In a reverse of the usual order, a simple analog robot designed by a US
engineer has gone on sale in Taiwan. Its gait mimics human gait. Japanese
researchers have also refined bipedal
robot gait to look more human, and NASA is funding a robot with “a spookily
human gait,” to clamber over rocks and
mountains on Mars and — why not? — on Earth as well.

Spookily human robot brains are also on the way. An artificial cerebellum could be the
first component of a powerful analog brain for robots, mimicking the way the
human brain works; and new research suggests that the machine learning algorithms designed
to help robots learn from experience turn out to mimic the natural algorithms
that help humans learn from experience.

On the other hand, a spookily robotic pair of
trousers — an exoskeleton — is available to turn Wo/Man into Superwo/man.
It is hardly surprising that the Japanese appear to be ahead of the world in
miniaturizing the components and commercializing the idea of exoskeletons.

A case of the worms
might be just what the doctor ordered, provided they are robotic. They and
digital-hormone-driven
shape-shifting robots are on a roll, slither, or scurry, and massing to the beat of the Pentagon’s
drum.

A new robotic laboratory at
Cambridge University is another sign of European leadership in stem cell therapy
research.

Toshiba and Keio University have jointly developed a 3 mm diameter robotic forceps for delicate
abdominal, heart, and brain procedures.

Robovie-M is a diminutive walking robot sold in kit form for US$3,800.
It takes a lot of patience to build. It does not do the sophisticated things
more expensive robots do — such as guard a home or turn on appliances or
conduct the Tokyo Philharmonic — and it does not look very prepossessing. But,
says Yuri Kageyama of the Associated Press, “its movements are dazzling to
watch.” The movements have to be pre-programmed or can be controlled via
joystick. Especially impressive is its ability to throw a ball, pivoting on one
leg like a baseball pitcher.

Reference: Kageyama, Yuri (2004). “Review:
Robot Is Speechless but Agile.” AP via Mercury News, June 8.

Reference: Kageyama, Yuri (2004). “Robovie-M
is one for the robo-hobbyists.” AP via Mercury News, June 9.

Another Cheap Robot

Taiwan is the first Asian country to sell a diminutive humanoid robot
designed by an American former engineer at NASA, DARPA, and the Los Alamos
National Laboratory. Robosapien uses sensors plus simple analog control
circuits instead of microprocessors to perform complex tasks.

Reference: Ping Wei (2004). “Robosapien
enters local market.” China Post, June 10.

Another Humanoid

The first bipedal robot “that doesn’t walk like it has a bad back” is how
Engadget‘s Gareth Edwards describes Chroino, progeny of Kyoto
University’s “Robo Garage.” Each leg straightens as it makes contact with the
ground, instead of remaining bent like Honda’s Asimo and Sony’s
Qrio.

Reference: Edwards, Gareth (2004). “A robot that doesn’t walk
like an old man.” Engadget.com, June 9.

Robot Rock Climber

Another prototype robot with “a spookily human gait” is Lemur, jointly
developed at Stanford University and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL),
with a view to improving robotic exploration of the planets and moons. The
robots could also be used in search and rescue operations on Earth.

The gait in question is not walking, however — it is rock-climbing.
Lemur “can already follow a human climber up an irregular surface without
any guidance from a controller,” reports Will Knight in New Scientist.
Lemur has a central body and four triple-jointed limbs each with a claw
to hook into a foothold as it climbs.

For now, the robot navigates using a computer model of the wall to work out
an ideal route, but eventually it will have video cameras and touch sensors
enabling it to figure out a route without a map. Its computer brain performs
very complex calculations sometimes taking minutes between each movement of a
limb, but the processing speed is expected to increase to the point where the
robot can “scamper” up rocks and mountains.

Future versions will sport grippers rather than claws, more limb joints for a
greater range of movement, and intelligence to react if it loses its grip.

Reference: Knight, Will (2004). “Robotic
rock-climber takes its first steps.” New Scientist, June 4.

Brain Circuits

With US Navy support, American and Russian scientists are developing a
“cerebellum-on-a-chip” to control robot vehicles with speed and precision. The
devices mimic the olivocerebellar circuit, which controls balance and limb
movement, reports Charles Choi for United Press International.

Unlike the digital circuits of standard robot “brains,” the animal nervous
system is analog and its sensory and motor systems are tied intimately together.
Analog circuits control complicated systems faster, smaller and with less
complexity than digital systems. “Instead of a whole lot of computations by a
whole lot of elements, a few elements can work alone very, very fast,” as one
researcher explained it to Choi.

Though intended initially for military robotics purposes, the device will
have much wider application potential, including service robots capable of
helping (say) paralyzed patients by getting a glass of water,
dressing/undressing them, and transferring them to a wheel chair. Digital
technologies are not up to such complex tasks.

The controller is being tested this Summer to help an undersea autonomous
research vehicle maneuver itself in and out of a docking tube. If it passes the
tests, it “could become operational in the near term,” though “many challenges
remain.

Reference: Choi, Charles (2004). “Brain-mimicking
circuits to run navy robot.” United Press International, June 7.

Human, Robot Brains Similar

University College London researchers used a functional MRI scanner to study
the brain activity of subjects as they were shown arbitrary images, of which
certain combinations were followed by a painful electric shock to the back of
the hand. Before long, subjects were able subconsciously to predict what
arrangements would result in a shock, and certain regions of their brains — the
insula cortex, which helps process emotions, and the ventral striatum, known as
the brain’s motivation Center — “lit up,” reports Tanguy Chouard in
Nature. “This is the first time,” he writes, that those areas “have been
implicated in the ability to learn good from bad.

But apparently the study held even deeper significance. When plotted and
reduced to mathematical formulae, the human brain activity underlying the
formation of value judgments showed, said one of the researchers, “an almost
perfect match between the brain signals and the numerical functions used in
machine learning” — the artificial intelligence subdiscipline applied to
robots, to help them learn from experience.

Reference: Chouard, Tanguy (2004). “Brain learns like a robot:
Scan shows how we form opinions.” Nature, June 10.

US Exoskeleton

With US Department of Defense funding, a Utah company has built a prototype
lower-body robotic exoskeleton enabling a wearer to carry heavy loads
effortlessly. Each leg has powered joints at the hip, knee, and ankle and about
20 sensors, all coordinated by an onboard PC in a backpack attached to the
frame. A portable gasoline engine generates hydraulic power for the prototype,
but the company is working on a smaller, more efficient power source for its
next-generation exoskeleton, which will also be lighter, stronger, and more user
friendly.

A 90-kilogram load feels like nothing, the company’s CEO told Gregory Huang,
whose article in Technology Review describes how the exoskeleton was
built, and has excellent photographs that really bring to life just how real
this technology is.

Reference: Huang, Gregory T. (2004). “Robotics
inventor Stephen Jacobsen demonstrates an exoskeleton that provides superhuman
strength.” Technology Review, July/August.

Japanese Exoskeleton

A professor at Tsukuba University in Japan plans to commercialize a “Robot
Suit” designed to help people with weakened leg muscles to walk smoothly. The
exoskeleton detects electric currents produced when people move their leg
muscles, and activates motors installed at the waist and knee to help the user
move their his or her legs more smoothly. A future version will allow the user
to “run as fast as Olympic athletes,” says the i4u article.

Reference: Unknown (2004). “Robot Suits.” I4U News, June 17.

Biomimetics

Futurist Robert Mittman, writing in iHealthBeat, describes several
biomechanical inventions that mimic the movements of animals and insects. They
include an endoscope, modeled on the ragworm, that will “guide itself around the
human body without the discomfort of endoscopy procedures.

Reference: Mittman, Robert (2004).
“Biomimetics-Mimicking Nature’s Technological Genius.” iHealthBeat, June 2.
(Email subscription newsletter)

Hormonal Robots

“If it sees a hole in the wall or a pipe, it can become a snake, go through
the pipe. If it needs to climb on stairs … it can literally grow legs. Or if
the terrain is downhill, it can become a ball and roll down,” a University of
Southern California computer scientist told Tom Siegfried of the Dallas
Morning News.

What is it? — It’s a shape-changing robot endowed with the electronic
equivalent of human hormones that “[cause] its parts to respond in new ways to
the circumstances responsible for the hormone surge,” says Siegfried. Prototypes
of the modules of which such robots would be constructed are under development.
“Each module, small enough to hold in your hand, is a self-contained computer
complete with battery, motor, connectors and wireless sensors. Modules can be
connected in different arrangements into a line like a snake, for example, or in
an insectlike form with six ‘legs.'”

The modules send “hormonal” signals to one another via infrared sensors. Each
can figure out where it is in relation to the others, so it knows “whether it is
at the head or tail of a snake, for instance, or in the middle of an insect’s
body,” and its response to digital hormones depends on that knowledge. “A
signal, the same signal, is flooded into the whole body, yet each component of
the body will decide what to do based on where they are in the body,” the
scientist said. “What to do” basically means “where to go” — to go to the “end”
of the robot, helping form the tail of a snake, or to help form a limb.

Since there is no central brain, cutting the robot in half simply leaves two
functioning, but smaller, robots. Cut off just the “head” module, and the next
module assumes the duties of “head.”

Reconfigurable robots will have many applications in disasters, exploration,
and construction.

Reference: Siegfried, Tom (2004). “Robot
Hormones Could Make Humans Jealous.” Dallas Morning News, June 1.

Swarms on the Move

The company that makes the Roomba robot vacuum is working on the robotic
equivalent of “a bunch of robots [which] act like ants . . . that . . . really
like land mines,” one its scientists told Fortune‘s Stuart Brown. The
company’s “Software for Distributed Robots” project is funded by the US Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency.

The robots themselves, called SwarmBots, are five inch cubes each
housing rechargeable batteries, two electric motors, and a microprocessor. They
have collision avoidance sensors, a camera for simple object recognition, light
sensors, and infrared transceivers for line-of-sight communications.

The computer code that runs each robot is only 60 Kbytes, yet it can
effectively control a swarm of 10,000 bots. As they swarm over an area to be
explored, they continually relocate to keep themselves equidistant, and “When
it’s time to return home, some robots nominate themselves to be landmarks, or
‘bread crumbs,’ that wait at corners until the followers catch up,” writes
Brown, who watched a demonstration. “Once the last moving robot passes a
landmark robot, the stationary one abandons its post and follows the gang home
for a bracing charge of electricity.”

Reference: Brown, Stuart F. (2004). “Send In
the Swarm.” Fortune, June 1.

Automated Stem Cell Research

A planned GB�16.5 million robotic laboratory at Cambridge University will
process human embryonic stem cells into insulin-producing islet cells and
dopamine-producing nerve cells, to treat diabetes and Parkinson’s disease
respectively.

Reference: Highfield, Roger (2004). “Robots
to lead stem cell research.” Daily Telegraph, June 21.

Robotic Forceps

Toshiba and Keio University have jointly developed a 3 mm diameter robotic
forceps for abdominal, heart, and brain procedures. It appears that it is a
prototype and that further development is planned.

Reference: Tsukioka, Aki (2004). “Toshiba, Keio University
Jointly Develop World’s Smallest Robotic Forceps for Endoscopic Surgery.”
JCNN, June 18.