A Colorado man made history at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) this summer when he became the first bilateral shoulder-level amputee to wear and simultaneously control two of the Laboratory’s Modular Prosthetic Limbs.

Most importantly, Les Baugh, who lost both arms in an electrical accident 40 years ago, was able to operate the system by simply thinking about moving his limbs, performing a variety of tasks during a short training period. These Prosthetic Robot Arms are opening gates to new human cyborgs.

One other DARPA-funded robotic limb controlled by thoughts alone — actually make that two, because Colorado man Les Baugh had two bionic arms attached from shoulder level. Baugh got them this summer, 40 years after losing both arms, as part of a Revolutionizing Prosthetics Program test run at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. The project’s researchers have been developing these Modular Prosthetic Limbs (MPL) over the past decade, but they say Baugh is the “first bilateral shoulder-level amputee” to wear two MPLs at the same time. Unlike Jan Scheuermann who controlled a robotic arm with a pair of neural implants, though, Baugh had to undergo a procedure called targeted muscle reinnervation, which reassigned the nerves that once controlled his arms and hands.

Once that was done, the team recorded the patterns his brain makes for each muscle he moves, and then they had him control virtual arms to prepare for the real things. Since his arms were cut off from the shoulder, they also had to design a custom socket for his torso where the prosthetics can be attached. All their preparations were worth it in the end, though, as Baugh turned out to be a brilliant test subject: after just 10 days of training, he was already moving cups from one shelf to the other just by thinking it.

Resources

© 2015 The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory LLC. All rights reserved.

http://www.jhuapl.edu/newscenter/pressreleases/2014/141216.asp

http://www.engadget.com/2014/12/18/double-amputee-mind-controlled-robot-arms/

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Keywords: Nano, Silver, Ink, Inkjet, Printer, Printed Electronics, 31041

Printed Electronics by Robotpark

Researchers at “Robotpark R&D Labs” has developed an easy-to-use “conductive printer ink” which can print electronic boards with an ordinary inkjet printer. With this ink, you only draw your curcuit board in any drawing software, send it to your desktop printer and voila. “It is like magic...” says Harry Eliot one of the test engineers of the project.

After adding this ink to your desktop printers cartridge everything is ready. This process may be a little bit frustrating, but after you have successfully installed your cartridge, the magic begins.

The Nano Technology Beneath

The evolution of producing printed electronics — printing semiconducting organic polymers or conductive ink on paper or plastic to create electronically functional devices is a new approach.  These new manufacturing methods will play an increasingly important role in a wide range of applications. Silver Nano Particles which are smaller then 20nm are added to a special solvent, this makes the “Conductive Ink” but it is not finished. You have to use a special A4 Paper to ensure pattern integrity

Available in three different substrates, the self-sintering special inkjet media utilizes an adhesion layer, a micro-porous, solvent-absorbing layer for flexibility, print quality and instant dry benefits. The proprietary chemical sintering agents produce instant electrical conductivity and the resultant patterns look like gold foil stamping.

The Products

Robotpark’s Smart Conductive Series makes time-consuming and expensive thermal curing and other additional processes that are generally used to produce conductors no longer required.

Creating functional electronic devices faster, more easily and more cost-effectively is vital to research institutions, development engineers, students and electronical device developers. Applications, once too complex are now easy with Robotpark’s SCS (Smart Conductive Series) Silver Nano Inkjet Tech.

Whether it be in research labs or in test areas, development engineers can print with Robotpark’s SCS (Smart Conductive Series) on a variety of specially treated media for conductivity in seconds without heat or flash exposure sintering.

Links

You can order test samples with the following link if you are interested in this technology.
http://www.robotpark.com/Silver-Nano-Particle-Printer-Ink-10ml

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DUBLIN

Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/lk6rvx/industrial) has announced the addition of the “Industrial Robotics Market in China 2012-2016″ report to their offering.

One of the key factors contributing to this market growth is the need for increased productivity in the manufacturing process. The Industrial Robotics market in China has also been witnessing the emergence of next-generation industrial robots. However, the continuous decline in vendors’ profit margin could pose a challenge to the growth of this market.

The key vendors dominating this space include ABB Ltd., Denso Wave Inc., Fanuc Corp., KUKA AG, Seiko Epson Corp., Toshiba Machine Co. Ltd., and Yaskawa Electric Corp.

The other vendors mentioned in this report are iRobot Corp., Kawasaki Robotics Inc., Omron Corp., RoboGroup TEK Ltd., Rockwell Automation Inc., Siasun Robot & Automation Co. Ltd., ST Robotics, STAUBLI Corp., Yamaha Robotics, and Mitsubishi Electric Automation Inc.

Commenting on the report, an analyst from the team said: One of the main trends witnessed in the Industrial Robotics market in China is the need for multipurpose robotic systems. Various end-users are looking for robotic systems that can perform numerous tasks efficiently. The multipurpose robots should be able to perform several functions such as assembly, dispensing, machine tending, material handling, material removing, and packaging. End-users are also investing in industrial robots that can perform inspection activities such as error proofing during the assembly process. The use of multipurpose robots will in turn reduce the total cost of ownership and enhance the productivity of manufacturers.

According to the report, one of the main factors driving the market is the need to reduce total cost of ownership. Robots help manufacturing companies develop and manufacture accurate and reliable products without defects. They also help companies reduce product failure costs and product wastage.

For more information visit: http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/lk6rvx/industrial

About Research and Markets

Research and Markets is the world’s leading source for international market research reports and market data. We provide you with the latest data on international and regional markets, key industries, the top companies, new products and the latest trends.

Links:

http://www.fortmilltimes.com/2013/08/15/2892291/research-and-markets-the-industrial.html

http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/lk6rvx/industrial

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“Electrically-Charged Hydrogel has applications for soft robotics and biomedical fields”

Article Summary - By Randall Marsh
Soft robotics is a quickly emerging field that takes a lot of inspiration from marine creatures like squids and starfish. A light-controlled hydrogel was recently developed that could be used for control of these new robotic devices, but now researchers at North Carolina State University are taking the development of soft robotic devices to a new level with electrically-charged hydrogels.

What is IONOPRINTING ?

Researchers at NC State have developed a method called ‘ionoprinting’ with the capability to pattern and actuate hydrated gels in two and three dimensions by locally patterning ions using electric fields. The ability to pattern, structure, re-shape and actuate hydrogels is important for biomimetics, soft robotics, cell scaffolding and biomaterials.

The ionic binding changes the local mechanical properties of the gel to induce relief patterns and in some cases evokes localized stresses large enough to cause rapid folding. These ionoprinted patterns are stable for months, yet the ionoprinting process is fully reversible by immersing the gel in a chelator. The mechanically patterned hydrogels exhibit programmable temporal and spatial shape transitions and serve as a basis of a new class of soft actuators able to gently manipulate objects both in air and in liquid.

The paper, “Reversible patterning and actuation of hydrogels by electrically assisted ionoprinting” is co-authored by Etienne Palleau, Daniel Morales, Michael Dickey and Orlin Velev and published in Nature Communications. The work was supported by the National Science Foundation Triangle MRSEC program and the French DGA.

Resource Links:

http://ionoprinting.com/

http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2013/130802/ncomms3257/fig_tab/ncomms3257_F1.html

http://www.gizmag.com/electrically-charged-hydrogel-soft-robotics/28576/

Video – http://youtu.be/9SXWJP1KK-8

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They may not yet have reached the startlingly lifelike capabilities of Sonny, the soft-spoken android in the movie I, Robot, but they’re getting closer.

This week it has been reported that robots are moving ever nearer to acquiring human abilities – to smell, feel and see their surroundings, allowing them to operate more independently and perform some of the messy, and dangerous, jobs that people don’t want to do.

Machines are being created that can “smell” gas leaks, carry out underwater surveillance, and sort packages by shape and colour – and advances in sensor technology enable them to make decisions without human beings overseeing them.

On Friday, Kirobo, the world’s first talking humanoid space robot, is due to arrive at the International Space Station, where it will patiently await the arrival of the next astronaut there, Koichi Wakata from Japan. It has been programmed to recognise his face – and greet him warmly in his native tongue.

What is the future for robots ?

and could they, as they did in the Will Smith film, try to take over the world?

Three senior figures at Cambridge University have been exploring that topic this week in an online question-and-answer session for the university’s Department of Engineering: Lord Martin Rees, Emeritus Professor of Cosmology and Astrophysics; Kathleen Richardson, who did her PhD at Cambridge and is writing a book about robots as potential friends or enemies; and Daniel Wolpert, from the Department of Engineering, an expert in bioengineering.

In answer to the question, what can robots do for us? Lord Rees said: “Robots have two very different roles.

-The first is to operate in locations that humans can’t reach, such as the aftermaths of accidents in mines, oil rigs and nuclear power stations.

-The second, also deeply unglamorous, is to help elderly or disabled people with everyday life: tying shoelaces, cutting toenails and suchlike.

Moreover, if robots can be miniaturised, they can perhaps be used inside our bodies for monitoring our health, undertaking surgery, and so forth.”

Prof Wolpert said: “While computers can now beat grandmasters at chess, there is currently no robot that can match the dexterity of a five-year-old child. The field of robotics is similar to where computers were in the 1960s – expensive machines used in simple, repetitive industrial processes. But modern day robotics is changing that. Robots are likely to become as ubiquitous as the smartphone computers we all carry – from microscopic robotics for healthcare and fabrication to human-size robots to take on our everyday tasks or even act as companions.”

How soon will machine intelligence outstrip human intelligence?

Lord Rees said: “Up till now, the advances have been patchy. For at least the last 30 years, we’ve been able to buy for a few pounds a machine that can do arithmetic faster than our brains can. Back in the 1990s IBM’s ‘Deep Blue’ beat Kasparov, the world chess champion. But robots are still limited in their ability to sense their environment: they can’t yet recognise and move the pieces on a real chessboard as cleverly as a child can.

“Later this century, however, their more advanced successors may relate to their surroundings (and to people) as adeptly as we do. Moral questions then arise. We accept an obligation to ensure that other human beings, and indeed some animal species, can fulfil their ‘natural’ potential. So what’s our obligation towards sophisticated robots? Should we feel guilty about exploiting them? Should we fret if they are underemployed, frustrated, or bored?”

Dr Richardson said: “The human fear of robots and machines arguably has much more to say about human fear of each other rather than anything inherently technical in the machines. However, one of the consequences of thinking that the problem lies with machines is that as a culture we tend to imagine they are greater and more powerful than they really are – and subsequently they become so.”

Should we be scared by advances in artificial intelligence?

Lord Rees said: “Those who should be worried are the futurologists who believe in the so-called ‘singularity’, when robots take over and themselves create even more sophisticated progeny. And another worry is that we are increasingly dependent on computer networks, and that these could behave like a single ‘brain’ with a mind of its own, and with goals that may be contrary to human welfare. I think we should ensure that robots remain as no more than ‘idiot savants’ – lacking the capacity to outwit us, even though they may greatly surpass us in the ability to calculate and process information.”

Should robots be used to colonise other planets?

Lord Rees believes that by the end of the century, the entire solar system – planets, moons and asteroids – will be explored and mapped by “flotillas of tiny robotic craft.”

He said: “The next step would be mining of asteroids, enabling fabrication of large structures in space without having to bring all the raw materials from Earth. It would be possible to develop huge artefacts: giant telescopes with gossamer-thin mirrors assembled under zero gravity, collectors of solar energy, and so forth. I think this is more realistic and benign than the so-called ‘terraforming’ of planets.”

Prof Wolpert added: “I don’t see a pressing need to colonise other planets unless we can bring resources back to Earth. The vast majority of Earth is currently inaccessible to us. Using robots to gather resources nearer to home would seem to be a better use of our robotic tools.”

Resource Links:
More about the Cambridge experts’ views on robots can be found on the engineering department’s website, at

http://www.eng.cam.ac.uk/news/stories/2013/robot_world/

http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/News/Could-robots-every-take-over-the-world-20130807060000.htm

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The nanorobots—a collection of DNA molecules, some attached to antibodies—were designed to seek a specific set of human blood cells and attach a fluorescent tag to the cell surfaces. Details of the system were published online in Nature Nanotechnology.

“This opens up the possibility of using such molecules to target, treat or kill specific cells without affecting similar healthy cells,”

said the study’s senior investigator, Milan Stojanovic, PhD, assoc. prof. of medicine and of biomedical engineering at Columbia Univ. Medical Center.

“In our experiment, we tagged the cells with a fluorescent marker; but we could replace that with a drug or with a toxin to kill the cell.”

Though other DNA nanorobots have been designed to deliver drugs to cells, the advantage of Stojanovic’s fleet is its ability to distinguish cell populations that do not share a single distinctive feature.

Cells, including cancer cells, rarely possess a single, exclusive feature that sets them apart from all other cells. This makes it difficult to design drugs without side effects. Drugs can be designed to target cancer cells with a specific receptor, but healthy cells with the same receptor will also be targeted.

The only way to target cells more precisely is to identify cells based on a collection of features. “If we look for the presence of five, six or more proteins on the cell surface, we can be more selective,” Stojanovic said. Large cell-sorting machines have the ability to identify cells based on multiple proteins, but until now, molecular therapeutics have not had that capability.

How it works

Instead of building a single complex molecule to identify multiple features of a cell surface, Stojanovic and his colleagues at Columbia used a different, and potentially easier, approach based on multiple simple molecules, which together form a robot (or automaton, as the authors prefer calling it).

To identify a cell possessing three specific surface proteins, Stojanovic first constructed three different components for molecular robots. Each component consisted of a piece of double-stranded DNA attached to an antibody specific to one of the surface proteins. When these components are added to a collection of cells, the antibody portions of the robot bind to their respective proteins (in the figure, CD45, CD3 and CD8) and work in concert.

On cells where all three components are attached, the robot is functional and a fourth component (labeled 0 below) initiates a chain reaction among the DNA strands. Each component swaps a strand of DNA with another, until the end of the swap, when the last antibody obtains a strand of DNA that is fluorescently labeled.

At the end of the chain reaction—which takes less than 15 min in a sample of human blood—only cells with the three surface proteins are labeled with the fluorescent marker.

“We have demonstrated our concept with blood cells because their surface proteins are well known, but in principle our molecules could be deployed anywhere in the body,”

Stojanovic said. In addition, the system can be expanded to identify four, five, or even more surface proteins. Now the researchers must show that their molecular robots work in a living animal; the next step will be experiments in mice.

Links

http://newsroom.cumc.columbia.edu/2013/08/07/dna-robots-tag-cells/

http://www.rdmag.com/news/2013/08/dna-robots-find-and-tag-blood-cells

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Robot Challenge is an international championship for self-made, autonomous, and mobile robots. It takes place annually in Vienna, Austria. Since 2004, more than 1.000 robots from all over the world have taken part in the competition.

RobotChallenge 2013: March 23-24 in Vienna
In March 2013 RobotChallenge celebrates its 10th anniversary: Robot designers from all over the world will compete with their self-made, autonomous robots in 15 different competitions. In addition to the traditional competitions — Robot Sumo, Line Follower, Puck Collect, Humanoid Sprint and Freestyle — flying robots will take part in the “Air Race” for the second time. The new competition “Line Follower LEGO” is a special category for robots built out of LEGO bricks and is aimed primarily at beginners.

In the last few years RobotChallenge became one of the biggest events in the field of robotics worldwide. Since 2004 teams from 31 countries with more than 1000 robots have competed.

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The post Farm Robots, Replace Human Hands 31034 appeared first on Robotpark ACADEMY.

Video Link:

http://youtu.be/2Ysb-Oko3Bg

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