Technology Trends

BusinessWeek’s cover story looks at the future of health care from a business point of view. And the magazine tries to answer at how high-tech can save lives and money. For BusinessWeek, ‘productivity’ in health-care declined during the 1990s, but is starting to rebound, partially because of a massive investment of about $30 billion in information technology in 2005 alone by U.S. hospitals. Not only this is saving money by better managing patients and reducing the length of their stays in hospitals, this investment is also saving lives. Lots of them! It is estimated that “hospital errors result in up to 98,000 deaths annually,” including 7,000 just by missing drug-interaction problems. Amazing numbers, isn’t? Read more…

BusinessWeek has used the example of the Hackensack University Medical Center to check if it was defining the future of health care. Here is a short description of what’s going up there.

Hackensack is one of the nation’s most aggressive tech adopters. Millions of dollars in investments have paid for projects well beyond the online drug system that tipped off Gross. Doctors can tap an internal Web site to examine X-rays from a PC anywhere. Patients can use 37-inch plasma TVs in their rooms to surf the Net for information about their medical conditions. There’s even a life-size robot, Mr. Rounder, that doctors can control from their laptops at home. They direct the digital doc, complete with white lab coat and stethoscope, into hospital rooms and use two-way video to discuss patients’ conditions.

There are currently thirty-five Mr. Rounders in hospitals in the U.S. You can rent one for $4,000 a month, or buy them for $120,000 a piece. For more information about Mr. Rounder, you can check the following resources:

• “Mr. Rounder is On-Call at Hackensack University Medical Center” (press release)
  
  
• “Meet Mr. Rounder,” an online extra article from BusinessWeek
  
  
• “Mr. Rounder Makes the Rounds,” part on an online slide show from BusinessWeek
  
  
• InTouch Health, Inc., which builds Mr. Rounder
  

Now, let’s go back at the question of the health-care future.

Hospitals such as Hackensack, along with insurers and the government, are stepping up their investments in technology. For hospitals, there’s more motivation than ever: The government and private insurers are beginning to pay hospitals more for higher-quality care — and the only way to measure quality, and then improve it, is with more information technology. Hospital spending on such gear is expected to climb to $30.5 billion next year, from $25.8 billion in 2004, according to researcher Dorenfest Group.

Investing more dollars is one thing, but how do you measure ‘improved productivity’ in health-care? One thing is to look at financial results. And investments — and commitments by all nurses and doctors — have raised Hackensack’s operating margins, to 3.1% last year from 1.2% in 2000.

But besides the business case, hospitals are here to save lives. And BusinessWeek comes up with pretty staggering numbers.

Poor information kills some 7,000 Americans each year just by missing drug-interaction problems, according to the National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine. All together, hospital errors result in up to 98,000 deaths annually. Early evidence indicates that proper technology can reduce the toll. Hospitals that have begun using electronic prescription systems have seen up to 80% fewer prescription errors. And at Hackensack, patient mortality has dropped by 16% over the past four years, in part because of its digital initiatives.

Pretty impressive, don’t you think?

As this post starts to be a little bit longer, let’s jump to a couple of conclusions.

Hackensack offers clear lessons for other hospitals. Making technology pay takes time. It can be several years before the results of initiatives begin to surface. Just as important, making the technology work well takes a huge amount of effort. Hackensack’s central software system is constantly being tweaked to ensure that it’s woven into the routine of the medical staff.

Most important, doctors remain the key to hospitals’ success. Wooing them is an extremely delicate task. Only 7% of doctors actually work for hospitals. The others are essentially independent operators who are not required to do what hospital administrators want. Many are wary of gadgets that take extra time or interfere with their work. But they aren’t Luddites. Most are willing to experiment with new technology.

Please read this whole report, preferably the print edition because it will bring some money to BusinessWeek, which will be able to do more of these reports in the future. On the other hand, the online version has some extra articles. So read both.

[Final note: I'm not affiliated in any way with BusinessWeek or with any of the companies of the McGraw-Hill group, owner of BusinessWeek.]

Sources: Timothy J. Mullaney and Arlene Weintraub, BusinessWeek Magazine, Cover Story, March 28, 2005 Issue; and various websites

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Robots developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are working everywhere and can move without human assistance in a variety of settings, according to this article from the MIT News Office, “Robots serve humans on land, in sea and air.” For example, the famous PackBots were conceived at the MIT and are now used by the U.S. Army in Afghanistan and in Iraq. But engineers and robotic designers at MIT also are developing submarine-like vessels to help the U.S. Navy in mine warfare and battlespace preparation. And others are building ‘intelligent’ aircrafts, such as a ‘robochopper’ which would be better suited than surface robots to move in chaotic urban environments. Read more, especially about their ‘robotoddler’…

Please read the article mentioned above to learn more about robots working on land. This section mainly talks about Professor Rodney Brooks, known for the humanoid Kismet robot, but also for being one of the founders of iRobot, which produces the Roomba, a robotic vacuum cleaner for home use and the PackBots used by the U.S. Army.

But don’t miss this page about Rodney Brooks pet projects and this other one about the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) which plans to develop prototypes of autonomous vehicles and humanoid robots for exploration on the Moon and Mars.

Now, let’s go in the sea to check what robots can do there.

Professor Chryssostomos Chryssostomidis, director of the Autonomous Underwater Vehicles Laboratory (AUV Lab), envisions “robots filling the vast void of oceans, roaming around, observing, communicating, and reporting back.” His lab has spent the past 15 years developing AUVs that have carried out missions ranging from surveying shipwrecks to testing underwater navigation and communication software.

The lab developed the Odyssey class of submarine-like vessels, which evolved into AUVs produced commercially by Bluefin Robotics, a company that spun out of the AUV Lab and still works closely with it. BlueFin vehicles aid research, survey offshore oil fields, and assist the U.S. Navy in mine warfare and battlespace preparation.

If you want to know more about the Odyssey class of submarine-like vessels, here are two links to its history and to a photo gallery.

Finally, let’s look at the sky, for which another group is developing intelligent aircrafts, such as this helicopter.

Eric Feron and his research group in the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems are working on several projects that may lead to more airborne robots. Those projects include intelligent aircraft, communication among multiple air vehicles, and automated takeoff and landing.

The group has already made progress in two of these areas. The “robochopper,” a model helicopter outfitted with a sophisticated instrumentation box, can perform autonomous aerobatic maneuvers at the flip of a remote-control switch. Feron, an associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics, also led the development of an intelligent aircraft guidance system that allows a pilot in one airplane to guide another unmanned airplane by speaking commands in English.

Here are two links to the 2002 announcement of this robotic helicopter, “MIT’s robotic helicopter makes first acrobatic roll” and to a gallery of pictures and videos on Aerial robotics.

And for more information about all these MIT robots, you can read the full March 2, 2005 issue of MIT Tech Talk (PDF format, 8 pages, 824 KB). It contains two articles, “Robot’s gait mimics toddlers’” (Pages 1 and 4), and “Robots serve humans on land, in sea and air” (Page 4).

Finally, if you’re interested by this ‘toddler’ but don’t want to load a PDF document, you also can read “Teams build robots that walk like humans” (February 17, 2005, but updated on March 2, 2005).

Sources: Lauren J. Clark, School of Engineering, MIT, March 2, 2005; and various websites at MIT and elsewhere

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A Japanese designer has developed a mannequin robot, Palette, which can adapt its movements to the shoppers passing in front of it, according to this article from Agence France-Presse (AFP), “Striking a robotic pose.” Using motion-capture technology, Palette will be able to act as a supermodel. And with its specialized sensors and software, it also will be able to identify the sex and age of shoppers before transmitting them to store owners for marketing purposes. The price has not been set yet, but Palette should go on sale in 2005 in two versions: a body without legs to showcase clothings, and a torso model for jewelry. Read more…

Here is a short description of Palette.

“Mannequins have been static but this will pose for the nearest person by sensing his or her position,” robot designer Tatsuya Matsui told a news conference.

“It makes the product the mannequin wears look more attractive, increasing consumers’ appetite to buy,” said Matsui, who heads Flower Robotics Inc.

The female robot, code-named Palette, can draw inspiration from the world’s most beautiful women, using motion-capture technology to replay the movements of supermodels.

Palette will not only be a mannequin, it will be a spying marketing tool.

Palette will double up as an industrial spy, with the maker planning to program it to judge the age and sex of shoppers and even identify the bags they are carrying and pass along the information to stores for marketing purposes.

Matsui developed Palette with software company SGI Japan Ltd. and aim to start selling it this year for the fashion and service industries.

The price has not been set yet but SGI wants to make it “as close as possible to that of conventional mannequins,” said Hiroshi Otsuka, who is in charge of new business promotion at SGI Japan.

[Disclaimer: I worked in the past for SGI, but right now, I don't have any ties with this company.]

From what you can see in the above image, Palette has no human face, but it’s intentional.

“Consumer attention would be diverted to the face if there were one,” said Matsui, the designer, noting he wanted customers to focus on the clothes or jewellery the mannequin wears.

And as noted above, Palette will initially come in two versions, but Matsui might introduce other models in the future, such as male or child versions.

Sources: Agence France-Presse, via Independent Online, South Africa, February 28, 2005; and various websites

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Researchers at the University of California, Davis, have recorded the behavior of baby rats in enclosed rectangular environments and saw that the rat pups, almost blind and deaf, didn’t move much after hitting the walls of their cages. They decided to build rat-like robots, inject them some software and rules, and see what will come from this. Surprisingly, they saw that their robots didn’t follow their software rules and started unexpected movements, such as circling the rectangular arena after a shock into a wall. This led them to revisit the original animal data and to conclude that baby rats also had similar behaviors even if they didn’t pay attention to it previously. Now the researchers want to give different sets of rules to their rat-like robots to predict the behavior or more sophisticated robots — and also the rats’ one. Read more…

Robots that act like rat pups can tell us something about the behavior of both, according to UC Davis researchers.

Sanjay Joshi, assistant professor of mechanical and aeronautical engineering, and associate professor of psychology Jeffrey Schank have recorded the behavior of rat pups and built rat-like robots with the same basic senses and motor skills to see how behavior can emerge from a simple set of rules.

Here are the basic facts.

Seven to 10-day-old rat pups, blind and deaf, do not seem to do a whole lot. Videotaped in a rectangular arena in Schank’s laboratory, they move about until they hit a wall, feel their way along the wall until their nose goes into a corner, then mostly stay put. Because their senses and responses are so limited, pups should be a good starting point for building robots that can do the same thing.

Joshi’s laboratory built foot-long robots with tapered snouts, about the same shape as a rat pup. The robots are ringed by sensors so that they “feel” when they bump into a wall or corner. They are programmed to stay in contact with objects they touch, as rats do.

Here is a picture of one of these rat-like robots. (Credit: University of California, Davis) This image comes from the Robotics, Autonomous Systems, and Controls Laboratory (RASCAL) web page.

And here is what — unexpectedly — happened.

But when the robotic “rats” were put into a rectangular arena like that used for experiments with real rats, the robots showed a new behavior. They scuttled along the walls and repeatedly bumped into one corner, but favored one wall. Instead of stopping in a corner they kept going, circling the arena.

“When we re-analyzed the animal data, we found that the animals were also favoring one wall over another as they bumped around in corners,” Joshi said. “The robots showed us what to look for in animal studies.”

On the above image, you can see the actual travel paths of a robotic rat pup with instantiated rules (left) and of a 10-day old rat pup (right). (Credit: University of California, Davis)

Now, the question is: what can we expect from these similarities between animals and robots’ behaviors?

The [researchers are] also looking at the behavior that emerges when groups of robotic rats interact using different kinds of rules. This should show biologists what the rats may be doing. Understanding the biology of these simple systems might later inform the design of more sophisticated robots, Joshi said.

For more information, you can read the two following papers.

• A Biorobotic Investigation of Norway Rat Pups (Rattus norvegicus) in an Arena, Adaptive Behavior (PDF format, 13 pages, 448 KB)
  
  
• Development of Autonomous Robotics Technology for the Study of Rat Pups (PDF format, 13 pages, 668 KB) (The second image on this page comes from this paper.)
  

Sources: University of California, Davis, via EurekAlert!, February 14, 2005

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If you happen to be around Ohio this coming fall, don’t miss an exhibit at the Mansfield Memorial Museum featuring the 7-foot-tall Elektro, the oldest U.S. robot with its 65 years. “Elektro is the only survivor of a group of eight robots created by Westinghouse in Mansfield between 1931 to 1940 for several hundred thousand dollars each,” according to this article from the Plain Dealer, Cleveland (free reg. is sometimes necessary). Back in 1939, Elektro was able to walk, talk, raise and lower his arms, turn his head and move his mouth as he spoke. It used a 78-rpm record player to simulate conversation and had a vocabulary of more than 700 words.Thousands of people enjoyed Elektro at the New York World’s Fair in 1939. It even appeared in a long-time forgotten movie, “Sex Kittens Go to College,” also known as “The Beauty and the Robot.” Read more…

Other information about this exhibit is featured on this page at the Mansfield & Richland County Convention & Visitors Bureau website.

“Elektro was the first true robot ever built in the United States,” said museum director, Scott Schaut. “Built in total secrecy by Westinghouse, Elektro was promoted as the ultimate appliance. In fact, it was thought that Elektro would one day be able to cook, do laundry and entertain the children.”

But let’s return to the Plain Dealer article.

[After being restored for $500 by Jack Weeks, whose father, John, helped create the robot in Mansfield for Westinghouse,] Elektro is back home — repaired, polished and drawing crowds to the Mansfield Memorial Museum. Recently, he was taken off display for repairs, but he will return in September.

“We had more than 4,000 people come to the museum to see Elektro since September,” said Schaut. “It was wildly popular, and a good way to get people to visit the museum.”

Elektro, like the other robots built by Westinghouse seventy years ago, was pretty expensive, but also brought back money.

Elektro is the only survivor of a group of eight robots created by Westinghouse in Mansfield between 1931 to 1940. The company predicted the robots — built for an estimated cost of several hundred thousand dollars each — would be the ultimate household appliances, handling daily drudge work such as washing dishes and cutting the grass.

[But] “they made millions off him,” Schaut said. “People came in from all over the world to see him at the New York World’s Fair. In the late 1940s and through the 1950s, Elektro traveled around the country from appliance store to store. People flocked to see him. It was a hugely successful promotion.”

Later, Elektro went to Hollywood.

Elektro did what many Californians do — he wound up in the movies. He played Thinko, a giant robot that handicapped horses, in the 1960 film “Sex Kittens Go to College (1960),” also known as “The Beauty and the Robot,” with Mamie Van Doren and Tuesday Weld.

Now that you’re a fan of Elektro, you might want to buy an image. From this page, you can buy one from Corbis. But be sure to have your credit card with you. A small version (7.29 x 9.11 cm) costs $90 while a larger one (17.09 x 21.36 cm) goes for $200! Personally, I think these prices are outrageous.

Sources: Michael Sangiacomo, The Plain Dealer, Cleveland, February 9, 2005; and various websites

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Rotundus is a spherical robot which was designed in Sweden to explore the planets of our solar system. But now, it found other occupations right on Earth. According to New Scientist, it could be used for surveillance and detection in rough environments and help security personnel. This rolling robot is very robust because it has no moving parts. It’s also very fast — up to 20 mph or 32 km/h — because its shape limits friction with the ground. It looks like a good candidate for outdoor environments because it can easily move on sand, mud or snow. But it might be less well-adapted for looking inside buildings: it’s hard for a sphere to climb stairs. Read more…

Here is the introduction from New Scientist.

The design was first developed with planetary exploration in mind, at the Ångström Space Technology Center, part of Uppsala University, Sweden. But Rotundus, formed in December 2004 plan to market the ball-shaped bot as an automated security guard.

“We knew it would have applications on Earth,” says company CEO Nils Hulth. “It is very robust when compared to robots that use wheels or tracks and can travel through mud or even snow.”

As I said above, the Rotundus robot has no moving parts.

It is propelled by a pendulum suspended from an axis inside the casing, controlled by a motor. Moving the pendulum forwards causes the robot roll along, but the pendulum can also swing from side to side, giving the robot the ability to steer left and right.

Below are two pictures of this spherical robot, one where it’s “running” in snow, and the other one in an industrial environment. You’ll find larger versions of these pictures, as well as additional movies on this page at Rotundus.

The New Scientist article also tells us about future features of this robot.

The finished version of the robot will follow a patrol route using an internal GPS sensor, Hulth says. Wide angle cameras fitted to the sides of the robot should allow it to record and transmit video footage back to a controller. And the next version will also have enough power to propel itself up slopes, he says.

Ultimately, the company hopes to make the robot virtually autonomous. It is currently developing a radar sensor to allow it to navigate around obstacles and motion-sensing software to automatically detect an intruder. “It will sound the alarm, allowing a remote controller to take over and get even better pictures,” Hulth says.

Right now, this robot can detect intruders and send alarms to security personnel patrolling around a factory during cold winters of Sweden and elsewhere. But it will be more difficult inside them, and even the company acknowledges it.

Hulth concedes that the robot is not well suited to navigating inside a building, where it would face steps, stairs and other obstacles.

Still the start-up company thinks this robot can be used in a great variety of applications, such as inspection of fires and gas leaks.

As this robot is still a prototype, I can’t tell you when it is available and how much it will cost.

For more information, you can read this flyer (PDF format, 1 page) or watch this animation showing the Rotundus on Mars — if it ever goes there.

But as far I know, you can’t buy this rolling robot today.

Sources: Will Knight, New Scientist.com, January 28, 2005; Rotundus website

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A professor in computer science at the Utah State University (USU) is building robots to help people with disabilities, according to the Utah Statesman in this article. The story, which is more focused on the professor than robotics, carries several anecdotes, such as an embarrassing voice recognition system. After a blind man cleared his throat, the robot misinterpreted the sound as a sign that the man wanted to go to the bathroom. Later, every time a man cleared his throat before speaking, the robot changed directions and insisted to guide him to the restrooms. Even if the article is entertaining, this project at USU is far more ambitious. In fact, they want to design RFID-enabled robots mounted on mobile carts which will welcome blind persons at the entrance of a supermarket and guide them through the store. I bet you’ll never find those carts at a Wal-Mart store, but read more…

RFID has been around for almost 50 years and is still helping people. Harness the power of this technology and check out how you can get some RFID tags and RFID readers. The debate between RFID and barcodes continues on and it seems the technology for RFID may be beating out barcodes and the use of barcode scanners and barcode printers is waning. Get in on the RFID wave and see why this new technology appears to be better.

First, let’s look in detail at the failure of the voice recognition system.

Vladimir Kulyukin, assistant professor in the department of computer science, works jointly as a computer science researcher and for the Center for Persons with Disabilities. He said he had an especially embarrassing moment here at the Center for Persons with Disabilities involving a robot and a speech recognition system.

“We figured we could speak to the robot in English, and using the voice recognition system the robot would interpret the commands and obey them. I quickly realized that just wasn’t possible,” he said.

He said a blind man found the glitch in the system when he cleared his throat and the robot misunderstood the sound to mean the man wanted to go to the bathroom.

“Every time the man cleared his throat, the robot would immediately change directions and guide him into the bathroom,” he said. “It was an especially embarrassing moment in my research,” he added.

Of course, this is only a very small part of the project, which will deploy radio frequency identification (RFID) tags for use in robot-assisted indoor navigation for the visually impaired.

“Simply speaking, we are trying to develop a robot for use as a mobile grocery cart used for the blind in supermarkets,” he said. “The robot would meet the blind person at the door and, by the push of a button, would lead the person to different areas of the store.”

Kulyukin said the robot would ideally be mounted on mobile carts, but the level of funding for the technology here at USU is not sufficient for marketing the project.

But they already built prototypes. And below are two pictures showing this RFID-equipped robotic guide (RG) for visually impaired people (Credit: Vladimir Kulyukin)

For more information, here is a link to Vladimir Kulyukin home page — which is not always available. From there, you’ll have access to various pages covering his research interests and his publications.

You might also want to read a paper named “RFID in Robot-Assisted Indoor Navigation for the Visually Impaired,” available as a PDF document (6 pages, 124 KB). Here is the abstract.

We describe how Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) can be used in robot-assisted indoor navigation for the visually impaired. We present a robotic guide for the visually impaired that was deployed and tested both with and without visually impaired participants in two indoor environments. We describe how we modified the standard potential fields algorithms to achieve navigation at moderate walking speeds and to avoid oscillation in narrow spaces. The experiments illustrate that passive RFID tags deployed in the environment can act as reliable stimuli that trigger local navigation behaviors to achieve global navigation objectives.

This paper also exists as a PowerPoint presentation (42 pages, 2.58 MB). The images above come from this presentation.

Sources: Lexie Kite, The Utah Statesman, Utah State University, January 26, 2005; and various websites

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I was quite intrigued by a recent brief article (8 lines) from New Scientist, “Robotic baby rocker to relieve tired parents.” It said that soon parents will be able to use an electromechanical device to rock their babies when they cry. Basically, the Robopax BabySitter is a device that sits on the floor and which supports almost all varieties of baby carriages. When a buggy is on the top of the BabySitter, it starts to balance it at about 66 rocks per minute. The Scottish company behind the Robopax opened its website only a couple of days ago. It hopes to sell 20,000 units per month starting this summer for a price of about £80 (around $150 or €115). Would you be interested? Read more…

Below are some images showing the device (Credit: Robopax website)

Here is the very brief article from New Scientist — in its entirety.

As every new parent quickly learns, one of the best ways to stop a baby crying is to rock him or her to sleep. But from May this year, an electromechanical rocker could relieve parents of the task of keeping a restive infant rocking for many hours on end. The Robopax BabySitter from Dream Technology in the UK is essentially a motorised plastic platform that moves back and forth a few centimetres on hidden wheels.

The BabySitter stands on the floor and is broad enough for a pram, buggy (stroller) or baby’s car seat to be placed on top. The device then reciprocates at about 66 rocks per minute, roughly in time with a resting heartbeat and the speed at which people instinctively rock their child. The launch commercialises an idea that was well received by parents when it was aired at an innovation exhibition in the UK in 2000.

Here are some more details picked on various pages of the site.

First, you’re not limited to use it inside your home.

The product is a worldwide first consumer product for the industry, as all other known baby rockers require to be manually operated, whereas the Robopax BabySitter operates via a DC power supply, similar to that used for a laptop computer — which means that it can be used indoors absolutely anytime, anywhere!

Is it really compatible with most of current buggies?

The Robopax BabySitter’s bed-size at 855mm long by 677 mm wide, has been developed to fit the majority of prams in the marketplace. We believe it works with virtually all four wheeler prams and the majority of three wheelers.

And is it really safe to use this BabySitter?

It has been safety-tested to meet all appropriate EU Electrical and Mechanical Directives. Designed to support a continuous weight-load of 35 kilograms, the BabySitter has been life-cycle tested and subjected to FE analysis at various loads and distributions.

And if I want one, when will it be available?

It is anticipated that 20,000 units will be available per month from the Summer of 2005 from major Department Stores, and directly from the Dream Technology website.

You can already preorder the device for £79.90 (about $150 or €115) from the company’s online store.

So what do you think? Would you buy such a ‘robotic baby rocker?

Sources: New Scientist magazine, January 8, 2005, Issue 2481, Page 20; Robopax website

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It’s Saturday and I’m sure you have some free time to visit an exhibit named “The Feminine Face of Fiber,” which is partially about robots. If you live in the Chicago area, you can see the “Female Cyborg Series,” a collection of robot-inspired quilts created by Kathy Weaver, a former teacher and painter. According to this article from Pioneer Press, in Glenview, Illinois, Kathy started to create quilts featuring robots about seven years ago, partially because “she is a longtime collector of ’50s sci-fi memorabilia.” Admission is free and details are here. As Chicago is far from Paris, France, I doubt I’ll see these quilts. But if you happen to see them, please let me know…

Below are two quilts made by Kathy Weaver. You’ll find other ones in this gallery of robot quilts.

Please read the Pioneer Press article for more details about the artist. Here are selected excerpts about why she started to design quilts featuring robots..

Robots began appearing in Weaver’s work about seven years ago.

“I was teaching at the time in an elementary school and we’d been playing around with paper robots,” she recalled. Weaver noted that when the children moved the robots’ arms and legs even slightly, the paper figures became very animated.

“I started thinking these could really talk to somebody about different emotions,” she said.

The robots additionally appealed to Weaver because she is a longtime collector of ’50s sci-fi memorabilia.

“And I also see the robot as sort of a hopeful figure. I don’t see them as threatening,” Weaver said. “My dad was in electronics and always kept up with the latest gadgets. They are definitely part of our future.”

The artist doesn’t view robots as male-dominated figures, but rather as “a kind of figure that would be parallel to the soothsayer or the shaman.”

The exhibit, which started on January 5, 2005, will end on February 13, 2005. This exhibit is open to the public and admission is free. You’ll find all the details on this page from the Dittmar Memorial Gallery at the Norris University Center of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Here is how Kathy Weaver’s works are introduced.

Kathy Weaver uses the quilt medium and the robot persona to invite the viewer into a complex and intriguing alter world in her Female Cyborg Series. As a child of the fifties living amidst today’s technological modernity, the robot for Weaver represents a potential ranging from an ambiguously “friendly future” to a literal integration of robot into the human body in the form of pacemakers and piecemakers. In seven stunningly handcrafted large-scale works, the viewer is invited into the picture plane to see the modality of the robot’s disposition as it reflects the delicious complexity of human nature. The environment of the robot raises important questions about the intersections between technology and nature, between our skinned, armored world and our interior, emotional selves.

As I wrote above, please let me know what you think if you see Weaver’s ‘robotic’ quilts.

Sources: Myrna Petlicki, Pioneer Press, Glenview, Illinois, January 6, 2005; and various websites

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Robotics news are dominated these days by the $100 Robosapien toy or by the latest version of Honda’s ASIMO, that you will never been able to buy, even if you put a cool US$1 million on the table. But other recent news are worth mentioning. In Florida, according to the Miami Herald (free subscription), a small company is developing a robotic arm for surgeons which could save the healthcare industry $15 billion a year. And did you know that solar-powered autonomous underwater robots are now monitoring the waters of Lake George, N.Y.? On the other coast, PARC’s pliable ‘polybots’ will reconfigure themselves to act independently on earthquake scenes or in space. And in New Zealand, robot experts are creating servants of the future able to serve us the drink we want. Elsewhere, in Korea, the government wants to deploy two-legged networked robots in post offices later this year. In a long interview to the Korea Times, Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) professor Raj Reddy says the network-based robot is a great idea. Read more…

Please read all the articles linked above for more informatio. Below are only essential excerpts and pictures.

Let’s start with the robotic arm from Z-KAT.

The new firm is using technology licensed from Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Artificial Intelligence Lab. ”This is what they call haptic robotics,” says Ferre. ”It is a human interactive tool,” so that the surgeon holding the arm has the touch and feel just as if her own fingers were holding the instrument.

The key is that the small arm can do a knee replacement with an inch-long incision, compared with cuts of 7 to 12 inches for traditional surgery.

The arm, trademarked as Tactical Guidance System, must be approved by the Food and Drug Administration, which Ferre expects to happen fairly quickly because the FDA has already given approval to a more basic version of the arm.

Now, let’s look at what Rensselaer researchers are doing with solar underwater robots.

A collaborative group of researchers are conducting experiments with underwater robots at Rensselaer’s Darrin Fresh Water Institute (DFWI) on Lake George, N.Y., as part of the RiverNet project, an NSF-funded initiative. The group is working to develop a network of distributed sensing devices and water-monitoring robots, including solar-powered autonomous underwater vehicles (SAUVs), for detection of chemical and biological trends that may guide the management and improvement of water quality.

[Additional note: you'll find all the details about the experiments done between October 17 and 22, 2004 here.]

PARC’s modular reconfigurable robots, or polybots are an entirely different story. Sometimes, they’re called morphing or mutating robots, but why would you use these reconfigurable robots?

“The problem with a conventional robot is you spend a lot of money building this one robot that does one task very well,” says Craig Eldershaw, [a research engineer at PARC (Palo Alto Research Center).] “A modular robot can change its shape to adapt to a particular job. To wash dishes, it needs small delicate arms and fingers. For gardening, it could have a couple big strong arms to hold a shovel and big treads to move through mud.”

That kind of robotic domestic help is as much as three decades away, he acknowledges. But experimental search-and-rescue bots could be deployed in earthquake- or bomb-racked buildings within the next few years, he says.

Morphing robots also could become space explorers.

PARC recently took on a long-term NASA contract to develop a robotic arm that could move around the outside of a next-generation space shuttle freely and convert itself into several arms or a claw if the need arises. “Think in-space construction or assembly,” Mr. Eldershaw says. “Any time you can prevent someone having to go out into space in a suit you’ve won a lot of friends at NASA.”

Mark Yim, a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania who set up the modular robotics research group at PARC after completing his doctorate at Stanford, is leading a team that has taken on a NASA contract to build a morphing Mars explorer. To demonstrate the robot’s ability to assist with human life support, the experimental robot will be given the task of growing and nurturing a small plant inside a sealed environmental chamber.

It’s time to move to another continent, and to robots willing to serve us our favorite cocktails — maybe not this year — but in a foreseenable future.

“(In) 15 years’ time, I’d estimate something like this would serve drinks,” says Australian Tribotix robotics and electronics company engineering manager Steve Mitchell, putting a humanoid-shaped robot through its paces, literally. They’ll be that common.”

He remote-controls the 30cm-tallrobot and fascinated conference-goers cluster, watching it walk, bend forward and backward and move its arms, legs, torso and head independently. It can also slide skiing-style and perform acrobatics such as headstands.

Meanwhile, Korea is introducing a competitor with Honda’s Asimo. The 1.2-meter-tall KHR-3, which weighs roughly 55 kilograms, can walk by using 41 built-in motors and numerous joints and can also shake hands or lift objects with its five-fingered hands.

Korea’s officials also think they’re fast catching Japanese in robotics.

“In order to understand the humanoid development, we must split two facets of the mechanics and intelligence. Mechanically, we lag behind Japan 2-3 years, but we are almost on par with the country in intelligence,” a project manager said.

These robots will be introduced next year in five different projects, three for home usage and two for post offices.

To conclude this long post, I just want to say I was disappointed by the Korea Times’s interview of Raj Reddy, a person I really respect. His interview looks like a press release, very different from what you can read in a recent effort he made for promoting $250 computing devices for developing countries.

Sources: John Dorschner, The Miami Herald, December 6, 2004; Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, December 6, 2004; Janet Rae-Dupree, Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal, December 10, 2004; Lee Matthews, Manawatu Standard, New Zealand, December 10, 2004; Kim Tae-gyu, The Korea Times, November 23 and December 19, 2004; Byron Spice, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, September 20, 2004

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In this must-read article, MIS, from Australia, asserts than in 10 to 15 years, we’ll be unable to use today’s technologies to build electronic devices always smaller and more powerful. Instead, three disruptive technologies will converge and deeply change our lives: nanotechnology, sensors and wireless technology. The author explains how this will influence molecular computing or quantum information processing. She also describes future advances in robotics, including nanobots. And the transportation industry will welcome the arrival of skycars, which are under development today. But will we travel anymore when holographic videoconferencing tools will be available? Please take a moment to check this fascinating article or read more below…

If nanobots and skycars sound more like sci-fi than a sane view of the future, then you may need to reprogram your mindset. Helene Zampetakis reports on the technology that will shape our lives in the decades to come.

A trio of disruptive technologies will converge over the next five to 15 years to overtake our incumbent systems and create new competencies that will profoundly change the way we organise our lives and the way we do business.

The driving principles behind modern technology are running out of steam: it is becoming prohibitively costly to continue to shrink technology, while Moore’s Law, which postulates the doubling of computer power every 18 months, is reaching its physical limits under current processes.

Luckily, help is coming with the convergence of three technologies.

But research that is underway today is expected to usher in a new technological era. Dubbed ‘embedded connectivity’ by Bob Hayward, vice-president and research fellow at Gartner, it will draw strength from nanotechnology, sensors and wireless technology.

The embedded world of the future will harness the power of billions of microprocessors on a single device, wirelessly connected to others, that can read the environment and react accordingly. Scientists portray a future in which we attach these devices to our bodies to communicate, set them loose on our streets to do menial tasks, and embed them in the commonplace objects of our lives to address our daily requirements.

The underlying foundation for this new era of embedded connectivity is nanotechnology, which is based on the manipulation of molecules less than 100 nanometres in size. “Nanotechnology means that rather than taking a chunk of silicon and carving it down to size, we build from the bottom up by assembling single molecules and atoms,” says Dr Terry Turney, director of CSIRO’s nanotechnology centre.

Zampetakis then looks at electronic circuitry and how it will be transformed by molecular self-assembly technology. She also describes future quantum information processing and wireless networks of sensors.

Now, let’s look at what she says about robotics.

It will be at least 20 years before we see microscopic ‘nanobots’, the much-hyped molecular manufacturing systems that have generated sci-fi like fears of mutating swarms running amok. But miniature robots are in fact under serious investigation.

In 2000, for example, MIT’s Bioinstrumentation Laboratory unveiled the Nanowalker, a sugar-cube sized prototype of the first autonomous nanorobot. The Nanowalker is able to move with great precision at a speed of about 4,000 steps a second and communicate wirelessly to a central computer.

Nanorobots will eventually construct materials atom by atom to create products that do anything from surveillance to in vitro navigation.

Larger robots will also be present and will become more independent.

Currently robots operate in controlled environments designed around them, such as car assembly plants, but the next generation of machines will be designed to function in a less structured world and to cope with unexpected changes to their environment.

Robotics research today centres around embedding these devices with fuzzy logic skills using sensors that will allow them to perceive and respond. Dr Peter Corke, autonomous systems team leader at CSIRO, says we could expect to see this class of machine delivering mail or medication or stacking store shelves at low cost to replace human labour in five to 10 years from now. Larger versions could be used down mines; and indeed this research is principally funded by the mining industry, along with organisations interested in flying robots that can inspect assets such as power lines.

And after decades of science-fiction stories, skycars will finally be there.

These will let us travel “when and where but especially how we wish”, according to Mark Moore, personal air vehicle sector manager for NASA’s Vehicle Systems Program.

NASA’s area of focus is a skycar (or personal air vehicle — PAV) designed not for getting about the city, but for travelling at high speeds for distances of between 160kms to 800kms. That would allow people to live in regional areas and commute into urban airfields for work.

Over the next decade Moore expects to see flying cars priced at less than US$100,000 using automated functionality based on NASA’s EquiPT (Easy-to-use, quiet Personal Transportation) technology set.

Moore says an obstacle to PAVs has been the intensity of training required to fly them, so automation is critical. The goal is to have the vehicle controlled by a computerised brain that senses and responds to weather conditions or other crafts in the vicinity, and compensates for technical failures.

And did you know you could order a skycar today? Moller International, based in California, is developing the M400 Skycar and hopes it will be certified by 2006. And you can purchase a 4-passenger Skycar today for a cool $995,000!

But will we travel with the arrival of the next generation of videoconferencing tools?

The synergy of vastly increased bandwidth, three-dimensional video projection and interactive holography systems is expected to change the way we collectively communicate, according to James Anderson, country manager of Polycom.

Videophones as a standard business tool are a decade away but it will be more like 20 years before research from bodies such as MIT’s Spatial Imaging Group or 3D visualisation company, Actuality Systems, yields practicable holographic videoconferencing. By then, however, “we’ll be looking at life-size holograms in 3D that can move around the room in full motion”, says Anderson.

Finally, Zampetakis looks at changes in information technology likely to happen in the next five to ten years.

Now, I have a question for you. Is this message from the future a one you like? Personally, I do.

Source: Helene Zampetakis, Managing Information Strategies, Australia, December 17, 2004; Moller International

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Here is a story for your weekend. The grandmother of an engineering student at the University of Arizona has an old mine on her property. What could be inside? Would it be safe to explore it? She — the student, not the grandmother — decided it was better to send a robot inside and she teamed with another robotic enthusiast to build a radio-controlled rover to explore the mysteries of the old mine. The 18-inch-long and 7-inch-high robot can communicate with them via a 900 MHz radio modem and send them videos from inside the mine. Theoretically, the robot has a seven-mile range line-of-sight, but the team is not so sure. So the robot is also tied with a rope to pull it out of the mine if necessary, especially if it falls into a big hole. And did I mention this robot is a ’she’? They decided the machine was female “because the rover is independent, sometimes unpredictable and able to do the seemingly impossible” and they called her “Green Meanie.” Read more…

Let’s start with the beginning of the article of the Arizona Daily Wildcat.

Keith Brock and Jessica Dooley, both aerospace engineering seniors, were curious about what was inside a mine northeast of Phoenix near Congress, Ariz., but were not willing to risk their lives to find out.

Brock and Dooley, members of the UA’s Aerial Robotics Club, said they were familiar with the technology necessary to make the rover, so it only took two weeks to go from an idea to the finished product.

Dooley said they have yet to test the rover in an actual mine because they are uncertain how safe the mineshafts are and unsure if they will get radio transmission that far underground. They plan to connect the rover to a rope in case they need to pull it out of the mine.

Here are some general details about this robotic rover.

Dooley said the 18-inch-long rover has a searchlight powerful enough to see in the depths of the mine, and a pan-and-tilt video camera that will be able to send images of the mine back to their laptop.

Brock said the rover is 1.5 square feet in area and seven inches tall. He said it can be controlled with a joystick, computer mouse, or cursor tracking.

Brock said the rover is 1.5 square feet in area and seven inches tall. He said it can be controlled with a joystick, computer mouse, or cursor tracking.

Now, let’s turn to the Tucson Citizen to learn more about why this robot is a ’she.’

It climbs over rocks as big as your head and remains agile on loose gravel, sand and hardpan. It can explore areas too dangerous for humans, lighting its way and sending video images to it creators. It’s the Green Meanie.

That’s what Jessica Dooley dubbed the green-wheeled, battery-operated rover she built with the help of Keith Brock, a fellow aerospace engineering senior at the University of Arizona. She’s decided the machine is female.

“It’s definitely a she,” Dooley said, explaining that the rover is independent, sometimes unpredictable and able to do the seemingly impossible.

Now that we know that this over is female, let’s look at more technical details provided by innovations report, from Germany, in “Students Build Rover to Explore Old Mines.”

The rover is about 1.5 square feet in area and seven inches tall. It can be controlled with a joystick, computer mouse or cursor tracking. The cursor tracking or “mouse tracking” is linked to the rover’s video camera. Move the cursor to a point on the image sent back from the video camera, and the video camera will center over that part of the image where the cursor lies. “If you have a moving object, you can follow it with the mouse and the camera will automatically stay centered on it,” Brock said.

With the hatch off, the rover electronics can be seen to include: lithium polymer batteries; servos that drive the wheels; a 900 MHz wireless modem; a servo-driver board that allows the remote computer to send signals to the servos; and a DC-to-DC converter that has outputs for several voltages to power the rover’s various electronic components.

So you have an old mine close to your home and want to see what’s inside? Contact the students and build your own ‘Green Meanie.’

Sources: Georgeanne Barrett, Arizona Daily Wildcat, November 23, 2004; Larry Copenhaver, Tucson Citizen, December 3, 2004; innovations report, Germany, November 18, 2004

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I bet most of you have never heard about Argo, an ambitious scientific project about the observation of our oceans. This project is endorsed by 18 countries and just reached a milestone: there are today more than 1,500 robotic floats reporting about salinity changes or predicting El Niño events, among other ones. This news release from the University of California at San Diego says that the Argo floats, which are autonomous ocean-traveling robots programmed to sink more than a mile below the ocean surface, are helping scientists all over the world to look at the future of our whole planet. And in 2007, when the deployment is completed, 3,000 underwater robots will help us to better understand the changes in our climate. Read more…

Even in a press release, you can find some real facts.

Researchers with the international Argo program announced they have reached the point where 1,500 ocean-traveling float instruments — half the target 3,000-float array — are now operating. This marks an important milestone in the program’s mission to capture valuable data around the globe.

The Argo floats, which are robotically programmed to record and transmit data, are uniquely positioned to provide important information about climate and weather phenomena. Other applications of Argo information include: ocean heat storage and climate change; ocean salinity changes due to rainfall; ocean-driven events such as El Niño; impacts of ocean temperature on fisheries and regional ecosystems; interactions between the ocean and monsoons; and how the oceans drive hurricanes and typhoons.

If your screen as enough pixels, you should see above a cross section of one float (left) (Credit: Southampton Oceanographic Centre) and one of the three models of floats, the PROVOR, shortly before recovery by the Japanese coastguard vessel Takuyo (right) (Credit: Scripps/UCSD Argo information). You can find many more pictures in this picture gallery on the Scripps/UCSD Argo information site.

The National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration, (NOAA), provides additional information and pictures in this story.

“This was just a dream back in 1998,” said Conrad C. Lautenbacher, a NOAA administrator. “Today, the dream is a reality and these devices prove that a global network of robotic instruments can provide the information we need to enhance our understanding of climate, weather and our oceans.”

And if you like acronyms, you’ll appreciate this quote.

Argo is a major contributor to the World Climate Research Programme’s Climate Variability and Predictability Experiment (CLIVAR) project and to the Global Ocean Data Assimilation Experiment (GODAE). The Argo array is part of the Global Climate Observing System/Global Ocean Observing System (GCOS/GOOS).

Sources: University of California,San Diego, news release, November 30, 2004; and various websites

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According to this very long article from Military & Aerospace Electronics, vehicle electronics (vetronics) technologies will be at the heart of all future manned and unmanned vehicles of the U.S. Army. Advanced vetronics technologies include automatic target recognition, computer-based decision aids, high-speed distributed computing, robotics, and high-speed networks. In particular, networking will involve high-speed mobile networks, theater-level wired networks, ultra-broadband satellite networks and advanced IP communications. The article looks at all the components of the Future Combat System (FCS), which will link commanders and troops to manned or unmanned vehicles. Below, I’m focusing on one element: why automation and unmanned vehicles are so important in vetronics developments. Read more…

So, let’s see why the U.S. Army is putting vetronics technology at the center of its future vehicles.

U.S. Army vehicle electronics (vetronics) designers are shifting virtually all their research-and-development money over to robotics and unmanned systems, and are looking to commercially developed technology to meet their future needs in manned vetronics systems.

“Over the last four to five years there has been a shift in our R&D investment,” says Dr. Grace Bochenek, executive vice president for research, and technical director of the U.S. Army Tank, Automotive & Armaments Command (TARDEC) in Warren, Mich. “We have migrated to investments in unmanned ground platforms. All the Army’s investment is in automation and unmanned systems.”

Army leaders see automation and unmanned systems as important ways not only to reduce the number of crew members necessary to operate combat vehicles on the battlefield, but also to reduce the number of human beings who must operate vehicles in dangerous areas.

For example, the future 20-ton combat vehicles, which are part of the Future Combat System (FCS) program, will have only two crew members. But they will receive plenty of assistance from their vehicles.

Not only would [these Intelligent systems] enable two-man crews to control their own vehicle, keep in touch with other vehicles in the area and with their commanders, and keep track of the locations of friendly and enemy forces, but the station also would enable them to control unmanned ground and air vehicles.

At the moment, this project revolves around the Crew Integration and Automation Test Bed Advanced Technology Demonstration, otherwise known as CAT-ATD. This project is to demonstrate the crew interfaces, automation, and integration technologies necessary to meet the future needs of two-man combat vehicle crews.

The CAT-ATD seeks to design a wrap-around reconfigurable display that would help crew members drive the vehicle with sensors and the wrap-around display, rather than by using a direct view outside the vehicle. The crew station will also demonstrate automated decision aids, ways for crewmembers to dip into a rich supply of real-time battlefield information, and help the crew practice missions and hone their skills with embedded simulation and computer-generated mission rehearsal.

The demonstrator is to showcase soldier-machine interface technology, indirect vision, speech recognition, 3-D audio, helmet-mounted displays and panoramic displays, as well as automated route planning, driving, and battle planning. The station will blend information from sensors, weapons, and unmanned vehicles.

There are also many projects about unmanned vehicles, including the Robotic Follower Advanced Technology Demonstrator (Robotic Follower ATD) project.

This program focuses on developing a low-risk, near-term autonomous vehicle to handle tasks such as equipment carrier, resupply, scouting, mine detection, rear-area security, unmanned-aerial-vehicle launch, and fire support.

This vehicle will incorporate second-generation laser radar, forward-looking infrared sensors, and advanced computers to handle autonomous navigation, which experts point out is one of the most difficult challenges to building autonomous vehicles.

One of the program’s goals is to build an autonomous vehicle capable of driving on primary roads at speeds of 50 to 60 miles per hour, and driving off-road at 40 miles per hour. The vehicle should operate at distances of three to six miles from the lead vehicle.

For more information about these developments, you can check two U.S. Army websites, the Vetronics Institute or the Vetronics Technology Area. The first image on the top comes from the CAT-ATD page on this site.

Sources: John Keller, Military & Aerospace Electronics, October 2004, Vol. 15, No. 10, P. 20; and various other websites

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