Robots designed to move like cockroaches and geckos
It’s suspected that the earliest forms of cockroaches were present over 300 million years ago during the Carboniferous period while our modern roach’s history dates back to the more recent Cretaceous period, which ended about 65 million years ago. The end of that era demolished the dinosaurs but anyone living in an urban environment knows that the cockroaches managed to survive!
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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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Check out Russia 2045
Could we reach an age of cibernetic immortality? It’s a controversial question (to say the least) however, Dmitry Itskov is now making it loud and clear that he thinks the answer is yes and the Russian media tycoon doesn’t stand alone in his opinion. By founding the Russia 2045 movement in 2011, Itskov is now supported by a team of over 30 experts including some of Russia’s leading astronauts, physicians, mathematicians, neuroscientists and engineers (oh, and he’s also recieved the thumbs up from Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama).
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Could blending living and artificial systems help make agriculture more eco-friendly?
What started out as an undergraduate summer project at the Distributed Robotics Lab (DRL), part of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab at MIT, has now turned into a long-term plan to
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¨Turning thought into action¨
The Robotic arm moves a thermos filled with coffee towards Cathy Hutchinson’s mouth while she imagines carrying out this same motion with the very hand she has been unable to move for the past fifteen years.
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The SPECS lab puts their stuff on display in Barcelona!
The Spanish Society of Neuroscience, has declared 2012 Neuroscience Year in Spain. The year-long celebration serves as a way to bring neuroscience to the public and promote the dissemination of scientific knowledge ; a series of exhibitions, conferences, and a variety of other events have been taking place around the country throughout the year.
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Researchers at MIT envision a bag of tiny machines that can assemble into just about anything…
Remember that scene in the 1964 Mary Poppins film where Julie Andrews manages to retrieve everything from plants to coat hangers out of her hand bag? Well… there’s no magic involved however, the Distributed Robotics Lab (DRL) and the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence lab (CSAIL) at MIT are currently working on something rather similar.
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A South Korean effort to reduce stress among corrections officers
Prison guards often face high levels of stress due to under staffing, overtime and rotating shift work associated with their work. This often results in burnout, health problems, high turnover rates and even low life expectancy.
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Jumping and rolling to places we can’t get to
This little contraption probably won’t be found at the beach and it’s not about to bite anyone’s toes either. In fact, all it really wants to do is take a look around. The latest version of the Sand Flea, developed by Boston Dynamics, is able to jump up to 10m thanks to the help of a CO2 powered piston. Sand Flea can perform about 25 of these types of jumps before it needs to refuel.
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