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New Robot With Artificial Skin To Improve Human Communication
Work is beginning on a robot with artificial skin to be used to investigate how robots can help children with autism learn about social interaction.
Planning for Communication Resources
For many human team activities, ranging from military operations through to emergency rescue or large entertainment events, communications resources must be assigned to different teams or team members. These assignments must reflect the capabilities of the available communication devices and avoid conflicting use of communications channels already in use in the local environment. In general, finding and assigning available communication channels for short-term use is a task performed manually by human operators.
Accurate and Flexible Simulation for Dynamic, Vision-Centric Robots
As robots become more complex by incorporating dynamic stability or greater mechanical degrees of freedom, the difficulty of developing control algorithms directly on the robot increases. This is especially true for large or expensive robots, where damage is costly, or where communication bandwidth limits in-depth debugging. One effective solution to this problem is the use of a flexible, physically-accurate simulation environment which allows for experimentation with the physical composition and control systems of one or more robots in a controlled virtual setting.
Robotic Approach To Urothelial Cancer Of The Kidney Proves To Be Beneficial For Patients
Robotic trained surgeons have developed a new and novel approach to surgically treat urothelial cancer (in the lining of the bladder or kidney). Using da Vinci robot-assisted technology, urologic cancer surgeons perform complicated urologic cases using minimally invasive surgery.
CAMEO: Camera Assisted Meeting Event Observer
Static cameras are pervasive in a variety of environments. However it remains a challenging problem to extract and reason about high-level features from real-time and continuous observation of an environment. In this paper, we present CAMEO, the Camera Assisted Meeting Event Observer, which is a physical awareness system designed for use by an agent-based electronic assistant. CAMEO is an inexpensive high-resolution omnidirectional vision system designed to be used in meeting environments.
Plays as Team Plans for Coordination and Adaptation
Coordinated action for a team of robots is a challenging problem, especially in dynamic, unpredictable environments. In the context of robot soccer, a complex domain with teams of robots in an adversarial setting, there is a great deal of uncertainty in the opponent's behavior and capabilities. We introduce the concept of a play as a team plan, which combines both reactive principles, which are the focus of traditional approaches for coordinating actions, and deliberative principles. We introduce the concept of a playbook as a method for seamlessly combining multiple team plans.
STP: Skills, Tactics and Plays for Multi-Robot Control in Adversarial Environments
In an adversarial multi-robot task, such as playing robot soccer, decisions for team and single robot behavior must be made quickly to take advantage of short-term fortuitous events when they occur. When no such opportunities exist, the team must execute sequences of coordinated action across team members that increases the likelihood of future opportunities. We have developed a hierarchical architecture, called STP, to control an autonomous team of robots operating in an adversarial environment.
Robot-assisted Surgery Appears Useful For Removal Of Some Head And Neck Tumors
Robot-assisted surgery appears feasible for treatment of selected head and neck cancers, according to a new article.
Companion Robots To Improve Elderly People’s Quality Of Life In Smart Homes
Researchers aim to enhance the quality of life of elderly and disabled persons by designing robotized solutions for intelligent homes.
Researchers Develop World's First Flying Microrobot For Microscale Applications
A Canadian engineering research team has developed the world's first flying microrobot capable of manipulating objects for microscale applications. The microrobot discovery provides researchers with more control over the microscale environment, allowing them to move and place tiny objects with far greater precision. The microscale deals with tiny objects, at levels that are too small to be manipulated by humans.
