Paralyzed individuals may be able to walk again with aid from the Cyberdyne suit out of Japan. Yoshiyuki Sankai, a professor at Tsukuba University near Tokyo, introduced the robotic suit at a news conference today. The suit is like a powered exoskeleton, granting new movement to its wearers.
The robot suit receives signals from the brain that move over the skin with the anticipation of muscle movement—the signals are translated to robo-movement as Cyberdyne does its thing. Sankai refuses that his robotic suit technology be used for military purposes, saying “I believe technology becomes useful only when it works for people.” Future implementation of the technology could be used to help construction workers and others who have to lift heavy loads, making a hundred pounds feel like much less. Cyberdyne will be leasing 500 of the battery-operated suits this week.

[AFP]

In addition to becoming bionic, prostheses may soon help a person feel bionic too. Bionic hands with gelled fingertips may be the answer to giving the wearer a sense of touch and sensitivity. It may even help them instinctively hold objects. That’s because humans have a reflexes that respond to vibrations. The top part of the bionic hand would consist of a rubber skin filled with silicon gel.

When an object slips, the skin transmits the vibrations through the gel to acoustic sensors, giving the wearer feedback so that the motors can tighten their grip. Also, the finger is also covered with electrodes, which change the electric conduction to accompany the pressure. So now they will be able to feel as well as function.

[NewScientist]

Some would say that celebrities are robots. Thanks to Worth1000.com’s Celebrity Cyborg photoshop contest, some have become cyborgs. Hit the link for a bunch more.

[Worth1000]

Researchers at MIT are developing a robotic wheelchair that will memorize the layout of a building, then take the user where he/she wants to go with voice commands. By saying something as simple as “take me to my room” the robotic wheelchair would navigate to that destination without the user having to control every maneuver in the trip. Assistant professor of aeronautics and astronautics Nicholas Roy says that the wheelchair will adapt to the user and the surroundings; that the robots will be personalized for different users.
The robochair learns about its environment by being pushed once around a building, with key parts of the building being noted. For example, while passing the cafeteria, the patient or caregiver would say something like “here is the cafeteria”, so the robot would be able to find the location later. This is similar to how a human would learn to navigate a new environment, through physical exposure to different areas.
Professor of computer science and engineering Seth Teller is another researcher working on the project—he’s also part of another team at MIT that is working on other gizmos with situational awareness; things like a location aware cellphone to an industrial forklift.
GPS is a fine technology for placing things outdoors, but inside buildings engineers need to use different approaches to locating things. Using tech like WiFi, cameras, and lasers, these researchers hope to further explore the possibility of situational awareness. Teller says, “I’m interested in having robots build and maintain a high-fidelity model of the world.”
Right now, the robotic wheelchair relies on a series of WiFi nodes around a facility to let the robot know where it is. The wheelchair is currently being used in preliminary real-world trials at the Boston Home in Dorchester. Future improvements to the chair will probably be an obstacle avoidance system, and perhaps even robotic arms to let patients manipulate their environment from the chair. Microsoft and Nokia are funding the research.
So it’s clear that as robots become smarter, our geriatric future looks brighter. We’ll have robots mowing our lawns, cleaning our houses, and making us food while we tell our robot wheelchair, “take me to the sex dungeon” where we’ll settle down for a night of romping with the robot harem.

[MIT news]

This is how it begins. You buy a rare Terminator endoskeleton on eBay. Before you know it, you start learning about cybernetics. Soon you start your own company. Skynet sounds catchy. What could possibly go wrong? Before you know it, you have some hot milf and her kid trying to kill you so they can stop Judgment Day in the future. So she’s a little wacky and dangerous, you just have to try to score with her. And just like that you’re dead and the future is safe. Except for that microchip you hid away for a rainy day. Oops. Sequel time.

All because you had to had to place the minimum bid of $19,999.00.

[ebay]

You may think that if robots needed brains to learn, scientists would do everything possible to inhibit this, because it would unquestionably lead to a horrific future where mankind is tormented always by robotic zombies–the terror of which not even our goriest nightmares can concoct.  The artificial living dead would chug from village to village, killing all humans in their wake and harvesting our sweet, sweet neurons.

Well, University of Reading scientists are either incredibly short sighted or in cahoots with our mechanic oppressors, because they’ve recently decided to give a rat brain to a robot.  A robot with a freaking rat brain. So fortify your towns, populate them with Wall-E and Pleo, and throw up some Tesla coils at your defense towers.

The technology, though sinister, is quite fascinating.  The scientists are using 300,000 rat neurons to control a small robot in hopes that the project may shine light on the way memories are formed, and perhaps provide insight into diseases like Alzheimer’s.  The brain cells were taken from a rat fetus’s neural cortex and the connections between individual neurons were dissolved.  The robot itself is outfitted with sonar sensors, providing feedback to the neural blob, which then helps create new neural connections.

A temperature-controlled, electrode-sprinkled cabinet houses the rat brain, and the robot communicates with it via Bluetooth.  The robot has already learned to steer around obstacles, and the researchers hope that next it will be able to recognize its surroundings.  Then the creators plan to disrupt the memory connections that have been formed to emulate conditions of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.  How the neural tissue reacts to this will provide information for how memory-debilitating diseases are coped with by human neural networks.

Dr. Ben Whalley, a Reading neuroscientist who carried out tests on the robot, said one large question facing neuroscientists is how individual neuron activity affects the complex behavior of the entire neural network and of the organism.  “This project gives us a really useful and unique opportunity to look at something that may exhibit whole behaviours but still remains closely tied to the activity of individual neurons,” he said.

This research may provide a fuller understanding of memory-related diseases, but it will inevitably lead to robots who learn to be evil quickly and efficiently.  Why do you think the Scarecrow got a brain and the Tin Man did not?

[BBC]

To mark the release of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Warner Home Video commissioned a study into the role of AI in the future of law enforcement.  Robots are already being integrated with policing efforts, but what does the future of lawbots look like?  University of Sheffield AI Professor Noel Sharkey executed the two-month study, and concluded that by 2084, advanced humanoid robots will be patrolling alongside traditional police.

He predicts that these robots will have human features and expressions.  Because of their ultimate robo-strength and inability to feel pain (and emotion) they would be well equipped to make arrests.  They would also be outfitted with sensors to detect drugs and weapons on would-be tough customers.  The robots would be able to pinpoint things like public drunkenness and other kinds of mischief and act accordingly.  One idea that is central to Sharkey’s findings is that these bots will be able to access or store huge amounts of citizen data, thus making them able to quickly identify people and keep track of criminal movement.  Sharkey finds that autonomous police cars should appear around 2070, being able to spot speed-demons, read license plates, and perform drug and alcohol tests on drivers.

The report’s conclusions are based primarily on leading robotic developments from Japan, South Korea, Israel, China, UK and USA.  These law-enforcement robots would help human officers in many ways and would lower the crime level, but, Sharkey warns, at what cost?  Sharkey says, “in the wrong hands…robot law enforcement could be a major blow to individual privacy and basic human rights.”  He says that Hollywood’s portrayal of future robots in counter-criminal work is often dismissed as “fantastical”, but his report suggests that robots will play a “much bigger role in society over the next 75 years than previously anticipated.”

So in 2084, when you’re hobbling down the street (to the hover-wheelchair repair shop) and Officer Bolts blows you to smithereens because he x-ray sees the machete concealed under your Botropolis Brand robe, don’t say we didn’t warn you.

[Sheffield Telegraph]

If you’re one of those pet owners who have microchips embedded in your animals because of worries about dog napping, thanks for doing your part to usher in the apocalypse. My future dismembered corpse appreciates it. It’s in part thanks to you that we can also look forward to Cyborg cows.

Imagine if that same chip could tell your pet to go home or relay some other instructions from the owner, from as far as miles away. That’s what the always scary USDA Agricultural Research Service has in mind so they can direct cows and calm them down, maybe even say “Give me more milk or you’re beef”.

In the USDA experiment, cows are basically equipped with special ear receivers that are pretty much like iPods. They can receive signals from a remote controlling station. With negative stimuli, like unpleasant sounds, they can herd cows to move wherever the hell they want. It’s based on invisible fence technology used by ranchers, with the devices upgraded by MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory to include GPS and a wide range of animal diagnostics.

That’s not nice. Just remember, next it will be you. That next headache you get may be a negative stimulus telling you to slow down in traffic and be more like the rest of the herd.

[io9]