Beyond the Body

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The Multimodal Brain Orchestra

Visual art, music and dance allow people to express their emotional experiences and put them on display for others. By using their bodies people produce masterpiece paintings, play glorious symphonies or put on amazing dance recitals but what would happen if we took our bodies out of the equation? This is what the Multimodal Brain Orchestra created by the Synthetic, Perceptive, Emotive and Cognitive Systems (SPECS) group at the University Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona wanted to investigate.
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¨不気味の谷現象¨

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Hiroshi Ishiguro, director of the Intelligent Robotics Laboratory at Osaka University, Japan and his twin robot

When robots become too real, our approval takes a plunge into ¨The Uncanny Valley¨

Coined by robotics professor Masahiro Mori, ¨The Uncanny Valley¨ is a phenomenon that describes our aversion to robots and or artificial beings after they reach a certain level of human likeness.  Many people such as Sigmund Freud and Ernst Jentsch have explored the concept of ¨the uncanny¨
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iCub

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The famed European robot has made itself a home in laboratories around the globe

iCub is a robot capable of  interacting with the world much the way a small child does . It is used to look at how experience and the learning of physical acts can affect the development of cognition.  Among other capabilities, iCub is able to:  crawl, grasp objects and express emotion through facial expressions.  Check out the article in nature featuring the icub project leader Giulio Sandini who is also the founder of the LIRA-Lab (Laboratory for Integrated Advanced Robotics) at the University of Genoa and director of research in the Robotics, Brain and Cognitive Sciences department at IIT (the Italian Institute of Technology). Giulio is also a consortium member of the Coordination Action of the Robot Companions for Citizens FET Flagship Initiative.


Biomechatronics ???

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A fascinating field that allows for the revolutionary use of new materials

Biomechatronics integrates biological elements into artificial devices. A dynamic is created  where the biological element carries out a specific function to the system, while the artificial device promotes the adaptation and  maintenance of the biological element.
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SKINformation

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As the largest organ of the human body, our skin provides us with loads of valuable data

Hot. Sharp. Rough. Wet. Our skin is capable of giving us this type of information about the objects and environment around us. As chair of the Institute for Cognitive Systems at the University of Munich, Gordon Cheng and others are working on producing artificial skin as a system of both hardware and software for new humanoid robots.
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Miniature Machines with Major Applications

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Approximately as large as pills, these tiny robots are made to self-assemble in a human stomach

Earth’s little critters give scientists big ideas

Paolo Dario is a Professor of Biomedical Robotics at the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Pisa who is heavily involved in the study of micro-machines for medical purposes. In coordination with 3 other European Universities, Paolo headed the The ARES Project Continue reading →

Innorobo

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Innovation robotic summit  held in Lyon, France March 23-25, 2011

The innorobo summit featured the exhibit of more than 100 robots, 30 of which were on display for the first time ever in Europe. It  included conferences on a wide range of topics such as the social implications of robotics and the shape of robots to come.
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Robot Becomes Living Fossil

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Evolving about 400,000 000 years ago, these guys hung out with dinosaurs!

Coelacanth robot used for education

In 2001, Mitsubishi began the production of an artificial Coelacanth, an ancient species believed to be extinct  until the 1930′s.

The body of the artificial fish is partly made of silicone, plastic and elastic metal. The artificial fish achieves life-like movements through the use of an ¨elastic oscillating fin propulsion system,¨ technology originally developed for propeller-operated marine vehicles.  It is fully automated  and will swim to a recharging unit when its batteries run low!
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