Venturebeat: “Yelp’s augmented reality app is an iPhone first, but still needs improvement.” “Yelp, the social review site, is claiming to have “the first Augmented Reality app specifically for the U.S. in the iTunes App Store.” By augmented reality, Yelp means that the app displays markers for restaurants, stores and other locations of interest right on top of the live view through the iPhone’s camera lens. Internet content firehose Robert Scoble touted the app — you need to shake it to turn it on — on FriendFeed earlier today.”

UPI: “Robots May Have a Lighter Touch.” “The researchers found the robots’ accuracy scores for detecting tumors — depending on the robot control method used — were between 59 percent and 90 percent better than those of the surgeons. The robot is being developed to be small enough to be used in minimally invasive surgery, which minimizes tissue damage, infection risk, recovery time and costs, the researchers said.”

CNet: “Friday Poll: What should robots never do?” “Advancements in modern robotics amaze, amuse, and occasionally appall, which got us wondering. What should robots never, ever be allowed to do?”

LA Times: “Robots + virtual worlds = Robini-i.”” “Starting Sept. 28, another company is making a run at robots for the masses. Robinica, a South African startup, said it will start selling a $250 robot that can be programmed to do any number of things. In addition, the robot can jack into an online virtual world by way of a computer to download new programs, play games or socialize with other robots and their owners.”

Wired: “How it Works: Augmented Reality.” “Total Immersion is one of the most successful augmented reality providers currently. Here’s a quick look at how the company’s augmented reality technology for the desktop works. Take the baseball cards. Users have to first log on to a URL and navigate to the 3-D section of the website, where they enter an interactive code found on their baseball card to activate the software. Then, they can hold the card under a webcam and Total Immersion’s software goes to work. It identifies a target on the baseball card, then overlays a virtual baseball player on the video onscreen. Users can then rotate the baseball player and make it perform a select few actions.”

CNet: “Robots kiss, but don’t go to second base (yet).” “With robots now doing everything from strutting the fashion catwalk to greeting hotel guests, it was only a matter of time before our humanoid friends started engaging in public displays of affection. Exhibit A: Thomas and Janet, two performance bots who made out publicly in front of hundreds during a December 2008 robotic production of “Phantom of the Opera” in Taiwan (racy robot lip-lock video is only making the rounds now). A team at National Taiwan University of Science and Technology spent three years developing and programming the smooching bots, which with the help of servo motors that pull at the face and mouth, can form six expressions–fewer than the highly expressive Einstein Robot, but sometimes sacrifices must be made for romance. The team used manual molding, non-contact 3D face scanning, and 3D face morphing to make the movements realistic.”

Wired (Bruce Sterling): “Augmented Reality: Augmented Traffic Views.” “Even by the rough-and-ready standards of AR viral-youtube product, this one’s pretty ragged. Love the eager offscreen babbling of the developer’s tot in the early part of this video. It’s like the Voice of the Industry.”

New York Times: “Could Auto Battery Advances Lead to Better Robots?“ “Perhaps more than any other factor, the life span of batteries has limited the infiltration of robotics into daily life. As computer processing and sensors have become cheaper and more powerful by the year, batteries, woefully inefficient and slow to recharge, have slogged behind, leaving engineers to dream of a day when they’ll have the juice to give life to their boldest creations.”

ReadWriteWeb: “Augmented Reality: 5 Barriers to a Web That’s Everywhere.” “Let’s set aside for now questions about the desirability of Augmented Reality. Some people will be wary of its consequences for social interaction – even for spiritual practices already based on engaging with other layers of the world around us. Those questions deserve exploration, but the potential of AR is exciting enough that obstacles are worth discussing aside from objections. Augmented Reality is in some ways just another version of the web; a web applied, through novel interfaces, in reference to the physical world, instead of floating documents tied only to each other as the web is today.”

Physorg: “New Robots Mimic Fish’s Swimming.” “Mechanical engineers Kamal Youcef-Toumi and Pablo Valdivia Y Alvarado have designed the sleek robotic fish to more easily maneuver into areas where traditional underwater autonomous vehicles can’t go. Fleets of the new robots could be used to inspect submerged structures such as boats and oil and gas pipes; patrol ports, lakes and rivers; and help detect environmental pollutants.”

Wired (Bruce Sterling): “Augmented Reality: Ogmento.” “A lot of tech nitty-gritty here. I love the part where they just can’t help themselves, and start breaking into some brand-new Augmented Reality trade jargon.”

VatorNews: “Amazon’s Jeff Bezos invests in robot company.” “Heartland Robotics, a startup working on industrial robotics, has received $7 million in funding from Amazon.com’s founder, Jeff Bezos, according to a report by Techflash. The Cambridge, Mass.-startup isn’t saying much about itself at the moment, but on it’s placeholder Website, the company explains it’s ‘combining the power of computers — embodied in robots — and the extraordinary intelligence of the American workforce, to increase productivity and revitalize manufacturing’. “

Map/Territory from timo on Vimeo.

O’Reilly Radar: “Map/Territory: Augmented Reality Without the Phone” “The world will become our display. As a stopgap we are busily turning our phones into the lens through which we view floating tweets and wikipedia entries. However designers like Timo Arnall are starting to explore how we will interact with an augmented world when we are able to move past the iPhone crutch.”

Morning Sun: “Pitsco robots designed to take over education” “TETRIX, a metal building system with parts made of heavy-duty aircraft-grade aluminum, is designed to work with the LEGO MINDSTORMS robotics system and is the newest member to join the LEGO Education robotics continuum. Tony Allen, TETRIX program manager, explained that the LEGO system consists of plastic parts. ‘This is the first time that LEGO has allowed a metal component to attach to their plastic base,’ he said.”

Wired: “Real-Life Decepticons: Robots Learn to Cheat.” “In an experiment that sounds like a deleted scene from one of the Terminator movies, robots with artificial animal-inspired brains quickly evolved to deceive one another. The robots — soccer ball-sized assemblages of wheels, sensors and flashing light signals, coordinated by a digital neural network — were placed by their designers in an arena, with paper discs signifying “food” and “poison” at opposite ends. Finding and staying beside the food earned the robots points.”