Saturday, April 18, 2009
HONDA's Asimo
Natural Computing and Intelligent Robotics conference and NCAF 2009
Call for Papers, Abstracts, Participation
Conference on Natural Computing and Intelligent Robotics and
Natural Computing Applied Forum Meeting (NCAF)
University of Sunderland
21-22 January 2009
Submissions are invited for the forthcoming Conference on Natural
Computing and Intelligent Robotics and NCAF meeting to be held at
the University of Sunderland, 21-22 January 2009. This forum
should be ideal to bring together PhD students and staff in an
enjoyable setting. Submissions are invited in general areas of
natural computing including:
* Nature-inspired Knowledge Representation
* Multimodal Knowledge Representation
* Neural Networks
* Artificial Life
* Evolutionary Computation
* Genetic Algorithms
* Biological Computation
* Neuroscience-inspired architectures
* Reinforcement Learning
* Machine Learning
* Hybrid Intelligent Systems
and particularly in areas related to biologically-inspired
intelligent robotics, such as:
* Language processing robots and speech interfaces
* Smart sensors and perception
* Human-robot interaction
* Learning robots
* Multimodal integration
* Biorobots and neuroscience-inspired architectures
* Robot control and navigation
* Neural, statistical and symbolic integration
* Hybrid architectures.
This meeting will complement the EU funded NESTCOM project and
submissions focussing on multimodal communication are especially
welcome. We particularly encourage submissions from PhD
students with early results for dissemination. In order to
encourage student submissions a prize will be awarded for the
best paper from a PhD student.
1 page abstracts or full papers of up to 10 pages should be submitted
to Dr. Michael Knowles ( Michael.Knowles at sunderland.ac.uk )
by Monday 17th November 2008 in pdf form.
High quality submissions could be considered as submissions for
publication in journals e.g. Connection Science, Neural Networks
in extended form.
For more information see the website
http://www.his.sunderland.ac.
Organising Committee:
Stefan Wermter (Chair)
Naveed Anwar
Graham Hesketh
Michael Knowles
John MacIntyre
Kimberley Moore
Martin Page
Kiran Ravulakollu
******************************
Professor Stefan Wermter
Centre for Hybrid Intelligent Systems
Department of Computing and Technology, FAS
University of Sunderland
St Peters Way
Sunderland SR6 0DD
United Kingdom
Robotic surgeon to team up with doctors, astronauts on NASA mission
Raven, the mobile surgical robot developed in the UW's BioRobotics Lab, weighs about 50 pounds. Its nimble appendages can suture wounds and perform minimally invasive surgeries. Credit: David Clugston
This week Raven, the mobile surgical robot developed by the University of Washington, leaves for the depths of the Atlantic Ocean. The UW will participate in NASA's mission to submerge a surgeon and robotic gear in a simulated spaceship. For 12 days the surgical robotic system will be put through its paces in an underwater capsule that mimics conditions in a space shuttle. Surgeons back in Seattle will guide its movements.
The 12th NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations test will take place May 7 to 18 off the coast of Florida. The robot leaves Seattle on Friday. During the mission, Raven will operate in the Aquarius Undersea Laboratory, a submarine-like research pod about 60 feet underwater. This mission will test current technology for sending remote-controlled surgical robotic systems into space.
During the mission, four crew members will assemble the robot and perform experiments. The two larger-than-life black robotic arms will use surgical instruments to suture a piece of rubber and move blocks from one spindle to another on what looks like a delicate children's toy. The brains behind the robot's movements will be three surgeons in front of a computer screen in Seattle: Drs. Mika Sinanan and Andrew Wright of the University of Washington's Medical Center, and Dr. Thomas Lendvay of Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Center in Seattle.
Instructions will travel over a commercial Internet connection from Seattle to Key Largo, Fla., then via a special wireless connection from there to a buoy, and finally via cable underwater. Images of the simulated patient will travel back over the same network.
Raven was built over the past five years in the UW's BioRobotics Lab, co-directed by professor Blake Hannaford and research associate professor Jacob Rosen in the department of electrical engineering, with partners in the UW's department of surgery. The da Vinci surgical robot, which is used at the UW and elsewhere, weighs nearly a half-ton. Raven weighs only 50 pounds.
Lightweight, mobile robots could travel to wounded soldiers on the battlefield to treat combat injuries. Surgical robotic systems also could be used in disaster areas so doctors worldwide could perform emergency procedures. The robots could even travel to remote areas in the developing world so local doctors could get help on difficult procedures. NASA will test the robot's suitability for a mission to space, where it could perform emergency surgery without requiring a surgeon to be onboard.
Raven went on its first road trip last summer to California's Simi Valley. Researchers installed an operating-room tent in gusting winds and temperatures nearing 100 degrees F (40 C), and hooked the equipment up to gasoline-powered generators. Surgeons completed the first field test communicating with the operating tent using an unmanned aircraft equipped with a wireless transmitter.
The NASA mission poses new challenges. Researchers shrank the computers and power supplies that support the robot so they can be carried in dive bags by technical scuba divers and fit into the limited space. Most importantly, the engineers wrote an instructional manual so crew members could reassemble the robot and troubleshoot any problems they encounter.
"When you build a technology as a lab prototype, it takes someone with a Ph.D. six weeks to put it together," Hannaford said. "If you build something for the field, it's got to be repairable, modular and robust."
Once everything is installed in the undersea lab the crew will be alone with the robot. Crew members can communicate by phone with the ground team but they will have to operate the robot and fix any problems on their own. The four-person crew includes research collaborator and surgeon Dr. Tim Broderick of the University of Cincinnati, who will observe the robot's movements and determine its suitability for space travel. Two NASA astronauts and a NASA flight surgeon complete the crew.
Also traveling to the research pod is the M7, a surgical robot developed by SRI International in Menlo Park, Calif. These two robots are the only existing prototypes for a mobile surgical robot, Hannaford said. Currently both robots are research projects and are not yet approved by the Food and Drug Administration for use on humans.
Source: University of WashingtonScientists control complex nucleation processes using DNA origami seeds
The first three seeds each present a distinct pattern (000000, 100001, or 011010) and were incubated with a set of tiles that copy the pattern from layer to layer; the fourth seed was incubated with a set of tiles that constructs each diagonal layer to represent a binary number one larger than the previous layer. Some errors occur. Credit: Credit: Caltech/Winfree, Rothemund, Barish, Schulman
The construction of complex man-made objects--a car, for example, or even a pizza--almost invariably entails what are known as "top-down" processes, in which the structure and order of the thing being built is imposed from the outside (say, by an automobile assembly line, or the hands of the pizza maker).
"Top-down approaches have been extremely successful," says Erik Winfree of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). "But as the object being manufactured requires higher and higher precision--such as silicon chips with smaller and smaller transistors--they require enormously expensive factories to be built."
The alternative to top-down manufacturing is a "bottom-up" approach, in which the order is imposed from within the object being made, so that it "grows" according to some built-in design.
"Flowers, dogs, and just about all biological objects are created from the bottom up," says Winfree, an associate professor of computer science, computation and neural systems, and bioengineering at Caltech. Along with his coworkers, Winfree is seeking to integrate bottom-up construction approaches with molecular fabrication processes to construct objects from parts that are just a few billionths of a meter in size that essentially assemble themselves.
In a recent paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Winfree and his colleagues describe the development of an information-containing DNA "seed" that can direct the self-assembled bottom-up growth of tiles of DNA in a precisely controlled fashion. In some ways, the process is similar to how the fertilized seeds of plants or animals contain information that directs the growth and development of those organisms.
"The big potential advantage of bottom-up construction is that it can be cheap"--just as the mold that grows in your kitchen does so for free--"and can be massively parallel, because the objects construct themselves," says Winfree.
But, he adds, while bottom-up approaches have been extremely useful in biology, they haven't played as significant a role in technology, "because we don't have a great grasp on how to design systems that build themselves. Most examples of bottom-up technologies are specific chemical processes that work great for a particular task, but don't easily generalize for constructing more complex structures."To understand how complexity can be programmed into bottom-up molecular fabrication processes, Winfree and his colleagues study and understand the processes--or algorithms--that generate organization not just in computers but also in the natural world.
"Tasks can be solved by carrying out well-defined rules, and these rules can be carried out by a mindless mechanism such as a computer," he says. "The same set of rules can perform different tasks when given different inputs, and there exist 'universal programs' that can perform any task required of it, as specified in its input. Your laptop is such a universal computer; it can run any software that you download, and in principle, any feasible task could be programmed."
These principles also have been exploited by natural evolution, Winfree says: "Every cell, it appears, is a kind of universal computer that can be instructed in seemingly limitless ways by a DNA genome that specifies what chemical processes to execute, thus building an active organism. The aim of my lab has been to understand algorithms and information within molecular systems."
Winfree's investigations into algorithmic self-assembly earned him a MacArthur "genius" prize in 2000; his collaborator, Paul W. K. Rothemund, a senior research associate at Caltech and a coauthor of the PNAS paper, was awarded the same no-strings-attached grant in 2007 for his work designing scaffolded "DNA origami" structures that self-assemble into nearly arbitrary shapes (such as a smiley face and a map of the Western Hemisphere).
The structures designed by Rothemund, which could eventually be used in smaller, faster computers, were used as the seeds for the programmed self-assembly of DNA tiles described in the current paper.
In the work, the researchers designed several different versions of a DNA origami rectangle, 95 by 75 nanometers, which served as the seeds for the growth of different types of ribbon-like crystals of DNA. The seeds were combined in a test tube with other bits of DNA, called "tiles," heated, and then cooled slowly.
"As it cools, the first origami seed and the individual tiles form, as their component DNA molecules begin sticking to each other and folding into shape--but the tiles and origami don't stick to each other yet," Winfree explains.
"Then, at a lower temperature, the tiles start to stick to each other and to the origami. The critical concept here is that the DNA tiles will only form crystals if the process gets started by a seed, upon which they can grow," he says.
In this way, the DNA ribbons self-assemble themselves, but only into forms such as ribbons with particular widths and ribbons with stripe patterns prescribed by the original seed.
The work, Winfree says, "exhibits a degree of control over information-directed molecular self-assembly that is unprecedented in accuracy and complexity, which makes me feel that we are finally beginning to understand how to program information into molecules and have that information direct algorithmic processes."
More information: The paper, "An information-bearing seed for nucleating algorithmic self-assembly," was published in the March 24 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Source: California Institute of Technology
Gene discovery could lead to male contraceptive
Mouse studies have shown that the CATSPER1 gene is present in sperm and is essential for normal sperm motion during fertilization. The left side of the diagram illustrates normal sperm fertilizing an egg. The right side of the diagram illustrates that sperm lacking the CatSper1 protein are not able to penetrate an outer layer of the egg, known as the zona pellucida, preventing normal fertilization. Credit: University of Iowa. Image adapted from Avenarius et al 2009 AJHG in press.
A newly discovered genetic abnormality that appears to prevent some men from conceiving children could be the key for developing a male contraceptive, according to University of Iowa researchers reporting their findings in the April 2 online edition of the American Journal of Human Genetics.
Although female oral contraceptives were developed over 40 years ago and have proven very effective for family planning, no similar pharmacological contraceptive has been developed for males. Surveys conducted by the Medical Research Council Reproductive Biology Unit in the United Kingdom, suggest that men would be willing to use a pharmacological contraceptive if one was available. Presently the only contraceptives available for men are condoms or a vasectomy.
"We have identified CATSPER1 as a gene that is involved in non-syndromic male infertility in humans, a finding which could lead to future infertility therapies that replace the gene or the protein. But, perhaps even more importantly, this finding could have implications for male contraception," said Michael Hildebrand, Ph.D., co-lead author of the study and a UI postdoctoral researcher in otolaryngology at the UI Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine.
The research team, which included scientists from the University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences in Tehran, Iran, discovered the male infertility gene while studying the genetics of families from Iran -- a population that has relatively high rates of disease-causing gene mutations.
Although the team's research with these Iranian families focuses on identifying genetic causes of deafness, collecting genetic information from this population allowed the researchers to identify two families where male infertility that was not part of a syndrome appeared to be inherited. The affected men's infertility was diagnosed with a routine semen analysis.
Focusing on a group of genes that have been implicated in male infertility in mice, the researchers found that mutations in both Iranian families occurred in a single gene called CATSPER1. DNA analysis revealed two different mutations -- one in each family -- but both mutations would likely lead to either a very truncated, non-functional version of the protein, or no protein at all. Neither mutation was found in the DNA of 576 Iranian individuals who were screened as controls.
Harvard University studies on mouse models that lack the CATSPER1 gene reveal how sperm is affected when the protein is missing or abnormal. These studies show that CATSPER1 mutations affect sperm motility, specifically the very vigorous hyperactive motion the sperm uses when it is entering the egg during fertilization.
"Our research suggests that the defect in sperm hyperactivity that is seen in mice without CATSPER1 will also occur in humans with the genetic mutation," Hildebrand said. "Identification of targets such as the CATSPER1 gene that are involved in the fertility process and are specific for sperm -- potentially minimizing side effects of a drug targeting the protein's function -- provide new targets for a pharmacological male contraceptive."
Several approaches to male contraception are currently under investigation at other institutions. One approach that could potentially target CATSPER1 is immunocontraception where antibodies are developed that bind to a targeted protein and block its function. Immunocontraception is still in early stages of development and in order to be useful it will need to be proven effective, safe and reversible.
Source: University of Iowa (news : web)Brain mechanisms for behavioral flexibility
Modern human brain. Image source: Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison Brain Collection.
New research provides insight into how the brain can execute different actions in response to the same stimulus. The study, published by Cell Press in the April 16 issue of the journal Neuron, suggests that information from single brain cells cannot be interpreted differently within a short time period, a finding that is important for understanding both normal cognition and psychiatric disorders.
Humans exhibit incredible flexibility when it comes to adjusting to the demands of a particular task. For example, when the word "blue" is written in red ink, separate responses to the color or the meaning of the word can be elicited. "Although the roles played by the frontal cortex in this kind of switching behavior have been well documented, little is known about how neural pathways governing sensory and motor associations accomplish such a switch," explains senior study author, Dr. Takanori Uka from the Juntendo University School of Medicine in Tokyo.
Dr. Uka and coauthor Dr. Ryo Sasaki investigated where and how identical sensory signals are converted into distinct motor signals. The researchers examined the responses of middle temporal (MT) neurons and the associations between MT neurons and downstream functions in monkeys as they switched between direction and depth discrimination tasks. Previous work has shown that the MT area is critical for both direction and depth discrimination.
The monkeys were trained to view dots on a screen and to indicate whether dots moved up or down when they saw the color magenta or whether the dots were nearer or father away when they saw the color cyan. "We found that neuronal sensitivities were nearly identical during both the direction and depth discrimination tasks; that is, neural activity depended on the visual stimulus and not the task itself," says Dr. Uka. This finding suggests that inputs to the MT area were not directly responsible for task switching.
Importantly, the researchers went on to show that signals from different MT populations were read out to perform different tasks. "We suggest that task switching is accomplished via the communication of distinct populations of MT neurons into a downstream decision system," explains Dr. Uka. "We hypothesize that single neurons probably cannot switch outputs in a short period of time, so the brain realizes behavioral flexibility by preparing separate pathways for each task through learning, and then chooses the appropriate pathways, rather than switching outputs, in a given trial."
Researchers find gene mutation that causes infertility in male mice
Up to 15 percent of couples of childbearing age struggle with the heartache of infertility. Now there is the promise of new hope with Cornell researchers' identification of a mutation in a gene that causes male infertility in mice. Because this is the first time that a dominant mutation that leads specifically to infertility in a mammal has been discovered, the researchers say they can now look for similar mutations in the DNA of infertile men.
"If you consider infertility a disease, you can't study it like you would other diseases, because the affected people can't reproduce," said John Schimenti, director of Cornell's Center for Vertebrate Genomics and senior author of the paper published in the current issue of the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Biology. Laura Bannister, a research associate in Schimenti's laboratory, is the paper's lead author.
"Consequently, we know very little about the genetic causes of infertility in humans," said Schimenti, a Cornell professor of genetics.
The gene, called Dmc1, provides the code for a key protein involved in meiosis, the process that produces sperm and egg cells for reproduction. These sex cells contain only one set of chromosomes that combine during conception and create an embryonic cell with two chromosome sets, one from each parent.
The mutation leads to a change in an amino acid in Dmc1 that blocks meiosis in its tracks, preventing sperm production. The mutant allele (one version of the pair of genes we inherit from each parent) is dominant; females who carry it remain fertile but carry the defect and pass the mutation on to future generations.
However, female carriers show higher rates of abnormalities during meiosis, which can potentially cause chromosome imbalances and birth defects, the researchers discovered. In addition, the researchers found that female mice with the Dmc1 mutation are born with fewer egg cells and can run out of eggs prematurely -- resulting in early menopause (or "mousapause" as the researchers humorously refer to the condition).
To get their results, the researchers randomly induced mutations in the mouse genome and then looked for infertility in the resulting mice. They then analyzed the DNA of the sterile males and identified the allele that caused the infertility. While most studies on the genetics of fertility stem from analyses of mice that have had a custom gene "knockout," this is the first to reveal a dominant mutation that leads specifically to infertility in a mammal. The researchers believe this kind of dominant effect is closer to how real-life infertility occurs in humans.
"People have been sequencing genes in humans, including the Dmc1 gene, to try and associate changes in gene sequences with infertility," said Schimenti. "There have been occasional reports that in some patients, a sequence change in this or other meiosis genes might cause a dominant defect in function, but until now there has been no definitive proof."
Mouse models, he said, will be critical in distinguishing between those DNA sequence changes that are benign in humans versus those that disrupt sperm or egg production. The researchers are engaged in a project to identify ultimately all the genes needed for fertility in mice and apply this information to the human situation.
Source: Cornell UniversityLaughter remains good medicine
The connection between the body, mind and spirit has been the subject of conventional scientific inquiry for some 20 years. The notion that psychosocial and societal considerations have a role in maintaining health and preventing disease became crystallized as a result of the experiences of a layman, Norman Cousins.
In the 1970s, Cousins, then a writer and magazine editor of the popular Saturday Review, was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease. He theorized that if stress could worsen his condition, as some evidence suggested at the time, then positive emotions could improve his health. As a result, he prescribed himself, with the approval of his doctor, a regimen of humorous videos and shows like Candid Camera.
Ultimately, the disease went into remission and Cousins wrote a paper that was published in the New England Journal of Medicine and a book about his experience, Anatomy of an Illness: A Patient's Perspective, which was published in 1979. The book became a best seller and led to the investigation of a new field, known then as whole-person care or integrative medicine and now, lifestyle medicine.
Background
The unscientific foundation that was laid down by Cousins was taken up by many medical researchers including the academic medical researcher Dr. Lee Berk in the l980s. In earlier work, Berk and his colleagues discovered that the anticipation of "mirthful laughter" had surprising and significant effects. Two hormones - beta-endorphins (the family of chemicals that elevates mood state) and human growth hormone (HGH; which helps with optimizing immunity) - increased by 27% and 87 % respectively in study subjects who anticipated watching a humorous video. There was no such increase among the control group who did not anticipate watching the humorous film. In another study, they found that the same anticipation of mirthful laughter reduced the levels of three detrimental stress hormones. Cortisol (termed "the steroid stress hormone"), epinephrine (also known as adrenaline) and dopac, (the major catabolite of dopamine), were reduced 39, 70 and 38%, respectively (statistically significant compared to the control group). Chronically released high levels of these stress hormones can be detremential to the immune system.
Lee Berk, DrPH, MPH, a preventive care specialist and psychoneuroimmunologist, of Loma Linda University, Loma Linda, CA, has paired with Stanley Tan, MD, PhD an endocrinologist and diabetes specialist at Oak Crest Health Research Institute, Loma Linda, CA, to examine the effect of "mirthful laughter" on individuals with diabetes. Diabetes is a metabolic syndrome characterized by the risk of heart attack, blindness and other neurological, immune and blood vessel complications. They found that mirthful laughter, as a preventive adjunct therapy in diabetes care, raised good cholesterol and lowered inflammation. The researchers will present their findings entitled Mirthful Laughter, As Adjunct Therapy in Diabetic Care, Increases HDL Cholesterol and Attenuates Inflammatory Cytokines and hs-CRP and Possible CVD Risk. They will present the findings at the 122nd Annual Meeting of the American Physiological Society (APS; www.the-aps.org/press), which is part of the Experimental Biology 2009 scientific conference. The meeting will be held April 18-22, 2009 in New Orleans.Carbon Nanotubes Toughen a Common Plastic
A nanotube-enforced PMMA fiber being stretched, forming narrow “necks.” Image courtesty H. Daniel Wagner.
(PhysOrg.com) -- A research group from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel has discovered that adding carbon nanotubes to a widely used commercial plastic can greatly strengthen it. Their work is one example of how incorporating carbon nanotubes into plastics and other materials can yield composites with much improved properties.
The plastic, known as PMMA, is most commonly used to make shatterproof glass-substitute materials, such as the brands Plexiglas and Lucite. The researchers reinforced PMMA fibers with both single-walled and multi-walled carbon nanotubes and found that, while both types were effective, the highest toughness was achieved with the multi-walled nanotubes, which resemble several single-walled nanotubes nested together.
Bulk materials reinforced with nanostructures are the future of composite materials, beginning to replace composites made with micrometer-sized particles. Carbon nanotubes are a natural choice because they are exceptionally strong, and the multi-walled varieties are especially tough because of their more complex structures; they can contain up to 50 nested nanotubes.
But achieving significant improvements in a material's strength via nanotube reinforcement doesn’t happen often because of hard-to-avoid issues like nanotube clustering—some nanotubes randomly aggregate rather than distribute evenly. This may even reduce a material's strength.
“Despite the large numbers of studies being done, there are still contradictory findings on the role of carbon nanotubes as reinforcement agents and the role of nanotube type—multi-walled versus single-walled—has not been adequately addressed,” said the study's lead scientist, H. Daniel Wagner, to PhysOrg.com.
He continued, “Another major challenge in preparing nanocomposites is developing procedures that distribute nanostructures in ordered ways. We used electrospinning, which is both simple and effective in creating large-scale nanocomposite materials.”
Electrospinning involves using an electric charge to draw very fine fibers or structures (typically on the micro- or nanoscale) from a liquid and deposit them elsewhere. It is used in many areas of science and technology, from making textiles to creating components for artificial organs.
Wagner and colleague Xiaomeng Sui electrospun both pure PMMA fibers and fibers reinforced with either single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) or multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs). Their analysis shows that the nanotubes embedded among the fibers were nicely aligned along the fiber axis. The SWCNTs formed long, thick ropes, which turn out to triple the composite's toughness. The MWCNTs, on the other hand, were more evenly dispersed, leading to even larger toughness enhancements.
Wagner and Sui tested each composite's strength using a “nanotensile” device they designed, which stretched the fibers until they broke. They watched the process under an electron microscope. To eliminate the effect of fiber diameter on the results, they limited their scope to samples with diameters between 500 and 750 nanometers.
The addition of carbon nanotubes to the PMMA fibers causes a “striking” transformation, they found. The pure PMMA fibers developed thin “necks” and broke under relatively small strains. Both composites also experienced necking, but only failed at strain values that were comparatively enormous. That is, they deformed but did not break under much more forceful stretching than that applied to the pure fibers.
Scientists discover genetic variant tied to increased stroke risk
Millions of people have a genetic variant linked to increased risk of ischemic stroke, reports an international research team including scientists at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston in a study published online by The New England Journal of Medicine on April 15.
Primary congenital glaucoma (PCG) is a devastating condition affecting 1 in every 1000 Romany people. Researchers at the University of Leeds, looking to uncover the cause, found a single gene mutation repeatedly appearing in affected families.
An international collaboration led by Dr Manir Ali of the Leeds Institute of Molecular Medicine, first identified the ‘Jatt’ mutation in one of four Pakistani families. Further study amongst Roma populations in Europe showed that the same mutation accounted for nearly half of all cases of PCG in that community.
Dr Ali’s research also confirms the widely accepted view that the Roma originated from the Jatt clan of Northern India and Pakistan and not from Eastern Europe as previously believed.
Dr Ali said: “Glaucoma is the leading cause of preventable blindness worldwide and we are now looking at this same gene to see if changes in it are also found in patients with the more common form of glaucoma, primary open angle glaucoma (POAG) or chronic glaucoma, which affects so many older people.
“It is hoped that our research, which looked at a relatively rare form of the disease, can help medical professionals address the health needs and find appropriate treatments for a particularly vulnerable at-risk group,” he added.
Recognised as Europe’s largest ethnic minority, the Romany and Gypsy communities continue to suffer discrimination. An estimated 84% across Europe live below the recognised poverty line.
A recent Mori poll revealed that a third of UK residents admitted to being prejudiced against these groups. The British Medical Association says the Gypsy communities have the lowest life expectancy and the highest rate of child mortality in the UK.
One reason may be the difficulty these groups have in registering with a GP, which effectively excludes them from the health care system, routine screening and early diagnosis of disease.
Although the common form, chronic glaucoma, is difficult to detect in the early stages, early diagnosis offers real opportunities to treat this condition. However, if left unchecked it leads to loss of vision and in some cases permanent blindness.
This means that regular eye examinations are essential, especially in high-risk groups, such as the elderly and those with a family history of the condition.
More information: Null Mutations in LTBP2 Cause Primary Congenital Glaucoma, Manir Ali, Martin McKibbin, et al. The American Journal of Human Genetics - 09 April 2009, 10.1016/j.ajhg.2009.03.017
LATEST ADVANCES IN ROBOTICS
Japanese scientists in robotics. . . . . . . .
Recent subject advances by Asian scientists in robotics brings to nous the flick “The Rise of the Machines”—one of the Terminator classics starring today Calif. controller traitor Schwarzenegger—advances that bear a earnest question.
Will the newborn robots today reaching online—and the dumbfounding ones that are on the unmediated horizon—be a boon to mankind (as the scientists claim) or module they develop into a newborn visit of info that becomes self-aware (as in the flick “I, Robot”) and themselves end on what the human-robot relation should be?
Japanese scientists, who move to attain digit break-through after the another in planning robots to feel, hear, wager and conceive same manlike beings, reassert that their goals are to create robots that module be healthy to behave as assistants, caretakers and nurses for Japan’s apace old population.That sounds both harmless and commendable of pursuing, especially since the old are due to attain up 40 proportionality of Japan’s accumulation by 2055—with kindred demographic changes in another countries as higher experience standards and meliorate activity results in a fall in births and individual life-spans. Scientists in Nihon are today geared in creating the profession for a arrange of robots that includes caretakers, generalized servants, technicians and engineers. Technology already matured and cosmos utilised includes most of the eye, hear, limb and handicap functions that characterize manlike beings.
The stylish advances in robotics involves placing unbelievably huffy sensors every over the bodies of robots that emulate the somatosense salutation of manlike skin—a utilization that has far-reaching and intense implications. The fingers of this newborn visit of robots are meet as huffy as manlike fingers.
This ontogeny try to alter robots is cosmos spearheaded by a compounding of polity and clannish business sponsorship low the way of an methodicalness titled the Information and Robot Technology Research Initiative (IRT), which is aimed at fusing aggregation profession and mechanism technology. In another words, the content is to wage robots with human-like skills and brains.
Project teams are substantially into applying newborn curb systems matured by much companies as Toyota and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. To refrain making the robots countenance same humans, and thence a doable threat, these teams are reaching up with forms supported on the impact the robots are fashioned to perform.
Their open explanation is that a mechanism fashioned to do machinelike repairs on a work machine, for example, does not hit to countenance same “Mr. Maytag;” a mechanism that prepares and serves meals would not needs hit to countenance same a chef.
But grouping would sure be more easy if it did, and it is this manlike emotion that module no uncertainty watch the attendance of most forthcoming “domestic” and “service” robots!
The efforts of the IRT are cosmos directed by Isao Shimoyama, a academic at the University of Tokyo, who says his content is to create a collection of robots that module be desegrated into manlike gild on the take that machines, electrical appliances and electronic devices today play.
The individual meg grouping who visited the Expo of 2005 in Japan
’s Aichi Prefecture got a looking of the robotic concern of the future, but the travel and conversation robots that were introduced at that aggregation discolour when it comes to the procreation of robots that module go into the prototypal stages of creation in 2009. The instance has become when the Laws of Robots devised by power falsity illustrator patriarch author in 1940 should be dusted soured and overturned into non-fiction laws worldwide. These laws would at small ordered standards that scientists should follow.Asimov’s First Law says: A mechanism haw not damage a manlike being, or, finished inaction, earmark a manlike cosmos to become to harm; his Second Law says: A mechanism staleness obey orders presented it by manlike beings, eliminate when much orders would offend with the First Law; and his Third Law says: A mechanism staleness protect its possess cosmos as daylong as much endorsement does not offend with the First or Second Law.
New robot ready for dirty work
The latest humanoid robot unveiled in Japan is nice and shiny but wants to get its hands dirty.
The HRP-3 Promet Mark II is designed to work in tunnels, disaster zones and other dangerous environments. Jointly developed by bridge-builder Kawada Industries, Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) and others, HRP showed off its skills tightening bolts and screwing screws. Check out the funky video here - it also drops the driver with studied nonchalance. But then again it only has three fingers.
Rain- and dust-proof, the latest droid in the HRP series (for Humanoid Robotics Project) stands 160 cm (5'2") tall and weighs 68 kg (150 lbs). Mechanically, it is more sophisticated than the HRP-2, with 12 more degrees of freedom for a total of 42. This reflects improved grasping ability, a skill many humanoids in Japan lack. The robot can also operate autonomously or by remote control. Anime mecha designer Yutaka Izubuchi (who worked on Gundam, Patlabor and Macross) did Mark II's exterior.
The developers plan to keep improving the HRP series with an eye to commercialization by 2010 at a cost of $80,000-150,000 per unit. Since the project itself grew out of a national scheme to create robots that could operate in Japan's many nuclear power plants, power utilities could be potential customers.
Vietnam’s first robot manufacturing company
Since the impressive triumph of the Hanoi Polytechnic University’s BKCT team at a robot contest named Robocon in 2003, the team’s leader has become the director of the first robot and hi-tech toy manufacturing company in Vietnam, TOSY.
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Robot TOPIO 2.0. |
Ho Vinh Hoang said his childhood was as normal as other kids’. He was very active and had a passion for hi-tech toys like remote-controlled cars and planes. He often took his toys apart to see what the inside looked like.
When he was a high-school student, Hoang was determined to become a robot and hi-tech toy manufacturer. Ten years ago, he tried to make a ball robot which could roll upwards, backwards, to the left, to the right and could move on different terrains.
In 2003, Hoang participated in the Robocon contest as the leader of the Hanoi Polytechnic University’s team. His team won the championship. Hoang established a robot and hi-tech toy manufacturing company named Topsy, and his teenage wish was fulfilled. The first products of Topsy were flying objects and boomerangs.
He then focused on manufacturing a robot named TOPIO. TOPIO can play table tennis with human beings. It has a head, two hands and six legs. It can hit the ball, calculate scores and express feelings upon losing or winning a game. Made of composite materials, TOPIO can move quickly and accurately, like a human. Four high-speed cameras help TOPIO identify the trajectory of the ball and accurately return shots. TOPIO knows how to hit an incoming ping pong ball when it has traveled only 20 cm from the opponent’s paddle.
The made-in-Vietnam robot TOPIO captured special attention at the International Robot Exhibition (IREX) held in Tokyo in late 2007. Local and international press agencies tried to make appointments with the representative of Tosy. Reuters, Nippon, Japanese newspapers and foreign press agencies in Japan filmed, photographed and reported on TOPIO’s demonstration at the exhibition.
Donkennedi, editor of Technology and Industry News, said TOPIO was the most impressive robot at the exhibition. Representatives of the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs arranged a meeting with Hoang on the last day of the exhibition, when the Vietnamese-produced robot was introduced as the new image of the country.
Mass media representatives and the organising boards of several technology trade fairs have invited Tosy’s TOPIO to perform, saying that TOPIO would be welcome in the US. One US company has even expressed interest in TOPIO for upgrading.
Returning from Tokyo, Hoang and his co-workers continued upgrading TOPIO and other hi-tech toys. He has received hundreds of orders for Tosy’s products from many countries. Tosy has become more popular and Hoang has recruited many more talented employees who were members of teams at Robocon contests.
Hoang and his colleagues are preparing to bring TOPIO and other products to an international toy festival in Germany in February, to the world’s largest festival of robots in Japan this November and the world’s largest automation exhibition in Germany in June 2010.
Hoang disclosed that Tosy’s goal in 2009 is introducing large-sized TOPIO and commercialising small-sized TOPIO. The TOPIO 2.0 is improved to have better shape and better skills in playing table tennis. Tosy is also manufacturing industrial robots.
Biomimetic Robots
From the ominous Klaatu of The Day the Earth Stood Still to the Terminator, we've seen robots typically portrayed on screen as stiff, humanoid machines. But it's not just Hollywood that has locked robots to the human form.
"A lot of conventional thinking pervades the field of robotics," says Morley Stone, a program manager in the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's defense sciences office. "They still look very much like they are depicted in grainy black-and-white films. You see this humanoid robot that doesn't walk very well. We still haven't improved upon that all that much."
Forget the anthropomorphs. Today, researchers are looking in the cupboards of their local diners and under rocks for biological inspiration to create a new generation of flying, crawling, and swimming automatons known as biomimetic robots. Intrigued by how other species have adapted to a whole world of environmental niches, researchers are working to understand and reverse-engineer the adaptive traits of creatures, including those—like the seemingly indestructible cockroach—we might much rather step on than study.
MIMICKING BIOLOGY
Biomimetics is a general description for engineering a process or system that mimics biology. The term emerged from biochemistry and applies to an infinite range of chemical and mechanical phenomena, from cellular processes to whole-organism functions.
"People have been trying to copy nature for a very long time," says Jerry Pratt, a research scientist at the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition. Leonardo da Vinci made drawings of potential flight contraptions based on detailed anatomical studies of birds, and the Wright brothers based their airplane structure on observations and analysis of bird flight. However, researchers diverge in precisely how they define biomimetics. "'Biomimetic' is often a vague term, much like 'robot,'" says Pratt.
Mark Cutkosky, a professor in Stanford University's Department of Mechanical Engineering, is part of a team working on a family of legged robots based on cockroach locomotion. He says their team defines biomimetics as "extracting principles from biology and applying them to man-made devices—particularly robots."
Cutkosky says two forces are driving the "new wave" of robotics. First, biological research has exposed a huge amount of biological process data that roboticists can apply to their work. Second, advances in low-cost, power-efficient computing systems allow researchers to create robots that work outside laboratories. Cutkosky says that roboticists can "really put some of the lessons we're learning from biology to practice. Ten years ago, even if I had understood exactly what materials and mechanical principles underlie the cockroach's robust dynamic locomotion, I would have been unable to build a robot that embodied them."
Not that current biomimetic robots are dependent on the fastest computing technologies available.
"The interesting thing about the biomimetic work," says Butler Hine, manager of the computing information and communications technology program based at NASA-Ames, "is it uses nature's evolved way of doing things rather than the computationally intensive way." In lieu of algorithmic-intense artificial intelligence, Hine says, some researchers are using control loops and 8-bit processors and field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) for command control rather than lines and lines of programming.
Biomimetic robots are still relatively new, however, and the possible collaborations among biologists, robotic engineers, and computer scientists have barely begun.
There's more to this process than simply constructing a workable, autonomous robotic device, say scientists. "How birds fly, how fish swim, how dolphins locate objects, and how humans walk might best be discovered and understood by trying to reproduce these activities in a device,"contends IMHC's Pratt. "The knowledge gained might not be immediately useful, but it could some day lead to useful technologies based on, but not necessarily mimicking, these phenomena."
RESEARCH PROJECTS
Most of the current robotic projects sprang from DARPA programs, says Hine. The US is the primary financial underwriter for research through DARPA and other agencies such as NASA, the Office of Naval Research (ONR), and the National Science Foundation (NSF).
Researchers have hopes of creating robots that can detect mines, explore Mars, or search for people trapped beneath an earthquake-damaged building. It is premature to predict which of the many existing projects will be widely deployed first; the variety of concepts and potential applications both alone and in combination with other robotics research is simply still too broad.
Sprawl hexapods
Cutkosky is part of a team at Stanford's Center for Design Research that is designing and fabricating six-legged robots that "draw their inspiration from the physical construction and mechanical design principles that are responsible for the robustness of the cockroach." Funded primarily by ONR, the group includes Bob Full, a respected biology researcher from the University of California, Berkeley, whose work on the mechanics of cockroach locomotion underpins the robot design.
Several characteristics of cockroaches intrigue the Stanford team, including the speed and stability with which they can negotiate rough terrain. "They run over obstacles without slowing down or getting knocked off course, and they do this mainly by virtue of having a wonderful tuned mechanical system—sort of like the suspension of a car—that keeps them stable and on course," says Cutkosky. Plus, he notes, "It's hard to damage a cockroach."
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Figure 1. iSprawl robot. The small (115 mm long, 315 grams) cockroach-inspired robot runs autonomously at 15 body lengths per second (photo courtesy of Stanford Center for Design Research). |
Figure 1 shows a robot from the Sprawl family. What makes these robots different, says Cutkosky, is their mechanical, rather than computational, properties. "In the past, legged robots were expensive and required fast computation and accurate sensors to achieve rapid locomotion. In contrast, Sprawl robots rely on a tuned, resonant mechanical system."
The system's six legs move in an alternating-tripod gait in a "sprawled" design that mimics the cockroach's biological structure and both supports the robot and allows it to move fast. The system is operated using an open-loop motor pattern driven by a clock associated with the on-board processor. The various sensors, actuators, and microprocessors are embedded in the robot's durable polymer shell, made possible by a complex fabrication process called shape deposition manufacturing.
Cutkosky says that government funding is essential because the applications are still a few years away. More work is required to make the robots more robust and to improve fabrication. He would like to make a version using injection-molded plastic parts and subject it to testing in real-world applications, such as military reconnaissance.
Adds Cutkosky, "We are not trying to 'copy a cockroach.' This would be impractical. And besides, who would want one?"
Robotic lobsters
For years now, two independent teams of researchers—one concentrating on sensory-chemical tracking and the other on locomotion—have been working toward creating a chemical-tracking, underwater robot based on lobster biology.
Neuroscientist Frank Grasso, an associate professor of psychology at Brooklyn College, has been part of a research team examining the lobster's acute sense of smell in the turbulent ocean environment. Grasso headed the robotics group that designed and built two generations of autonomous underwater robots, Robolobsters I and II, which match the size as well as the sensing and locomotor capabilities of their biological counterparts. These robots let researchers test hypotheses based on controlled observations of a real lobster's superhuman ability to detect olfactory information and make decisions based on it.
Because Robolobster operates under water, any tether to power interferes with operations, requiring researchers to make it as close to autonomous as possible. Grasso says that Robolobster II is computationally and energetically autonomous for missions up to five hours.
Another team of researchers is working on making the first robot with an elementary nervous system. This project stems from research on lobster and crayfish nervous systems conducted in the 1970s by Joseph Ayers, a biology professor at Northeastern University. Ayers subsequently used biosonar telemetry to study lobster behavior in the wild.
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| Figure 2. Robotic lobster. This robot prototype uses biomimetic control principles. Its behavior is based on a library of action patterns reverse-engineered from lobster behavior in the target operational environment (photo courtesy of ONR). |
When DARPA approached him in the 1990s about building a robot, Ayers quips that he was "a card-carrying neurophysiologist." He assembled a group of biologists, naval architects, and electrical and mechanical engineers, several of whom, he says, were "experts on what's impossible." Figure 2 shows a prototype robot currently under development.
In an important evolutionary piece of robotic research, Ayers is collaborating with the University of California, San Diego's Institute for Nonlinear Science to create a locomotion control system that does not use typical motors and finite-state machines as controllers. The team is working to reduce the electronic neurons and synapses to analog VLSI and to generate "motor program-like central pattern generators based on a nonlinear dynamic model of real lobster neurons," Ayers explains. "The artificial neurons generate action potentials that gate power transistors to drive artificial muscle." This eliminates the need for a feedback loop in a motor controller, as many robot controller systems require. Modulation of chaos in these networks will enable more animal-like behaviors in robots, such as a squirming motion.
Eventually, Ayers wants to create an artificial brain by integrating gravity, bump, and flow sensors with the central pattern generators the researchers have already developed, thereby forming an elementary nervous system.
Robotic lobsters have been funded by an alphabet soup of agencies, including DARPA, ONR, and NSF. "The only delay is to really find a mission [for the technology]," says Joel L. Davis, an ONR program officer working on adaptive neural systems. Davis expects one lobster to be available for use by summer 2006.
One military application is minesweeping beachheads, but the robots must have specific knowledge about their mission, says Davis. They must know, for example, if they should detect mines that are on the ocean floor or buried beneath its surface and, when they are working in a swarm, whether to communicate with each other or not. If one lobster detects a mine, it could, for example, signal others in the area to go away before it detonates the mine, taking itself out at the same time.
Entomopter
At Georgia Tech, work continues on Entomopter. This tiny robot is designed to both crawl and fly, but its name stresses its flying ability.
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| Figure 3. Entomopter. The multimodal design is adapted for indoor flight operations. Its wings beat autonomically from a chemical energy source (photo courtesy of Georgia Tech). |
Aerial robots have existed for about two decades, says Robert Michelson, a Georgia Tech professor and principal research engineer, but "they don't necessarily take on biological form." As Figure 3 shows, these robots look more like other machines than winged animals because "the bioinspired things are not as well understood."
When the Entomopter research was initiated in the mid-1990s, the idea was to design a micro-sized air vehicle about the size of a military MRE (meal, ready to eat) and sturdy enough to survive a GI accidentally sitting on it. The dream device could go over a hill or obstacle and "find bad guys ..., but it's unrealistic," says Michelson. Factors such as delicacy and the need for line-of-sight communication made it impractical.
Subsequent research proved "size doesn't matter" for outdoor operations, so Michelson says his group shifted focus to niche indoor operations. His team is working on devices nimble enough to enter a building through a chimney or open window, fly fast, evade detection on camera surveillance, and negotiate tight areas. Such a device would be used for reconnaissance and for missions such as disrupting electrical equipment. And, perhaps, they might even be mistaken for a large moth.
This generation of the Entomopter is designed for operation in two atmospheres: a 50-gram terrestrial version and an aerospace version designed for use in different gravitational environments. Both versions are constructed primarily from carbon composite material. The design feature that intrigues aeronautical engineers is a circulation control process that turns high-speed, hot-gas flow into a lower speed, cooler gas that can, when vented out the wing, cause flow that gives the vehicle seven times more lift and lets it fly at slow speeds. Perfect for exploring Mars.
Michelson expects computer scientists to eventually help create a fully autonomous device, but other problems are more pressing. Once the scientists resolve the flight mechanics, they can work on flight control. Until they know whether the device "turns on a dime or on a quarter Ö it doesn't make sense to do flight algorithms." Besides, processors and other computing devices will change many times before the Entomopter is deployed, Michelson says.
DARPA has provided much of the funding, and NASA is interested—but it will probably be six or more years before Entomopter is deployed on a Mars mission.
Bugs and Whegs
Biomimetic research at Case Western Reserve University began in 1987 with insect behavior studies that employed neural networks on biological data. Today, the Biologically Inspired Robotics Lab creates machines inspired by nature.
Roger D. Quinn, professor of mechanical engineering and the lab's director, says inspiration is a more accurate description of their work since mimicry is neither possible nor desirable. He says robots should not be restricted by an animal model's design as is the case with airplanes, which can fly faster and carry payloads heavier than the birds that inspired their development.
Quinn's team has been working on robots inspired by cockroaches and crickets as well as a hybrid mechanism called Whegs (wheels plus legs). Whegs is the device that is closest to commercial deployment, says Quinn. This fairly simple robot uses one motor and "needs little software in terms of locomotion."
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| Figure 4. Cricket-inspired robot on a 2-inch grid. The robot can both walk and jump to navigate terrain with features much larger than itself (photo courtesy of Biorobotics Lab/Case Western Reserve). |
Figure 4 shows a cricket-inspired robot, approximately three inches long, designed for both walking and jumping. Quinn says that one of the most promising projects for this device involved sound tracking in collaboration with Barbara Webb, an expert in artificial intelligence and biology at the University of Edinburgh.
Crickets use sound to track potential mates. The team is investigating this phenomenon for robots that could be used in search and rescue efforts. The idea is to deploy small robots in lieu of dog or human search units to safely locate cries for help or detect breathing in a constricted environment such as ruined buildings following an earthquake or explosion. The design places sensing microphones close together like cricket ears so the robot can use the Doppler effect to locate sound.
Quinn's lab has also applied this idea to a full-sized Whegs robot. He says combining the two systems "just makes sense." Applying the idea to mini-Whegs is also a possibility. This three-inch version of the platform can run up to 10 body lengths per second and comes in a jumping version as well.
Like many other programs, Case Western robots have been funded by DARPA and other US military research agencies. Quinn says work on the Whegs platform continues because "the military is going to fund something they can use as soon as possible." A next step is to eliminate radio control in favor of autonomous operation.
Germany's Scorpion
The German-led Scorpion project is creating a robot for use in environments where humans either cannot or do not want to go, says Bernhard Klaassen, a researcher on the team from Fraunhofer Institute. The team, led by Bremen academic Frank Kirchner, chose the scorpion to emulate because it is "fast, robust, and in some sense kinematically complex," Klaassen says. One of the more notable physical attributes people remember about a scorpion is the tail, with its venomous stinger. Versions of the robot use the stinger to transport a tiny camera rather than a painful payload.
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| Figure 5. Scorpion robot. The 60-cm, 9.5-kg robot integrates a robust network for navigational and other rules of learning (photo courtesy of Fraunhofer AIS). |
Figure 5 shows one of these eight-legged robots. Successive Scorpion generations have employed an increasing number of sensors and more sensor data to help them move smoothly. "To read and interpret all these sensor inputs, we used not only a fast processor on board but also a programmable hardware device, an FPGA, to get all sensor inputs prepared within the 100-Hz control loop," Klaassen says. This enables the Scorpion to, for example, increase current to the motor to push away a stone or use a higher swing motion to help its leg clear an obstacle.
"Our latest developments are more concerned with neural control for walking robots," he says. Small, recurrent neural networks and artificial evolution help the robot "learn" simple rules such as how to navigate, including, for example, how to get out of a corner. "The interesting feature of these networks is robustness," says Klaassen. "If you transfer the identical net to a completely different robot that only knows how to change its direction to left or right and how to 'see' a wall, it will react in a similar way if the situation is similar. But you never have to explain what a corner is and what to do then."
Klaassen says Scorpion, funded primarily by DARPA, is still a research platform, but its learning capability is an important part of the autonomy that many military projects require.
RESEARCH DIRECTIONS AND APPLICATIONS
Although the funding has vanished for some promising projects, including Case Western's cricket, Morley Stone expects DARPA's investment in biorobotics to continue, as it is "so important in many aspects of what we do across the Department of Defense." He especially sees the need for missions involving reconnaissance and defusing explosives.
New ideas are still eliciting funds from US military research agencies. For example, an octopus-inspired project is looking at creating soft arms with suckers that can bend in any direction. Grasso's group at Brooklyn College is part of an international team that also includes researchers from Hebrew University, Penn State, and Clemson. Grasso is enthusiastic sbout the work, saying "it's going to keep us going for a few years."
Corporate funding, apart from Japanese companies such as Sony and Fujitsu, has been negligible, say researchers. The lack of commercial activity is partly because the field is very young, but NASA's Hine expects pieces of biomimetic research to be gradually introduced into mass-produced commercial devices by much the same process that resulted in fuzzy logic being used in vacuum cleaners.
It seems that some of this research is destined for use in toys that will appear on the commercial market, not unlike Sony's robot dog Aibo. Toy applications are actually very challenging, says Stanford's Cutkosky. "The companies that are making toy robots have to do extremely clever engineering to achieve entertaining performance at an acceptable cost. I think if you asked iRobot engineers about the challenges associated with Roomba versus their expensive military robots, you'd find there were many," he says.
University research has resulted in some spin-off companies founded by former students. Stanford spawned Iguana Robotics, for example, which is making a cat-inspired robot. Hine says some students who have completed advanced studies in the US have returned to their home countries and opened businesses. Hungary's AnaLogic Computers Ltd., founded by a Berkeley graduate, is one example.
Japan is probably the first nation in which robot assistants will be accepted, but other nations may slowly accept this technology into the mainstream. "If robots are more clever and more helpful in private houses, then of course, the companies will jump on it," says Klaassen. "It would be a sad thing," he adds, "if we had only military robots and not friendly ones."
Computer science is a critical tool for both biologists and roboticists in this enterprise. "If you're a biologist, you start to simulate these things in hardware or software," to gain better understanding, says ONR's Davis. And if you're a roboticist, "Once you get a beating wing, you have to learn how to control it."
The bulk of the research work ahead is concentrated on making robots autonomous, and as this work continues, researchers expect collaboration with computer scientists to increase.
The interdisciplinary nature of the work is intense. Because each creature is so exquisitely made and so vastly different, it can be difficult for teams of biologists, chemists, and engineers to understand it, much less devise a facsimile. While the progress of biomimetic robots from the laboratory to the unpredictable world we live in may seem slow, from the perspective of evolution, it may be on a pace to beat a cockroach.
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