Mind-Controlled Robots Bring Us One Step Closer To Our Avatar Future

Mind-Controlled Robots Bring Us One Step Closer To Our Avatar Future: "Mind-Controlled Robots Bring Us One Step Closer To Our Avatar Future
Andrew Liszewski
It's been speculated—in big budget movies, no less—that one day mankind will never leave its computers, and will instead explore the world through virtual reality and robots. And here's the cutting-edge research that will make that nightmarish future possible.

Researchers at the CRNS-AIST Joint Robotics Laboratory have created an android that can be controlled using thoughts alone. But it's not quite at the point where a user can don an electrode-embedded cap and their robot avatar will run off into the streets. At the moment the user chooses and concentrates on flashing images which then give the robot instructions on a given task.

The technology is crude and in its infancy, but before we all turn into office chair planted vegetables, the research could be used to improve the life of paraplegics providing them with mind-controlled assistants to help them in their daily routines. [DigInfo TV]"

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Smart as a bird: Flying rescue robot will autonomously avoid obstacles

Smart as a bird: Flying rescue robot will autonomously avoid obstacles: "Smart as a Bird: Flying Rescue Robot Will Autonomously Avoid Obstacles
ScienceDaily (Oct. 30, 2012) — Cornell researchers have created an autonomous flying robot that is as smart as a bird when it comes to maneuvering around obstacles."

Able to guide itself through forests, tunnels or damaged buildings, the machine could have tremendous value in search-and-rescue operations. Small flying machines are already common, and GPS technology provides guidance. Now, Ashutosh Saxena, assistant professor of computer science, and his team are tackling the hard part: how to keep the vehicle from slamming into walls and tree branches. Human controllers can't always react swiftly enough, and radio signals may not reach everywhere the robot goes.

The test vehicle is a quadrotor, a commercially available flying machine about the size of a card table with four helicopter rotors. Saxena and his team have already programmed quadrotors to navigate hallways and stairwells using 3-D cameras. But in the wild, these cameras aren't accurate enough at large distances to plan a route around obstacles. So, Saxena is building on methods he previously developed to turn a flat video camera image into a 3-D model of the environment using such cues as converging straight lines, the apparent size of familiar objects and what objects are in front of or behind each other -- the same cues humans unconsciously use to supplement their stereoscopic vision.

Graduate students Ian Lenz and Mevlana Gemici trained the robot with 3-D pictures of such obstacles as tree branches, poles, fences and buildings; the robot's computer learns the characteristics all the images have in common, such as color, shape, texture and context -- a branch, for example, is attached to a tree. The resulting set of rules for deciding what is an obstacle is burned into a chip before the robot flies. In flight the robot breaks the current 3-D image of its environment into small chunks based on obvious boundaries, decides which ones are obstacles and computes a path through them as close as possible to the route it has been told to follow, constantly making adjustments as the view changes. It was tested in 53 autonomous flights in obstacle-rich environments -- including Cornell's Arts Quad -- succeeding in 51 cases, failing twice because of winds. The results were presented at the International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems in Portugal Oct. 7-12.

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BBC News - Robots in the classroom help autistic children learn

BBC News - Robots in the classroom help autistic children learn: "Autistic children may learn better from robots than from human teachers, according to evidence emerging from a trial at a school in Birmingham.

Two humanoid robots, Max and Ben, have been helping teach children with autism at Topcliffe Primary since March.

The school is one of the first in the UK to try the technology.

Head teacher Ian Lowe said: "The robots have no emotion, so autistic children find them less threatening than their teachers and easier to engage with."

He added: "They are really cute looking. Children with autism struggle with communicating with adults and with other children, but for some reason they engage with these robots.

"Children who first come into school unable to make eye contact with humans start to communicate through the robots."

About a quarter of the children at the school are autistic. It is a mainstream primary that receives specialist funding to support autistic children in separate classes, using a range of technologies.

The robots are knee-high and move like children. The school is using them to teach phonics and play cards or memory and imitation games with children aged from five to 10."

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