Strokable robot rabbit talks with touch

Source:

http://technology.newscientist.com/article/dn13959-strokable-robot-rabbit-talks-with-touch.html

A pet robot that communicates with humans only by touch is being used to probe the way the oft-neglected sense bolsters our emotional relationships. The findings could be used to make humans' relationships with robots and other pieces of technology more emotionally rewarding.
Steve Yohanan at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, says that robotics researchers too often neglect haptics – touch – as a form of communication. Vision and sound have been concentrated on instead.But missing out tactility has a detrimental effect on the quality of the interaction, he says. "I'm trying to provide a deeper experience by adding touch," says Yohanan.
"I had a cat for many years, and what I miss most about interacting with her is touch," he says. "For example, the cat would sit in my lap while I worked at the computer – I would scratch the top of her head and feel her purr."

Purring robot:
Yohanan's new robot, dubbed the Haptic Creature, is designed to recreate that touch-based communication between pet and owner to inject an element of emotion into human-robot interactions. Working out how to do that could have applications ranging from toys to domestic robot servants. The creature is around 35cm long and has shorter fur on its belly and the back of its two "ears" (see image, right).
Using pressure sensors, the Haptic Creature can detect the way it is touched or stroked. It can only respond with breathing movements of its body, inaudible purring vibrations, or by moving its ears.
But even those simple responses to touch can elicit a range of emotions in humans, says Yohanan. "Our preliminary investigation showed participants could identify most of the emotional responses [across a scale from negative to positive]," he says.
Sommer Gentry, an applied mathematician at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, US, says that the importance of haptic interaction to the way people use technology has long been neglected.

Dancing arm:
"I am not sure whether it is the technical challenges of human-robot haptic interaction, or under-appreciation of the potential for these technologies that make this a relatively immature area," she says.
In 2003, Gentry programmed a robotic arm to perform a random sequence of hand movements associated with swing-dance moves.
By isolating the movements in this way, she found that a human swing dancer could tell the sequence of moves using touch alone, without needing to observe the movements of the arm or of a dancer.
Steve Yohanan presented the Haptic Creature at the Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour (AISB) 2008 Convention in Aberdeen, Scotland in April.

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New Robot Walks Like A Human

Source:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/05/080522083814.htm

ScienceDaily (May 22, 2008) — Researcher Daan Hobbelen of TU Delft (The Netherlands) has developed a new, highly-advanced walking robot: Flame. This type of research, for which Hobbelen will receive his PhD on Friday 30 May, is important as it provides insight into how people walk. This can in turn help people with walking difficulties through improved diagnoses, training and rehabilitation equipment.

If you try to teach a robot to walk, you will discover just how complex an activity it is. Walking robots have been around since the seventies. The applied strategies can roughly be divided into two types. The first derives from the world of industrial robots, in which everything is fixed in routines, as is the case with factory robots. This approach can, where sufficient time and money are invested, produce excellent results, but there are major restrictions with regard to cost, energy consumption and flexibility.
Human
TU Delft is a pioneer of the other method used for constructing walking robots, which examines the way humans walk. This is really very similar to falling forward in a controlled fashion. Adopting this method replaces the cautious, rigid way in which robots walk with the more fluid, energy-efficient movement used by humans.
PhD student Daan Hobbelen has demonstrated for the first time that a robot can be both energy-efficient and highly stable. His breakthrough came in inventing a suitable method for measuring the stability of the way people walk for the first time. This is remarkable, as ‘falling forward’ is traditionally viewed as an unstable movement.
Next he built a new robot with which he was able to demonstrate the improved performance: Flame. Flame contains seven motors, an organ of balance and various algorithms which ensure its high level of stability.
For instance, the robot can apply the information provided by its organ of balance to place its feet slightly further apart in order to prevent a potential fall. According to Hobbelen, Flame is the most advanced walking robot in the world, at least in the category of robots which apply the human method of walking as a starting principle.
Rehabilitation
Modelling the walking process allows researchers to construct two-legged robots which walk more naturally. More insight into the walking process can in turn help people with walking difficulties, for example through improved diagnoses, training and rehabilitation equipment. TU Delft is working on this together with motion scientists at VU University Amsterdam.
Hobbelen cites ankles as an example. These joints are a type of spring which can be used to define the best level of elasticity. Research conducted by Hobbelen into Flame’s ankles has provided motion scientists with more insight into this topic.
Football-playing robots
Over the next few years, TU Delft intends to take major steps forward in research into walking robots. These include developing walking robots which can ‘learn’, see and run.
One very special part of the robot research concerns football-playing robots. On Thursday 29 May, together with the University of Twente, TU Eindhoven and Philips, TU Delft will present the Dutch RoboCup team which is to participate in the 2008 RoboCup Soccer in China this summer.
This presentation will take place at TU Delft during the international Dynamic Walking 2008 conference held from 26-29 May. Biomechanics experts, motion scientists and robot experts will come together at this event to exchange expertise on the walking process.

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Fuels Cells: New Material Increases Power Output By More Than 50 Percent

Source:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/05/080515145345.htm

ScienceDaily (May 19, 2008) — MIT engineers have improved the power output of one type of fuel cell by more than 50 percent through technology that could help these environmentally friendly energy storage devices find a much broader market, particularly in portable electronics.

The new material key to the work is also considerably less expensive than its conventional industrial counterpart, among other advantages.
"Our goal is to replace traditional fuel-cell membranes with these cost-effective, highly tunable and better-performing materials," said Paula T. Hammond, Bayer Professor of Chemical Engineering and leader of the research team. She noted that the new material also has potential for use in other electrochemical systems such as batteries.
The work was reported in a recent issue of Advanced Materials by Hammond, Avni A. Argun and J. Nathan Ashcraft. Argun is a postdoctoral associate in chemical engineering; Ashcraft is a graduate student in the same department.
Like a battery, a fuel cell has three principal parts: two electrodes (a cathode and anode) separated by an electrolyte. Chemical reactions at the electrodes produce an electronic current that can be made to flow through an appliance connected to the battery or fuel cell. The principal difference between the two? Fuel cells get their energy from an external source of hydrogen fuel, while conventional batteries draw from a finite source in a contained system.
The MIT team focused on direct methanol fuel cells (DMFCs), in which the methanol is directly used as the fuel and reforming of alcohol down to hydrogen is not required. Such a fuel cell is attractive because the only waste products are water and carbon dioxide (the latter produced in small quantities). Also, because methanol is a liquid, it is easier to store and transport than hydrogen gas, and is safer (it won't explode). Methanol also has a high energy density-a little goes a long way, making it especially interesting for portable devices.
The DMFCs currently on the market, however, have limitations. For example, the material currently used for the electrolyte sandwiched between the electrodes is expensive. Even more important: that material, known as Nafion, is permeable to methanol, allowing some of the fuel to seep across the center of the fuel cell. Among other disadvantages, this wastes fuel-and lowers the efficiency of the cell-because the fuel isn't available for the reactions that generate electricity.
Using a relatively new technique known as layer-by-layer assembly, the MIT researchers created an alternative to Nafion. "We were able to tune the structure of [our] film a few nanometers at a time," Hammond said, getting around some of the problems associated with other approaches. The result is a thin film that is two orders of magnitude less permeable to methanol but compares favorably to Nafion in proton conductivity.
To test their creation, the engineers coated a Nafion membrane with the new film and incorporated the whole into a direct methanol fuel cell. The result was an increase in power output of more than 50 percent.
The team is now exploring whether the new film could be used by itself, completely replacing Nafion. To that end, they have been generating thin films that stand alone, with a consistency much like plastic wrap.
This work was supported by the DuPont-MIT Alliance through 2007. It is currently supported by the National Science Foundation.
In addition, Hammond and colleagues have begun exploring the new material's potential use in photovoltaics. That work is funded by the MIT Energy Initiative.

Fausto Intilla - www.oloscience.com

Weather, Waves And Wireless: Super Strength Signalling

Source:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/05/080516100946.htm

ScienceDaily (May 16, 2008) — A new study from the University of Leicester has discovered a particular window of time when mobile signals and radio waves are 'super strength' -- allowing them to be clearer and travel greater distances, potentially interfering with other systems.
The research, examining the signal strength of radio waves travelling over the sea, identified late afternoons and early evenings in spring and summer as a time when enhanced signals occur.
The research by Salil Gunashekar was part of his Doctoral studies at the University of Leicester's Department of Engineering and has yielded results that have implications for the design of cellular telephone networks operating in marine and coastal regions
Dr Gunashekar, who is now a Post-Doctoral Research Associate in the Radio Systems Research Group, said: "In today's world, radio waves are an indispensable means of communicating information 'without wires' from one place to another, be it for radio broadcasts or cell phones, television transmissions or airport radars.
"When radio waves travel for long distances over the sea their strength can be affected by the weather. The constantly changing weather conditions over the sea mean that marine and coastal environments, in particular, are prone to unusual atmospheric phenomena that enable radio waves to travel longer distances and have higher strengths than expected."
On Wednesday 4th June, in the fourth of the series of Doctoral Inaugural Lectures, Dr Gunashekar will present the key findings of his Ph.D. research in which he conducted a detailed theoretical and experimental investigation of the propagation characteristics of over-sea radio communications.
Specifically, between August 2003 and August 2005, three long-range radio paths operating at a frequency in the ultra high frequency band (UHF: specifically 2 Gigahertz) were established in the British Channel Islands. This frequency is of particular importance since it is used by many mobile phones. The relationship between specific over-sea propagation mechanisms and signal strength distribution patterns in a temperate region such as the English Channel have been examined, modelled and correlated with meteorological parameters.
Dr Gunashekar said: "Interestingly, signal strength enhancements have been observed on all three radio paths, predominantly in the late afternoon and evening periods, in the spring and summer months. During these periods, which occur only approximately 5-10% of the time, the influence of higher-altitude radio wave 'trapping' structures has been verified."
The research conducted in this investigation is expected to have implications for the design of cellular telephone networks operating in marine and coastal regions, as well as other maritime communication systems such as those used in commercial shipping and sea-rescue operations, and is all the more applicable to the United Kingdom because of its extensive coastline.

Fausto Intilla - www.oloscience.com

Designing Bug Perception Into Robots

Source:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/05/080512141718.htm

ScienceDaily (May 13, 2008) — Insects have provided the inspiration for a team of European researchers seeking to improve the functionality of robots and robotic tools.

The research furthers the development of more intelligent robots, which can then be used by industry, and by emergency and security services, among others. Smarter robots would be better able to find humans buried beneath the rubble of a collapsed building, for example.
The EU-funded SPARK project set out to develop a new robot control architecture for roving robots inspired by the principles governing the behaviour of living systems and based on the concept of self-organisation.
Basing their work on the basic functions of the insect brain, the team developed a new architecture for artificial cognitive systems that could significantly increase the ability of robots to react to changing environmental conditions and to ‘learn’ behaviour in response to external stimuli.
The research team calls their new software architecture a spatial-temporal array computer based structure (SPARC).
Robots are complex systems that rely on software, hardware and mechanical systems all working together. One of the challenges facing researchers is to develop robots, or moving artefacts, that are capable of several different behaviours, that are able to sense or perceive external signals and, most importantly, are able to ‘learn’ and react appropriately to changing conditions.
For example, a robot travelling over unknown terrain may need to adapt its way of moving depending on whether it is navigating flat, rocky or wet ground. Or it may need to modify its course to reach a defined target.
The objective is to enable a robot to do this without human intervention, based on its own powers of perception and ability to adapt.
Powers of perception
Within the SPARC software architecture, the robot’s powers of perception are enhanced by its ability to use information derived from visual, audio and tactile sensors to form a dynamically evolving pattern. The pattern is in turn used to determine the movements of the device.
The researchers’ technical objective was to produce a moving artefact able to actively interact with its environment to carry out a set task.
The research so far has already provided a new theoretical framework, or paradigm, for active robot perception. The paradigm is based on principles borrowed from psychology, synergetics, artificial intelligence and non-linear dynamical systems theory.
Learning as you go
One of the researchers’ central objectives was to develop a machine with the ability to build knowledge independent of human control. Researchers based the proposed architecture for artificial cognitive systems on the basic building blocks of the insect brain.
“The SPARC architecture is a starting step toward emulating the essential perception-action architecture of living beings, where some basic behaviours are inherited, like escaping or feeding, while others are incrementally learned, leading to the emergence of higher cognitive abilities,” notes Paolo Arena, the project coordinator.
The cognitive system allows the device to autonomously ‘learn’ based on a combination of basic reflexive behaviours and feedback from external environmental data.
Once the robot is assigned a mission, compatible with its structural and mechanical capabilities – for example ‘find people alive’ – it is able to work out how best to do this itself in a particular external context.
“The robot will initially behave by using primarily the basic inherited behaviours,” says Arena. “Higher knowledge will be incrementally formed in the higher layer of the architecture, which is a neuron lattice based on the Reaction-Diffusion Cellular Non-linear Network (RD-CNN) paradigm, able to generate self-organising dynamic patterns.”
Basic behaviours incorporated in the demonstrations so far include, for example, the ability of a robot to direct itself towards a specific sound source. This optomotor reflex allows the robot to maintain heading and avoid obstacles.
During the course of the demonstration, the robot ‘learns’ how to safely reach the sound source. This it does while it is properly modulating its basic behaviours so it does not become trapped into the deadlock situations that are typical of complex and dynamically changing environments.
Next steps
The project’s experimental robots used some of the partners’ technologies, such as the real-time visual processing features of the Eye-RIS vision system, one of the lead products of Spain-based Innovaciones Microelectrònicas (Anafocus).
The project also attracted the interest of other commercial enterprises, including STMicroelectronics, which provided components and boards for Rover II, one of the robots developed by SPARK.
Altera, another company, supplied field-programmable gate array (FPGA) devices for the development and implementation of perceptual algorithms.
The advances made have led to a number of software and hardware innovations for the improvement of machine perception. The project’s industrial partners are continuing to work on the innovations.
The cognitive visual algorithms designed and improved by the project’s researchers have, for example, already been integrated into products produced by some of the project’s partners.
Hungary-based Analogic Computers, a partner in the project, has launched its InstantVision software package based on some of the research. The package has become one of the company’s lead products.
The work of the SPARK project is continuing with the SPARK II project, which will look more deeply into the details of insect brain neurobiology to refine, assess and generalise the SPARK cognitive architecture.
Further down the line, the research is expected to lead to the introduction of powerful and flexible machines suitable for use in dynamically changing environments where conditions are unstable or unpredictable, such as war zones or disaster areas.
The project has introduced a new model for action-oriented perception. Ongoing work will focus on assessing this model and on expanding it to a larger family of moving machines.
The SPARK project received funding from the EU's Sixth Framework Programme for research.

Fausto Intilla - www.oloscience.com

Alternative To Silicon Chip Invented By Student

Source:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/05/080513112341.htm

ScienceDaily (May 13, 2008) — Even before Weixiao Huang received his doctorate from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, his new transistor captured the attention of some of the biggest American and Japanese automobile companies. The 2008 graduate's invention could replace one of the most common pieces of technology in the world--the silicon transistor for high-power and high-temperature electronics.

Huang, who comes from humble roots as the son of farmers in rural China, has invented a new transistor that uses a compound material known as gallium nitride (GaN), which has remarkable material properties. The new GaN transistor could reduce the power consumption and improve the efficiency of power electronics systems in everything from motor drives and hybrid vehicles to house appliances and defense equipment.
"Silicon has been the workhorse in the semiconductor industry for last two decades," Huang said. "But as power electronics get more sophisticated and require higher performing transistors, engineers have been seeking an alternative like gallium nitride-based transistors that can perform better than silicon and in extreme conditions."
Each household likely contains dozens of silicon-based electronics. An important component of each of those electronics is usually a silicon-based transistor know as a silicon metal/oxide semiconductor field-effect transistor (silicon MOSFET). To convert the electric energy to other forms as required, the transistor acts as a switch, allowing or disallowing the flow of current through the device.
Huang first developed a new process that demonstrates an excellent GaN MOS (metal/oxide/GaN) interface. Engineers have known that GaN and other gallium-based materials have some extremely good electrical properties, much better than silicon. However, no useful GaN MOS transistor has been developed. Huang's innovation, the first GaN MOSFET of its kind in the world, has already shown world-record performance according to Huang.
In addition, Huang has shown that his innovation can integrate several important electronic functions onto one chip like never before. "This will significantly simplify entire electronic systems," Huang said. Huang has also designed and experimentally demonstrated several new novel high-voltage MOS-gated FETs which have shown superior performance compared to silicon MOSFET in terms of lower power consumption, smaller chip size, and higher power density.
The new transistors can greatly reduce energy loss, making energy conversion more efficient. "If these new GaN transistors replaced many existing silicon MOSFETs in power electronics systems, there would be global reduction in fossil fuel consumption and pollution," Huang said.
The new GaN transistors can also allow the electronics system to operate in extremely hot, harsh, and high-power environments and even those that produce radiation. "Because it is so resilient, the device could open up the field of electronic engineering in ways that were not previously possible due to the limitations imposed by less tolerant silicon transistors," he said.
Huang has published more than 15 papers during his time as doctoral student in the Department of Electrical, Computer, and Systems Engineering at Rensselaer. Despite obvious difficulties, his parents worked tirelessly to give Huang the best possible educational opportunities according to Huang. And when school wasn't enough, Huang's father woke him up early every morning to practice mathematical calculations without a calculator, instilling in Huang a lifelong appreciation for basic, theoretical mathematics and sciences.
He received a bachelor's in electronics from Peking University in Beijing in 2001 and a master's in physics from Rensselaer in 2003. He will receive his doctorate from Rensselaer on May 17, 2008 and plans to work as a device engineer in the semiconductor industry.

Fausto Intilla - www.oloscience.com

Smart Miniature Pump Could Deliver Medicine

Source:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/05/080506105133.htm

ScienceDaily (May 7, 2008) — An innovative micro-pump makes it possible for tiny quantities of liquid – such as medicines – to be dosed accurately and flexibly. Active composites and an electronic control mechanism ensure that the low-maintenance pump works accurately – both forwards and backwards.
Medicines sometimes have to be administered in extremely small quantities. Just a few tenths of a milliliter may be sufficient to give the patient the ideal treatment. Micro-pumps greatly facilitate the dosage of minute quantities. Pumps like these have been built and constantly optimized for over 25 years. They find application in numerous areas – from medical engineering to microproduction technology – wherever tiny volumes have to be variably dosed with extreme accuracy.
However, these micro-pump systems are usually not as flexible as desired: They often work in only one direction, bubbles in the liquid impair their operation, they do not tolerate bothersome particles, they have a fixed pump output and they contain expendable parts such as valves or cogwheels. Together with partners from research institutes and industry, researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Mechanics of Materials IWM in Freiburg have developed an innovative pump system that solves all these problems: a controllable peristaltic micro-pump.
“The peristaltic pump is a highly complex system,” explains IWM project manager Dr. Bärbel Thielicke. “It contracts in waves in a similar way to the human esophagus, and thus propels the liquid along – it changes shape of its own accord. To achieve this, we had to use a whole range of different materials and special material composites.” The researchers use lead-zirconate-titanate (PZT) films that are joined in a suitable way with bending elements made of carbon-fiber-reinforced plastic and a flexible tube. “PZT materials change their shape as soon as you apply an electric field to them. This makes it possible to control the pump system electronically,” says Thielicke. Special adhesives additionally hold the various components of the pump system together. Thanks to the special control electronics, tiny quantities can be pumped accurately through the system.
The peristaltic pump system has already passed its first functional tests. Now the researchers are working to adapt the peristaltic micro-pump to the various different applications. “We work with special simulation models to do this,” says Thielicke. “We calculate in advance how the structure of the pump needs to be modified in order to administer other dosages or other liquids. This helps us save time and money during the development phase.”
Adapted from materials provided by Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft.

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