Famous Circuits Blog

IEEE Spectrum

Driverless Cars: Optional by 2024, Mandatory by 2044
Defense Against the Dark Arts (of Cyberspace)
Graphene Plasmonic Circuits Take a Critical Step Foward
U.S. Department of Energy Wants to Get Into the Self-Driving Car Business
The Good Life, With Robots
Skype Will Translate Multilingual Conversations by Next Year
The Rise of the Personal Power Plant
Clark Gellings: The Future of the Power Grid
Google Is Building Its Own Self-Driving Car Prototypes
Learn New Skills With Superhuman Speed
Wearable Computers Will Transform Language
Quantum Cryptography with Ordinary Equipment

Driverless Cars: Optional by 2024, Mandatory by 2044

Posted: 29 May 2014 09:00 AM PDT

Autonomous driving will push humans into the passenger seat

Defense Against the Dark Arts (of Cyberspace)

Posted: 29 May 2014 08:00 AM PDT

Universities are offering graduate degrees in cybersecurity

Graphene Plasmonic Circuits Take a Critical Step Foward

Posted: 29 May 2014 06:02 AM PDT

Graphene-based optical antennas could help create photonic logic circuits

U.S. Department of Energy Wants to Get Into the Self-Driving Car Business

Posted: 29 May 2014 06:00 AM PDT

Amended rules allow its loan program to fund producers of autonomous vehicles

The Good Life, With Robots

Posted: 28 May 2014 02:00 PM PDT

Photographer Dan Saelinger envisions a future eased by amiable automatons

Skype Will Translate Multilingual Conversations by Next Year

Posted: 28 May 2014 02:00 PM PDT

Skype Translator is trying to connect people across the globe, regardless of language barriers

The Rise of the Personal Power Plant

Posted: 28 May 2014 01:00 PM PDT

Smart and agile power systems will let every home and business generate, store, and share electricity

Clark Gellings: The Future of the Power Grid

Posted: 28 May 2014 01:00 PM PDT

Electricity expert Clark Gellings envisions an integrated, agile network to tie together millions of electricity producers and consumers

Google Is Building Its Own Self-Driving Car Prototypes

Posted: 28 May 2014 12:30 PM PDT

Tiny test cars lack steering wheels and control pedals

Learn New Skills With Superhuman Speed

Posted: 28 May 2014 12:00 PM PDT

Wearable computers could provide the muscle memory to learn guitar chords or dance steps

Wearable Computers Will Transform Language

Posted: 28 May 2014 10:00 AM PDT

Smart clothes and accessories will let us share thoughts and sensations as well as words

Quantum Cryptography with Ordinary Equipment

Posted: 28 May 2014 09:00 AM PDT

Japanese scientists dream up efficient protocol for securing data with quantum keys

Trossen Robotics Blog

Jimmy in the Press

Posted: 28 May 2014 03:40 PM PDT

Earlier today Jimmy walked onto stage at the Re/Code conference and he’s been showing up over the media ever since! From Gizmdodo to The Wall Street Journal, Jimmy is everywhere.

Intel CEO Brian Krzanich also talked a little bit about our next Jimmy related project – a smaller version of Jimmy. We’ll have more details on this AX-12 based robot soon, but in the mean time check out the smaller Jimmy on CNBC

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Introducing the Jimmy Research Humanoid!

Posted: 28 May 2014 06:29 AM PDT

For the last several months we’ve been working tirelessly on a secret project, and we’re finally ready to share it with the world! Today at the Re/code conference we’ll be unveiling the Jimmy Research Robot. Jimmy is the first robot platform to be released by the 21st Century Robot Project.

The 21st Century Robot project is the brainchild of Intel’s Futurist Brian David Johnson and is the result of the collaboration of developers from USC, Olin College, and Trossen Robotics.

The 21st Century Robot Manifesto:

A Robot Is: Imagined first. Easy to build. Completely open source. Fiercely social. Intentionally iterative. Filled with humanity and dreams. Thinking for her/him/itself.

The 21st Century Robot Project aims to imagine a radically different kind of robot. A robot that is designed, constructed and programmed like never before. We can imagine and build a far more amazing future than we have today, a much more creative and rich tomorrow for robots and their relationship to humans. It’s time for a 21st Century Robot

Hardware

Jimmy’s internal endoskeleton is manufactured from 5052 aircraft aluminum, and is completely modular and expandable. The outer shell of the robot is designed to be 3D printed, which means modifications and aesthetic tweaks are very easy and affordable. The robot features 12 MX-106T, 6 MX-64T, and 2 MX-28T DYNAMIXEL servos from Robotis. The on-board CPU is comprised of an Intel NUC D54250WYK, which features an Intel Core i5-4250U 4th Generation Haswell chipset, 4GB of DDR3 RAM (up to 16gb expansion), and a 32GB SSD for internal storage. Wireless connectivity options are available in Xbee, Wifi 802.11AC, and Bluetooth. Onboard IO for expansion and development include 4x USB 3.0 & 2x USB 2.0 ports, HDMI & Display Port video output, Gigabit Ethernet, SATA port, 2x mini-PCIe slots (used for SSD & Wifi/Bluetooth), and up to 8-channel audio. The sub-controller used to communicate with the Dynamixels is the Robotis CM-730 Cortex-M3 based microcontroller, which will eventually be replaced by our own Arbotix-PRO (currently in development, scheduled release is Q4 2014). Onboard LiPo batteries provide 4S 14.8v 4000mAh of power, which produces approximately 30-60 minutes of runtime per charge.

Software

The humanoid robot platforms of the 21st Century Robot project aim to run a unified software framework. The robot is offered in two flavors of Linux- Ubuntu 14.04 LTS for developers who wish to take advantage of a full-featured desktop OS, or Yocto Project Poky distribution OpenEmbedded Linux which has a custom 21C Robots layer to allow for unified support across many different CPU configurations and hardware.

This framework is being actively developed, and is based upon the open-source and highly featured Darwin-OP framework from Robotis and Virginia Tech University. We will continue to refine and expand this software, providing multiple control interface solutions as well as a REST based API so that the robot can be connected to ROS & the Intel XDK for cross-platform application development, as well as a variety of different software environments. The goal of the API is to easily expose higher level functions of the robots, so that developers can bring the robots to life without having an in-depth knowledge of the more advanced lower level functions that make the robot move and walk. Like the hardware, all of the software will be available completely open-source and available for anyone to download.

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