Tech – Page 13 – NerdBeach

Mahru the robot moves the bar closer to robotic domestic help

What would it be like to have a robotic domestic servant? Imagine, one that could help with keeping the house clean, vacuuming, washing dishes, fixing drinks. Maybe even one that could cook for you (or at least fix a microwave meal and bring it to you). While realizing this may be quite a few years away, robotic research continues to cross new thresholds, bring that reality just a bit closer.

In pushing towards that goal, South Korean researchers have created a robot that looks like something you would see from The Jetsons, but Mahru the robot is certainly not fiction. The Korean Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) created Mahru as part of a state funded $200,000 project, and it performs quite well, both from a practical standpoint and an entertainment one. Built to be functional, the bipedal and tethered white and blue robot is appears to be quite friendly.

Mahru is not intimidating in its stature, since it stands 4 foot and 9 inches tall. Weighing 148 pounds, there is no fear of the robot crashing through the floor either. Onboard Mahru incorporates such goodies as advanced motion capture systems and sensors. By using these sensors, capture systems, and actuators Mahru has developed a lot of abilities, including:

Watch and mimic human beings when they do something physical, such as waving their arms or other simple gestures.
When out for a stroll, it is able to avoid obstacles with its hands.
Recognize human voices
Walk to a specific place on demand
Respond to simple phrases like "What is your name?" and "How tall are you?"
Differentiate between faces and objects
Deliver items to humans on command
Express scents using two different kinds of scents (hopefully being scared is not one of the scented emotions)
Cut a rug on the dance floor

Mahru is targeted at being a household domestic servant, and in this area he faces some competition from MIT's Domo, among others. However, KIST researchers are confident that by the year's end Mahru will be performing simple chores such as serving drinks on command. KIST believes that commercial domestic robotic help along the lines of Mahru could be available as soon as a decade from now. Not a moment too soon.

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Snake-like robot designed to help rescue people trapped in rubble

Greg Chaffins

What better to snake through a bunch of debris to rescue people than, well, a snake? Researchers at Japan's Tohoku University have created the Active Scope Camera, which is basically a snake-like robot with a camera.

The robot uses a fiber-optic camera and it is covered with tiny cilia bristles which allow it to move rather like a cross between a snake and a millipede, The robot has a length of 8 meters, a diameter of 2.5 cm, and it has the capability of climbing up 20 cm by extending its body.

The university recently tested the device in a collapsed building in the USA, and it passed the challenges. The team hope to have it in action next year.

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Flexible conductive nanotube material could be used for sensing robotic skin

Greg Chaffins

Japanese researchers led by Takao Someya at the University of Tokyo School of Engineering have developed an electricity-conducting robber which could help robots to have skin that can detect heat and pressure, not unlike humans.

The material crosses the gap between rigid non-stretching conducting metals and flexible rubber, and it is more than 570 times more conductive than current carbon embedded conducting rubbers.

The material could be used in the manufacturer of elastic circuits, which could be stretched 1.7 times its original size without any damage or change in conductivity, making extremely durable electronics.

But an ideal application seems to be artificial skin for robotic uses. A research associate on the team, Tsuyoshi Sekitani, said,

As robots enter our everyday life, they need to have sensors everywhere on their bodies like humans. Imagine they bump into babies. Robots need to feel temperatures, heat and pressure like we do to co-exist. Otherwise it would be dangerous.

The material is constructed by grinding carbon nanotubes with an ionic liquid and adding ti to rubber. The ionic liquid prevents the carbon nanotubes from bunching up, allowing for a uniform dispersion.

There are other applications for the material, ranging from driver condition sensing steering wheels to smart mattresses that prevent bedsores. Sekitani notes that,

Objects that come into contact with humans are often not square or flat. We believe interfaces between humans and electronics should be soft.

Further down the road, the team sees the material to be useful in many applications, including possible use in living bodies. But their focus is on the electronic applications for the time being, as Sekitani adds,

We can't rule out the possibility of using this in living bodies but we're sticking to using it in electronics.

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Researchers use disembodied rat brain to control small wheeled robot

Greg Chaffins

Researchers delving into brain functionality have constructed an interesting, if not disturbing, project to help with their research. The project takes a rat's brain and, through a circuit board, have it controlling a small wheeled robot that avoids a series of obstacles.

The researchers hope that the project will lead to advances in treatments in such diseases as Alzheimer's. Not to mention possible advances in cyborg technology, no doubt.

This is no ordinary robot control system – a plain old microchip connected to a circuit board. Instead, the controller nestles inside a small pot containing a pink broth of nutrients and antibiotics. Inside that pot, some 300,000 rat neurons have made – and continue to make – connections with each other.

As they do so, the disembodied neurons are communicating, sending electrical signals to one another just as they do in a living creature. We know this because the network of neurons is connected at the base of the pot to 80 electrodes, and the voltages sparked by the neurons are displayed on a computer screen.

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