Yaser Sheikh, assistant research professor in the Robotics Institute, and Alan Black, associate professor in the Language Technologies Institute, are among five winners nationwide of 2010 Honda Initiation Grants.

A magnetic levitation haptic interface invented by Ralph Hollis, a professor in Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute, is the recipient of a 2010 R&D 100 Award, presented by R&D Magazine to recognize the 100 most technologically significant products of the past year. Hollis and other winners, listed on the R&D Awards website, www.rdmag.com, will be recognized at an awards banquet Nov. 11 in Orlando, Fla.

AquaLux 3D, a new projection technology developed at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute, can target light onto and between individual water droplets, enabling text, video and other moving or still images to be displayed on multiple layers of falling water.

Piasecki Aircraft Corp. and Carnegie Mellon University have developed and flight demonstrated a navigation/sensor system that enables full-size, autonomous helicopters to fly at low altitude while avoiding obstacles; evaluate and select suitable landing sites in unmapped terrain; and land safely using a self-generated approach path. Autonomous flight at low altitude and landing zone evaluation/selection is an unprecedented feat with a full-size helicopter.

ChargeCar, the gas-to-electric car conversion project at Carnegie Mellon University, is sponsoring a series of Friday night community events this month at its new Electric Garage, 4621 Forbes Ave., for anyone interested in electric cars and environmentally friendly commuting.

The Robotics Institute's Dom Jonak and David Kohanbash took Scarab to Washington, D.C., June 23 to participate in NASA Day on the Hill. The NASA-sponsored robot is designed to test robot designs and components that might be used to prospect for ice and other resources on the moon.

CMDragons, Carnegie Mellon's small-size league robot soccer team, finished second to a team from Thailand at RoboCup 2010 in Singapore. CMurfs, the CMU team of Nao humanoid robots competing in the standard platform league, finished fourth.

Adrien Treuille, assistant professor of computer science and robotics at Carnegie Mellon University, will join a panel of top scientists in a live webcast to discuss how the U.S. government can tap the full potential of three “Golden Triangle” technologies: information technology, biotechnology and nanotechnology. The webcast will be from 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., Tuesday, June 22 and can be viewed via the website of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST).

R. Craig Coulter says his 10 years as a student at Carnegie Mellon inspired him to found a socially conscious robotics venture called Disruptive Robotics. Its first start-up is BluPanda, which seeks to reduce the time patients spend waiting for healthcare.

Ryan Cahoon, a computer science major, volunteers with the McKeesport Area High School and Technology Center robotics team, which competes in FIRST® (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology). Patricia DePra, the regional director for FIRST, says college students are very valuable to the program, not only for their technical knowledge, but for the insights about college that they can pass on to high school students who might not have considered college as a possibility.