http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/08/technology/circuits/08ROBO.html

> Charmed by Six Feet of Circuitry
> By CURTIS GILLESPIE
>
> EDMONTON, Alberta -- WITH her conference duties complete, Grace found
> a quiet spot in the wings of the busy auditorium where she had just
> delivered a detailed and fluid speech on her groundbreaking scientific
> advances.
>
> The crowd at the conference, the annual meeting of the American
> Association for Artificial Intelligence, had responded with genuine
> human warmth. "Thanks for coming," she said over the applause, adding,
> "See you next year in Acapulco," referring to the site for the 2003
> conference.
>
> When scientists from around the world gathered from July 28 to Aug. 1
> in Edmonton,

hey, I was there.

> [...] Grace (the name is short for Graduated Robot Attending Conference)
> emerged as the focal point, and her shining moment came during the
> Robot Challenge, one of several conference events designed to showcase
> the state of the art. The challenge was for each robot to start at the
> entrance to the conference center, take the elevator to the
> registration desk, register for the conference and then report to the
> auditorium at a set time and deliver a speech.

cool...

> During her PowerPoint speech to a crowd of about 300, Grace outlined
> in detail her circuitry and software.
>
> "My chassis," Grace said, "is an iRobot B-21 base with two Pentia
> running Linux. I have a laser range finder, sonar and both stereo and
> monocular active heads for vision. I also have a flat-panel display,
> speakers and a wireless link for communication.
>
> "My software has been under development for many years by the various
> institutions that make up the Grace team. Mobility, vision, speech
> recognition, speech generation and facial expressions are all separate
> processes. I use simple, well-defined interfaces to control software
> complexity."
>
> The crowd ate it up, and even seemed to understand most of it, but
> Grace very nearly didn't make it to her speaking engagement. The robot
> was already 10 minutes behind schedule at the starting point of the
> challenge when some of the Carnegie Mellon graduate students in the
> project team decided that last-minute adjustments to Grace's
> performance characteristics were required. They began to make those
> changes via infrared links from their laptops.
:

I'd like to get into robotics one day. I imagine it could get
pretty time-consuming.

--
Gerald Oskoboiny <[email protected]>
http://impressive.net/people/gerald/