Providing a clear location usage description is critical to have your iOS app approved. With the default settings of the Apache Cordova location plugin cordova-plugin-geolocation, your app is likely to be rejected by Apple. I experienced this first hand with the iOS version of the Farmers Market app. Apple reviewers sent me the following message: Guideline 5.1.1 - Legal - Privacy - Data Collection and Storage We noticed that your app requests the user’s consent to access their location, but ...

As a Pharo addict, making a 3D printed lighthouse is a fun week-end project. This idea is even more attractive. It's a project that goes beyond what can be done using a small 3D printer, with a single extruder. The requirement are the following:

• The lighthouse can be taller than the maximum printing height.
• The height should be easy to change, without a CAD sofware.
• Combine at least 3 colors.
• Minimize wasted  time and  filament in case of a ...
  
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A loft of plastic litter (bottles, bags...) end up in harbours, marinas and canals. WasteShark, a robotic boat by a Dutch company (Rana Marine) takes care of collecting this floating waste. The robot behaves the shark whale style to clean urban waters. Video 1 shows WasteShark in action. Video 1 shows WasteShark in action Plastic pollution is a very problem dramatic as shown in Video 2. Unfortunately, the WasteShark robot can't cope with rough waters. There is however another the ...

In this post we give an overview of major open source humanoid robots. Existing ones are interesting and seriously compete with the pre-built closed robots such as the Nao. One surprising conclusion is that going the open source route does mean cheap. Indeed humanoid robots have many degrees of freedom. Usually more than 20 servo motors are required. However, those are robots that are mainly used for reaseach. Hobbyists can downsize the robots, and customize their shape to use fewer ...

The ArbotiX is an open hardware (GPL 3 license) Arduino compatible board that can control up to 30 Dynamixel servo motors. It is ideal for building robots of various kinds (Legged robots, Robotic arms, ...). In the following, we provide you with a detailed description of the ArbotiX-M board and its characteristics. Our code samples will help you quickly make your first project. Outline:

• Overview of the ArbotiX Board
• Arduino IDE Setup to use ArbotiX
• Powering your servos using ...
  
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Robotics is of great fun. But, making robots can take very long time... Or maybe not. Checkout the selection of videos below we have gathered for you. Those DIY robots belong to the so called BEAM Robotics. Robots made along this philosophy are based on simple analog circuits with inexpensive and more often scavenged parts. Video 1: Toothbrush Robot (HexBugs Clone) Video 1 features a robot similar to the famous hexbug nano that we have discussed in a previous post ...

The Climate World Summit COP 21 is taking place in Paris. Governments from all countries are discussing policies to deal with the global warming. While we can expect a new agreement that will help making a step forward, it is likely to be insufficient to fully address the problem. There were already 20 previous summits, but none of them stopped the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere. Let's face it, the top-down approach is broken. The answer should come from ...

The importance of emotional expression as part of human communication has been understood since the seventeenth century, and has been explored scientifically since Charles Darwin and others in the nineteenth century. Recent advances in Psychology have greatly improved our understanding of the role of affect in communication, perception, decision-making, attention and memory. At the same time, advances in technology mean that it is becoming possible for machines to sense, analyse and express emotions. We can now consider how these advances ...

A great mystery is how human infants develop: how they discover their bodies, how they learn to interact with objects and social peers, and accumulate new skills all over their lives. Such development is organized and progressive, and results from the complex growth processes and interaction between brain mechanisms, the physical and the social environment. Constructing robots, and building mechanisms that model such developmental processes, is key to advance our understanding of human development, in constant dialogue with human and ...

Murray Shanahan is Professor of Cognitive Robotics in the Dept. of Computing at Imperial College London, where he heads the Neurodynamics Group. His publications span artificial intelligence, robotics, logic, dynamical systems, computational neuroscience, and philosophy of mind. He was scientific advisor to the film Ex Machina, which was partly inspired by his book “Embodiment and the Inner Life” (OUP, 2010). In the two videos below, he describes what he sees as the main obstacles to achieving human-level artificial intelligence given ...