Robots- a new vision

That vaguely attractive androgynous face up there belongs toSocibot, a super-creepy robot that can wear any face at all – even your own. Meant to act as a humanoid interface at trade shows, airports, shopping centers, and other public settings, the Socibot takes over some of the tedious human interaction chores. It can even act as a physical stand-in during teleconferences.

                   

The robot – Socibot  is the larger floor model and Socibot-Mini is the tabletop version – has a fully articulated neck. The robot can read the emotions of the humans around it and respond appropriately, both with facial expressions and with body (or head, anyway) language. The ‘bot can even keep track of up to 12 people in a room at a time, even in a large crowd. We aren’t sure what practical purpose this would serve, but there has to be one, right? It can’t be just about the creepiness factor.

                  

The oddest thing about the Socibot, by far, is its ability to put on any face you wish. It can look like you, your friends, celebrities, or a generic computer-generated human face. An internal projector is used to change the robot’s visage as wanted. Some are pre-set and others can be programmed. When the ‘bot talks,its lips move in perfect synchronization with its virtual words, increasing the level of uncanny valley-type creepiness. The Socibot can scan a human’s face to determine his or her age based on facial lines. And if you have to get up and walk around for a bit, the Socibot’s eyes will follow you around.

              

Socibot is designed to be as user-friendly as possible, requiring little to no instruction for the general public who would be using the bot for information in a public place. It can understand simple gestures like waves and postures. Owners can program Socibot’s behaviors to determine how it interacts with crowds. The combination of changeable face and programmable behaviors make Socibot one of the most fascinating – yet still (not to beat a dead horse) super-creepy – modern robots.

Every second counts when someone is having a cardiac emergency. The time it takes for an ambulance to reach the patient can mean the difference between life and death. TU Delft graduate Alec Momont came up with a brilliant idea to avoid traffic when getting help to people who need it.

                  

The Ambulance Drone is an unmanned aerial vehicle with an on-board defibrillator. According to Momont, the drone can travel at speeds of up to 60 MPH to reach anyone in a 4.6 mile radius from its starting point within just one minute.

                 

In this scenario, survival rates for cardiac arrests could raise from a dismal eight percent (in the EU, according to the inventor) to 80 percent. The current high mortality rate can be mostly attributed to slow response times by emergency medical workers. The oxygen-deprived brain begins to experience permanent damage within four minutes, but emergency services take an average of 10 minutes to reach patients in need.

                

The three-armed, three-rotor drone design includes an automated external defibrillator (AED) secured within its body. When it arrives on scene, a bystander takes the equipment out to put it to work. The drone carries usage instructions which tell anyone on the scene how to use the equipment. Other versions of the drone could carry emergency medication or CPR aids.

Momont’s Ambulance Drone would carry a two-way video channel that would allow emergency responders to communicate with people on the scene. They could convey instructions, gather information, and assess the patient remotely.

Are these rather awkward-looking robots the key to exploring the outer reaches of our solar system? They could very well be the next step in space exploration as their light, nimble bodies would roll across the surface of distant destinations like robotic tumbleweed. The robots are made of rigid rods held together with tensile cables. This allows them to be flexible when needed but to retain their forms well enough to roll around and explore. More importantly, it will let the robots bounce to a landing on a planet without the need for expensive and heavy landing equipment.

            

The Super Ball Bot was created by NASA researchers Vytas SunSpiral, Adrian Agogino and colleagues at the Intelligent Systems Division of the NASA Ames Research Center. Its primary benefit is its extremely light weight, but the tumbleweed-like bot is also surprisingly robust. The unusual construction is nothing new; it’s known as a tensegrity structure and was first used in the 1940s, then later explored by Buckminster Fuller. In fact, tensegrity structures are even common in nature – the human spine is a good example. The defining feature is that there are no rigid connections between pieces.

             

This new class of robot is sturdy enough to survive a drop to the surface of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. NASA envisions dropping a fleet of the Super Ball Bots to the moon’s surface, all covered in a protective heat shield to keep them from burning up in the atmosphere. Because the gravity on Titan is about one-seventh of that on Earth, the bots would experience a relatively soft landing. Their joints are all able to contract and loosen thanks to a series of motors, sensors, and electronic control systems. This movement will help them steadily roll along Titan’s surface. From time to time, the bots would lower to the ground the scientific instruments suspended in the middle of their bodies to take samples and perform tests.

                 

Another benefit of the tensegrity structure is that if one or a few of the components break or fail, the others can still function as a unit. In space exploration, preparing for the worst is the name of the game – and in exploring all the way out there on Titan, you can either get it done the first time or send another mission and wait another three to six years for it to get there. The robots’ control systems will also be outfitted with evolutionary algorithms which will help them adapt to the environment on Titan and let them move around in the most efficient and effective ways possible. The researchers are working on getting their prototype ready for an outdoor rover test facility, but they say the technology has a long way to go before it can be used in an actual NASA mission.