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  • The product of a long quest, Robot III, an artificial cockroach built by mechanical engineer Roger Quinn (in blue shirt) and biologist Roy Ritzmann at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, OH, required seven years to construct. (Quinn directs the Biorobotics Lab at the university.) From the book Robo sapiens: Evolution of a New Species, page 102-103.
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  • Professor Robert J. Full's Poly-PEDAL Lab at UC Berkeley has been working with roboticists for years, supplying them with information on small animal locomotion that is used to conStruct innovative robots. Recently, the Lab has been working with the Stanford Research Institute (SRI), testing and evaluating artificial muscles. Dr. Kenneth Meijer (from Holland) compares and measures a Stanford Artificial Muscle with a natural one from the leg of the Death Head Cockroach. After cooling the cockroach and exposing leg extensor muscle number 179, an electrode is suctioned into the muscle to simulate the nerve-to-muscle connection. Published in Stern Magazine, February 11th, 2000.
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  • Dan Paluska, the mechanical engineering grad student leading M2's hardware design and construction stands with his girlfriend, Jessica, at MIT Leg Lab, Cambridge, MA.
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  • Dan Paluska, the mechanical engineering grad student leading M2's hardware design and construction, is seen here in a double exposure that melds him with his machine for a photo illustration. The lower torso and extremity robot, called M2, took its first tentative steps last year here in the basement of MIT's Leg Laboratory. Established in 1980 by Marc Raibert, the Leg Lab was home to the first robots that mimicked human walking; swinging like an inverted pendulum from step to step. Similar to image published on the cover of Wired Magazine, September 2000. MIT Leg Lab, Cambridge, MA.
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  • Dan Paluska, the mechanical engineering grad student leading M2's hardware design and construction, is seen here in a double exposure that melds him with his machine for a photo illustration. The lower torso and extremity robot, called M2, took its first tentative steps last year here in the basement of MIT's Leg Laboratory. Established in 1980 by Marc Raibert, the Leg Lab was home to the first robots that mimicked human walking; swinging like an inverted pendulum from step to step. Similar to image published on the cover of Wired Magazine, September 2000. MIT Leg Lab, Cambridge, MA.
    Usa_rszz_705_120_xs.jpg
  • Dan Paluska, the mechanical engineering grad student leading M2's hardware design and construction, is seen here in a double exposure that melds him with his machine for a photo illustration. The lower torso and extremity robot, called M2, took its first tentative steps last year here in the basement of MIT's Leg Laboratory. Established in 1980 by Marc Raibert, the Leg Lab was home to the first robots that mimicked human walking; swinging like an inverted pendulum from step to step. Similar to image published on the cover of Wired Magazine, September 2000. MIT Leg Lab, Cambridge, MA.
    Usa_rszz_704_120_xs.jpg
  • Dan Paluska, the mechanical engineering grad student leading M2's hardware design and construction, is seen here in a double exposure that melds him with his machine for a photo illustration. The lower torso and extremity robot, called M2, took its first tentative steps last year here in the basement of MIT's Leg Laboratory. Established in 1980 by Marc Raibert, the Leg Lab was home to the first robots that mimicked human walking; swinging like an inverted pendulum from step to step. Similar to image published on the cover of Wired Magazine, September 2000. MIT Leg Lab, Cambridge, MA.
    Usa_rszz_703_120_xs.jpg
  • Aftermath of the October 17, 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake, San Francisco, California. Damage in the Marina District of San Francisco resulting from the earthquake that occurred at 5:04 PM and lasted 15 seconds. At a magnitude of 7.1, it was the worst earthquake in the San Francisco Bay Area since 1906.
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  • In Death Valley, California, the team responsible for a Russian Mars Rover 'Marsokhod' tests its vehicle to see how it will handle its maneuvering along the similar rocky terrain. The Planetary Society sponsored the test. Robo sapiens Project.
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  • Chris Foley seen here with, Herbert, a robot that picks up empty soda cans, Insect Robot Lab, M.I.T., Cambridge, MA
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  • In the East Bay suburb of Walnut Creek, near San Francisco, Will Wright and family collectively in their garage preparing their creation for "Robot Wars"(daughter Cassidy 11, nephew Patrick 14, and Will). Later that week, in a battle pit ringed by six-foot sheets of bulletproof glass and a sellout crowd, radio-controlled gladiators battle their robots to the mechanical death. Will Wright developed the Sims software games.
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  • For a photo-illustration, graduate student Josh Davis (underwater, in a wet-suit) helps the RoboPike breach out of the water in order to show how well the robotic fish might be able to swim one day. The idea for the image of the RoboPike breaching came from the head of Ocean Engineering, Professor Triantafyllou, whose dream it is for a robotic fish to swim well enough to be able to jump out of the water Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA.
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  • In the same building as Robert Full at UC Berkeley is Michael Dickinson, whose email address "FlymanD" is revealing. Dickinson is a biologist specializing in the study of the aerodynamics of flapping flight. His bizarre studies of fruit fly flight are fascinating. In one small room sits a Plexiglas tank filled with two metric tons of mineral oil. Suspended in the oil are giant mechanical models of fruit fly wings, RoboFly. Because the tiny movements of the wings of a real fruit fly displace air on such a small scale that the air acts sticky, RoboFly enables Dickinson to study similar forces when the giant wings are flapping in oil.
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  • To study the flight control behavior of fruit flies, a tiny fly is glued to a probe positioned in an electronic arena of hundreds of flashing LEDs that can also measure its wing motion and flight forces. By altering its wing motion, the fly itself can change the display of the moving electronic panorama, tricking the fly into "thinking" it is really flying through the air. The amplified humming of the fruit fly as it buzzes through its imaginary flight surrounded by computers in the darkened lab is quite bizarre. UC Berkeley, CA, USA.
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  • Here COG,(short for cognitive) is seen using a slinky toy. Cog's designer is Rodney Brooks, head of MIT's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, in Cambridge, Mass. Although some might be discouraged by the disparity between the enormous amount of thought and labor that went into it and the apparently meager results (simulating the intelligence of a six month old baby), Brooks draws a different conclusion. That so much is required to come close to simulating a baby's mind, he believes, only shows the fantastic complexity inherent in the task of producing an artificially intelligent humanoid robot. Robo sapiens page 59
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  • Graduate student Dan Paluska adjusts mechanisms of the lower torso and extremity robot, called M2. The robot is funded by a DARPA (US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) program called Tactile Mobile Robotics. DARPA's goal is to replace soldiers and rescue workers in dangerous situations. MIT Leg Lab, Cambridge, MA.
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  • Here COG,(short for cognitive) is seen using a slinky toy. Cog's designer is Rodney Brooks, head of MIT's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, in Cambridge, Mass. Although some might be discouraged by the disparity between the enormous amount of thought and labor that went into it and the apparently meager results (simulating the intelligence of a six month old baby), Brooks draws a different conclusion. That so much is required to come close to simulating a baby's mind, he believes, only shows the fantastic complexity inherent in the task of producing an artificially intelligent humanoid robot. Robo sapiens page 59
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  • Walking robot. Blur-flash image of Pinky, a walking robot prototype, being physically supported by researcher Dan Paluska at the Leg Lab. at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). Pinky is a next generation walking robot that, unlike previous generations, can walk untethered and unsupported at normal human pace. Pinky was built to help understand the dynamics of the human stride. Photographed in Cambridge, USA
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  • Joseph Ayers, head of Northeastern University's Marine Research Laboratory, has been researching lobster locomotion for more than twenty years. Based on Ayers's studies, staff researcher Jan Witting is building a robotic lobster that will capture in detail the behavior of a real lobster. The project has enough potential for sweeping mines that it is funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Nahant, Massachusettes. From the book Robo sapiens: Evolution of a New Species, page 110-111.
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  • A "smart" pallet that can move in any direction, OmniMate was designed by Johann Borenstein, a research scientists at the University of Michigan. Like the HelpMate hospital delivery robot, OmniMate sits on robotic platforms called LabMates. Although earlier robot pallets had to move along cables buried in the floor, OmniMate can track its own location by measuring its movements precisely. Borenstein is in the process of putting his robot on the market. At the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. From the book Robo sapiens: Evolution of a New Species, page 189.
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  • Force-feedback is widely used in data gloves, which send hand movements to grasping machines. The robot hand, which was built by the students in Mark Cutkosky's Stanford lab, transmits the "feel" of the blocks between its pincers, giving operators a sense of how hard they are gripping. Stanford, CA. From the book Robo sapiens: Evolution of a New Species, page 137 bottom.
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  • Rather than building an exact metal and plastic copy of an insect's bones and muscles, Stanford engineer Mark Cutkosky and his students Sean Bailey and Jorge Cham (Cutkosky at left) stripped a cockroach to its essence. The Mini-sprawl has padded feet, with springy couplings and pneumatic pistons that yank the legs up and down. Like a real roach, the robot skitters forward as each set of legs touches the surface. The next step: creating a robot that can turn and vary its speed. Stanford, CA. From the book Robo sapiens: Evolution of a New Species, page 99 top.
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  • Although MIT roboticist Rodney Brooks has worked in robotics since the late 1970s, he first attracted widespread attention when he began building robot insects, in the 1980s. (He was one of the subjects of Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control, a documentary film.) From the book Robo sapiens: Evolution of a New Species, page 61.
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  • One of Rodney Brook's team's first subsumptive robots was the insectoid Attila (in photo from 1991), here being worked on by graduate student Cynthia Breazeal. The other pairs of hands belong to then-undergraduate student Mike Binnard, and former graduate student Colin Angle, who is now chief executive officer of the robotics firm iRobot. MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab, Cambridge, MA. From the book Robo sapiens: Evolution of a New Species, page 60.
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  • AeroVironment engineers (left to right) Marty Spadaro, Paul Trist Jr., Tom DeMarino, and Carlos Miralles cluster around the working prototype of the Mars glider, Otto. NASA sees an airplane as an important tool for exploring Mars early in the 21st century, and AeroVironment is seeking the honor of building the plane. From the book Robo sapiens: Evolution of a New Species, page 158 top.
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  • Surrounded by the robots used in his Georgia Institute of Technology laboratory, computer scientist Ronald C. Arkin specializes in behavior-based robots, he's written a textbook with that name. Concerned more with software than hardware, he buys robots from companies and modifies their behavior, increasing their capacities. But outside such places, what Arkin calls "the physical situatedness" of the robot is "absolutely crucial" to its ability to act and react appropriately. Like many of his colleagues, he has been inspired by the way insects and other nonhuman life forms have adapted to their environment. From the book Robo sapiens: Evolution of a New Species, page 153.
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  • When the Three Mile Island reactor failed catastrophically in 1979, the intense radioactivity in the plant prevented its owners from surveying and repairing the damage. Four years later, with conditions still unknown, Carnegie Mellon engineer William L. "Red" Whittaker designed several remote-controlled robots that were able to venture into the radioactive plant. From the book Robo sapiens: Evolution of a New Species, page 141.
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  • Leaning over the glass-topped workbench in the spare bedroom of his Los Alamos, NM condominium, where he builds most of his robot creatures, Mark Tilden shines a flashlight on what will become the head of Nito 1.0. Many of the components scattered over his desk are simple, cheap, and (by contemporary standards) primitive; many are ripped from junked tape decks, cameras, and VCRs. Nito will be Tilden's most ambitious creation yet. (The name stands for "Neural Implementation of a Torso Organism.") When complete, he says, this easily built machine should interact in a simianlike fashion in its world. From the book Robo sapiens: Evolution of a New Species, page 121..
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  • The robot, called Kenta, (Ken means tendon in Japanese) has a flexible spinal column that resembles that of the human body; 96 motors; a five-joint neck; a10 joint spine (each with 3 degrees of freedom); and fast-moving stereo vision that can track a flesh color object. The neck and torso are coordinated to respond in concert with the eye's movement. Student researchers create movements for the robot in simulation and then feed the simulations back to the robot. Professor Hirochika Inoue thinks that developing robots with this structure of incredibly decreased weight and fewer parts will reduce the cost and the complexity of robots in the future for more widespread application. Inoue-Inaba Robotic Lab, University of Tokyo, Japan.
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  • Cynthia Ferrell soldering at the M.I.T., Insect Robot Lab, Cambridge, MA. Robo sapiens Project.
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  • Maja Mataric works on her robot at the  M.I.T., Insect Robot Lab,  Cambridge, MA
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  • Chris Foley seen here with , Eddie, a wall climbing robot, M.I.T., Insect Robot Lab, Cambridge, MA
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  • "Squirt" is a robot that hides in the dark, M.I.T., Insect Robot Lab, Cambridge, MA
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  • Here COG,(short for cognitive) is seen using a slinky toy. Cog's designer is Rodney Brooks, head of MIT's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, in Cambridge, Mass. Although some might be discouraged by the disparity between the enormous amount of thought and labor that went into it and the apparently meager results (simulating the intelligence of a six month old baby), Brooks draws a different conclusion. That so much is required to come close to simulating a baby's mind, he believes, only shows the fantastic complexity inherent in the task of producing an artificially intelligent humanoid robot. Robo sapiens page 59
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  • Cynthia Ferrell (Breazeal) seemingly gives life to the robot Genghis at the M.I.T. Insect Robot Lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA USA.
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  • Kismet is a complex autonomous robot developed by Dr. Cynthia Breazeal, at the time of this image a doctoral studies student at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab under the direction of Rod Brooks. Breazeal's immediate goal for Kismet is to replicate and possibly recognize human emotional states as exhibited in facial expressions. Breazeal has located the most important variables in human facial expressions and has mechanically transferred these points of expression to a robotic face. Kismet's eyelids, eyebrows, ears, mouth, and lips are all able to move independently to generate different expressions of emotional states.
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  • To study the flight control behavior of fruit flies, Dickinson and his researchers have come up with something even more bizarre than RoboFly. They have built a virtual reality flight simulator for fruit flies in an upstairs lab. A tiny fly is glued to a probe positioned in an electronic arena of hundreds of flashing LEDs that can also measure its wing motion and flight forces. By altering its wing motion, the fly itself can change the display of the moving electronic panorama, tricking the fly into "thinking" it is really flying through the air. The amplified humming of the fruit fly as it buzzes through its imaginary flight surrounded by computers in the darkened lab is quite bizarre.
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  • Michael Dickinson of the University of California at Berkeley's email address is revealing: FlymanD. Dickinson is a biologist specializing in the study of the aerodynamics of flapping flight. His studies of fruit fly flight are fascinating. In one small room sits a Plexiglas tank filled with two metric tons of mineral oil. Suspended in the oil are giant mechanical models of fruit fly wings: RoboFly.  RoboFly enables Dickinson to study similar forces when the giant wings are flapping in oil. Thousands of tiny bubbles that act as visual tracers are forced into the oil from an air compressor making all the swirling turbulence visible. The device has been used to identify the unusual aerodynamic mechanisms that insects use to fly and maneuver. UC Berkeley, CA, USA.
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  • Group Leader Jamie Anderson, Mechanical Engineer Peter Kerrebrock, and Electrical Engineer Mark Little (L to R) are shown with the Draper Laboratory VCUUV?Vorticity Control Unmanned Undersea Vehicle. The craft, which cost nearly a million dollars to build, is modeled after a tuna and can swim freely without tethers at a maximum speed of 2.4 knots and can make rapid turns. The Draper Lab VCUUV is based on studies made at MIT by Professor Michael Triantafyllou.
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  • Researcher John Kumph monitors the free-swimming robot pike he has designed. The robot is used in research into the swimming efficiency of fish. The robot is powered by motors, which pull on its skeleton, producing a realistic swimming stroke. It is steered by its fins. A human operator using a radio controls the battery-powered robot. Photographed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA,  USA.
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  • AeroVironment engineer Matt Keennon repairs an Ornothopter; a balsa wood model that flies by flapping its four wings with energy generated from the untwisting of a twisted rubber band. In the background hang a few of the numerous models found in the company's design center. Robo sapiens Project.
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  • Robotic autonomous-control technology will become more and more useful to the disabled in the future, as Hugh Herr can testify. A double amputee, MIT Leg Lab researcher Herr is developing a robotic knee. Standard prosthetic joints cannot sense the forces acting on a human leg. But a robotic knee can sense and react to its environment, allowing amputees to walk through snow or on steep slopes now impassable for them. Cambridge, MA. From the book Robo sapiens: Evolution of a New Species, page 181.
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  • Pinky (chaperoned by graduate student Dan Paluska) is the prototype of the next walking robot from the MIT Leg Lab in Cambridge, MA. Established in 1980 by Marc Raibert, the Leg Lab was home to the first robots that mimicked human walking?swinging like an inverted pendulum from step to step. Famously, Raibert even built a robot that could flip itself in an aerial somersault and land on its feet. From the book Robo sapiens: Evolution of a New Species, page 182.
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  • Roboticist Rodney Brooks of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory shares a slinky moment with his creation, Cog (short for cognitive), the robot he has been developing since 1993. Brooks is less concerned with making it mobile than with creating a system that will let the robot reliably tell the difference between static and social objects; for instance a rock and a person. In the resolution of such apparently simple distinctions, Brooks suggests, is a key to understanding at least one type of human learning. Cambridge, MA. From the book Robo sapiens: Evolution of a New Species, page 62-63.
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  • Utilizing the research results of University of California biologist Robert Full, Martin Buehler of McGill University and Daniel E. Koditschek of the University of Michigan seized upon when they created RHex (controlled by graduate student Uluç Saranli). Tested in a laboratory (at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor) dominated by an antique poster for Isaac Asimov's book, I, Robot, RHex could become a "companion robot," Buehler says, following its owner around like a friendly mechanical shadow. From the book Robo sapiens: Evolution of a New Species, page 97.
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  • Under the control of NASA engineers (from left) Eric Baumgartner, Hrand Aghazarian, and Terry Huntsberger, the Mars Rover robot slowly carries its small payload of rock debris and dirt up the ramp to its mother ship. The rover was scheduled to be sent to Mars on two missions, in 2003 and 2005. Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. From the book Robo sapiens: Evolution of a New Species, page 126.
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  • In a simulated bedroom complete with stuffed animals, tossed bedclothes, and a sleeping dummy victim, Robin R. Murphy of the University of South Florida keeps tabs on her marsupial robot; or, rather, robots. Developed to help search-and-rescue teams, the robots will work as a team. The larger "mother" is designed to roll into a disaster site. When it can go no farther, several "daughter" robots will emerge, marsupial fashion, from a cavity in its chest. The daughter robots will crawl on highly mobile tracks to look for survivors, feeding the mother robot images of what they see. Although the project is funded by the National Science Foundation and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Murphy's budget is hardly overwhelming. From the book Robo sapiens: Evolution of a New Species, page 154-155.
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  • Aerospace engineer Scott Newbern programs the flight computer in the Gryphon, one of the prototypes in the fleet of small robot jets under development at AeroVironment, a company founded in 1971 by inventor Paul MacCready. AeroVironment  , Simi Valley, California. From the book Robo sapiens: Evolution of a New Species, page 156-157.
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  • Working behind a plastic shroud that keeps dust out, NASA engineer Art Thompson of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, works with an early mock-up of what is called Nanorover, a lunchbox-sized space vehicle that will touch down on and explore a one-kilometer-wide asteroid. The small near-Earth asteroid 4660 Nereus is the target of a Japanese space mission that will launch in 2002. When its payload is full, it will return to the Japanese spaceship, which will in turn come back to Earth in 2006. From the book Robo sapiens: Evolution of a New Species, page 127.
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  • By flexing his data-gloved hand, robotics specialist Fredrik L. Rehnmark controls the NASA robonaut as it reaches for a battery-operated power drill on a test platform. Black goggles on Rehnmark's head give him the view from the twin digital cameras mounted in the robot's shiny carapace. Next to Rehnmark, engineer Hal A. Aldridge tracks the robot's test results. In a cavernous adjacent room in the Johnson Space Center  in Texas is a life-sized mock-up of the robonaut's future home: the NASA space shuttle. From the book Robo sapiens: Evolution of a New Species, page 132-133.
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  • Moving like its skittish biological counterpart, Spring Flamingo walks tethered to a boom in a circular course around its home at the MIT Leg Lab, Cambridge, MA. From the book Robo sapiens: Evolution of a New Species, page 8-9.
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  • Wedged into her small, cluttered workspace in the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in Cambridge, MA., researcher Cynthia Breazeal holds a mirror to Kismet, the robot head she has been working on for two years. The cameras behind Kismet's big blue eyes send data to its computer, which has software allowing the robot to detect people and bright toys visually. In addition, the software recognizes people by vocal affect. Then, following its programming, it reacts, twisting its features in a comically exaggerated display of emotion. From the book Robo sapiens: Evolution of a New Species, page 66.
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  • Reviewing the results of her work, Carnegie Mellon computer scientist Manuela Veloso (kneeling) watches the university soccer-robot team chase after the ball on a field on the floor of her lab. Every year, the Carnegie Mellon squad plays against other soccer-robot teams from around the world in an international competition known as RoboCup. Veloso's team, CMUnited, is highly regarded. Flanked by research engineer Sorin Achim, postdoctoral fellow Peter Stone, and graduate research assistant Michael Bowling (right to left), Veloso is running through the current year's strategy a month before the world championships in Stockholm. CMU's AIBO team members are Scott Lenser, Elly Winner, and James Bruce. Pittsburgh, PA. From the book Robo sapiens: Evolution of a New Species, page 214.
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  • Deep in the basement of the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute, Omead Amidi adjusts the wing of the robot helicopter he is designing with Takeo Kanade, a Carnegie Mellon researcher who specializes in robotic vision. Several smaller versions of the project sit in his workshop. Pittsburgh, PA. From the book Robo sapiens: Evolution of a New Species, page 160-161.
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  • A dinamation robotic model of an Apatosaurus (with the skin removed showing the metal skeleton) at the Dallas Science museum. A time exposure shows how the neck and head respond to joystick commands. Dinamation International, a California-based company, makes a collection of robotic dinosaurs. The dinosaurs are sent out in traveling displays to museums around the world. The dinosaur's robotic metal skeleton is covered by rigid fiberglass plates, over which is laid a flexible skin of urethane foam. The creature's joints are operated by compressed air and the movements controlled by computer.
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  • Student Yousuke Kato points to a female face robot created at the Science University of Tokyo, Japan, Fumio Hara Robotics Lab. The female face robot (secondgeneration) has shape-memory electric actuators that move beneath the robots' silicon skin to change the face into different facial expressions much as muscles do in the human face. The research robot undergoes a metamorphosis with each class of students assigned to work on it. The latest iteration allows the robot's face to mold into six different expressions: happiness, sadness, fear, disgust, anger, and surprise. In some images, the computer monitor displays a graphical representation of the software creating the expression on the robot.
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  • Looking into the eyes of Jack the robot, Gordon Cheng tests its response to the touch of his hand. Researchers at the Electrotechnical Lab at Tsukuba, an hour away from Tokyo, Japan, are part of a project funded by the Japanese Science and Technology Agency to develop a humanoid robot as a research vehicle into complex human interactions. With the nation's population rapidly aging, the Japanese government is increasingly funding efforts to create robots that will help the elderly. Project leader Yasuo Kuniyoshi wants to create robots that are friendly and quite literally soft, the machinery will be sheathed in thick padding. In contrast to a more traditional approach, Kuniyoshi wants to program his robot to make it learn by analyzing and fully exploiting its natural constraints. From the book Robo sapiens: Evolution of a New Species, page 56-57.
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  • At the time, the robot Strut, a work in progress, could not walk at all, it could only stand. (It walked sometime later.) But simply getting the robot to stand properly was a major accomplishment. Like a human being, Strut has such complex, interreacting mechanical "musculature" that considerable processing power is needed simply to keep it erect. Osaka (Japan) University Department of Computer-Controlled Mechanical Systems, built by Junji Furusho and research associate Masamichi Sakaguchi. From the book Robo sapiens: Evolution of a New Species, page 48.
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  • In the water, pike can accelerate at a rate of eight to twelve g's, as fast as a NASA rocket. To scientists, the speed is inexplicable. In an attempt to understand how the flap of a thin fish tail can push a fish faster than any propeller, John Kumph, then an MIT graduate student, built a robotic version of a chain-pickerel?a species of pike?with a spring-wound fiberglass exoskeleton and a skin made of silicone rubber. Now under further development by iRobot, an MIT-linked company just outside Boston in Somerville, MA, the robo-fish can't yet swim nearly as fast as a real pike, suggesting how much remains to be learned. Photographed at the MIT tow tank, Cambridge, MA. From the book Robo sapiens: Evolution of a New Species, page 108-109.
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  • Leaning back in his chair, graduate student Jerry Pratt controls Spring Flamingo, a walking robot at the MIT Leg Lab in Cambridge, MA. A branch of MIT's renowned Artificial Intelligence Lab, the Leg Lab is home to researchers whose subjects run the gamut from improved artificial legs to robots that help scientists understand the complex dynamics of the human stride. Tethered to a slightly counterweighted boom that rotates around a pivot, the robot always walks in a circle in the lab.From the book Robo sapiens: Evolution of a New Species, page 8-9..
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  • Lugano, Switzerland on Lake Lugano. Contemporary Art Museum of Lugano under construction: LAC."Lugano is a city in the south of Switzerland, in the Italian-speaking canton of Ticino, which borders Italy. The population of the city proper was 55,151 as of December 2011, and the population of the urban agglomeration was over 145,000. Wikipedia"
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  • Burton Richter (b.1931), Director of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), photographed during the construction of the Stanford Linear Collider in 1986. Richter won the 1976 Nobel Prize for Physics, following his discovery of the Psi- particle at the SLAC in 1974. The Prize was shared with Sam Ting of Brookhaven National Laboratory. The discovery of the Psi- particle also implied the existence of two new quarks, Charm and anti- Charm. Richter has been at SLAC since 1964, having also designed the PEP positron-electron storage ring at Stanford. Richter became Director of SLAC in 1984, and now oversees projects such as the Stanford Linear Positron-Electron Collider. MODEL RELEASED. Detector 4 SLC in CEH. MODEL RELEASED.
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  • Ironworker Jeff Devine at work at a construction site on 300 East Randolph St., Chicago, Illinois. (Jeff Devine is featured in the book What I Eat: Around the World in 80 Diets.) MODEL RELEASED.
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  • Ironworker Jeff Devine at work at a construction site on 300 East Randolph St., Chicago, Illinois. (Jeff Devine is featured in the book What I Eat: Around the World in 80 Diets.) MODEL RELEASED.
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  • Ironworker Jeff Devine (at top) at work at a construction site on 300 East Randolph St., Chicago, Illinois. (Jeff Devine is featured in the book What I Eat: Around the World in 80 Diets.) MODEL RELEASED.
    USA_080925_141_xw.jpg
  • Construction welder Huang Neng, with his typical day's worth of food in Pudong's Lujiazui Central Green Park in Shanghai, China. (From the book What I Eat: Around the World in 80 Diets.) The caloric value of his day's worth of food on a typical day in June was 4300 kcals. He is 36 years of  age; 5 feet, 6 inches tall and 136 pounds. The migrant welder has worked on a dozen trophy skyscrapers on the Huangpu River in Pudong New Area, across the river from old Shanghai. His current project is the Zhongrong Jasper Tower, at far right, which will top out at 48 floors?a short-statured building compared to its neighbors. MODEL RELEASED.
    CHI_060604_098_xxw.jpg
  • (MODEL RELEASED IMAGE). Hubert Sobczynski, his daughter Klaudia, and his wife Marzena at the construction site of their new house hold a picture of the final design. (Supporting image from the project Hungry Planet: What the World Eats.)
    POL03_7589_xf1b.jpg
  • USA_SCI_BIOSPH_81_xs <br />
Biosphere 2 Project undertaken by Space Biosphere Ventures, a private ecological research firm funded by Edward P. Bass of Texas.  Architect Philip Hawes at a computer workstation, with Biosphere construction on his computer and projected onto the background.  Biosphere 2 was a privately funded experiment, designed to investigate the way in which humans interact with a small self-sufficient ecological environment, and to look at possibilities for future planetary colonization. The $30 million Biosphere covers 2.5 acres near Tucson, Arizona, and was entirely self- contained. The eight ‘Biospherian’s’ shared their air- and water-tight world with 3,800 species of plant and animal life. The project had problems with oxygen levels and food supply, and has been criticized over its scientific validity. 1990
    USA_SCI_BIOSPH_81_xs.jpg
  • Aerial of Mission Viejo housing subdivisions in Orange County, California, showing the last of new construction at center.
    USA_SCAL_05_xs.jpg
  • New house construction seen from wild horse valley road. Napa Valley, California.
    USA_070106_02_rwx.jpg
  • Lugano, Switzerland on Lake Lugano. Contemporary Art Museum of Lugano under construction: LAC."Lugano is a city in the south of Switzerland, in the Italian-speaking canton of Ticino, which borders Italy. The population of the city proper was 55,151 as of December 2011, and the population of the urban agglomeration was over 145,000. Wikipedia"
    SWI_121012_181_x.jpg
  • Berlin, Germany. Construction cranes with colored neon lights.
    GER_11_xs.jpg
  • The Louvre pyramid in final stage of construction. Paris, France.
    FRA_042_xs.jpg
  • Biosphere 2 Project buildings under construction seen at dawn. The Biosphere was a privately funded experiment, designed to investigate the way in which humans interact with a small self-sufficient ecological environment, and to look at possibilities for future planetary colonization.  1989
    USA_SCI_BIOSPH_44_xs.jpg
  • Ironworker Jeff Devine (at top) at work at a construction site on 300 East Randolph St., Chicago, Illinois. (Jeff Devine is featured in the book What I Eat: Around the World in 80 Diets.) MODEL RELEASED.
    USA_080925_041_xw.jpg
  • A sky scrapper under construction looms above the rows of dormitories in which Huang Neng shares a room with nine other workers in Shanghai, China. (Huang Neng is featured in the book What I Eat: Around the World in 80 Diets.)
    CHI_060603_067_xxw.jpg
  • Tourists stand outside the Taj Mahal Bangladesh, a replica of India's famed Taj Mahal erected by Ahsanullah Moni, a millionaire film director and businessman. The Bangla Taj sits in the middle of rice fields near Moni's home village outside of Dhaka, Bangladesh. He says he built it because most  Bangladeshi people cannot afford the trip to Agra, India to see the real thing. The entry fee for his replica is 50 Taka, about  0.75 USD. There is a 25-room hotel facing the Bangla Taj and he says his plans include a film studio and center nearby. The construction of the main Taj will be completed in about a month but the tourist attraction is now open to the public. Moni claims about 20,000 people visit daily. There is only a single lane two kilometer road winding through the surrounding rice fields connecting the main road to his attraction, near the town of Sonargaon, about 30 kilometers from Dhaka.
    BAN_081213_695_xw.jpg
  • Tourists stand outside the Taj Mahal Bangladesh, a replica of India's famed Taj Mahal erected by Ahsanullah Moni, a millionaire film director and businessman. The Bangla Taj sits in the middle of rice fields near Moni's home village outside of Dhaka, Bangladesh. He says he built it because most  Bangladeshi people cannot afford the trip to Agra, India to see the real thing. The entry fee for his replica is 50 Taka, about  0.75 USD. There is a 25-room hotel facing the Bangla Taj and he says his plans include a film studio and center nearby. The construction of the main Taj will be completed in about a month but the tourist attraction is now open to the public. Moni claims about 20,000 people visit daily. There is only a single lane two kilometer road winding through the surrounding rice fields connecting the main road to his attraction, near the town of Sonargaon, about 30 kilometers from Dhaka.
    BAN_081213_588_xw.jpg
  • Tourists stand outside the Taj Mahal Bangladesh, a replica of India's famed Taj Mahal erected by Ahsanullah Moni, a millionaire film director and businessman. The Bangla Taj sits in the middle of rice fields near Moni's home village outside of Dhaka, Bangladesh. He says he built it because most  Bangladeshi people cannot afford the trip to Agra, India to see the real thing. The entry fee for his replica is 50 Taka, about  0.75 USD. There is a 25-room hotel facing the Bangla Taj and he says his plans include a film studio and center nearby. The construction of the main Taj will be completed in about a month but the tourist attraction is now open to the public. Moni claims about 20,000 people visit daily. There is only a single lane two kilometer road winding through the surrounding rice fields connecting the main road to his attraction, near the town of Sonargaon, about 30 kilometers from Dhaka.
    BAN_081213_331_xw.jpg
  • Tourists stand outside the Taj Mahal Bangladesh, a replica of India's famed Taj Mahal erected by Ahsanullah Moni, a millionaire film director and businessman. The Bangla Taj sits in the middle of rice fields near Moni's home village outside of Dhaka, Bangladesh. He says he built it because most  Bangladeshi people cannot afford the trip to Agra, India to see the real thing. The entry fee for his replica is 50 Taka, about  0.75 USD. There is a 25-room hotel facing the Bangla Taj and he says his plans include a film studio and center nearby. The construction of the main Taj will be completed in about a month but the tourist attraction is now open to the public. Moni claims about 20,000 people visit daily. There is only a single lane two kilometer road winding through the surrounding rice fields connecting the main road to his attraction, near the town of Sonargaon, about 30 kilometers from Dhaka.
    BAN_081213_328_xw.jpg
  • Foreign guest worker directing traffic at a construction site in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
    DUB_030519_001_x.jpg
  • Ahsanullah Moni, millionaire film director and business man, stands on the balcony of a hotel overlooking his new Taj Mahal Bangladesh, a replica of India's famed Taj mahal built in the middle of rice fields near his home village outside Dhaka, Bangladesh.  He says he built it because most  Bangladeshi people cannot afford the trip to Agra, India to see the real thing. The entry fee for his replica is 50 Taka, about  .75 USD. There is a 25-room hotel facing the Bangla Taj and he says his plans include a film studio and center nearby. The construction of the main Taj will be completed in about a month but the tourist attraction is now open to the public. Moni claims about 20,000 people visit daily. There is only a single lane two kilometer road winding through the surrounding rice fields connecting the main road to his attraction, near the town of Sonargaon, about 30 kilometers from Dhaka.
    BAN_081213_599_xw.jpg
  • Coopers making wine barrels at Bodegas Muga in Haro, Rioja, Spain.
    SPA_021_xs.jpg
  • A factory worker carries a stack of bricks at the JRB brick factory near Sonargaon, outside Dhaka, Bangladesh. The heavy clay soils along the river near the market town of Sonargaon are well suited for making bricks. At the JRB brick factory, workers of all ages move raw bricks from long, stacked rows, where they first dry in the sun, to the smoky coal-fired kilns. After being fired, the bricks turn red. A foreman keeps tally, handing the workers colored plastic tokens corresponding to the number of bricks they carry past him. They cash in the chips at the end of each shift, taking home the equivalent of $2 to $4 (USD) a day.
    BAN_081214_631_xw.jpg
  • Glen Canyon Dam, Lake Powel, UT
    USA_100528_162_x.jpg
  • Glen Canyon Dam Bridge, Lake Powel, UT
    USA_100528_160_x.jpg
  • Glen Canyon Dam, Lake Powel, UT
    USA_100528_132_x.jpg
  • Orange County, California. Massive earth grading for homes and roads. Near Mission Viejo, California.
    USA_SCAL_06_xs.jpg
  • Alf Burtleson (center) stands with his partners Dale Wondergem and Jim Curry where they are expanding a wine cave belonging to Flora Springs Winery in Napa Valley, California.
    USA_030129_23_xs.jpg
  • Lugano, Switzerland on Lake Lugano. "Lugano is a city in the south of Switzerland, in the Italian-speaking canton of Ticino, which borders Italy. The population of the city proper was 55,151 as of December 2011, and the population of the urban agglomeration was over 145,000. Wikipedia"
    SWI_121012_147_x.jpg
  • Lugano, Switzerland on Lake Lugano. "Lugano is a city in the south of Switzerland, in the Italian-speaking canton of Ticino, which borders Italy. The population of the city proper was 55,151 as of December 2011, and the population of the urban agglomeration was over 145,000. Wikipedia"
    SWI_121012_141_x.jpg
  • Lugano, Switzerland on Lake Lugano. "Lugano is a city in the south of Switzerland, in the Italian-speaking canton of Ticino, which borders Italy. The population of the city proper was 55,151 as of December 2011, and the population of the urban agglomeration was over 145,000. Wikipedia"
    SWI_121012_127_x.jpg
  • Early morning training workout for camels at the racetrack in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
    DUB_030522_005_x.jpg
  • Jet skis on Jumeirah beach with the Burj-al-Arab luxery hotel in the background.  The Burj-al-Arab, built on an artificial island extending from the beach, is the world's tallest hotel. Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
    DUB_030521_002_x.jpg
  • Toeleria Victoria, wine barrel factory in Haro, Rioja, Spain.
    SPA_020_xs.jpg
  • Aftermath of the October 17, 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake, San Francisco, California. Damage in the Marina District of San Francisco resulting from the earthquake that occurred at 5:04 PM and lasted 15 seconds. At a magnitude of 7.1, it was the worst earthquake in the San Francisco Bay Area since 1906.
    USA_CA_EQ_09_xs.jpg
  • Aftermath of the October 17, 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake, San Francisco, California. Damage in the Marina District of San Francisco resulting from the earthquake that occurred at 5:04 PM and lasted 15 seconds. At a magnitude of 7.1, it was the worst earthquake in the San Francisco Bay Area since 1906. The earthquake left parts of San Francisco without power for four days; at least 27 fires broke out across the city, a four-foot tsunami wave traveled from Santa Cruz (which also suffered considerable damage to its downtown structures) to Monterey, and in Oakland parts of the Cypress Structure freeway collapsed onto each other.
    USA_CA_EQ_06_xs.jpg
  • Aftermath of the October 17, 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake, San Francisco, California. Damage in the Marina District of San Francisco resulting from the earthquake that occurred at 5:04 PM and lasted 15 seconds. [[At a magnitude of 7.1, it was the worst earthquake in the San Francisco Bay Area since 1906.
    USA_CA_EQ_01_xs.jpg
  • Biosphere 2 Project Insectarium seen at dusk. The Biosphere was a privately funded experiment, designed to investigate the way in which humans interact with a small self-sufficient ecological environment, and to look at possibilities for future planetary colonization. The $30 million Biosphere covers 2.5 acres near Tucson, Arizona, and was entirely self-contained. The eight 'Biospherian's' shared their air- and water- tight world with 3,800 species of plant and animal life over their two-year stay in the building, producing all of their own food and supporting the whole environment in five 'biomes'; agricultural, rain forest, savannah, ocean and marsh.  1989
    USA_SCI_BIOSPH_48_xs.jpg
  • Ironworker Jeff Devine tightens bolts on an I beam at his fiftieth floor worksite in Chicago, Illinois, on highrise at 300 East Randolph St. (Jeff Devine is featured in the book What I Eat: Around the World in 80 Diets.) MODEL RELEASED.
    USA_080925_145_xw.jpg
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Peter Menzel Photography

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