After a bad day, there’s nothing like a Hugvie
If you’re a fan of bizarre robots, you’ve got to be familiar with some of Hiroshi Ishiguro’s work. As the director of the Intelligent Robotics Laboratory at Osaka University in Japan, Ishiguro’s gained a lot of fame through many of his pseudo-human creations.
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These rats are back in action!
Grégoire Courtine and his team at The École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) have been using a robotic harness and electro-chemical stimulation to get rats with damaged spinal cords up and running again.
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Joanne O’Riordan’s Address to the UN
On April 26, 2012, 16 year old Joanne O’Riordan gave a speech to the United Nations for Girls in ICT Day. Although Joanne was born with one of rarest conditions we know of, Total Amelia, her motto in life is no limbs, no limits.
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The goal is ambitious but there’s a motive behind it!
The video above by Reuters features some of the robots that were on display at this year’s INNOROBO Conference in Lyon, France. A recent article in the BBC which featured the conference suggests that it may be time we forget about the idea of robots as companions however, some of the robots displayed in the video above seem like they could provide valuable human accompaniment to suit a variety of human needs.
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Robots as healthcare assistants and companions
Healthbots is a joint research project being carried out by Bruce MacDonald and his team at the University of Auckland in New Zealand and the Electronic and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) in Korea. Together, the team wishes to create custom designed robotic technology that’s suitable for use with an older population. The robots have been evaluated over the past 4 years in a series of trials and they are now being poised for use on a larger scale as assistants in people’s homes, hospitals and retirement communities.
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Why it’s all about biomimetics
Back in the 14th century, a man notorious for both his artistic talent and scientific ability, studied birds in an attempt to create a machine that was capable of flight. Today, Leonardo da Vinci’s endeavour may be considered one of the early examples of biomimicry. Corresponding to the word’s Greek roots, the quickly growing field is centred on the imitation of life in a vast array of contexts .
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Nanorobot mimics behaviour of white blood cells to get the job done!
DNA nanorobot from Wyss Institute on Vimeo.
Upon identifying specific deviant cells, the tiny organic robot releases its payload of destructive material onto the cancerous target while well-functioning surrounding cells remain out of harm’s way. This is the gist of the research carried out by Shawn Douglas, Ido Bachelet and George Church that was recently published in Science.
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Perceptive machines lend a hand in the real-world
The robot featured in the picture is named Matilda and she also has a ¨male¨counterpart named Jack. Their creators at La Trobe University ( in partnership with Kyoto University and Japan’s NEC Corporation) Continue reading
Learning from home may be the only option for some but robots can help fill some critical gaps
Cris Colaluca is a 14 year old boy who is attending class at his local school for the first time in six years. Technically, he’s sitting at a desk in his room, in New Castle, USA, but a mobile VGo robot allows him to experience his seventh grade math class between two of his peers in the front row.
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Robots are out of the operating room and at patients’ bedsides!
Robots that perform surgery have been around for a while. The da Vinci system, which has been in use since the 90s, electronically translates a surgeon’s hand movement into much smaller movements Continue reading