University of South Florida professor Robin Murphy has received a $500,000 grant from Microsoft to develop a robotic companion to be friends with people who find themselves stuck in uncomfortable situations. I’m not talking about airplane seats or blind dates; these robots would be designed for people stuck in disaster areas or pinned down by snipers. The “Survivor Buddy” would be able to maneuver into hard to reach or dangerous places, and could do all kinds of things to help you feel better. Like, play soothing music. Or let you video chat with loved ones. As far as actual, physical help… Well, the robot will be able to monitor your vital signs, and it can bring you some water, but don’t expect it to do much digging or drag you anywhere.

[ St. Petersburg Times ] VIA [ Smart-Machines ]

In February, we learned about Dean Kamen’s amazing Luke robotic prosthetic arm, which is way, way, way better than the current standard for prosthetic limbs. It looks like DEKA has put more than a little work into the arm system since then, focusing on what is probably the trickiest (and most important) aspect: how the user interacts with and controls the system.

The arm itself has 18 degrees of freedom, which is nearly as many as a human arm has. That’s a lot of control, which is great, but it becomes that much harder for the arm to be controlled. For most people, sensors on the arm read muscle signals from neurons in the upper body to determine what the user wants the arm to do. DEKA’s system adapts the arm to the user, rather than vice versa, and also allows for the use of macros to make common or repetitive tasks easier to accomplish. DEKA is also working on arms controlled directly with the brain, and part of the above video shows just how effective such an approach can be, as a man uses his mind to lift a cup to his mouth and take a drink, and then sets the cup down again without conscious thought. Simply incredible.

[ DEKA @ D6 ] VIA [ Gizmodo ]

Later today, Halifax Health will be webcasting a live robot-assisted gynecologic oncology surgery. The robot assisting (or actually performing the surgery) will be (surprise surprise) a da Vinci surgical system. Here’s the scoop, kind of:

Watch it online here, starting at 7pm EST.

[ Halifax Health ] VIA [ Communist Robot ]

I’m not sure whose idea it was to put some poor kid’s dolls inside this maze, but it’s a good thing that a bunch of very capable robots are competing to find them all. RoboCup Rescue (the video above was taken at a German warm-up event) challenges robots to navigate and map a complex 150 square meter three dimensional maze of blocks, stairs, and pipes that simulates a disaster area… Something like what my office will look like when the next big quake hits San Francisco. Anytime now. No? Not yet? Okay, moving on.

The dolls wiggle around, make noise, emit CO2, and get warm, just like real babies/people. The robots are completely autonomous, and are scored both on how many dolls they find and how accurate of a map they construct while doing so. Currently, the time it takes for autonomous robots to survey an area and then produce a map usable by search and rescue teams is on the order of 10-20 minutes, which is just too long to be practical, but as with everything else these days, faster/better/cheaper is a future inevitability.

[ RoboCup Rescue ] VIA [ New Scientist ]

An RP-7 robot, normally used to allow physicians to interact remotely with patients, allowed Army Staff Sgt. Erik Lloyd (stationed in Iraq) to interact (sort of) with his family and 7 day old son at a hospital in Texas. Lloyd had full control of the robot’s movements and cameras, and was able to communicate through a live video uplink with his family and meet his son (albeit virtually) for the very first time.

“It was an awesome experience. I am far from the first father in this conflict who has missed the birth of their child. … However, with this technology I was in a small way allowed to feel more like I was part of a family than I had been … since he was born.”

It’s really promising to see the military using robots in ways like this, since it implies that robots are being allowed out of their box a little bit, and hopefully they’ll start to become more useful to soldiers on an everyday, not necessarily combat basis.

Telepresence is in no way limited to the military or commercial sectors. It’s exactly the sort of niche that the iRobot ConnectR is designed to fill, albeit in a slightly less complicated manner. The Rovio should do more or less the same thing. So far, neither of these are available commercially, I imagine because telepresence is not something that people think they need yet, even in a niche market. Will people need it, and will people be comfortable with the idea? I’m not sure what to think, but we should find out in the second half of this year.

[ DefenseLink ] VIA [ AUVSI ]

This is Cyberdyne’s HAL (hybrid assistive limb) exoskeleton, a powered robotic suit designed to significantly increase the strength of the wearer. Using sensors attached to the skin, HAL senses which muscles you intend to move, and powers its joints at the same rate as you move yours, allowing you to walk around effortlessly while wearing the fifty pound suit. If you pick something up, the suit is able to compensate for a portion of the weight, effectively increasing your strength from 2 to 10 (!) times. The suit can be used indoors or outdoors and will provide power for between about three to five hours before it needs a recharge.

Prototypes of the HAL exoskeleton have been around for a few years, and Cyberdyne just begun to construct a new facility that should be able to produce 400 - 500 suits per year by the end of 2008, ramping up to tens of thousands of suits (!!) over the next few years. The best news is that the suits will be available for individual users overseas to rent (that’s us), for an estimated $1,000 per month which includes $300 for maintenance and upgrades. Is that a sweet deal or what? Sign me up, I’ll take one for Christmas.

[ Cyberdyne ] VIA [ Loving The Machine ]

Paro, the world’s “Most Theraputic Robot” (seriously, ask Guinness), has just gone on sale in the US. Finally. I mean, there is a serious shortage of cuddly baby sealbots on the market right now. Paro (which stands for personal robot) originated in Japan, where about a thousand of them are being used to treat patients with Alzheimer’s and other debilitating physical and emotional illnesses. Each Paro is handmade, so each one is a bit different and can learn and respond to an individual name. They have light sensors, tactile sensors, pressure sensors, and audio sensors, and can respond to a variety of stimuli with sound and movement.

Paro can learn to behave in a way that the user prefers, and to respond to its new name. For example, if you stroke it every time you touch it, Paro will remember your previous action and try to repeat that action to be stroked. If you hit it, Paro remembers its previous action and tries not to do that action. By interaction with people, Paro responds as if it is alive, moving its head and legs, making sounds, and showing your preferred behavior. Paro also imitates the voice of a real baby harp seal.

A harp seal pup wasn’t chosen as a model for Paro just because it’s one of the cutest animals on the planet. Rather, it was a carefully thought out decision to choose an animal that people couldn’t directly identify with. If you have a robotic dog, for example, it’s far too easy to compare it to a real dog and end up disappointed (not that that necessarily happens). But since nobody has pet seals, that comparison (subconscious or otherwise) doesn’t take place, making it far easier for users to suspend their incredulity at the robot and develop an emotional bond with it. And it really, really works to improve people’s lives, both in clinical and domestic settings:

Unfortunately, Paro costs about $5000. Honestly, I can’t help but think if you did a little bit of anatomical hacking on a Pleo and bought it a fur coat you might get better results for a lot less money. Paro is several years old, however… My guess is that we’ll be seeing a lot more companion robots like Paro in the near future, most likely originating in Japan and drifting over to the US just as Paro has done.

[ Paro ] VIA [ Smart Machines ]

Even with object recognition, gesture recognition, and voice recognition, getting a robot (or a human, for that matter) to pick out a specific object and perform an action with that object is sometimes tricky. For example, how do you tell a human to bring you a specific apple from a bowl of apples? There’s a lot of, “no, not that one, THAT one” that takes place. Very inefficient. The “clickable world interface” solves this problem for robots (and humans, incidentally) with a laser pointer. Just point the laser at what you want, and a robot (this robot) will go and fetch it for you, like a humane and useful sort of of GBU-24. After the robot has picked up the object, use the laser a second time to tell the robot where to put it, or point the laser at your feet and the robot will hand you the object. The system is powered by a Mac Mini, and will be tested this summer assisting patients with ALS.

[ Clickable World Interface ] VIA [ Physorg ]

They may not be as warm or fuzzy or drooly, but a study conducted in nursing homes by researchers from St. Louis University has shown that a Sony AIBO is (in this case, at least) as equally effective as a real mutt named Sparky when it comes to alleviating loneliness. A group of 38 patients got weekly visits from either Sparky or the AIBO, and after 7 weeks, “both dogs provided virtually equal comfort.”

“The most surprising thing is they worked almost equally well in terms of alleviating loneliness and causing residents to form attachments,” said Dr. William Banks, a professor of geriatric medicine who worked on the study reported in the Journal of the American Medical Directors Association. “It really improves loneliness considerably… Loneliness is common in nursing homes. Robots may be very useful for people who cannot for whatever reason have access to a living dog.”

All things considered, AIBO is actually a rather primitive robotic pet… Pleo, for example, offers tactile skin, much more in the way of movement, and a real artificial personality. The key point when it comes to real versus artificial pets is that real pets take a lot of work. If you have a real pet, you know what I’m talking about. So, if there’s no significant difference between the benefits real and artificial pets in a nursing home context, an artificial pet would be much easier to deal with on a day to day basis for most people. Hooray, Pleos for everyone!

[ Reuters ] VIA [ Gearlog ]

I’m gonna try real hard to pretend that this isn’t a Keepon videospam post (not that there’s anything wrong with that), and talk a little bit about what everyone’s favorite little dancin’ squishbot is actually designed to do, since he’s more than just a pretty face. Really, he is. Keepon was created to exchange emotions with, and provide attention to, small children in a simple and comprehensive way. Although he’s programmed to track faces and dance autonomously, when working with children, Keepon is generally controlled by a remote operator. He’s capable of two primary actions: “attentive” (Keepon is “looking” at something specific) and “emotive” (rocking back and forth or bobbing up and down). The simplicity of these actions means that Keepon is very, very easy to understand, relate to, and get along with.

Keepon works at a day-care center for children with developmental delays and/or disorders. Despite his simplicity, he seems to be quite effective as an interactive diagnostic tool:

The children showed various actions in relation to Keepon. Sometimes they showed vivid facial expressions that even their parents had not seen before. They also showed prosocial actions like trying to feed Keepon, putting on a cap on its head, and kissing it. As a whole, the observations suggest the following points:

-The children with difficulty in inter-personal communication (especially, those with PDD and autism), were able to approach to Keepon with curiosity and security. This is probably because Keepon seemed to be neither a complex human nor a simple toy.

-Some of the children extended their diadic interaction with Keepon into triadic inter-personal interaction, where they tried to share the pleasure and surprise they found in Keepon with others, like their caregivers and nursing staff.

-Each child showed a different style of interaction that changed over time, which would tell us a “story” of his or her personality and developmental profile, which would not be thoroughly explained by a diagnostic label like “autism”.

Not bad for a little yellow puffball, right? More Keepon vids (the ones you really want to see) after the jump. (Read more…)