Category Archives: Events

Here Space of Memory: Conserving, Presenting and Elaborating the Memory of the Holocaust

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blog by Paul Verschure [@Paul.Verschure]

Soon after liberation, camp survivors await their ration of potato soup. Bergen-Belsen, Germany, April 28, 1945. — US Holocaust Memorial Museum

Soon after liberation, camp survivors await their ration of potato soup. Bergen-Belsen, Germany, April 28, 1945.
— US Holocaust Memorial Museum

“Wir wissen nur dass wenn wir hier rauskommen, das wir alles dass wir hier erlebt haben in die Welt hinaus schreien müssen, anders kann man nicht leben”

“We only know that when we get out of here, we must shout out into the world about everything that we have experienced here. Otherwise one cannot live.”

These are the words of Charlotte Grunow recorded on April 20, 1945 by BBC reporter Patrick Gordon Walker.

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Robot Saviours

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Article by Michael Szollosy

Tscc_3We’ve all seen the terrifying headlines:

‘Rise of the Cybermen: The Terminator-style bionic ear that could give people “superman” hearing’
‘Terminator is nigh: Shape-shifting material that instantly switches from solid to liquid could lead to a new generation of robots’

And the rest.
Undoubtedly, there is a great deal of anxiety out there about the development of robots and artificial intelligence. Some of these fears are well-founded, of course, and some less so. We’ve been presented in the popular media so often – in films, video games and in the popular press –  with the image of robotic monsters and genocidal AI that it’s a wonder that public have not demanded that these dangerous toys be taken from scientists and forever locked away, their development forever prohibited for the good of all life on earth as we know it. (A similar public attack is underway regarding GMOs, for example; again, many of these are well-founded and some are not.) Continue reading →

Scientists set robots against Ebola

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Xenex's germ-zapping robot Credit: Xenex

Xenex’s germ-zapping robot
Credit: Xenex

With the official Ebola death toll approaching 5,000, scientists are increasingly concerned with exploiting all possible ways of fighting this deadly disease. While the biggest labs around the world are working on a vaccine that will hopefully exterminate Ebola once and for all, roboticists are developing more unconventional ways of preventing the spread of the disease.

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Telluride neuromorphic engineering workshop celebrates 20 years

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Brain_Chip_Wide

Every year, Telluride, a small mountain town in Colorado, attracts an international roster of scientists from several disciplines for three weeks of intensive discussion and exchange of ideas about neuromorphic engineering, a rapidly expanding research field that promises to bridge the gap between the lifeless silicon of computer chips and the very much lively brain-based biological systems. This year is not an exception: the Telluride workshop is now in full swing and will continue until July 19.

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Living Machines 2014

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Screen Shot 2014-06-18 at 15.35.48

The 3rd Conference on Biomimetic and Biohybrid Systems will be held this year from 30 July to 1 August in Milan. As has become a tradition, the three-day event, organised by the Convergent Science Network, will be hosted at a fantastic venue consistent with the spirit of the conference: the Da Vinci Museum of Science and Technology, one of the largest technology museums in Europe.

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Is Pepper the world’s hottest personal robot yet?

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Credit: Aldebaran Robotics

Credit: Aldebaran Robotics

Pepper, a new humanoid robot introduced earlier this month in Japan, may herald the beginning of a new era in personal robotics. Unlike its ancestors, such as Mitsubishi’s Wakamaru and Sony’s QRIO, who had to join the halls of robot extinction, Pepper, developed jointly by the French robotics company Aldebaran and the Japanese telecom giant SoftBank, is here to stay.

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Virtual reality labs reshape how we process information

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We live in a time when the scale of scientific research is undergoing an unprecedented exponential growth, which contributes to the generation of equally unprecedented amounts of data. Disciplines like neuroscience, astronomy or particle physics are piling up so much information that finding and implementing new ways of representing, navigating and manipulating this information is rapidly becoming a pressing necessity.

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Festo unveils a jumping kangaroo robot

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Source: Festo

Source: Festo

The German automation company has once again secured its place at the cutting edge of bionic technology.

This time Festo came up with a life-like kangaroo robot that realistically emulates the jumping dynamics of a natural kangaroo. The robot is expected to be officially unveiled this week at Hannover Messe.

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Meet Romeo, a new rising star of humanoid robotics

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Source: Aldebaran Robotics

Source: Aldebaran Robotics

Five years have passed since Aldebaran Robotics announced an ambitious joint project with over a dozen leading French research centres to make France one of the few countries to have developed an advanced humanoid robot. Finally, the robot, named Romeo, made its long-awaited debut at the Innorobo robotics fair, which was held earlier last month in Lyon.

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