TOPIO: A robot that can play table tennis with you

What would you call it he or it? Well, it doesn't matters. It’s TOPIO 3.0 and it is developed by TOSY which is a Vietnam's company. TOPIO is abbreviated to TOSY Ping Pong Playing Robot and it’s a bipedal (walk by two legs) robot. It is basically designed to play table tennis. And of course it can play table tennis against a human being.

 It was under development since 2005 and various versions of TOPIO were released before this latest version TOPIO 3.0 in 2009 and it was publicly demonstrated on 25^th November 2009 at Tokyo International Robot Exhibition, Japan

The Tech: TOPIO has 39 degrees of freedom, and this humanoid uses two 200-fps cameras to detect the ball, of course while playing. It uses the Artificial intelligence to detect the incoming and choose the best return shot. And yeah the artificial intelligence system allow it to learn and improve its skills while playing.

Specifications:

            Weight- 120kg

            Height- 6.2 feet

            Legs- 2 (Interestingly TOPIO 1.0 had 6 legs)

            DOF- Total 39 (Degree of freedom defines independent joints capable of movement)

·         Two in the head

·         Seven in each arm

·         Six in each leg (2 legs)

·         One in the torso

·         Five in each hand

President’s Talk: Ho Vinh Hoang is the TOSY's president and his goal is to see the TOPIO in every home, not just to play ping-pong only but to do the household tasks.

Final Words: Doesn't matter how does it go for TOSY but these guys really build a cool robot with a great look not very close to the human look but they are excellent at the robot type. I mean if you compare it to Honda ASIMO which has the fines look I guess then TOPIO deserves the place near beside ASIMO.

Ironman's Jarvis - Turn your computer into jarvis

Tony Stark

Do you know Tony Stark? Of course you would if you don't live in caves. Well, I'm not talking about Tony Stark but his Computer (i.e. Jarvis). Isn't that cool hmm? Alright I will tell you how to make your computer talk and work like Jarvis. Yeah it won't be cool like Jarvis; but still it would be able to talk to you and do whatever you will tell it to do? 
          Okay wait, you know what? You can actually make it work like Jarvis but for that you gotta put your brain deep into it. So I'm gonna tell you some basics and few tricks about it. And lets see what you can make out of it. So just hang on here for a while...

Here is the list of Software and hardware you will need -

Hardware:

1. A computer running windows.
2.  A microphone (good quality microphone is needed you can also look for the Bluetooth enabled headset for better experience).

Software: 

1.  Windows Speech  Recognition (It's inbuilt in windows so you don't need to bother about it)
2. Windows Speech  Recognition Macros (search it on Google or you can download it from here - www.microsoft.com/en-in/download/details.aspx?id=13045)
3. Nircmd (search it on Google or you can download it from here - www.nirsoft.net/utils/nircmd.html?)

We are done with the requirements now its' time to build Jarvis; So here we go -

Step 1:
Train your windows speech recognition to better understand you. It's very easy just open the Speech recognition and it will prompt you to train it.

Step 2: 
Now install Windows Speech  Recognition Macros and put the nircmd in Windows directory i.e. go to "C:\Windows" and paste it here.

Step 3: Open Windows Speech  Recognition Macros and from GUI Menu select run a program.

Step 4: Now enter the text that you want to speak in the first dialogue.

Step 5: Write "nircmd.exe" in the second dialogue or you can use the browse tab to specify the location of nircmd.

Step 6:  Enter the command you want to run via nircmd in the third dialogue.

e.g. In the first dialogue write "Jarvis, you are up" (ignore the double quotes), in the second dialogue write "nircmd.exe" (ignore the double quotes), and in the third dialogue write (speak text "Welcome Sir!") ignore the brackets and everything in the bracket should go as it is . Make sure you have speakers in working condition.
Here is the screenshot:

Step 7: Now save it and if it prompt you to create digital signature; do it and then save it. Now open the Windows Speech  Recognition and put it in listening mode and speak "Jarvis, you are up" and your computer will respond you by saying "Welcome sir".

Wow! congratulations you have build your Jarvis. isn't it a great experience??
Check out the nircmd help utility  (came with your download), you can do more cool stuff like putting computer online by just saying "Jarvis, go online" or you can control your system sound, screen brightness, play music and much more, the list is endless. 
Actually you can control your browser too and even more than that. Here is a tip for you, use the script service of nircmd (look help document) for better tricks. Leave the comment for any further query. Good Luck.

A week with Linux

It was great going with windows when I decided to work with Linux. I had heard lot of about Linux that its quite good to work, its open source, no virus problems just like that, And only these things persuaded me to go for Linux. So, I installed Ubuntu 11.04 (a well known version of Linux OS), and start discovering the things that I heard about, and you I'm pleased to say that most of the things I found true. Well it's for only a week I'm with Linux but its quite exciting since I got the new environment to work with. Its not like the windows that has a start button and task-bar, Linux has completely different GUI than Windows, moreover you will also find the completely different architecture in different - different versions of the Linux like Ubuntu, Fedora, Red Hat, Kubuntu etc.

                 And, of course I just forgot about the viruses as I go with Linux. Linux does not have any problem of viruses because unlike windows, in Linux everything is a file or a process, and Linux do not allow any exe file to execute (most of the viruses usually have .exe format). Actually it does not allow any file to execute without permission, you must grant the execution rights before execution of any file.

          But few things were there that disappointed me for a while and these include the installation of a new softwares and USB modem configuration etc, I searched about modem configuration on Internet & easily found fix for that but it was really very enraging to install the new softwares. 

          

                And, this is where windows has advantage over Linux while I was working with windows, it takes me to just double click on a setup file & follow the instructions but with Linux when I tried to install the software with an archive file I was about to go insane. Its really a very tough job for a new user to install the software via archive file (like zip, tar etc), but don't bother about this because Linux also has a fix for this, you can install any software on Linux by its GUI based utility called software center (in Ubuntu its "Ubuntu Software Center") or you may search for the blogs and forums, where you can easily get the terminal commands to install the softwares, But it all want you to be connected via Internet (for big files you must have high speed Internet connectivity).

Although Linux disappointed me at some occasions but its quite interesting to work with Linux.

Good Luck.