The Future And You
Ideas and opinion about the future based on verifiable facts of today.
 
June 24, 2009 Episode

Tom Atwood (Editor-in-Chief of Robot Magazine) is our featured guest.

Topics: the latest in 3D displays for TV and for video games; self-fueling robots; robots in warfare now and in the near future; robots as smart weapons; robotic fighter jets; educational robots; robotic dance competitions; fighting methods used by TV battle robots; diversity of robotic body styles; and getting started in robotics without much money or without having to build your robot.

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the June 24, 2009 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 32 minutes]

Robot Magazine covers every aspect of the rapidly exploding field of robots. It has 'how-to' for robot hobbyists, 'what's going on' for robot enthusiasts and 'what's innovative' for tech and engineering professionals. Strong on education, it offers parents, teachers and kids guidance on using and playing with the latest consumer, toy and hobby robots that serve as educational tools and recreational fun. Every issue is full of hundreds of full color photos of robotic fun, gee whiz and hands on experience.

 

Direct download: TFAY_2009_6_24.mp3
Category:podcasts -- posted at: 12:01am EDT

June 17, 2009 Episode

Tom Atwood (Editor-in-Chief of Robot Magazine) is our featured guest.

Topics: the astounding progress being made in all areas of robotics such as: how vacuum cleaning robots are getting improved house-mapping abilities; what's happening in artificial intelligence for robots; trends in Japanese robots; the brilliant new way in which robots are being used in physical therapy for post-operative patients; and which needs to advance more to put robots to work in our homes as cooks, house cleaners, gardeners and laundry workers -- artificial intelligence or the basic mechanics of robotic bodies.

Tom Atwood also talks about his conversation with Sebastian Thrun of Stanford University, winner of the Second DARPA Grand Challenge, about how Sabastian's team programmed their car to win the robotic auto race. (The DARPA Grand Challenge is a series of very long -- some might say 'grueling' -- road races sponsored by DARPA in which all the participants are computer controlled motor vehicles. Not toy cars; but full-sized cars and trucks with no human driver.  DARPA is the Defence Advanced Research Project Agency: the organization that created the Internet.)

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the June 17, 2009 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 33 minutes]

Robot Magazine covers every aspect of the rapidly exploding field of robots. It has 'how-to' for robot hobbyists, 'what's going on' for robot enthusiasts and 'what's innovative' for tech and engineering professionals. Strong on education, it offers parents, teachers and kids guidance on using and playing with the latest consumer, toy and hobby robots that serve as educational tools and recreational fun. Every issue is full of hundreds of full color photos of robotic fun, gee whiz and hands on experience.

 

Direct download: TFAY_2009_6_17.mp3
Category:podcasts -- posted at: 12:01am EDT

June 10, 2009 Episode

Tom Atwood (Editor-in-Chief of Robot Magazine) is our featured guest.

Topics: Robots are in a world-wide boom time. Hundreds of thousands of hobbyists are building robots. Competitive robot events draw Rock-Star-sized crowds and are doubling in attendance each year. High schools and colleges are using the building and programing of robots (from scratch and from kits) to get students enthused about science, math, logic, engineering, programming and many other crucial subjects. Open source collaboration is driving innovation in robotic software as well as hardware. Tom emphasizes how these learning benefits are also beginning to work their way into grade schools, and how all this learning forms a foundation for the future of the students and of our world.

Tom Atwood also describes an experiment in which rat brain tissue (grown in a culture dish) was wired to a robot and taught to successfully navigate an obstacle course.

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the June 10, 2009 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 34 minutes]

Robot Magazine covers every aspect of the rapidly exploding field of robots. It has 'how-to' for robot hobbyists, 'what's going on' for robot enthusiasts and 'what's innovative' for tech and engineering professionals. Strong on education, it offers parents, teachers and kids guidance on using and playing with the latest consumer, toy and hobby robots that serve as educational tools and recreational fun. Every issue is full of hundreds of full color photos of robotic fun, gee whiz and hands on experience.

 

Direct download: TFAY_2009_6_10.mp3
Category:podcasts -- posted at: 12:01am EDT

James Maxey (author of the Dragon Age fantasy series and Nobody Gets the Girl) is our featured guest.

Topics: trends in medicine and the possibility that cancer may someday become completely curable. Privacy vs life-logging, twitter and the incessant text-messaging some people do about the trivial minutia of their daily lives. James suggests that 'When Orwell wrote in 1984 about people being watched by their TVs, what he didn't understand about the human condition is that a lot of people wanted the TV to watch them.' The compulsion of Googling one's own name, as well as  time travel paradoxes and human longevity.

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the June 3, 2009 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 47 minutes]

James Maxey is the author of the Dragon Age fantasy series which includes the novels Bitterwood, Dragonforge, and Dragonseed. Set a thousand years in the future, after the fall of our modern civilization, in a world dominated by the intelligent dragons we created through genetic engineering. Humans are reduced to slaves, and the remnants of long forgotten nanotechnology make the world a wondrous place of magic.

 

Direct download: TFAY_2009_6_3.mp3
Category:podcasts -- posted at: 12:01am EDT