Gyros, Autos, & Robots

Gyroscopes steady shaky hands

Early stage testing of a “helping hand” aimed at Parkinson’s patients “demonstrates significant reduction of tremors of over 80%,” reports Gyrogear.

The startup is using gyroscopes to make the GyroGlove, “a small, lightweight stability device that fits on the back of the hand., the company says. “It locks easily in place, and integrates intelligent functionality. With its minimal harness, we foresee hours of unobtrusive daily use, indoors and outdoors.”

Technology Review has more on the development here.

U.S. to spend $4 Billion automating autos

Will driverless cars curb fatalities and ease traffic on our roads? I sure hope so…

Now the Obama administration will propose spending nearly $4 billion over 10 years to speed adoption of driverless cars, the WS Journal reports. The proposal “aims to have federal regulators work with auto makers and others to craft policies and rules for vehicles that can move without a driver at the wheel.”

Auto makers would prefer a national “road map” for autonomous vehicles rather than a state-by-state patchwork of rules, the Journal adds.

Here is the full article.

Roving robot to repair roads

Additive manufacturing today is generally confined to a small printer housing in which plastic items are produced layer by layer. But the technology can also be freed from the printer and set out on the road — where it can fill potholes in our streets.

Robotics and 3D printing startup Addibots is based in the Hudson Valley of New York, and says it’s aimed at “Making the world a workspace.” I think it needs to work on a better slogan as that’s hardly appealing, but nonetheless can see the advantage of automating some common repair tasks. (I live in the mountains where I have to regularly dodge potholes.)

The 3D-printing robot can either steer itself or be remotely controlled.

It’s admittedly not ready for primetime yet: the inventor is still grappling with “how an Addibot would lay down tar to fix damaged asphalt,” Popular Science reports.

Here is the full article.

Cars can see better with solid-state LIDAR

80 percent of transportation accidents are avoidable with affordable LiDAR sensors, claims the developer of a new solid-state system that has no moving parts and may sell for $250 or less.

Sunnyvale, CA-based Quanergy says it’s developing sensing solutions for real-time 3D mapping and object detection, tracking, and classification that may “enable broad deployment of advanced driver assistance systems and autonomous driving systems.”

The laser-based time-of-flight sensors can provide passenger vehicles “robust and intelligent real-time 3D mapping solutions that work day and night, rain or shine, while performing object detection, tracking, identification, and classification.”

The sensors feature 360-degree field of view, a few-hundred-meter range, centimeter accuracy, 30 Hz scanning frequency, 0.1° angular resolution, a high dynamic range under various weather conditions, and unmatched reliability, the company claims.

Spectrum has more here.

Faster 3D: Mobiles map buildings

New software creates models of entire buildings, and “generates 3D maps in real time,” reports the ETH Zurich university.

The optical method uses triangulation to compare multiple images captured by a tablet’s camera with an added fisheye lens. “For each piece of image information, each pixel in an image, it searches for the corresponding element in the other,” the school says. “From these two points and from the camera’s known position and viewing angle, the software can determine how far each picture element is from the device and can use this information to generate a 3D model of the object.”

The software was developed for Google’s Project Tango mobile device.

Here is the full article.

Moving amorphous robots

NASA patented a new type of amorphous robot “that could one day slither and roll around other planets,” TechCrunch reports.

NASA’s patent notes that the amorphous robots are designed to move along a solid surface without the use of conventional wheels, tracks, or legs. Amorphous robots can passively change their shape. They’re less susceptible to damage from small particles as they’re all-but enclosed — amorphous robots wouldn’t have any external moving parts or a rigid shape. Some of the designs are analogous to amoebas and inchworms, and would move via circulating fluid within the structure, switching polarity of enclosed electromagnets, or inflating or deflating part of the structure.

Here is the full article.

Sensitive robot skin

Flexible touch sensors store tactile information, and may function as sensitive skin for future robots.

Developed at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, the sensors work like human haptic memory, New Scientist reports, “which can store impressions of touch sensations in the brain after the stimulus has stopped.”

The sensors could store information to help robots recognize their environment and moderate their grip strength to pick up different things, and to be delicate to avoid damaging things like fruit.

Here is the full article.

Nanoparticles fight antibiotic-resistant bugs

Drug-resistant bacteria can be combatted with adaptive, light-activated nano-therapy, report researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder.

The “new light-activated therapeutic nanoparticles” known as quantum dots are about 20,000 times smaller than a human hair, and successfully killed 92 percent of drug-resistant bacterial cells in a lab-grown culture, the Univeristy says. The quantum dots can be also tailored to particular infections thanks to their light-activated properties. The dots remain inactive in darkness, but can be activated on command by exposing them to light, allowing researchers to modify the wavelength in order to alter and kill the infected cells.

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria such as Salmonella, E. Coli and Staphylococcus infect some 2 million people and kill at least 23,000 people in the United States each year, the school notes.

Here is the full article.

Robot arms clean up damaged nuke plant

Toshiba will use a gigantic remote-control crane device to remove fuel-rod assemblies from a reactor at the Fukushima nuclear plant, which was crippled in 2011.

Japan Times reports the crane consists of two robotic arms that can pick up and cut debris, another arm to grab the assemblies, and multiple cameras.

Tokyo Electric Power has said that although it is working to reduce the radiation level inside the reactor 3 building, it remains impossible for humans to safely monitor the removal of the fuel-rod assemblies, the Times adds.

Here is the full article.

Pills sense gas in the gut

Gas-sensing pills can send data from inside the gut, helping diagnose colon cancer, irritable bowel syndrome and inflammatory bowel disease.

RMIT University in Australia reports its smart pills “allow us to identify precisely where the gases are produced and help us understand the microbial activity in these areas. It’s the first step in demolishing the myths of food effects on our body and replacing those myths with hard facts.”

Here is the report.

Spectrum has more information here.