Robot Science & Technology Magazine - This site offers a selection of articles from the print version that is published every 2 or 3 months. Plans are afoot for monthly publication. Summaries of all the magazine content are available from the site. These range from the very practical, such as 'Aluminium: The Not So Heavy Metal' and 'Plastic Gear Fabrication' to the more esoteric 'Popular Micromouse Algorithms, Part III: The Flood-fill Algorithm' and 'Multitasking the 68HC11 Robot Brain.' There are a few short pieces from the magazine, in PDF format, to whet the appetite. However, several of the links were not working at the time of review and those that did were several years old. Of more practical use is the links page that has some excellent 'How to' and 'Theory' sections that offer a solid foundation in the art of robotics. If this does not suffice there is also a concise but worthy 'resources' page with links to company websites as well as personal, groups and other related sites. Well organised, neatly and simply laid out and cross browser compatible. However, it suffers from the lack of up to date articles available online. Rating: 7 out of 10 (24 November 2002) ALD
http://www.robotmag.com/
Aerospare Robotics Laboratory - The home page of this site is refreshingly simple and welcoming. The laboratory in question is at Stanford University, California and the site is about the experiments being carried out there by the university's department of aeronautics and astronautics. It explains that the research focuses on improving robotic performance through application of feedback control, integrated sensing systems, and autonomy, and that the work is done by means of experimental robots, which are described in detail on the site. The robots are designed for use in all environments, and include air-cushioned robots gliding on a granite slab to simulate movement in space, a helicopter with computer vision designed to do various tasks such as object-tracking and station-keeping, and an underwater robot. The descriptions of the experiments are simple and clear, with good pictures, but there is more detail about some than others. There are useful links to other relevant sites and an extensive list of publications, some of which can be downloaded. There are also some movies, in MPEG format, but these don't seem to have commentaries (unless my sound card was faulty in some way - always a possibility) and can be slow to download. There are details of the personnel, together with links to other places involved in similar work. A few of the links didn't work properly for me. Rating: 8 out of 10. (5 August 2002) MDH
http://arl.stanford.edu/index.html
NASA Space Telerobotics Program - Telerobotics refers to the combination of robotics with remote operations (teleoperations). This NASA project investigated the use of robots in Earth's orbit, or on the distant surfaces of other planets. Robot arms and free-flying maintenance robots were developed to be used for projects such as servicing and assembly of satellites in orbit, and for the International Space Station. For surface exploration, Lunar Rovers and Mars Rovers have been designed, including the Mars Pathfinder Rover "Sojourner". The project was actually shut down in 1997, so most of the material here is provided as a historical reference. Some of the articles are very dry, clearly aimed more at the research community, but you'll still find much to interest you here. The site is not completely dormant: the "Cool Robot of the Week" still seems to be updated with, for example, links to recently developed humanoid walking robots. (22 November 2001) DP-P
http://ranier.oact.hq.nasa.gov/telerobotics_p...
Artificial Intelligence Center - This is an American site, prepared by a non-profit research organization called SRI. It is basically a resource site for three broad areas of artificial intelligence, namely written and spoken interfaces, perception and 3-D modelling, and representation and reasoning, which includes such things as fuzzy control. It provides a lot of information about these subjects, mainly by reference to research projects being carried out by the owners of the site. Hence it is likely to be of more interest to people or organizations who might be investigating the possibility of having some serious research in this field carried out, rather than the casual visitor. A few of the links didn't work properly. (20 September 2001) MDH
http://www.ai.sri.com/
A.L.I.C.E. AI Foundation - A.L.I.C.E. won the coveted Loebner prize for 2000, voted 'the most human-like computer' by a group of judges that included linguists, psychologists, and philosophers. You can get acquainted with Alicebot after downloading some files, and pc users seem to be able to access more bells and whistles, including speech recognition, than mac users. But more is coming soon, and from the looks of companies incorporating Alicebot into their offerings, we may see much more of this. There is a look into the A.L.I.C.E. brain, and because it is open source, an invitation to program using the Artificial Intelligence Markup Language, or AIML. This promises to be simple for nonprogrammers who know HTML, and will allow individuals to create their own robots, which will contribute to the whole. For those who find these waters a bit deep, it is still fun, especially for kids, to engage in a conversation with Alicebot, and find out just what it was that captivated all those judges. (4 September 2001) AD
http://alicebot.org
