Automaton

The EU-funded IQ Project has endowed a laboratory robot with innovative data mining and knowledge discovery techniques in a step towards automating the scientific process. The resulting "robot scientist" is the first computer system capable of originating its own experiments, physically performing them, interpreting the results and then repeating the cycle (see press release).

Endowing robots with advanced artificial intelligence and data mining techniques is of great interest in genomics, where data are being generated much faster than they can be effectively analyzed. Currently, when a new drug is sought pharmacological researchers conduct a blind study of tens or hundreds of thousands of chemical compounds to relate the structure of a chemical compound to its pharmacological activity.

Exhaustive testing like this is time-consuming, costly and generally has to be repeated each time a new drug is sought. The robot scientist holds great promise to significantly reduce the time and cost of new drug discovery.

A 2004 Nature article by the same group highlighted the concept behind the current prototype. The robot will now be put to work at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth to search for compounds that could be effective in treating malaria and schistosomiasis, so-called Third World diseases that are the focus of only limited research by commercial drug companies.

Source: ICT Results

Tonight MIT students in the class 6.270 will be competing with their autonomous robots. 6.270 was a course designed to give Course 6ers (electrical engineering/computer science) a chance to have a similar competition as the infamous 2.007 course designed by Woodie Flowers for the Course 2 kids (mechanical engineering). Over IAP, the January Independent Activities Period, the students build autonomous robots to compete in a competition and the public is invited to watch the tournament.

The event is from 6 to 9 PM in Building 26. Info here.

Thanks, Neena!

(In other news, apologies for all the Boston-local event info lately... please feel free to send us events in other locales and we'll be happy to post them!)

Intuitive Surgical is a California-based company that makes teleoperated robots for minimally invasive surgery. Using a remote haptic interface, a surgeon can perform surgery using the robotic interface while small end effectors do the actual work inside a patient across the room (or on another continent). These interfaces are incredible -- they give the operator a lot of feedback for accurate control, and at the same time filter out the slight shakiness inherent in even the most steady of human hands. Children's Hospital Boston has become one of the foremost users of the DaVinci robot, with a great overview here.

This video of one of the robots creating an origami crane really wowed me -- be sure to watch it all the way through for the last few seconds. It's a great demonstration of how capable this technology is.

As a side note (and a little bit of a plug), anyone attending the Boston FIRST Regional on March 7th will have a chance to operate a DaVinci robot (an incredible opportunity) and hear a short presentation by Dr. Hiep Nguyen, Children's head of robotic surgery.

Previously:

Robot Surgery - Reassuring or Scary?

The word "robot" originated from Karel Capek's 1921 play Rossum's Universal Robots, which details the very first robot uprising. Rather than refer to mechanical men, "robot" was derived from a Czech word that means, according to different sources, labor, drudgery, forced labor, or serf. Boston-area robot geeks have the opportunity to check out a performance of RUR through the end of this week, thanks to Flat Earth Theatre at the Arsenal Center for the Arts in Watertown. Tickets are $15; check out the details.

Thanks, Daniel!

As my editor puts it, "It doesn't seem very Earth-shattering, but I do love the phrase 'meat gripper'." So without further ado, here it is -- the Meat Gripper.

Applied Robotics, a maker of "robotic end-of-arm tooling and connectivity solutions" based in Glenville, N.Y., has just announced that its Meat Gripper has been approved and certified by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Designed to "handle all types of meat, fish, and cheese in various forms," this pneumatic meat-loving robot is fast: the gripper opens and closes in less than 65 milliseconds -- in the blink of an eye. And connected to an Adept Quattro s650 manipulator arm, it can handle over 100 pieces of meat per minute.

Now, after making their way into car assembly lines, semiconductor fabs, and Staples's warehouses, robots can take over meat-processing plants as well.

We've covered FIRST robotics extensively in the past, so we're of course excited to talk about "Lunacy", the 2009 FRC game. In celebration of the 40th anniversary of the lunar landing, the FIRST Game Design Committee has designed the playing field to use low-friction materials that simulate the low gravity of the moon. The students' 120lb robots must propel themselves around this field while towing a wheeled goal into which other robots and human players are trying to throw "moon rocks". This is all a recipe for bumps, collisions, and, well, lunacy. Check out the game animation below.

In addition to the game -- which is new every year -- teams are also navigating a new control system based on National Instruments cRIO architecture [previously]. The requirements for their drive train -- the use of low-friction wheels on a low-friction playing surface -- also present an exciting challenge for drive train design, as the systems used on past playing fields (usually carpet) don't really translate to "moon gravity." Teams are currently about halfway through their build seasons, about the time that they're firming up game-specific mechanism designs and building the basics of their chassis. Interested in the technical discussions that these talented high schoolers are having? Check out the unofficial FIRST forums, Chief Delphi.

Good luck from Automaton, teams!

On Friday, WPI formally released the competition rules and regulations for the Robotics Innovation Competition and Conference. The RICC [previously] is a competition for undergraduate or graduate students that encourages them to develop a robot and accompanying business plan that solves a real-world problem -- this year the theme is "Quality of Life."

Checkout their website for all the information. Registration is free.

In this month's issue of Spectrum, Sally Adee describes the Revolutionizing Prosthetics 2009 program, a "Manhattan Project" for prosthetic arms organized by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Here's an interesting excerpt:

But the most power-efficient arm in the world is no good if you canâ''t control it. So APL [Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory] partnered with RIC [Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago] to develop a groundbreaking technique for controlling a mechanical arm with an amputeeâ''s own nervous system.

Todd Kuiken, director of RICâ''s neural engineering center, created a portal to the nervous system by rewiring the shoulder. The procedure, called targeted muscle reinnervation surgery, redirects the residual nerve bundles that once connected the spinal cord to the 70 000 nerve fibers in the arm. After an amputation, these nerves remain in place, and they continue to workâ''they just arenâ''t connected to anything functional. The pectoral muscles also remain intact, but they too are no longer driving an arm. So Kuiken surgically threaded the residual nerves from their original locations into the chest, where they innervated, or grew into, an area of pectoral muscle slightly smaller than a compact disc.

Next, Kuiken taped electrodes over the chest patch, where they could pick up the electromagnetic signals from muscles and send them to paired electrodes inside the prosthesis. There, signal-processing algorithms could translate the signals into the userâ''s intended movements. With Kuikenâ''s surgery, amputees were able to control the DARPA prototype with their own muscles, as if it were an extension of their own flesh.

Then came an unexpected and very lucky break: the researchers found that the redirected nerves restored not only muscle function but also sensation. The skin on that patch had been rewired with the nerves from the arm and hand; therefore, the patients sensed a touch on their chests as if someone were touching their missing handsâ''even if it was just a tap. The Hopkins team exploited this discovery with a device called a tactor, built at Northwestern University. By placing the tactor on the chest next to the electrodes, they created a complete feedback loop. In the end, the combination of Kuikenâ''s complex rewiring scheme and the brainâ''s natural plasticity simulated a real armâ''s ability to sense touch, heat, and cold.

Read the full article here.

With the EU's focus on renewable energy, giant wind wheels, at times arranged in huge windfarms, other times in isolation, have been sprouting across the continent. With their enormous size (individual blades reach lengths of up to 60m!), airy heights, and typically remote (offshore) locations, regular inspection of the blades is a major headache.

Following a two and a half year research project researchers at Germany's Fraunhofer Institute for Factory Operation and Automation IFF have now unveiled a rope climbing robot which can independently inspect blades on all types of wind energy converters. The 16 DOF robot platform autonomously maneuvers up and down ropes lowered next to the blades. Its inspection system uses an infrared radiator to heat rotor blades in combination with a high-resolution thermal camera as well as an ultrasonic system to regularly monitor the rotor bladesâ'' condition and detect any external or internal signs of damage.

Unfortunately the press release does not mention projected costs for the robot nor when you can expect to see one on a wind turbine near you. Some technical information is available in a short project description (PDF).

iRobot has put up their own YouTube channel, which they are calling iTube -- which I think is a sadly generic Web2.0 name, but oh well. The implementation is much better: the channel is going to have both amusing videos of iRobot products in action and videos of iRobot employees making announcements and answering questions about their designs. (Though I must point out a disturbing lack of Roomba Cat on that channel) On the "amusing" side, I've been giggling for a while over the flying PackBot.

I'm imagining one of those engineers going back to HQ insisting, "As God as my witness, I thought PackBots could fly..."

I'll have my iRobot fangirl hat on this week, since iRobot is supposed to be launching (in the non-flying sense) a new home robots product at CES that starts tomorrow in Las Vegas. Stay tuned!

Thanks, Rod!