Surgery’s past, present and robotic future

Continuing on the topic from the last post… Surgeon and inventor Catherine Mohr tours the history of surgery (and its pre-painkiller, pre-antiseptic past), then demos some of the newest tools for surgery through tiny incisions, performed using nimble robot hands. Fascinating — but not for the squeamish.

Site – http://www.ted.com

da Vinci Surgery

I’m a da Vinci surgeon because it is obvious to me that this is an improvement, a paradigm shift if you will, a leap forward in our ability to take care of our patients… and it really comes down to the bottom line. If I was going to have someone in my own family operated on would I want that surgeon to be trained in robotics? Yeah, I would.

http://www.intuitivesurgical.com

Singularity University

Singularity University, based on the NASA Ames campus in Silicon Valley, is an interdisciplinary university whose mission is to assemble, educate and inspire a cadre of leaders who strive to understand and facilitate the development of exponentially advancing technologies (bio, nano, info, AI, etc.), and apply, focus and guide these tools to address humanity’s grand challenges.

Site – http://singularityu.org

Robots

Robotic systems continue to evolve, slowly penetrating many areas of our lives, from manufacturing, medicine and remote exploration to entertainment, security and personal assistance. Developers in Japan are currently building robots to assist the elderly, while NASA develops the next generation of space explorers, and artists are exploring new avenues of entertainment. Collected here are a handful of images of our recent robotic past, and perhaps a glimpse into the near future. (32 photos total)

Site – http://www.boston.com

Future Watch: A.I. comes of age

These are indeed nice days for artificial intelligence researchers. While Stair’s performance might not seem much better than that of a dog fetching the newspaper, it’s a technological tour de force unimaginable just a few years ago. “Stair, please fetch the stapler from the lab,” says the man seated at a conference room table. The Stanford Artificial Intelligence Robot, standing nearby, replies in a nasal monotone, “I will get the stapler for you.” Stair pivots and wheels into the adjacent lab, avoiding a number of obstacles on the way. Its stereoscopic camera eyes swivel back and forth, taking in the contents of the room. It seems to think for a moment, then approaches a table for a closer look at an oblong metallic object. Its articulated arm reaches out, swivels here and there, and then gently picks up the stapler with long, rubber-clad fingers. It heads back to the conference room. “Here is your stapler,” says Stair, handing it to the man. “Have a nice day.” Indeed, Stair represents a new wave of AI, one that integrates learning, vision, navigation, manipulation, planning, reasoning, speech and natural-language processing. It also marks a transition of AI from narrow, carefully defined domains to real-world situations in which systems learn to deal with complex data and adapt to uncertainty. AI has more or less followed the “hype cycle” popularized by Gartner Inc.: Technologies perk along in the shadows for a few years, then burst on the scene in a blaze of hype. Then they fall into disrepute when they fail to deliver on extravagant promises, until they eventually rise to a level of solid accomplishment and acceptance.

Site – http://www.computerworld.com

Site – http://stair.stanford.edu/

Robot “Twendy-One” has personal sense of touch

Have trouble getting out of bed in the morning? Japanese scientists have developed a robot called who can help you do just that – AND bring breakfast to your table.  The 17-stone robot called Twendy-One was developed at Waseda University in Tokyo.  Built with arms and hands the size ‘of an average adult female’, Twendy has enough strength to support humans as they sit up and stand, and can pick up and manipulate delicate objects such as a drinking straw.  In a demonstration the robot picked up a loaf of bread without crushing it, served toast out of a toaster and delivered a food trays to someone in a wheelchair.

Site – http://www.dailymail.co.uk

Robots that fetch

Whether you would care to admit it or not, man / machine hybrids are already walking amongst us, and robots are doing everything from building cars to managing the BCS and the stock market. I, for one, welcome and embrace our new technological partners (Note: partners NOT masters – lets not get silly here).

It took Norma Margeson a few minutes to learn to control the skinny metal robot. But instead of viewing it as a machine, she soon warmed up to it as a companion. “Oh, I love it,” she said. “I think it is such a unique character. It has a personality all its own. It can be a friend, a very good friend.” Margeson, an artist from Marietta, Georgia, is learning how a health care robot dubbed El-E (pronounced “Ellie”) can help her accomplish some simple household tasks. El-E is being tested by Margeson and other patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. Right now Kemp and his colleagues are focusing on programming El-E to locate and fetch common household items such as a hairbrush, a bottle of pills, a cell phone or a TV remote. El-E also can open doors. A robot with those skills could provide some independence for patients with motor impairments and a respite for caregivers. Kemp said he hopes his robots could help people in wheelchairs, the elderly and those with such diseases as arthritis and diabetes.

Site – http://www.cnn.com

Autosub 6000

Autosub6000, which was developed by British scientists, descended almost three miles below the surface to investigate a canyon north of the Canary Islands. The trough contains the deepest seabed volcanoes in the world. Its next mission is to investigate the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, one of Europe’s worst natural disasters, in which more than 10,000 people died. The successful first dive this week formed part of a research expedition investigating potential threats to Western European coasts from tsunamis, giant landslides and earthquakes.On its return to the surface, 24 hours after its launch, it provided scientists with three-dimensional images showing holes in the sea floor the size of Wembley Stadium – evidence of giant underwater avalanches in the past, and a potential cause of tsunamis in the future. Autosub6000, which was developed at the National Oceanographic Centre, Southampton, can dive to a depth of 6,000 metres – nearly four miles – allowing it to reach 93 per cent of the world’s seabed. It is an exciting prospect as the deepest parts of the sea floor remain the last explored places on our earth.

Site – http://www.timesonline.co.uk

Robot Wars: Japan vs. S. Korea

Four leading Japanese robotic companies have joined forces to outcompete South Korea, which recently announced legislation to develop more robots for common household use.  Although Japan has long led the world in robo technology, so called intellegent service robots have been slow to penetrate the average home.  But some have high hopes, “We believe house hold robots will finally become common in the near future, within five years the number of robots will increase ten fold or more…”.  According to the Associated Press the South Korean government aims to put a robot in every household by 2020, and has mobilized companies and scientists to help integrate robots into Korean society.  Faced with low birth rates and long life spans both Japan and South Korea are turning to robots to replace workers.

Site – http://news.nationalgeographic.com

Yes, there’s ice on Mars

“Whoohoo! Was keeping my eye on some chunks of bright stuff & they disappeared! Sublimated! So it can’t be salt, it’s ice.” That’s the triumphant verdict of the Mars lander Phoenix, which yesterday boldly declared, after 24 Martian days of scratching the planet’s surface, that yes, there is ice on Mars.

Phoenix is constantly sending back information to Earth, which is posted by the mission team using the instant messaging software Twitter (written, in touchy-feely style, in the first person as if Phoenix itself is providing its own commentary on its labours). Twitter, the ‘microblogging’ phenomenon, can thus claim to have brought the watery news to Earthlings’ attention.

Site – http://www.nature.com

Endeavour on way to international space station

In a rare middle-of-the-night launch, the shuttle blasted off with an almost blinding flash. But the darkness meant fewer pictures than usual to look for signs of possible damage to the spacecraft during the climb to orbit. NASA knew the nighttime launch would come at a photographic cost. But past successes at preventing the shuttle’s fuel tank from losing big chunks of foam insulation during liftoff and the accuracy of heat shield inspections convinced managers the night launch was a good choice. Putting together Dextre, the robot, will be one of the main jobs for the seven Endeavour astronauts, who are scheduled to blast off in the wee hours of Tuesday, less than three weeks after the last shuttle flight. They’re also delivering the first piece of Japan’s massive Kibo space station lab, a float-in closet for storing tools, experiments and spare parts. For the first time, each of the five major international space station partners will own a piece of the real estate. At 16 days, the mission will be NASA’s longest space station trip ever and will include five spacewalks, the most ever performed while a shuttle is docked there. Three of those spacewalks will feature Dextre, which is sure to steal the show.

Site – http://www.cnn.com

Site – http://www.physorg.com

SENSOPAC

The SENSOPAC project will combine machine learning techniques and modelling of biological systems to develop a machine capable of abstracting cognitive notions from sensorimotor relationships during interactions with its environment, and of generalising this knowledge to novel situations. Through active sensing and exploratory actions the machine will discover the sensorimotor relationships and consequently learn the intrinsic structure of its interactions with the world and unravel predictive and causal relationships. Together with action policy formulation and decision making, this will underlie the machine’s abilities to create abstractions, to suggest and test hypotheses, and develop self-awareness. The project will demonstrate how a naïve system can bootstrap its cognitive development by constructing generalization and discovering abstractions with which it can conceptualize its environment and its own self. The continuous developmental approach will combine self-supervised and reinforcement learning with motivational drives to form a truly autonomous artificial system. Throughout the project, continuous interactions between experimentalists, theoreticians, engineers and roboticists will take place in order to coordinate the most rigorous development and testing of a complete artificial cognitive system.

Site – http://www.sensopac.org