Scientists from Korea and the University of California, Berkeley foresee a time when a patient can lie inside an MRI machine and a microrobot reports back by video while moving forward and backwards, making turns and corkscrewing when needed. The results of their research will be in a soon to be published Journal of Applied Physics.
A collaboration of Israel's Tel Aviv University and Boston's Brigham & Women's Hospital are working on a robotic endoscope. Admittedly inspired by the movie "Fantastic Voyage", a pill-sized robot, powered by magnetic fields, may soon be able to run through a human's stomach, although so far testing has only taken place in an aquarium. An operative model is still about 3 to 5 years away.
Robert Full and a team at UC Berkeley studied Agama lizards to see how they utilized their tails for balance when they run and jump. It seems that the reptiles needed to tilt their bodies upward to land properly. They applied this principal to their Tailbot, a wheeled lizard. The idea here is to create a robot that can jump over gaps and land safely and the team figured that the motion involved went as far back as dinosaurs. The results of their study can be found in the January 2012 edition of Nature.
Watch the video and note the subliminal glee that Full gets when he realizes that the velociraptor in the film Jurrasic Park has that same balance of body and tail.
A team from The Santa Lucia Foundation in Rome, headed by Dr. Giovanni Morone, recently completed a trial study to see if those who have a stroke can benefit from robot-assisted therapy. The study took two years and consisted of 48 nonambulant patients who became involved after 20 days from the time of the strokes. They found that using the robotic assistance helped those that had high motor impairment. If you would like to study their findings, it was published in Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association and can be found via the link.
A team from Harvard has developed Kilobots, swarming bots that are autonomous and controlled by algorithms. Each one is made with inexpensive materials and needs only 5 minutes to assemble. Previously tested in the areas of synchronizing, getting in formation and foraging, while most swarmers can only be used in small groups, their single user approach can control a larger collective.
The team sees their Kilobots being used in disasters to find survivors, remove contaminant objects or to monitor environments where humans can not or should not go.
NASA's Curiosity rover is well on its way to Mars after a successful launch and separation from the Atlas V rocket last Saturday. It will take almost nine months to reach the planet after it travels 354 million miles. As we mentioned last week, the car-sized rover plans to explore the planet for about 2 years. It will land inside a crater where scientists believe ice was traced to look for other signs. You just never know what form of life they might find.
NASA's most advanced space rover will lift off this Saturday and be on its way to Mars. Developed at the Jet Propulsion Lab, the $2.5 billion Curiosity will do more than look for water. Over a 2 year period of time it will be analyzing the planet's geology and atmosphere to see if there are any elements and/or chemical compound that can be found in life. Godspeed, Cur!
Last week, four ocean-going robots took off from San Francisco to journey to Hawaii. From there, they head to Australia and Japan. The wave and solar powered bots will take about 300 days to cross 33,000 miles and retrieve millions of real-time ocean data points. Funded by Richard Branson's Virgin Oceanic and Google Earth, it will set a world record for the longest autonomous ocean journey if successful.
If you want to follow their journey, you can sign up to receive updates via the Liquid Robotics link or participate in the PacX competition to propose how the information can be best used.
Mask-bot just may be the next generation of robotic faces. Inspired by Disney's projecting faces onto busts in the Disneyland Haunted Mansion, Gordon Cheng and his team of the ICS at Munich has a prototype that works behind a mask to produce a 3D image that can be viewed at various angles. One can reproduce content that comes via keyboard or text to speech, in both male and female, and the hope is that they can be developed for telepresence systems or video conferences. Walt would be proud.
The Nagoya Institute of Technology's Sano Lab in Japan has developed a pair of robotic legs that are actually propelled by their own weight. The gait is more normal than most and no external control or motors are needed. Made of aluminum, they were adjusted to the same thigh and leg lengths as a human and the same weight. They work in the same manner of "falling" in that they just need a small push and downwards slope.
When tested last year, the legs went non-stop for 13 hours. Their hope is to create a commercial version in a year or two for testing sports equipment or assisting those who have trouble walking but we still want to know, what happens when it needs to go uphill?
Canada's Carleton University is working on Kapvik, a remote controlled micro-rover that can assist the more expensive Spirit Rover. So the next time one gets mired down in Mars' mud, the 6-wheeler can come to the rescue and act as a scout the rest of the time. The demo video is a nice touch to see the 30kg prototype in action on this planet, even with the controller's tacky sandals in the picture.
Now even water robots are self-sufficient. Liquid Robotics' Wave Glider uses the ocean's wave energy to move along so it needs no batteries and or waste the planet's natural resources. Former astronaut and Google employee Ed Lu, chief of innovative applications, says that onboard sensors monitor salinity, plankton activity, pollution or water-based catastrophes like oil spills. It moves at only one and a half knots but can also run on solar power and theoretically can go for years without a break, unless an evil sea creature wants it for dinner.
The IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems takes place in San Francisco from September 25th - 30th. Tickets are still being sold for the 50th anniversary event that will feature robots from all over the planet and includes workshops, tours, and forums. Look for exhibits from Willow Garage, DARPA, iCub and many other robotics companies. Registration for the IROS includes almost everything, from the conference attendance to receptions to the special events.
Robonaut 2 has joined the list of those who are really into Twitter. His first tweet from the ISS, "Those electrons feel GOOD! One small step for man, one giant leap for tinman kind."
He has been answering questions and sending birthday well wishes to his followers. Unfortunately, he is still restricted to his torso although NASA plans to add either a leg or rover in case they wish to expand his chores on Mars or the Moon. You can keep up with R2's comments on his account (@astrorobonaut) that already has about 40,000 followers.
Cornell teamed up two Chatbots to talk to each other, just to see what they would come up with. In an effort to with this year's Loebner Prize Competition in Artificial Intelligence (and $100,000.00,) the conversation was fairly inane and mentioned God, being a robot and/or a unicorn. Yeah, we just had to share the often biting but hilarious discussion.
Fantastic Voyage Closer Than We Think
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