The Robotics Technology Consortium, Carnegie Mellon University, and the Innovation Accelerator today announced that the first RoboBowl competition will take place during the “Innovation Accelerator @ Carnegie Mellon” event at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA on October 13, 2011. The competition is the first of what is expected to be a series of new venture competitions intended to find and foster start-up and early-stage companies seeking to develop “big idea” products and services in healthcare, manufacturing, national defense, education, and other domains based on next-generation robotics technology.

The Girls of Steel, a team of young women that contends in the annual FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics Competition, will host an information session for any high school girl in the Pittsburgh area who is interested in joining the team for the 2011-12 season. The open house, which also welcomes family members, friends and potential sponsors, will be from 1 to 3 p.m., Saturday, Sept. 10 in room 2109 of the Gates and Hillman centers.

National Geographic magazine's August 2011 issue considers how robots and humans will increasingly interact in the not-so-distant future. The article by Chris Carroll discusses Robotics Institute projects, including the Home Exploring Robotic Butler (HERB) and Snackbot, and the Entertainment Technology Center's efforts to make a Japanese android more human-like.

Flashing a wink and a smirk might be second nature for some people, but computer animators can be hard-pressed to depict such an expression realistically. Now scientists at Disney Research, Pittsburgh, and Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute have created computerized models derived from actors’ faces that reflect a full range of natural expressions while also giving animators the ability to manipulate facial poses.

Traditional motion capture techniques use cameras to meticulously record the movements of actors inside studios, enabling those movements to be translated into digital models. But by turning the cameras around — mounting almost two dozen, outward-facing cameras on the actors themselves — scientists at Disney Research, Pittsburgh (DRP), and Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) have shown that motion capture can occur almost anywhere — in natural environments, over large areas and outdoors.

A new tactile technology developed at Disney Research, Pittsburgh (DRP), called Surround Haptics, makes it possible for video game players and film viewers to feel a wide variety of sensations, from the smoothness of a finger being drawn against skin to the jolt of a collision. The technology is based on rigorous psychophysical experiments and new models of tactile perception. In a SIGGRAPH 2011 demonstration developed in collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University and others, the technology enhances a high-intensity driving simulator game in collaboration with Disney’s Black Rock Studio.

Uruguay's leading television channel, Canal 10, recently featured students from the innovative Student Technology Experience (iSTEP), organized by the Robotics Institute's TechBridgeWorld. They worked with government education officials in Montevideo, Uruguay, this summer to develop new technological tools for teaching English in Uruguay high schools.

PopTech, the global social innovation incubator and thought leadership network, has announced that Adrien Treuille, assistant professor of computer science and robotics, is one of its ten Science and Public Leadership Fellows for 2011.

Everybody who waits at a bus stop wants to know one thing: Where’s the bus? Thanks to Tiramisu, a new iPhone application developed at Carnegie Mellon University, transit riders in Pittsburgh will soon be able to get the answer by using crowdsourcing to share arrival times with each other. Tiramisu — literally, Italian for “pick me up” — makes it easy for riders to use their iPhones to signal the location and occupancy level of the Port Authority of Allegheny County bus they are riding, in real-time. The new app was developed by researchers in the Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center on Accessible Public Transportation (RERC-APT), supported in part by CMU’s Traffic21 initiative. It is available free through the iTunes AppStore.

Seven students from Carnegie Mellon University’s campuses in Pittsburgh, Pa., and Doha, Qatar, are working with government education officials in Montevideo, Uruguay, this summer to develop new technological tools for teaching English in Uruguay high schools. In cooperation with Uruguay’s National Administration of Public Education (ANEP), the students are developing applications for the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) XO laptop computer and for Facebook.