Looking to the future, we increasingly associate it with a well-developed science, many technology novelties, calmness and lack of everyday problems. Our friends robots should help for this. The fact is that the robot will solve a lot of little things in everyday life for us. We imagine well how they will help us out, but only few people know that now there is some difficulty in the thinking of robots. Many scientists work in this area and they have something for amusing us.

Everything started from tale of Gulliver’s adventure on the island of Laputa. Hayao Miyazak took a new cartoon "Tenk? no Shiro Rapyuta" ("Laputa: Castle in the Sky"). Laputa is a story about the people who built a flying city, which was subsequently destroyed by bad people. It also tells us about the island, but it is unusual, where floating castles have been home for robots.

And this cartoon gave the idea for the name of the Robo Earth project - Rapyuta.

Rapyuta is a cloud-based robotic "brain", which will organize the work of brain activity of robots.
The robot will not only aide in the house, it will also hold with us time as a family member, will create a cosiness and comfort of our homes. But he has to solve new problems. For example, to prepare breakfast for your family. Every day there will be other recipes and food components, which have a different shape, and require a new approach to take even this ingredient in the hand.
However, scientists were able to solve this problem and proposed a new approach. They propose to install in your home a device that will control your robots. It is embedded in robot another device that stores some information from his experience and sends it to "brain clouds." System device, which works by using a wireless connection, solves the problem and sends a signal to the robot with a ready solution.

Another possibility of the device is that it helps to solve the problem of a robot for a new task, such as hanging washed clothes, wiping off dust or turning off the computer. The robot is able to make a photoin the case when work is done, and later use it to improve it’s skills.

All developments of the robot are stored in a safe and high-speed media storage. Besides using it’s own data, the robot will be able to use and accumulate skills of other robots and connectivity between them will not make any condition. They will learn and grow quickly in the field of human activity.

And now to put in the right place a chair or cook a new dish will not be a problem for your assistant. This robot’s control system is reliable, fast, highly efficient, integrated and in the future will spread rapidly to every home. Ultimately you will not need to buy different expensive computerized robot’s control systems.

On the one hand the progress in technology will set a new wave in the development of robotics. But on the other hand there is a problem and a threat to the community which were portrayed in many science fiction movies. For example, the movie "I, Robot", "The Terminator", "Robocop" and others are proof that man is afraid of such events.

Therefore, before the widespread introduction of robotics in the home, it is advisable to develop accurate and reliable information system selection for robots and their control system. The system should provide information sharing on positive and negative, which contributes to respond to the situation. Only the application of these measures can be implemented innovations of technology and be calm for her safety.

Overall, progress is ongoing and despite some shortcomings, we still achieves scientific innovation. But we should not forget that robots will never replace humans.

Every day we know more and more about new technologies and other innovations. Now we treat them with some cautious, but in the near future we can not imagine our lives without them.

Everyone likes to spend their free time actively, and especially interesting. Any meeting with friends or colleagues leave us in a lot of pleasant memories. The company "GigaMaxx productions" made an extremely big step in the implementation of major meetings and gatherings. It has created fundamentally new model of robots. New design and look of attract the viewers always quickly. Robots of "GigaMaxx productions" are so flexible, and their movements are similar to the human, he can dance, greet and touch even small children.

The company began its journey in the field of robotics as recently as in 2005, but gained a lot of popularity and respect from users of its services. One of the advantages of this company is that it provides an opportunity to design a robot by you personally.

If you want to attract a lot of attention to your firm or product that you produce, make a show and invite a robot. It fits perfectly into any holiday: presentation of the new car, tasting of chocolate or just advertising your company. The robot can be delivered anywhere in the world.

Grishin Robotics, a global robotics organization of Russian origin, has recently announced its intentions to invest into Bolt - a hardware incubator situated in Boston, USA. The incubator provides a wide range of assistance for startups in different fields including robotics. Another two corporations, Logitech and Autodesk, agreed to support Grishin Robotics and help with capital and some other services.

During the next two years Bolt incubator is going to include 25 hardware startups into its project. The process of application is already opened at www.bolt.io and is planned to be over in 2 months. All the projects selected will receive a certain amount of start capital and a support from skilled engineers and designers. The program concentrates on the most important factors that are crucial for successful commercialization of any hardware product.

Dmitry Grishin, a head of Grishin Robotics, considers a new generation of hardware entrepreneurs is in a great need of friendly supporting environment. A co-founder and CEO of Mail.ru also regards the support of Bolt as the important investment into the future of the market. A model that makes the access to capital for startups possible is developed and is expected to show its first results in two-three years.

Professor Nikolaus Correll from the University of Colorado has put forward an idea about robot swarms. He offered to create a block containing large quantities of robots that work upon a certain problem as a team. To support the idea and show how it woks in practice professor Correll designed a swarm of 20 pingpong ball-sized robots and called them "droplets". Professor thinks it's only a beginning.

Big robot swarms can be applied to different tasks. For instance, they will be able to remove an oil spill or self-assemble without any external aid in outer space. Correll combines robot swarms with the cells in a living organism that collaborate in order to carry out a common task. He even thinks that some day robot swarms will be the first ones to colonize space and assemble habitit for humans. Professor also hopes to develop a methodology aimed at a more complicated behaviour of droplets, for example, assembling a space telescope or a plane. To promote the further research a scientist has created a specialized lab where his students could develop new applications of robots.

Professor Correll has received several awards and grants and hopes to continue his research in the future with his talented students.

A military conflict is not a rare thing on our planet nowadays. A lot of territories are involved into war campaigns, a great deal of which are ongoing and there is no perspective of their ending in a nearest future. Any war has always been a very devastating factor. Both parties inevitably incur heavy losses loosing people, important economic objects, spending after a lot of money to rebuild the ruined economy thus slowing down the development of a country. The losses of people and their sufferings are, perhaps, the most sad moment in the whole story. If it is so hard to avoid wars, is it possible to diminish the role of human factor or even replace it by some other means, say, robots? Using them we can avoid unnecessary loss of population or at least minimize it. The very idea seems to be very appealing and promising. But after a little closer consideration the outlooks appear to be not so bright.

The robots on a battlefield is not a science fiction any more. The developed countries pay more and more attention to autonomous weapons, implying the use of technical means that would be able to take fully autonomous armed combat in any place of the planet. While the programs on war robots are being approved the most conscious people launch the protest campaigns all over the world aiming at banning so-called “killer robots” when it is not too late.

Some experts consider that autonomous “killer robots” can be developed and put to practical use within 20-30 years. Autonomous robotic weapons imply that a machine with an artificial intellect will search for a target, make a decision whether it is a right target and destroy it afterwards. And that is the most worrying point since there is no warranty at all whether the machine could do it right and a civilian wouldn’t be missed with a real combatant.

Fully autonomous weapons aren’t created yet but the search is so intensive that some countries do have samples that can really be regarded as the precursors of “robot killers”. A lot of countries have weapons that are able to destroy automatically the air threats. These systems are valuable mainly because of their ability to reduce risks to the soldiers and expedite time of response. Presently the USA is a leader in developing autonomous weapons and seems to be close to achieving a full success. US Reaper and Predator drones used in Afghanistan proved their efficiency on the battlefield and can be considered as the first steps in a long way to creating really autonomous weapons. Modern robotic weapons are dependable upon a human operator taking the final decision whether to pull the trigger or not. Nevertheless the autonomy level of such systems is increasingly growing leaving no place for a human in a decision-taking process. Military experts think that the tendency of unmanned air forces will preserve in future and regard the Predator and similar models as a first generation. The US Department of Defence expenditures on the programs of unmanned war systems development only confirm the assumption of the experts. Total spendings of this kind reached about $6 billion annually and grow very swiftly. The Defence Department expects to put autonomous weapons into use in 2025.

Our society has developed the principles of humane warfare that is legally written down in the international humanitarian law. There are some types of weapons (a chemical one in particular) that are forbidden by an international law. Considering this the situation concerning fully autonomous weapons is not clear. The main question is whether “robot killers” could abide by international humanitarian law requirements, i.e. minimize the losses of civilians in a military conflict area. Even the proponents of autonomous weapons, let alone critics, admit it is a serious problem and look for the ways of making “robot killers” more humane.

A dilemma of distinguishing among a civilian and a combatant is also very serious. Fully autonomous weapons cannot feel or interpret the difference between the soldiers and civilians especially in terms of modern military environment. It is very easy to cheat these weapons, for instance, wearing no military uniform or hiding the guns.

Another aspect concerns the rule of proportionality that being one of the most complicated principles of international humanitarian law implies the evaluation of the military situation by a human being. The proportionality test forbids the application of the weapons if the expected harm to civilians exceeds the expected effect from its military use. It’s highly possible that a robot wouldn’t be able to analyze a great number of possible scenarios in order to interpret the situation correctly in a real time mode.

The problem of military necessity like the proportionality rule requires a subjective analysis of a situation. It enables military forces plan war actions considering practical requirements of a military situation in a certain time span.

Even more serious problem is that fully autonomous weapons are completely deprived of human emotions that are critical for evaluating the intentions of an individual as well as distinguishing a right target. The proponents of autonomous weapons argue that the very absence of emotions is a main advantage. But they seem to miss the existing side effects. Human emotions provide one of the best possible kinds of protection from killing civilians. The absence of emotions can make the killing process much easy. Robots cannot identify themselves with humans, i.e. they can’t feel compassion. For example, a robot can easily kill a child in an area of a conflict.

On the other part, fully autonomous weapons may become an ideal instrument of terror for dictators wishing to preserve their power. There is no possibility of mutiny among the armed forces since there is no much difference for a robot what kind of order to fulfill.

Considering the problems fully autonomous weapons create for the international law it’s inevitable that some day autonomous robots would injure or even kill a lot of civilians. When there are many victims people usually want to know who is responsible: a military leader, a developer or maybe a robot? None of these versions is satisfactory enough. So the positions of another instrument of civilian protection during military conflicts are considerably undermined.

The proponents of autonomous weapons admit the robots should abide by international humanitarian law. So several mechanisms describing how to make robots do it were offered. The most known are Ronald Arkin’s ethical governor rule and the concept of powerful artificial intellect. The “ethical governor” is a complex system enabling a robot assess the situation correctly and make a right decision in a given situation. The second concept presumes that robots will abide by law due to a mind that is compared to the human’s one if not surpassing it. Such robots are expected to have a computing power equal to the cognitive abilities of human brain. But most scientists consider it rather desirable than accessible.

Taking into account all the problems described above the one thing is absolutely clear: the leading powers together with scientists should immediately make the attempts to adjust the development of a military technologies connected with the robot autonomy. The possible risks far outweigh possible benefits. The situation when the fully autonomous weapons will decide by themselves when and where to start military operations is completely unacceptable.

At least all the experiments with autonomous robots should be conducted in a strict correspondence with an international humanitarian law and be put under severe public control as the ones that threaten the safety of the entire mankind.
It’s not so difficult to grow up a monster. But what to do if a monster stops obey the orders of a master?..

Is it possible to make a prosthetic hand without any complicated electrical schemes or “high tech” tricks? The answer is "Why not?" Two men from different parts of our planet joined their efforts to help Liam, a 5-year old boy from South Africa who was born without fingers on his right hand. As a result a 3D-printed prosthetic hand appeared. The Robohand cosists of 46 parts.

Sixteeen of them are 3D-printed elements while the rest is low-cost parts like nylon cord, bolts and different rubber components. The whole system works due to the moves of a hand. Liam is reported to feel excellent with his birthday present. With his new fingers he can play team games and even pick up very small objects. Moreover, he is no longer shy with an artificial hand and even boasts with it. The inventors are sure that this system can really help many people with similar problems.

One of the inventors was the first man to test Robohand on himself when he had lost his fingers in an accident. The most attractive side of Robohand is its simplicity. There is no need to buy espensive spare parts for it and as the hand grows one can easily make upgraded versions according to the age of an individual. By the way, the design is free for anyone, it can be personalized and the total cost is about $150.

Soft robotics is a relatively fresh trend in robot construction. The designers aim at making the robot parts as flexible and soft as possible that allows robot to move in limited spaces and change the pace of walk with no substantial effort. This direction appeared as a result of a long research of animal motion types, starfish and octopus in particular. Harvard University was among the pioneers of soft robotics and it still keeps amaze us with new creations.

Recently George Whitesides' team has introduced a new soft robot that can jump impressively high - 30 times higher than its own height. The underlying principle is rather straightforward, at least to those who drive a car - an explosive combustion. The developers encountered several problems during the process of construction. The main one was the choice of material for a robot since silicon used previously wasn't very resistant to a gas explosive expansion.

Finally silicon was successfully replaced with another polymer that wasn't melting so quickly. Scientists admit that it was the easiest thing for them to make a robot jump. Now they have to think how to make it walk and even run in a desired direction. If they succeed in it perhaps we'll have some useful rescue or search robots that can move on uneven surface and overcome various obstacles.

Dr. Watson is on everybody's lips again. Oh no, not that famous doctor from the well-known stories about Sherlock Holmes, but a powerful computer designed by IBM. This time it is put into commercial use and is going to help doctors treat the lung cancer. Both hospitals and insurance companies can use the supercomputer services to facilitate the process of lung cancer treatment and support insurance decisions.

The Watson computer is famous for it's quick thinking, good language skills and a huge database. Watson is filled with 1,5 millon lung cancer cases and over two million text pages from different sources that refer to this type of cancer. Additionally, Watson has come through an intensive course of medical training.

Meanwhile, in spite of all it's poserful abilities, the developers of a project warn that Watson will not make decisions concerning the very treatment of a disease. It stands as an additional instrument for doctors relieving them from the necessity to search through piles of information in each particular case. Watson is expected to compare rapidly the medical records of a given patient to the cases existing in his memory and formulate a set of recommendations for further treatment. Both scientists and doctors hope Watson to be the next step in fighting cancer disease.

North Americans are very lucky, because they will have the opportunity to see the play in part of Osaka University's Japanese Robot Theater Project. You are probably surprised to see the word "robot." No wonder, because a group of Japanese university will play with robots in the performance.

The viewers will able to see two stories: "Sayonara" and "I, Worker".

The first story is about the blonde and her friend, who is actually a robot. To guess about it is very difficult, because the robot truly looks like a simple ordinary Japanese. She sits like a real man, blinking eyes and mouth movement also demonstrate this. But her voice makes it possible to guess that this is not a man.

"I, Worker" - a story about a family which losts a child and is struggling with unemployment. The robot in this story is the servant, not only helps around the house, but also is trying to help their masters in an unbearable situation.

The authors of the project are trying to convey to us the reality of the future. The robot will be for us an important component of our life. Robot - it is our friend, who will be striving to understand us in the difficult situation.

Every day we deal with more and more impressive innovations. The theater in which the actors are robots, are not only impressive, but also informative for us, and recalls that future closely together with robots is nearby.