, quivering, hissing robotic butt. according to the creator of the robot called Shiri, “it represents emotions with visual and tactual transformation of the muscles. it is just an attempt to approach the creation of sensitive and subtle expression by a humanoid robot using organic constructs”.

Covered with a skin of silicon, the robotic butt basically consists of a foam superstructure, a gluteus maximus actuator, and a pair of pneumatically activated muscles that can be inflated or deflated to simulate the many subtle moods of the butt. If one can put a terminology for it, then it might be called a butt simulator.

It replicates to almost everything ranging from slaps to caresses. it even shows various emotions that human generally express but are unseen like shuddering, clenching, twitching and pulsating. the inventor of the butt, Nobuhiro Takahashi of the University of Electro-Communications in Japan, amusingly calls it a buttocks humanoid robot that expresses various emotions with organic movements of the artificial muscles.

By Jeffrey Matulef

Dejobaan Games, the Massachusetts-based developers behind, AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! – A Reckless Disregard for Gravity, are now making Drunken Robot Pornography.

They’re also making a game called Drunken Robot Pornography. the game will be a first-person shooter where you play as a human with a jetpack and a gun tasked with obliterating a colossal robot centerfold called a Titan. as the Titan demolishes the buildings you’re standing on, you can disassemble it piece by piece by removing its armor, cannons, and claws. You’ll also have the ability to erect force fields as makeshift shields.Beyond simply fighting Titans, you’ll be able to construct your own and unleash them on other players. “Start with a skeleton of titanium girders, then mount pulse cannons and shielding over hard points. Add actuators so your Titan can flex its arms or tentacles, and jets for locomotion,” the press release explains. “Pick your materials carefully — an aluminum finish may be pretty, but graphene armor will better withstand attack. Finally, fuel it up with isopropanol for speed, methanol for strength, or ethanol, if you just want your Titan to end up really, really angry.”

Conceptually, it sounds a bit like a zany Shadow of the Colossus with a stronger action vibe and no exploration. Or maybe it’s more like the giant robot bosses in Binary Domain crossed with the jetpacking daring-do and general goofiness of Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon. These are all things I love, so this sounds all sorts of amazing.

Drunken Robot Pornography is due later this year on PC and Mac. in the meantime, check out some screenshots at the official site.

[Source: Dejobaan Games]

Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time Sneaks onto PS Vita and has the Trailer to Prove itDead Island Dev’s Off-Road Racer ‘Mad Riders’ Coming may 30th

MALIBU, Calif. (KABC) — Emily is a robotic lifeguard that can race across the ocean to help a swimmer in distress. this is no toy motor boat, but literally, a lifesaver.

Los Angeles County lifeguards are now testing the device to see how Emily can help them during the busy summer beach season.

“Emily is a new device that was created to help contact a conscious victim. so it’s a very good tool if someone is still viable, they’re not unconscious, you can use Emily to go out and get someone,” said Capt. Remy T. Smith of the Los Angeles County fire Department Lifeguard Division.

Emily could help save lives, but her name was inspired by a tragic event.

“Emily was named after a young woman that was tragically killed here in Malibu,” said lifeguard Joe Everett.

Emily Rose Shane, 13, was walking near Pacific Coast Highway when she was struck by a car in 2010. To help deal with the loss, Emily’s parents started a pay it forward campaign. At the time, Tony Mulligan was working on his new robotic lifeguard. his daughter and Emily were close friends. They joined the campaign and named their project “Emily.”

“We knew Emily as a person who always wanted to help people. She always put other people in front of herself,” said Mulligan. “And that’s really what this robot is about, is going off and helping somebody. I think it’s a great way to memorialize Emily.”

With summer right around the corner, beaches are about to get busy. To prepare, the Los Angeles County lifeguards practice their rescue drills, using all of their equipment. for the first time, that includes Emily. I volunteered to be the first victim.

Happy to be in the hands of professionals, I was dropped off beyond the break. Emily was deployed from the shore and blasted through the surf to my rescue. Emily gave me, the victim, a chance to relax as I waited for lifeguards to arrive.

in rescues, time is of the essence, and Emily is able to stretch that time, which could save lives.

“It’d be nice to know that Emily’s angel is right there helping you to make it back to shore safely,” said Mulligan.

(Copyright ©2012 KABC-TV/DT. all Rights Reserved.)

Get more Los Angeles News »

beach, rescue, los angeles news, bri winkler

Pinteresting – Sure, we all thought Pinterest was a flash-in-the-pan fad like Tamagotchis and Pogs, but it may well be here to stay as Japanese ecommerce company Rakuten has invested $100 million in it. Are we going to start being able to buy stuff through Pinterest then? That could get expensive… [TNW]

Star spangled – Remember Eduardo Saverin? Sure you do, he was in The Social Network, the new Superman played him. He’s a real person too, one of the original Facebook creators who ended up with a stake in Facebook worth around $5bn. Ever thrifty, he’s hoping to avoid $64m in US taxes by renouncing citizenship (although his people say it’s actually because he just looooves Singapore). The rub? He probably won’t ever be allowed back in to the States. [TNW]

Arrow to the etc – A handy interactive map app for Skyrim has been told to shut up shop and remove the app from the App Store “due to copyright infringement”, despite the creator’s insistence that he “intentionally didn’t use any graphics or wording that would possibly be owned by Bethesda”. [Kotaku]

Home sweet homepage – Apple has kicked domain squatters off iPhone5.com after complaining to the World Intellectual Property Organisation. It’s no guarantee that Apple will name its next iPhone the iPhone 5 though, so don’t get too excited. [TNW]

Nothing to see here – Apparently we British reckon we waste two days a year waiting for slow websites to load, according to a survey by 1&1 Internet. “The overall lesson is that consumers have never been so unforgiving of slow running websites,” concludes 1&1 as TechRadar shuffles awkwardly, clears our collective throat and then runs away. [PR]

Episode II – The second instalment of interactive HTML5 web comic Brandon Generator is now live. As well as 69 bits of user-submitted content, the comic uses PNG to SVG translation and the animation power of IE9′s SVG engine to mask secret features. happy hunting. [Brandon Generator]

Your money or your smartphone – 37 per cent of people surveyed by Recombu say they can’t physically live without their phone. We don’t believe them. [Recombu]

Convenient – Staples has got some new notebooks to sell, so it’s handy that it’s latest round of research proves that people still want to use notebooks. Only 9 per cent of its respondents said they use electronic devices to take notes these days even though using paper and pen is well old school. [PR]

Kobo dragon – you can now get the Harry Potter ebooks on Kobo ereaders by visiting kobobooks.com/harrypotter. thank goodness. [PR]