Archive for Robotic Technology

Paralysed woman’s mind works robotic arm

May 18, 2012 Robotic Technology No comments

Using only her thoughts, a Massachusetts woman paralysed for 15 years has directed a robotic arm to pick up a bottle of coffee and bring it to her lips, researchers report in the latest advance in harnessing brain waves to help disabled people.

In the past year, similar stories have included a quadriplegic man in Pennsylvania who made a robotic arm give a high-five and stroke his girlfriend’s hand, and a partially paralysed man who remotely controlled a small robot that scooted around in a Swiss lab.

It’s startling stuff. but will the experimental brain-controlled technology ever help paralysed people in everyday life?

Experts in the technology and in rehabilitation medicine say they are optimistic that it will, once technology improves and the cost comes down.

The latest report, which was published online on Wednesday in the journal Nature, comes from scientists at Brown University, the Providence VA Medical Centre in Rhode Island, Harvard Medical School and elsewhere.

It describes how two people who lost use of their arms and legs because of strokes years before were able to control free-standing robotic arms with the help of a tiny sensor implanted in their brains.

The sensor, about the size of a baby aspirin, eavesdropped on the electrical activity of a few dozen brain cells as the study participants imagined moving their arms. The chip then sent signals to a computer, which translated them into commands to the robotic arms.

The computer was taught how to interpret the brain patterns through practice as the paralysed participants watched the robot arms move and then imagined that they were moving their own arms the same way.

In one task to test the system, the two participants tried to direct a robot arm to reach out and squeeze foam balls in front of them. The man succeeded in less than half his attempts, but the woman was able to do it about 60 per cent of the time.

The woman, Cathy Hutchinson of East Taunton, Massachusetts, was also asked to use the arm to drink the coffee. that involved picking up the bottle, bringing it to her lips so she could sip from a straw, and putting the bottle back on the table. she succeeded in four out of six tries with the arm, which was specially programmed for this task.

‘The smile on her face … was just a wonderful thing to see,’ said Dr Leigh Hochberg, a researcher with the Providence VA, Brown and Massachusetts General Hospital.

Researchers said in Hutchinson’s case that the results show that the implanted chip still worked after five years, and that her brain was still generating useful signals even though she hadn’t moved her arms in almost 15 years.

The ultimate goal, researchers said, is an implanted device that would reactivate a person’s own paralysed limbs. another goal is to operate high-tech prostheses for amputees.

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Video: One-arm robot juggles two balls at once – Future of Tech on msnbc.com

May 18, 2012 Robotic Technology No comments

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A one-armed robot has learned to juggle two balls at once, an impressive feat that promises to shed light on dynamic human motions, according to the Japanese researchers behind the machine.

The juggling robot was created by a group at Chiba University and presented Tuesday at the 2012 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

The robot is equipped with a three-fingered hand, each with 2 or 3 degrees of motion, and an arm with 7 degrees of motion. these pieces are coupled with a high-speed vision system (500 frames per second) that allows a controller to plan for catches and throws, the IEEE Automation Blog explains.

The combo allows the balls to be tracked through the air as the robot makes a series of throwing calculations for each cycle. in other words, the robot isn’t just doing a pre-programmed juggling act.

That said, the robot can only juggle two balls at once — not three — and it can only keep up the routine for about five catches before it loses a ball. That’s partly because it lacks a shoulder joint and is thus unable to twist when a ball is thrown out of alignment, which happens, even for robots.

The team will keep working on improving the robot’s throwing skills and, we hope, add in more balls. 

What’s the point of all this? 

These robots could make for a new class of scary clowns, for one. And since juggling is a complex task, studying it in robots will help researchers understand skillful and dynamic human-like motions, IEEE notes.

John Roach is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. to learn more about him, check out his website and follow him on Twitter. for more of our Future of Technology series, watch the featured video below.

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Italian Quadruped Robot Goes for a Walk

May 18, 2012 Robotic Technology No comments

last week, researchers from the Italian Institute of Technology took their quadruped robot HyQ for a test run outside the lab for the first time. the researchers were anxious to try some new tricks HyQ has learned, including the ability to trot over obstacles without falling. the robot is still a strange headless creature, and though a sensor head is in the works, this quadruped might get even weirder with a new hardware addition: arms. yes, arms.

HyQ, built by a team from IIT’s Department of Advanced Robotics, in Genoa, is a hydraulic robot that relies on torque-controlled, actively compliant actuators. the goal of the project is to create an autonomous, versatile machine capable of running, jumping, and negotiating rough terrain that could find applications in search-and-rescue operations and exploratory missions.

the team, led by Professor Darwin Caldwell, will discuss recent improvements made to the robot's control system at the 2012 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, which happens this week in St. Paul, Minn.

the researchers had previously tested HyQ on a special treadmill, when the robot achieved 1.7 meters per second. during last week's outdoor trials, the robot ran free on a 20-meter long concrete track (or mostly free—the researchers installed a safety harness above the robot, and a tether provided hydraulic power). HyQ reached a new top speed of 2 m/s with a walking trot gait, and the researchers expect it could go even faster when more space is available. Watch:

One big upgrade is that the control system now uses data from the on-board inertial measurement unit, or IMU, a Microstrain device running at 1 kilohertz, the same frequency of the servo controllers. the data allows the robot to react to disturbances and maintain a predetermined posture. when it trips on an obstacle, for example, it can correct its steps and avoid a fall. 

"We're able to do balance control with reactive steps," says Claudio Semini, the IIT researcher responsible for HyQ's hardware and a founding member of the project. "the robot reacts to what's happening on the spot."

the researchers acknowledge that their robot still needs improvements before it can achieve the performance levels of Boston Dynamics's famed quadrupeds, BigDog and AlphaDog, which can climb slopes, walk over icy surfaces, and even keep their balance after getting kicked.

"We haven't kicked our robot yet," says Jonas Buchli, team leader of the HyQ project and a locomotion software expert. "but it's starting to look eerily similar [to the way BigDog walks] … It looks almost like an animal." 

the IIT team is working with an Italian company to equip the robot with an on-board hydraulic system, which would eliminate the tether, an upgrade that should happen over the next several months. Another improvement is to add more sensors, including a Velodyne LIDAR, for mapping and navigation. (The researchers will describe HyQ's systems in research papers but do not plan to make all hardware and software open source.)

And soon, HyQ will get a pair of manipulation arms, becoming, in effect, a kind of robotic Centaur [see CAD images below showing conceptual designs of the arms in stowed and extended configurations]. “We want to combine the advantages of both legs and arms,” Buchli says. ”Adding manipulation to a stable locomotion platform opens up some interesting possibilities.”

Images and video: IIT

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Robot Sailboat Out to Break World Record

May 18, 2012 Robotic Technology No comments

Austrian scientists are looking to break the record for the longest journey made by a fully autonomous sailboat, all while collecting data on a Baltic Sea porpoise.

Scientists from the Austrian Society of Innovative Computer Sciences hope their craft, named the ASV Roboat, will cover 150 nautical miles (172 miles) and work for 100 hours without human intervention once it is put into the water July 9. The current record is 78.9 nautical miles (91 miles), set in March by a robot sailboat made by the French engineering institute ENSTA Brest. 

NEWS: Sailing across the Atlantic — with Babies

Robotic sailboats need human handlers only to enter final destination coordinates. The boats decide routes, perform sailing maneuvers and respond to changing winds on their own. They also generally make all the power they need, through solar panels. They need relatively little energy to move the sail and rudder while the wind provides the propulsion. 

Interest in robot sailboats has picked up since 2005, when two engineers established the Microtransat, which challenges teams to create sailboats that can cross the Atlantic Ocean on their own. so far no one has succeeded. 

The Roboat, however, has won a spinoff competition, the World Robotic Sailing Championships, since that competition’s inception in 2008. The Roboat is based on a sailboat made to teach kids, so it’s small and stable. Sensors including GPS, a compass and a wind speed detector help it decide routes and maneuver in the wind. Its solar panels generate up to 285 watts of energy in full sun, while a methanol-powered fuel cell provides backup power. a wireless communication system lets researchers track where it is and download data it gathers while it’s still at sea. 

NEWS: Ocean Expedition Gets Rare Glimpse of Earth’s Guts

For the porpoise project, the Roboat will carry an underwater microphone to capture the clicks and cackles made by the endangered harbor porpoise in the Baltic Sea. Researchers hope to learn more about these porpoises’ migration routes, mating sites and communication behavior, according to the Roboat website.  

In the future, technology developed for the Roboat could help in a variety of at-sea tasks besides eavesdropping on marine mammals.  ”These solar energy-powered robotic sailing boats can also be used for tsunami early-warning systems, search operations, meteorological measurements and the recovery of oil spills,” said the Roboat’s project manager, Roland Stelzer. 

Roboat’s creators also wrote on the vessel’s website that Roboat tech can go into automatic safety systems for human-sailed boats. Sailors can delegate some tasks to the system. The system might even detect someone falling overboard and move to rescue the person. 

Autonomous sailboats also can work as environmentally friendly, endlessly powered vessels for supplying people on remote islands or for spying on smuggler vessels. 

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Robot Arm Follows Brainwave Instructions

May 18, 2012 Robotic Technology No comments

Scientists have invented a device that allows paralyzed patients to control a robot arm directly from their brains, bypassing their damaged central nervous systems.

This brainwave-connected device can grab objects that the user wants. The system uses baby aspirin-sized electrodes implanted directly into the primary motor cortex, the part of the brain that controls movement. Signals are routed through a tiny box in the scalp, which is connected by wire to a refrigerator-sized computer. The computer translates the brain movement patterns into an algorithm that transmits directly to the robot arm.

PHOTOS: Real Life Robotics Better than ‘Transformers’

“The ultimate goal is to develop neural technologies to restore mobility specifically for people with no control of their arms or hands,” said Leigh Hochberg, a neurologist at the Department of Veterans Affairs in Providence, R.I., who also has appointments at Massachusetts General Hospital, Brown University and Harvard University. “We’re hoping to provide technology directly from brain signals back to commands that control assisted devices or limbs.”

Hochberg and John Donoghue, director of the Brain Institute at Brown, had previously collaborated on the “BrainGate” project that produced the 2006 study showing how a patient could control a computer cursor using a brain-to-computer neural interface.

Their latest study, which appears in today’s issue of Nature, goes a step further, developing a separate neural pathway to deliver messages from the brain to an arm, in this case an artificial one.

Hochberg said the experiment has worked with two patients, a man and a woman who both lost the use of their limbs and their voices as a result of a stroke.

Both patients moved the robot arm to grab foam balls. The woman picked up a metal coffee container and drank through a straw for the first time since she was injured 15 years earlier.

“The smile on her face was something I and our research team will never forget,” Hochberg said.

The researchers cautioned that the efforts with the two patients only worked successfully about two-thirds of the time, and are not as fast or accurate as a human arm. But the experiment gives hope to millions of patients who have become paralyzed as the result of stroke or other physical trauma.

NEWS: Robotic Arm Inspired by Elephant Trunk

The next step is to rig the BrainGate system to a wearable prosthetic limb and after that, perhaps to the muscles in the paralyzed limbs themselves. The researchers compared the development of their project to the years of engineering and neuroscience used to develop cardiac pacemakers and deep brain stimulators that are now used to help Parkinson’s disease patients. At first these devices were experimental and expensive, but are now common and affordable.

“There’s no doubt that for this device to be successful, it has to reach people who would benefit and it will have to be affordable,” Hochberg said.“Affordable means that it’s in a range that can be acquired privately or reimbursable by insurance.”

WATCH a VIDEO ABOUT THE RESEARCH HERE:

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Robotic spacecraft / rover hybrids for space exploration

May 18, 2012 Robotic Technology No comments

The solution may be to sprinkle the solar system with robotic platforms.

Marco Pavone is an assistant professor of aeronautics and astronautics at Stanford University, and also a research affiliate at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

Thanks to the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Program, Pavone is eying a new paradigm to explore comets and asteroids, as well as the small moons of Mars: Phobos and Deimos. His NIAC-supported research is titled “Spacecraft/Rover Hybrids for the Exploration of Small Solar system Bodies.”

Pavone’s work centers on developing robotic platforms capable of fast and precise mobility on the surface of small bodies within our solar system. On-the-spot robotic investigation of these exploration targets would not only shed light on how our solar system formed, he explains, but also sharpen the technologies needed for future human exploration of Earth.

What Pavone envisions is, quite plainly, taking on solar system exploration by leaps and bounds.

Making use of Reduced Gravity

At first blush, having a robot “take a tumble” might sound a bit worrisome – but that’s exactly how Pavone envisions a way to move about on other worlds. The idea is to make use of the reduced gravity of small bodies.

Pavone’s mobility platforms would be unleashed by a mother spacecraft. Once on the surface of a small body, each platform would literally spring into action. Long vaults on the far out world could be accomplished by hopping. Short treks by a platform to select locations on the body are done through a sequence of controlled tumbles. High-altitude, point-to-point jumps by a platform are feasible too.

“The proposed robotic platforms would behave as spacecraft/rover hybrids, capable of accessing most destinations on virtually any small body,” Pavone says. By using multiple platforms, the landscape of a small body could be closely observed, sampled and measured. another plus for using several units, according to Pavone, is that the loss of one hybrid would not spell the end of the mission.

The NIAC-backed investigation gives Pavone the opportunity to draw upon several fields of his expertise, from control theory, autonomous systems, coordination of multi-robot networks to formation flying and bio-inspired robotics.

“The systematic exploration of small bodies would help unravel the origin of the solar system and its early evolution, as well as assess their astrobiological relevance,” Pavone explains. “in addition, we can evaluate the resource potential of small bodies in view of future human missions beyond Earth.”

Provided by JPL/NASA

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Quadriplegic woman uses brain to drink coffee with help from robotic arm

May 18, 2012 Robotic Technology No comments

Cathy Hutchinson smiles after successfully taking a sip of coffee from the robot arm.

(Credit:Nature) (CBS News) Robots have lent two quadriplegic people who are unable to move or speak a helping hand.

Mind-guided robotic arm lets paralyzed man touch girlfriendMonkey study may bring robotic suits that restore mobility, touch to quadriplegics

With the assistance of a mechanical arm – which they controlled with their mind – two subjects that suffered strokes were able to get a robot to reach out and squeeze a ball in front of them. Cathy Hutchinson of East Taunton, Mass., who was successful at this task 46 percent of the time, was then asked to tell an arm to bring a bottle of coffee with a straw to her lips. she was able to complete the task on four out of six tries.

“The smile on her face … was just a wonderful thing to see,” said Dr. Leigh Hochberg, a researcher with the Providence VA, Brown and Massachusetts General Hospital, told Nature News. the study is published in the March 16 issue of Nature.

The report is another case of where brain power has been used to tell robotic devices how to assist people. In this study, tiny recording chips were implanted into the subject’s brains, which helped record the neuronal signals that told things to move.the study also described a man named Bob who suffered a stroke in 2006, and was able to complete the ball task 62 percent of the time.

The two are just the first of hopefully 15 people who will participate in this study. so far, seven people have been implanted with the devices and show no side effects.

It’s also promising because Hutchinson, who has been paralyzed for 15 years, still had the brain function that is required to signal one’s muscles to move.

Previously, a robotic arm allowed a man to give his girlfriend a high five for the first time, HealthPop reported. He said learning how the use the device was like learning how to drive a car with manual transmission. Eventually, he would like to hug his 8-year-old daughter.

While the technology is still rather cumbersome – the subjects have wires protruding from their heads – and expensive, in the future scientists want to find a way to get rid of the external brain hardware and find a way to transmit those movement “messages” directly into unaffected muscles. Typically, the injury in quadriplegic people occurs in the spinal chord, but the other limbs are fine.

This particular study focused more on seeing if the process of  implanting the chip is safe, rather than trying to see if these robotic devices could have every day application because of these issues.

Watch a video of Hutchinson working the robot device below:

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Could Robot Journalism Kill The News Industry? – PSFK

May 18, 2012 Robotic Technology No comments

This article titled “the robot journalist: an apocalypse for the news industry?” was written by Emily Bell, for the Guardian on Sunday 13th May 2012 17.00 UTC

Visit the website of Forbes.com and read the earnings forecasts for the New York Times Company, and you will notice the byline “By Narrative Science”. normally you have to open a copy of Wallpaper* to find someone with such a florid monicker. Except of course Narrative Science is not a person but a robot journalist – actually a set of algorithms which take data and turn it into words.

What started as an experimental lab at Northwestern University with journalists and technologists working together is now a fully-fledged business that turns data into stories of a type which will not be winning many Pulitzers, but which certainly pass the Turing test of making one unsure whether they were written by a person or machine. the lovable “stats monkey”, which came from the same series of research experiments, does the same for sports stories, without the attendant vet bills, bananas and spelling errors associated with employing a real monkey.

Although this algorithmic approach to compiling stories is by no means new – the lab which spawned Narrative Science was conducting and publishing work a number of years ago – the ultimate ramifications of what the approach symbolises seem to be taking a long time to sink into most newsgathering organisations.

The irony of the rather poor first-quarter earnings of the New York Times being reported into the Forbes database by a series of algorithms should not be lost on anyone, not least the NYT itself. Along with other large newspaper brands in the US, such as the Washington Post and USA Today, there is growing unease at the paper about what one senior news executive vividly described as a “coming apocalypse” for the news industry in general and mid-sized news brands in particular.

One could be forgiven for thinking that the apocalypse has already dropped off its bags, if not actually arrived. Newspaper closures and bankruptcies have swept across the US in the past five years, and the advertising market in print has continued to decline faster than digital revenues are increasing (according to a recent Pew survey at a rate of one dollar up in digital for every seven dollars down in print).

What now seems to be clear to everyone who is engaged in the Apocalyptic welcome Committee is that survival of the “what’s next” takes a greatly increased magnitude of change from that which we have already seen .

At a recent meeting of senior news executives, one commented that he saw colleagues in other companies “coming into work every day and cutting a tenth of an inch off their own body, and really not doing very much about it”. the statement itself was not that surprising, but the more widespread agreement in the room was. after 13 consecutive quarters of growth the US economy is technically if not visibly in recovery, and on a normal business cycle that puts us halfway through the “good times”. What happens come the next recession?

Forbes, which clearly does not like the Times much, also recently pointed to a presentation by Ironfire Capital on why the NYT might not last beyond 2015. mischievous investor-speak on one level, the presentation contained a couple of home truths about a plateau in cost-cutting and a failure to revive revenues which will resonate with many in the news industry. the message is that the disruption in the next round will have to outstrip anything seen to date. the New York Times is searching for a chief executive, quite possibly from the tech industry, and it is quite possible that many others will soon be in a similar state of remaking their businesses from top to bottom.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.

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Finally! A Robot Ass for You To Spank

May 18, 2012 Robotic Technology No comments

From robotic vocal chords to robotic lips, Japan has made a variety of robotic body parts over the years. but one body part has always been noticeably overlooked: robot ass.


Not anymore! Enter Shiri. In Japanese, “shiri” (?) means “buttocks”, and this robot is a “buttocks humanoid that represents emotions with visual and tactual transformation of the muscles.”

The goal of Shiri is supposed to express the “various emotions with organic movement of the artificial muscles”. That’s fancy talk for butt movement.

Shiri is above to tense up like butts are supposed to, and it is able to detect your touch, stroke, and, um, slap.

The project is the work of research Nobuhiro Takahashi and the University of Electro-Communications. Takahashi is also working on “self-hugging” rigs as well as some sort of kissing simulator

The above video, courtesy of sister site Gizmodo Japan, gives a breakdown of Shiri. Skip ahead to 2:30 for the hot butt slapping action. Boy, sometimes science sure is cheeky.

??????????????????????????????? [Gizmodo Japan]

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Perfume-puffing robot sniffs out social media mentions

May 18, 2012 Robotic Technology No comments

15 May 2012 Last updated at 02:07 Share this page Olly watches what is done in your name online and marks it with a whiff of scent.

The old saying that your ears go red when people are talking about you is getting a 21st Century update.

Now your nose can tell you when you are being talked about on social networks thanks to a net-connected robot.

Called Olly, the robot watches the millions of messages passing through social networks and spots when its owner is mentioned.

For every mention or referral Olly emits a waft of scent as a "reward" for the online interaction.

Olly was thought up and refined by Benjamin Redford as a project for technology company Mint. The idea, he told the BBC, was to develop a device that was connected to the net but which did not display its output on a screen.

Make your own

"We wanted to reward people in the physical world for their digital and social interactions," he said.

Smell rapidly emerged as a good medium for that reward, he said, because a whiff of perfume could catch someone's attention without overly distracting them.

"We are gradually spending more and more time on screen and it's good to have some other form of sensory stimulus rather than just video and audio," he said.

Smell was a intuitive way to gauge online interaction without constantly having to monitor feeds, notifications and other message streams, he said.

"they can all get a bit much," said Mr Redford.

Olly (short for olfactory) has gone through several versions since its initial design. The latest plans are for a gadget much smaller than the original.

Olly is built around the DIY electronics board known as Arduino

Plans to make an Olly robot have been put online under a creative commons licence so anyone can make their own, said Mr Redford. Putting one together demands a passing familiarity with electronics, 3D printing and computer programming.

Once finished, Olly can keep an eye on Twitter, Facebook or almost any other online account. The software that controls Olly can be tuned to emit a puff of perfume for a few different types of online interaction such as a retweet, posting a comment, a mention by name or a specific text search.

The scents that Olly wafts around a room can also be tailored, as the device has a drawer on its rear where the scent can sit. Smells tried during testing included vomit, candyfloss and a partner's perfume, said Mr Redford.

The complexity of building an Olly robot made the audience for it "fairly niche", said Mr Redford, but he added that a small but growing number were now in use around the world.

One chef in the US had loaded his Olly with the essence of tortilla to monitor when his restaurants were being mentioned online.

Olly has proved a hit with companies too, said Mr Redford. One company had decided to manufacture lots of Olly robots to help with a marketing campaign that will launch in late 2012.

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