Personal robots in homes and their integration in everyday life will be a major breakthrough of the 21st century. Yet, to realize this vision, important obstacles need to be overcome: these robots will have to act in unpredictable environments including homes and learn new skills while interacting with humans. Intelligent artifacts and robots are expected to operate in complex physical and social environments. The deployment of service and companion robots, however, requires that humans and robots can understand each other and can communicate.The goal of the Eu project WYSIWYD  is to be able to contribute to a qualitative change in human-robot interaction and cooperation (HRI)  and scientists are working towards advancing a robot’s ability to engage in communicative behaviours with humans.

By allowing robots to both understand their own actions and those of humans, will unable the interpretation and communication of the robot “understanding” into human compatible intentional terms. This is expressed as a language-like communication channel called “WYSIWYD Robotese” (WR). The WYSIWYD project will advance this critical communication channel following a biologically and psychologically grounded developmental perspective allowing the robot to acquire, retain and express WR dependent on its individual interaction history or “narrative”.

An integrated architecture to improve communication in HRI

To achieve transparency and communication in HRI a number of elements must be put in place: a well defined experimental paradigm, an integrated architecture for perception, cognition, action and intrinsic motivation that, among other things, provides the backbone for the acquisition of an autonomous communication structure, the WR-DAC architecture

WYSIWYD aims to contribute to a qualitative change in human-robot interaction (HRI) and cooperation, unlocking new capabilities and application areas together with enhanced safety, robustness and monitoring.

Project reviewed with excellence !

The Eu project WYSIWYD, coordinated by ICREA Prof. Paul Verschure director of the SPECS lab at UPF, has reached its 2nd year with a very positive report by the Eu project reviewers and has passed its 2nd review with excellent!

The yearly review meeting took place on the 19th of March and was hosted by the INSERM group in Lyon.  for more information on the project and more recent video see http://wysiwyd.upf.edu/

SO, the British Science Association has released a survey on the British public’s attitudes toward robotics and AI. Their headlines:

• 60% of people think that the use of robots or programmes equipped with artificial intelligence (AI) will lead to fewer jobs within ten years
• 36% of the public believe that the development of AI poses a threat to the long term survival of humanity.

Some other highlights:

• 46% oppose the idea of robots or AI being programmed with a personality

We would not trust robots to do some jobs…

• 53% would not trust robots to perform surgery
• 49% would not trust robots to drive public buses
• 62% would not trust trust robots to fly commercial aircraft

but would trust them to do others:

• 49% want robots to perform domestic tasks for the elderly or the disabled
• 48% want robots to fly unmanned search and rescue missions
• 45% want robots to fly unmanned military aircraft
• 70% want robots to monitor crops

There are also results showing some predictable divisions along the lines of gender (only 17% of women are optimistic about the development of robots, whereas 28% of men are) and age (of 18-24 year olds, 55% could see robots as domestic servants in their household, 28% could see having a robot as a co-worker, and 10% could even imagine a robot being a friend).

A reply has come from the UK-RAS Network (the ESPRC-funded organisation representing academic bodies working in robotics and autonomous systems) that explains while there is need to examine these issues and carefully plan our future, there’s really nothing to worry about. They cite a European Commission report that shows there is no evidence for automisation having a negative (or a positive) impact on levels of human employment, and point to genuine benefits of robots in the workplace, suggesting how robots ‘can help protect jobs by preventing manufacturing moving from the UK to other countries, and by creating new skilled jobs related to building and servicing these systems.’

The popular press also seems to have seized upon the issue of robots and AI replacing human labour – though a lot of this in recent weeks has been in response to other studies and speeches. The Daily Mail, however, can always be relied upon to strike fear into the heart of its readers, and they haven’t disappointed. Though their rather restrained headline on the BSA study seems innocent, ‘Do you fear AI taking over? A third of people believe computers will pose a threat to humanity and more fear they’ll steal jobs‘, the article (again) resuscitates Stephen Hawking’s and Elon Musk’s dire warnings about the future threat posed by AI. In case this wasn’t sufficiently terrifying – and it really isn’t – The Mail slaps up another one of THOSE TERMINATOR PICTURES to accompany the article (right), with the helpful caption that ‘There are mounting fears among the public about the threat posed by artificial intelligence.’ Well, honestly, I’m sure no one can imagine why.

(Sigh.) Some needs to sit down with The Daily Mail’s photo editor and have a nice, long, very slow, chat.

But what does this survey tell us? Simply, that there is still a problem with people’s perceptions of robotics and AI that must be addressed, and it seems that we are not even heading in the right direction. A Eurobarometer survey on the public’s attitudes to robotics conducted in late 2014 shows that 64% then had a generally positive view of robots (which, if added to the 36% in the BSA survey that believes robots and AI are a threat to the future of humanity, just about accounts for everyone). In that 2014 study, however, just 36% of respondents thought that a robot could do their job, and only 4% thought that a robot could fully replace them, so clearly this is area of heightened concern. A 2013 Sciencewise survey reported almost exactly the same general results: 67% held a generally positive view (though  this survey reports that 90% would be uncomfortable with the idea of children or elderly parents being cared for by a robot, so compared to the 49% that want robots to help take care of the disabled and elderly in the latest study there might be some progress there… or else people are just so desperate to deal with an increasingly ageing population that they’re perfectly happy to dispense with their elderly relatives by dumping them with psychotic, genocidal toasters.) However, a 2012 Eurobarometer report told us that  as many as 70% of Europeans were generally positive about robots.

These comparisons are very rough and cannot tell us much without more rigorous analyses (and the BSA hasn’t provided a link to the full survey). But it shows that there has been little movement in attitudes towards robotics, and in fact an increase in anxiety that robots will displace more humans in the workforce . Without more specific scrutiny, it’s hard to say what we’ve got here. It could well be the case that what we have is very unremarkable. But though it may be encouraging to see that a majority of Europeans are consistently generally positive in their perception of robots and AI, there is still a sizeable minority that could prove very disruptive to the development of future applications of robotics and AI, whose anxieties cannot – and should not – be ignored.

One way to alleviate a great deal of these concerns, particularly regarding the loss of jobs, is to explicitly undertake to address what is emerging as the vital question in the public imagination: what this increasing automisation means for our societies? Because it is not in any way inevitable that more working robots and AI means more poverty for unemployed humans. We get to choose what the consequences are of this mechanisation; and these decisions will be taken by human beings, not left to the whims of sentient robots, or even the indifference of disembodied market forces. If we decide to divide the advantages of such automisation more equally (for example, with the introduction of a Universal Basic Income), then it could be a very good thing indeed. (It is worth remembering that two thirds (or more) of us don’t like their jobs anyway, so more robots could mean less drudgery and freedom for a disaffected workforce.)

Again, without more scrutiny, it is difficult to judge what these numbers mean. It seems to suggest that the public are very ambivalent about the forthcoming developments in robotics and AI: if 46% oppose the idea of robots or AI being programmed with a personality, then it could mean that around 54% of people could be perfectly fine with emotionally engaged robots. If half of us don’t want robots driving public buses (49%, according to the BSA survey), half might be happy for the them to do so.

We might look at this study and say that we are ambivalent about robots and AI – that means, not ‘indifferent’ (as ambivalent is often, incorrectly, taken to mean now), but that we have mixed feelings. However ,this could be a terrible misreading of the numbers. What if people aren’t deeply ambivalent, but radically schizophrenic? If 50% are reporting that they are worried, the other 50% might not be; they might even be very enthusiastic about the possibilities.

Again, there is no evidence in this study to support this notion, necessarily. There is clearly a need for more research into the specific concerns  – and their sources – in order to properly address these issues, and to understand these anxieties more thoroughly (which will need a very different sort of study). However, the cultural record offers some some unique insights. Because what films, for example, show us is that we are not at all indifferent to robots and AI, or ambivalent. There is no middle ground: when it comes to robots and AI, we are deeply terrified OR wildly optimistic; we seem to be convinced that robots will either spell certain doom for the human race or our last, our greatest, hope for salvation from all of the terrible things that threaten us (including, inevitably, other robots and ourselves).

Let’s look again at the Terminator. (And why not? since so many seem unable to leave it alone we might as well make good use of it.) The first, 1984 Terminator, for many embodies what it is we fear about robots: the relentless, unstoppable, rational monster, the sole purpose of which is to destroy of human life. But already in the next film, Arnold Schwarzenegger is the Good Guy, posing as the only hope to save John Connor and our entire species, and subsequent instalments – including the aptly-named Terminator: Salvation and the latest Terminator: Genisys [sic] – build on this theme. In our cultural imaginations, robots are both to be feared and embraced, or are either genocidal psychopaths or benevolent messiahs.

Such diametrically opposed perceptions – such dread or aspiration – do not facilitate the sort of reasoned, rational debate that will be necessary to properly assess both the challenges and the opportunities that real robots and AI represent, outside the pages and reels of science fiction. And yet we are fed a steady diet of such vicissitudes. In my next post I’ll look at another example, when I finally get around to a full review of the latest Avengers offering, The Age of Ultron.

This post originally appeared in Dreaming Robots.

According to Prof. Paul Verschure and his Distributed Adaptive Control theory of mind and brain DAC, when foraging and hoarding, animals behave according to 5 top-level objectives called: “how”, “why”, “what”, “where” and “when” or the so called H4W problem (Verschure, 2012). This form of complex behavior includes: to learn where and when to look for  resources, what to look for, where and when to return to the home base, how  to avoid obstacles and how to act in order to satisfy internal needs.

But how does the brain organization and underlying neural principles account for these complex behaviors?

This is the question that Verschure and his research team SPECS at UPF tried to answer in their latest paper published in Neural Network.

The SPECS’ team including lead author G. Maffei, D. Pata, E. Marcos, M. Sanchez and PFMJ. Verschure, have looked at fundamental learning paradigms of classical and operant conditioning and how these are realised by core brain systems such as the cerebellum, hippocampus and neocortex. Biologically constrained models of these systems have been elaborated and the authors have managed for the first time to bring these components together in the model called DAC-X gaining new insights in how the interaction between brain systems is coordinated.

The DAC-X model is not only unique because of its biological detail but also because of its ability to control a robot in real-time facilitating an understanding of the realistic dynamics of brains as they engage with the real world.

The DAC-X robot experiments focus on fundamental behavior o foraging and hoarding. The experiments done using mobile robots show that a naïve agent foraging in a new environment needs to acquire multiple kinds of knowledge, from sensory-motor associations to landmarks and goal oriented strategies. In particular, the agent learns over time to rely on local environmental cues to find useful resources and acquires the navigational planning skills that support efficient decision making, leading to an increase of behavioural efficiency, observed in terms of the overall cost-reward ratio.

The DAC-X model shows in detail how concurrently core brain systems contribute to this complex task: the hypothalamus defining the dominant needs, the cerebellum shaping specific action patterns to negotiate the environment, the hippocampus performing internal simulations of potential routes with the prefrontal cortex setting the specific behavioral goals. This work sheds light on the synergies between multiple learning systems in the brain and how these could lead to coherent behavioural outcomes observed in rodents, and other mammals. The objective of DAC-X and the whole DAC series of models is to render whole brain models that can assist us in understanding the brain in health and disease giving rise to novel control methods for robots and better diagnostics and interventions in the clinic.

The SPECS group has already made the first steps in this direction by the DAC grounded approach to stroke rehabilitation called the Rehabilitation Gaming System RGS.

see also  http://www.elperiodico.com/es/noticias/sociedad/investigadores-pompeu-fabra-desarrollan-robot-que-comporta-como-rata-4765003

Robotic Lobster by Prof. Josef Ayers at Northeastern University. Photography Jan Witting

Here are some examples of small biomimetic robots, inspired by sea creatures and insects, developed by scientists around the world

The RoboClam

RoboClam MIT

Inspired by the Atlantic razor clam, this small energy efficient robot, developed by Amos Winter at MIT can dig holes into the sand like a razor clam. This was possible since the researchers have understood the principle behind this clam’s ability  — localized fluidization — and were able to give a robotic digging clam similar abilities.  The RoboClam may be useful to monitor a biological situation under water or to bury anchors and terminate underwater mines. “And the study of the robot gives deeper insight into the important mechanics behind burrowing through localized fluidization” says Amos Winter. https://youtu.be/bztw9PUiRss

Row-bot

Row-bot with its mouth open. Hemma Philamore, Univ. Bristol/BRL

Inspired by the water beetle, at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory, a group of scientists have been developing a robot called Row-bot that can swim in remote locations by harvesting energy directly from the water using a microbial fuel cell as an artificial stomach.

“When it is hungry the Row-bot opens its soft robotic mouth and rows forward to fill its microbial fuel cell (MFC) stomach with nutrient-rich dirty water. It then closes its mouth and slowly digests the nutrients”. The Row-bot may be useful for environmental clean-up of contaminants in natural and man-made disasters.

3D-printed soft robotic tentacles

3D-printed robotic tentacle. Cornell University

Using an elastomer and a 3D printing technique, engineers at Cornell University have developed a method to re-create soft actuators. Using their new technique, a digital mask projection stereolithgraphy system, they have produced pairs of actuators that mimic the function of octopus tentacles.

As reported in a paper published in the journal Bioinspiration & Biomimetics, the researchers believe that “this nascent printing process for soft actuators is a promising route to sophisticated, biomimetic systems” https://youtu.be/BZ5W7LyyKL0

The RoboBee

RoboBee. Wyss Institute

This very small flying robot, inspired by the biology of a bee, was initially developed by researchers from the Wyss Institute at Harvard University in 2004. The RoboBee, designed at Robert J Wood’s lab, is a micro-robot, smaller than a fingernail, that flies and hovers like an insect, flapping its transparent wings 120 times per second. The research effort around the RoboBee project is believed to “foster novel methods for designing and building an electronic surrogate nervous system able to deftly sense and adapt to changing environments; and advance work on the construction of small-scale flying mechanical devices”. Scientist anticipate that these devices may have an impact in advancing fields ranging from entomology and developmental biology to amorphous computing and electrical engineering. http://wyss.harvard.edu/viewpage/428/

The Tabbot

Tabbot. by Ingo Rechenberg

The robot Tabbot has the looks of a cartwheeling desert-dwelling spider and it is named after tabacha, which means spider in the local Berber language in northern Africa. According to its developer, engineer Ingo Rechenberg “…such a means of locomotion would be an advantage in a device meant to navigate the rough surface condition on Mars“. Rechenberg, who teaches biomimetics at the Technical University of Berlin, believes that this kind of tumbling robots can be used in agriculture as well as on the ocean floor. https://youtu.be/OHo32JrkDRk For more biomimetic robots see our previous blogs and  Biomimetic robots at Robot SafariEU in London and Biomimetics: Where’s it at?

Large-scale simulations of the brain in silico, sometimes using robotics, can be useful, but they are only meaningful if built upon a solid understanding of brain regions. “We need to know the specific interactions between brain regions and we need know the control signals involved. We need to know how the brain functions as a whole”, comments ICREA Prof, Paul Verschure from UPF Barcelona, with Prof. John Lisman from Brandeis University. This conversation was followed by the idea to organize a workshop, “The Convergent Science of Mind and Brain” to broaden the discussion with experts in the field. The goal of this small workshop was to bring together visionary scientists in the hope of getting a handle on the function of the brain from a system level perspective. How can we improve what we know already about the brain and its function?

In the beautiful and scientifically rich environment of Woods Hole, and with the promise of lots of fresh fish, desserts from “Pie in the Sky”, good wine and good conversation, 12 scientists from different Universities around the globe have gathered  together to discuss in a novel format that combined topic-oriented discussion with specific case studies of computational models.

These case studies were anchored in the expertise of the participants and the main objective of their analysis was to use them to predict fundamental organizational principles of the brain.  In parallel, a computational robot based system level model of the brain was advanced starting from an available system. This new format was  designed to facilitate the transformation of ideas into realized computation, possibly validated by the behaviour of robots.

The event was organized by Paul Verschure (UPF and ICREA), John Lisman (Brandeis Univ.), and Anna Mura (UPF, Barcelona). Sponsored by CSN II [FP7-ICT-601167]

for more information see http://csnetwork.eu/activities/woodshole2015

Where have all the workers gone?

The idea that robots will replace human labour hasbeen around since, technically, before there was even such a thing as robots. It is an intriguing history: We can trace our fears of being displaced by mechanised labour back to the earliest days of the Industrial Revolution, as automated looms, powered by the magic of steam engines, meant less employment for skilled workers.

The very origin of the word ‘robot’ is a part of this history, and reflects these fears.

Čapek’s R.U.R.

Karel Čapek’s 1920 play, R.U.R., in which the word ‘robot’ first appears in its modern usage, portrays a factory where all of the workers are manufactured humanoid slaves  robota in Czech means ‘forced labour’) who [spoiler alert] eventually rise up and overthrow their creators. (A famous plot endlessly repeated, and mirrored, to an extent, in another important historical footnote, 1927’s iconic Metropolis, which is also a story about machines replacing human labour and its consequences.)

And now, in a new twist on this old theme – or, looked at from another way, the inevitable evolution of our anxieties – we are being told that whatever jobs are left to we humans will be filled by robotic recruiting consultants, who will analyse the data (i.e. human CVs) to find the best matches for those few jobs that, miraculously, robots are incapable of doing.

However, despite what might described as a bit of excitement at the possibility, there is really nothing new about this. Machines have long had a hand, so to speak, in helping to determine good matches between jobs and potential employees, just as versions of artificial intelligence are presently also finding us potential husbands and wives, new favourite songs and our next favourite books.

The idea that it will be ‘robots’ that will be recruiting human employees is clearly a hook, and not a particularly helpful one. (Especially when the news comes complete with illustrations of sometimes cute, sometimes overly stern – and always unnecessarily expensive – humanoid robots.)

So the news really is… not news. But there’s nothing new in that either, not when it comes to robots, or technology more generally. So, if there is nothing remarkable about machines helping to organise our lives, why is this question of ‘robot recruiters’ such a popular topic at the moment?

The workers and the machines in Metropolis (1927)

The answer, of course, lies in history, and our anxieties. We can trace the answer back to the Industrial Revolution and those dark Satanic mills. It is a new articulation of the old fear that we will be replaced by machines, that robots – versions of ourselves that do not tire, that do not require rests or holidays or maternity leave – will take our jobs. And more fundamentally here, the idea of robot recruiters goes one step further, unless, of course, you are actually in the recruiting industry itself, in which case the idea of robots doing recruitment, and doing it better than you, is already enough.

The idea that robots will find us jobs taps into the fact that we already know that robots are determining more and more about our lives – the amazon.com suggestions, the match.com pairings, the tripadvisor.com recommendations. But the robot recruiter also suggests that so many – perhaps for some people, too many – of our interactions are with machines that might be entirely rational and highly efficient, but somehow still less than human. And perhaps we’re not just thinking about our human-robot interactions, the voice inviting us to press 1 to pay a bill. There may also be a sense that many of our human-human interactions are similarly governed by a rigid inflexibility, that we are meeting other people that are somehow less than human.

And while normally we might embrace these interventions, and be grateful for the able assistance, we are – as ever – ambivalent about our relationship with technology. We are foreshadowing for ourselves potential downsides, negative impacts, and imagining that there are limits to how far we would like this trend to continue. These reservations are entirely legitimate and entirely rational, but in the absence of clear discussion or reasonable debate, they tend to be expressed in nightmare dystopian scenarios; we move from what is perhaps an unconscious suspicion that it may not be perfectly fine for a robot to help us find a fulfilling, well-paid job to imagining a world where a Skynet-styled AI alters our DNA while we are still in the test-tube and employs laser-gun wielding cyborgs to march human children from their Brave New Schools into their computer terminal prisons, where we will be connected to feeding tubes and implanted chips will cause us to explode should we ever try to leave.

But, as usual, such fantasies says much more about human beings than it does about the present or future abilities of robots and AI.

from icub.org

Article by Michael Szollosy

“The desire to anthropomorphise, the need to connect, is powerful, and that is why this thing is going to sell.”

So says Daniel Graystone, inventor and CEO of Graystone industries in the American network series Caprica. The prequel to the 2004 remake of Battlestar Galactica, Caprica tells the story of how the genocidal Cylons came into existence. Graystone is trying to develop a robot for use by the military, but realises that his will be more successful if his robots look and act like human beings. First, it needs to be pointed out – evidently with some frequency – that bipedal robot soldiers are probably the most inefficient way that robots can be used in military combat, and not at all what a truly sophisticated artificial intelligence would use to take over the planet and enslave the human race.

But given that, Graystone makes a very important point: there is a very deeply-rooted impulse to anthropomorphise – to attribute human qualities to things that are not human – and this seems to be a big factor in the development of human-robot interactions. 

This became apparent in a recent post on this blog about the race to create ‘personal robots’: Amidst some genuinely beneficial devices and some really exciting innovations, we found some very ambitious promises about just how much these robots will serve not just as useful machines but also as ‘companions’. Sometimes, these robots involved little more than putting an animated face on a baby monitor, or putting a tablet on wheels and adding a soft female voice. (Why these robots are so often anthropomorphised as female is perhaps something that must be addressed in another post.)

But these robots, looking and sounding increasingly human, look as though they are going to sell.

The impulse to anthropomorphise is an irrational drive, sometimes leading us to draw some strange conclusions. It has little to do with the instrumental utility of a device.  A good hammer is effective at putting nails into wood. Would a hammer with a personality, with a face, be more effective at that task?

Well, maybe, yes, as it turns out.  As we humans are instinctively social animals, perhaps there are some clear benefits to robots with whom we can interacts on a social level: robots with material bodies, instead of disembodied intelligences, and, perhaps best of all, robots with faces, with whom we can more naturally interact.

The impulse to anthropomorphise is an important part of human evolution, and plays an important part of our learning. As Tony Belpaeme explains, this impulse can be seized upon to massively improve the effectiveness of technology in applications like learning and in caring, especially with children.

However, the impulse to anthropomorphise also leads to some assumptions about robots that are unrealistic and, in some cases, dangerous. If one is presented with a robot that has a face, one automatically, instinctive, makes assumptions about those things of which the robot is capable. One might expect, for example, that the face staring back at us shares our intellectual capacity, or our ability to empathise. (This might be in some way what is responsible for the phenomenon known as the uncanny valley, where one experiences a degree of discomfort when in the presence of a life-like humanoid robot.)

Anthropomorphisation, more worryingly, might lead us to expect that robots share human abilities to exercise judgement, for example, in combat situations. In a 2013 TED^x lecture, Noel Sharkey describes how military planners, having seen impressive killing machines, make all sorts of promises about how robot soldiers will be able to autonomously identity and eliminate targets. But these planners have no conception of the serious perceptual and intellectual limitations of robots, let alone their complete lack of moral agency, emotional engagement or critical faculties in the exercise of judgment.

Noel Sharkey – Toy Soldiers to Killer Robots

Looking at a robot with a cute cartoon face, or even a mean-looking Schwarzenegger look-alike, one might assume – automatically, unconsciously – that robot capable of all sorts of human behaviours, feelings and thoughts of which it is simply not capable. And that’s even before the marketing men and overly keen programmers (with an overestimation of their abilities) make their promises and videos that seduce us even further. As ever, what is needed is an informed discussion, and some careful thinking how to effectively and intelligently use our tendency to anthropomorphise, not exploit it.

Tony Belpaeme – The power of robots with a face

Sepios robot
Credit: ETH Zurich

A new marine robot, called Sepios, has recently joined the ever-growing robotic animal kingdom. Built by a group of students from Switzerland’s ETH Zurich, this biomimetic robot was inspired by yet another marine creature, namely a cuttlefish. The interesting thing is that Sepios can actually do better than the creature that inspired it.

Cuttlefish have two elongated fins that produce a beautiful undulating motion and allow these animals to move forward and backward, turn on the spot, or hover. Sepios has four such fins. The extra pair makes it possible for the robot to propel itself in any direction, including straight up and down, and rotate on any axis. Simply put, Sepios is omnidirectional, which cannot be said about the cuttlefish.

The fins are driven by the total of 36 servo motors and can reach the maximum speed of 1.8 km/h.

Perhaps the robot’s biggest advantage is that its fins cause very little turbulence and allow for a greater control as opposed to many other underwater vehicles. Sepios, for example, can easily navigate through patches of sea grass without leaving a mess behind.

Such properties suggest that Sepios will come in handy for marine life observation. The video below certainly proves the point, as Sepios seems to get on quite well with real fish.

Sepios is not the first biomimetic robot to use undulating propulsion. Its predecessors include this knifefish robot developed by researchers at Northwestern University and another cuttlefish robot from NextGen Aeronautics. Still, Sepios is the first to feature four undulating fins, making it the only truly omnidirectional vehicle that uses this kind of propulsion.

The amount of robots inspired by various marine critters has increased tremendously in the past years. Various types of fish, mollusks and even jellyfish consistently provide scientists with new ideas.

You may also be interested in this recent announcement from the National University of Singapore, which is developing a whole range of bio-inspired marine robots, including a smart robotic sea turtle.

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.

Recently, a lot of media attention has been focused on Xenex, a San Antonio-based company, which has developed a robotic assistant that helps medical professionals remove traces of infectious diseases, such as ebola, left in hospital premises. Even better, the robot can fence infections out 24/7 with 99,9 % efficiency, thus preventing any potential delays in the operation of a hospital.

The robot does that by firing powerful ultraviolet pulses that wipe out all nasty viruses and bacterias sneaking in the corners of hospital rooms. And while the technology of scrambling viral DNA with ultraviolet light is not particularly new, the idea of a roboticized Ebola killer is certainly to everybody’s liking.

But here is the catch: it does not take a genius to realize that Xenex’s machine has no more right to be called a robot than any other piece of medical equipment. What Xenox has developed is not an autonomous Roomba-like Ebola hunter. Essentially, it is a wheeled cart with a programmable ultraviolet lamp, and, although there is no doubt about its effectiveness in killing Ebola and other germs, we should choose words properly.

Does this mean, however, that robotics has nothing to offer in the biggest recorded outbreak of the virus?  Fortunatelly, the answer is no. Even existing medical robots have a huge potential for fighting diseases like Ebola, but deciding how to effectively use them in harsh conditions, such as those in West Africa, is a complicated issue.

In an attempt to clarify how robots can contribute to the ongoing battle, the Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue (CRASAR) at Texas A&M University is organizing a policy workshop on Safety Robotics for Ebola Workers. The workshop will help identify what robots can do in order to minimize human contact with the virus, detect the virus and provide expert consulting to those who contracted the virus. You can learn more about the upcoming workshop HERE.

Octopuses, squids, cuttlefish and other cephalopods are often called the chameleons of the sea for their dazzling ability to instantly change textures and colour patterns of their skin in response to the complex marine environment. For a long time, this property of cephalopods has inspired awe and wonder. Now researchers are getting closer than ever to creating camouflage materials that mimic these astonishing creatures.

Scientists from the US and China created a flexible camouflage sheet that can change colour to match its surroundings. To achieve that, the researchers copied the remarkable three-layered structure of the cephalopod skin. The results of the study are published in the PNAS journal.

The camouflage sheet consists of a grid made of 1 mm cells. The top layer is filled with temperature-controlled dye, which can instantly switch from black to white when a certain temperature is reached. The middle layer contains special actuators that produce an electric current, which raises the temperature and triggers the change. Finally, the bottom layer comprises an array of photosensors, responsible for detecting changes in light and transmitting them to the actuators. You can watch a demo of how the sheet works below.

Despite the overall similarity in the layered design, the working mechanism of the sheet is, of course, completely different from the working mechanism of the cephalopod skin.

In cephalopods, colour pigments are contained in small sacs called chromatophores. The sacs are driven by muscle contraction. When relaxed, these sacs shrink and become practically invisible. However, when contracted, their surface significantly expands, thus making them visible. Interestingly, the muscles can also change the texture of the skin, for instance, from flat to bumpy.

This peculiarity of cephalopod design was explored in another recent study, published in Nature Communications. The researchers developed a paper-thin, elastic film that can simultaneously change texture and colour on demand.

Cephalopods change their colourful skin patterns by contracting colour-filled cells. A team of scientists attempted to achieve the same using a specially designed elastomer.                           Qiming Wang et al./Nature Communications

The film is made of elastomer, a flexible and stretchable polymer. An important property of elastomers is that they can dynamically change texture under voltage. Stephen Craig, Duke University Professor of Chemistry and one of the leaders of the study, explains how the film works:

“The texturing and deformation of the elastomer further activates special mechanically responsive molecules embedded in the elastomer, which causes it to fluoresce or change color in response to voltage changes. Once you release the voltage, both the elastomer and the molecules return to their relaxed state – like the cephalopod skin with muscles relaxed.”

Depending on the intensity of electrical pulse, the surface of the elastomer becomes bumpy, at the same time creating different fluorescent patterns.                                                                             Qiming Wang et al./Nature Communications

Although both studies are nowhere near the complexity and colour range of cephalopods’ skin, they represent a huge step in the development of dynamic camouflaging materials and make us wonder where this technology will eventually end up.