Doc-Bots

Two areas in which medical robotics has been progressing for several years are rehabilitation and telepresence. I just learned about 2 systems which have demonstrated success in these types of applications. Manus is an arm rehab robot developed at MIT that interfaces with a VR-type game to prompt the patient to perform beneficial motions. It also incorporates adaptive constraint to help guide the patient's motion. I think this is a great use of robots doing what they do best - repetitive mechanical tasks.
The military has had a long-standing interest in medical telepresence. Apparently they are now using a robot called RP-7 to provide basic audio/video communication between patients and doctors. This allows specialists to provide their expertise (make rounds, etc.) even from a long distance away. Here's the thing though. The robot costs a quarter of a million dollars. Why don't they just put some fancy networking in all the hospital rooms and achieve the same thing rather than having a dumb robot wandering around the hospital? Now if the robot could do more than just facilitate communications, or if it were much less expensive, I might have a more positive opinion.
http://bmsmail3.ieee.org:80/u/13832/80596289
http://blogs.spectrum.ieee.org/riskfactor/2008/12/robot_use_in_military_hospital.html

Monkey Brains and Virtual Photons

In a new demonstration of the plasticity of the human brain, researchers have now shown that monkeys can quickly learn to redirect their brain activity to drive paralyzed muscles through a brain-computer interface. Cool stuff. Apparently you can do quite a bit with a single brain cell.
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/oct08/6908
I also just learned the theory behind the stiction effect in microdevices. Apparently virtual photons are constantly being formed everywhere, but they can only form in spaces larger than their wavelength. So when two surfaces are very close together, fewer photons are able to form, and this results in a "negative pressure" of photons in the gap, and the surfaces get sucked together. This sounds like a good premise for a nerdy party game.
http://spectrum.ieee.org/oct08/6799

Solar Smarts

I just read about a new solar power plant in Spain. They can run steam turbines through the night using stored energy in huge tanks of molten salts. This allows them to over-collect during the day (more energy than they can sell at a time) and then basically make tens of millions of dollars more each year by extending their operating hours. Nice.
http://spectrum.ieee.org/oct08/6851
One thing that jumped out at me was the difference in policy between Europe and the US. There seem to be much more consistent incentives in Europe to develop facilities that will truly meet people's needs. Rather than minimizing up-front investment, they are willing to build big if that is what will actually work the best. In the US, solar facilities with storage aren't as common. Mistake?

Plastic Digital Paper

Almost 10 years ago, I remember hearing about new organic polymer electronics, and I've been waiting for all the cool devices to appear. Finally now we are about to get digital paper (or plastic). I look forward to reading my e-books on a full-size page that I can fold or roll up or whatever.
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/sep08/6765

Beijing Olympics

We have had the TV on nonstop ever since the olympic games started. It sure is something to watch. I've been impressed by the amount of technology poured into making the games a successful attraction. The structure of the stadium is just gorgeous, and the Chinese have certainly made a nice marriage of engineering and aesthetics. There has also been a lot of effort put into designing modularity into the venues to extend their useful lifetime indefinitely. I think this is great engineering, as far as I can see on the surface. One other thing that I enjoy seeing on TV is the "robotic systems" that are being employed. It's fun to watch the underwater cameras that shuttle along the bottom of the pool and follow the swimmers. And it was brought to my attention recently (which I should have given more consideration before) that the Skycams used in the large stadiums all around the world are nothing other than a cable-suspended robot with a sophisticated control system. Brilliant stuff!

Music Technology

I have recently developed an interest in applications of computing technology to music. Not surprising since most engineering is done computationally these days and I have enjoyed music (performance, composition, theory, history, and OH YEAH listening) since I was a kid. So I perked up today when I saw two articles on this topic. One described a researcher in Japan who creates humanoid robots capable of playing instruments. This is quite a task since the robot has to both mimic human biomechanics and understand how to adjust so that the result is "good." The other article described a piece of software that Microsoft is developing which fits chord progressions to tunes. This is really cool since it does this probabilistically by mining a database of lead sheets. There is some really neat potential in this software, and the developers thankfully appear to have a fairly open mindset so that all user creativity doesn't end up squashed.
http://spectrum.ieee.org/jul08/6454
http://spectrum.ieee.org/jul08/6442

Commonality Between Tennis and Hospitals - Trusting in the Status Quo

I just read about a controversial call made by the HawkEye camera system at last year's Wimbledon. As a tennis fan, I immediately found this interesting. Apparently the system is accurate to within 3.6 mm on average. In the 2007 final between Nadal and Federer, a critical shot by Nadal was called out, and looked out on TV. However, Nadal requested HawkEye's opinion, and it turned out that the computer called in it by 1 mm. He was given the point. This seems ridiculous to me (and others) since the judgment was taken at face value (100% accurate) even though by its own specifications the computer's ruling was statistically inconclusive. I can't wait to watch this year's final! It seems like the computer should either say "it's in," "it's out," or "I don't know." Nobody questioned this until now?
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/jun08/6400

It turns out that medical professionals have also been going with the flow. Only recently did someone finally do a study indicating that RFID tags used to track medical devices can sometimes interfere with other life-critical equipment. Previously people assumed that they might but really didn't know if or how severely. Maybe some standardization of a "medical-class" RFID tag would help prevent this interference.
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/jun08/6405
On a related note, the Supreme Court has apparently indemnified class-III medical device manufacturers from liability for device failures once the FDA has approved them. Limits on liability ok; no liability not ok! Danger Will Robinson!
http://blogs.spectrum.ieee.org/riskfactor/2008/06/faulty_software_in_medical_dev.html

Rude Galactic Neighbors

I have had neighbors who play loud music, complain about the height of my grass, and do other less pleasant things, but none who are outright rude. Now it appears that the British are planning a "high-speed penetrator" project in which a payload of sensors and instruments would crash its way into various planets and send back information. This seems like a very rude thing to do from a "space neighbor" standpoint. I'm pretty sure that we wouldn't appreciate some other alien civilization lobbing pot-shots our way just to find out what kind of resources may be buried beneath our soil. It seems to me kind of a bootstrap approach: we're trying to look for signs of life on other planets, but in the process we're doing some pretty serious damage to anything that might be in the immediate vicinity of said sensors. Weird.
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/jun08/6345

Are Humans Just Smart Bugs?

Humans are all soft and gushy inside, and when it comes down to it, we're really not designed to take a lot of trauma. So some people have been inspired by nature to try to make us tougher, stronger, more (fill in the blank). One neat idea that has taken a long time in coming but that may be worth the wait is robotic exoskeletons. It appears that we may soon be able to work hard like an ant, for a price.
http://blogs.spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/2008/05/29/berkeley_bionics_accepting_orders_for_prototype_exoskeleton.html
When we watch ants filing along, ferrying food/resources back and forth to their colony, they seem pretty predictable. Food, home, food, home. Well, so are we.
http://staging.spectrum.ieee.org/jun08/6330
Maybe an understanding of just how like big smart bugs we are could help us fix some of society's problems, or at least engineer better solutions to them.

Maker Faire

I've never been to the Maker Faire, but I think I would love it. People take all their homemade engineering projects and show them off, and the list of stuff gets pretty high-tech actually. At the link below, you can find reference to robots, mechanical computers, and digital music-making, among other things. Sounds like my kind of people.
http://blogs.spectrum.ieee.org/cgi-bin/mt/mt-search.fcgi?tag=Maker%20Faire%202008&blog_id=2

Engineering and Autism

A few months ago, I attended a talk on uses of virtual reality. One that caught my attention was a computer game for teaching autistic children how to escape if their home were to catch fire. I think the idea is that one trait that some autistic individuals exhibit is a strong reliance on memorization or routine as opposed to what most people would consider independent reasoning or abstraction of information to new situations. This is certainly true of my son's early language abilities, although he continues to make good progress. I kind of had to laugh though - wouldn't it be more helpful if they came up with a VR application to teach these kids to dress themselves or use the bathroom properly or something with more everyday utility that many of them struggle with? I'm much less concerned about the house catching on fire than I am about timely achievement of basic life skills.
I just ran across a news article describing software for the diagnosis of autism. Often, getting a proper diagnosis can be difficult since autism is a spectral disorder with many different manifestations. So a young engineer in India has come up with a screening software that uses input from caregivers along with performance data from an AI gaming system used by the child in order to score the child's probability of falling on the autism spectrum. I thought this was pretty cool.
http://www.theinstitute.ieee.org/portal/site/tionline/menuitem.130a3558587d56e8fb2275875bac26c8/index.jsp?&pName=institute_level1_article&TheCat=1016&article=tionline/legacy/inst2008/may08/profile.xml&
They have also written a couple articles on the system, one entitled "Exploration of Autism using Artificial Intelligence Techniques" (Veeraraghavan & Srinivasan), available from IEEE.

Some Semiconductor Advances

I just read 2 interesting articles on semiconductor technology. This is about all the 2 articles had in common though.
Although I'm not fully versed in industrial engineering, there are a number of techniques typically taught in IE curricula that I have a fondness for due to their impact on design. The first article summarizes the effects of applying the Toyota Production System (TPS), a kind of common-sense philosophy for maufacturing, to a semiconductor facility. I like these types of solid design philosophies - they just resonate with me. One thing that is pointed out in the article is that tools (application) are not the same thing as the principles of the philosophy itself. For all the students out there, that translates roughly to "don't use an equation until you make sure the corresponding assumptions are valid." :)
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/may08/6179
The other thing I learned was that I need to redo all my notes for MECH 350 next semester. Apparently there is a 4th basic circuit element called a memristor - basically a resistor with varying resistance and memory of what its former resistance was. I sure would hate to be a EE and have to relearn everything. But apparently there are some cool applications for memristors that could make life nicer. Kudos to HP for discovering that this formerly theoretical element actually exists.
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/may08/6207
Quote of the week: apparently former president Bush recently said that the FIRST robotics program is like "the WWF, but for smart people." I like that. :)

Cheater!

I stumbled across a report yesterday on Nightline about a guy who is an aspiring Olympic runner. The catch - he doesn't have any feet. He uses special "Cheetah" prosthetic feet, which have a very high efficiency in transmitting the spring energy stored in them. You might have also seen one of these on a recent season of The Amazing Race. Unfortunately, whereas the human ankle is 88% efficient, the Cheetah foot is 91% efficient, so the Olympic officials have barred this guy from eligibility for using performance aids. I say just customize his feet to be a bit less efficient and let him run. He's obviously naturally fast and would be with natural feet or prosthetics. Anyone else with me on this?

Congrats

Congratulations are in order!
David successfully defended his PhD dissertation yesterday and will soon be known as Dr. Dave. And kudos to Mrs. Miller on her chocolate chip cookies.
Also, congratulations to Christy for the ongoing success of her fundraising efforts in behalf of Autism Speaks and Walk Now for Autism. There are still plenty of days left in Autism Awareness Month for those who want to help out. I'm looking forward to the big event May 24. (More details on Christy's blog.)
Oh yeah, and happy Earth Day. Congratulations to all those earth-lovers out there.

Biomimetics

This is a fascinating article on biomimetics and touches on some research already mentioned in a previous post.
Thanks to Chi Min for sending this article my way.
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/04/biomimetics/tom-mueller-text

Robot opinions, robotic telesurgery, and other good ideas

Dean Kamen is an interesting guy. I saw him the other day on the Colbert Report talking about his new filterless water purification system. I have some unanswered questions about that, but...
Here is some video of Kamen discussing his vision for robotics and some other things.
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/video?id=281

Speaking of robotics, how about robotic telesurgery? Cool stuff. Did you know that you can watch telesurgeries live? I just found this out.
http://blogs.spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/2008/03/25/robot_surgery_reassuring_or_scary.html

And in only marginally related news, the guy who invented the Supersoaker has come up with another good idea. This one is getting funded by NSF because it has the potential to basically double the efficiency of passive heat energy harvesting. It's kind of like a closed-system fuel cell with some engineering enhancements thrown in.
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/mar08/6079

From the world's first computer to high-rate haptics

Here are a couple of neat articles highlighting how far technology has come in the past 6-7 decades.
Incidentally, Dr. Okamura, mentioned in the first article, visited our lab at UNMC briefly several months ago and gave a very interesting talk at the HPER lab at UNO.
http://www.theinstitute.ieee.org/portal/site/tionline/menuitem.130a3558587d56e8fb2275875bac26c8/index.jsp?&pName=institute_level1_article&TheCat=2201&article=tionline/legacy/inst2008/mar08/featuretechnology.xml&
http://www.theinstitute.ieee.org/portal/site/tionline/menuitem.130a3558587d56e8fb2275875bac26c8/index.jsp?&pName=institute_level1_article&TheCat=1008&article=tionline/legacy/inst2008/mar08/history.xml&

Cool bionics/robotics stuff from IEEE

Here's an article on new nerve interfaces for prosthetic arms...
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/mar08/6069
...and a short video on topics including flying microrobots...
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/video?id=260
...and video of DARPA's Big Dog robot (you may have seen earlier video spoofed by Colbert).
http://blogs.spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/2008/03/17/scoop_new_video_of_bdis_big_do.html
Enjoy!