Tag Archives: family

#431862 Want Self-Healing Robots and Tires? ...

We all have scars, and each one tells a story. Tales of tomfoolery, tales of haphazardness, or in my case, tales of stupidity.
Whether the cause of your scar was a push-bike accident, a lack of concentration while cutting onions, or simply the byproduct of an active lifestyle, the experience was likely extremely painful and distressing. Not to mention the long and vexatious recovery period, stretching out for weeks and months after the actual event!
Cast your minds back to that time. How you longed for instant relief from your discomfort! How you longed to have your capabilities restored in an instant!
Well, materials that can heal themselves in an instant may not be far from becoming a reality—and a family of them known as elastomers holds the key.
“Elastomer” is essentially a big, fancy word for rubber. However, elastomers have one unique property—they are capable of returning to their original form after being vigorously stretched and deformed.
This unique property of elastomers has caught the eye of many scientists around the world, particularly those working in the field of robotics. The reason? Elastomer can be encouraged to return to its original shape, in many cases by simply applying heat. The implication of this is the quick and cost-effective repair of “wounds”—cuts, tears, and punctures to the soft, elastomer-based appendages of a robot’s exoskeleton.

Researchers from Vrije University in Brussels, Belgium have been toying with the technique, and with remarkable success. The team built a robotic hand with fingers made of a type of elastomer. They found that cuts and punctures were indeed able to repair themselves simply by applying heat to the affected area.
How long does the healing process take? In this instance, about a day. Now that’s a lot shorter than the weeks and months of recovery time we typically need for a flesh wound, during which we are unable to write, play the guitar, or do the dishes. If you consider the latter to be a bad thing…
However, it’s not the first time scientists have played around with elastomers and examined their self-healing properties. Another team of scientists, headed up by Cheng-Hui Li and Chao Wang, discovered another type of elastomer that exhibited autonomous self-healing properties. Just to help you picture this stuff, the material closely resembles animal muscle— strong, flexible, and elastic. With autogenetic restorative powers to boot.
Advancements in the world of self-healing elastomers, or rubbers, may also affect the lives of everyday motorists. Researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have developed a self-healing rubber material that could be used to make tires that repair their own punctures.
This time the mechanism of self-healing doesn’t involve heat. Rather, it is related to a physical phenomenon associated with the rubber’s unique structure. Normally, when a large enough stress is applied to a typical rubber, there is catastrophic failure at the focal point of that stress. The self-healing rubber the researchers created, on the other hand, distributes that same stress evenly over a network of “crazes”—which are like cracks connected by strands of fiber.
Here’s the interesting part. Not only does this unique physical characteristic of the rubber prevent catastrophic failure, it facilitates self-repair. According to Harvard researchers, when the stress is released, the material snaps back to its original form and the crazes heal.
This wonder material could be used in any number of rubber-based products.
Professor Jinrong Wu, of Sichuan University, China, and co-author of the study, happened to single out tires: “Imagine that we could use this material as one of the components to make a rubber tire… If you have a cut through the tire, this tire wouldn’t have to be replaced right away. Instead, it would self-heal while driving, enough to give you leeway to avoid dramatic damage,” said Wu.
So where to from here? Well, self-healing elastomers could have a number of different applications. According to the article published by Quartz, cited earlier, the material could be used on artificial limbs. Perhaps it will provide some measure of structural integrity without looking like a tattered mess after years of regular use.
Or perhaps a sort of elastomer-based hybrid skin is on the horizon. A skin in which wounds heal instantly. And recovery time, unlike your regular old human skin of yesteryear, is significantly slashed. Furthermore, this future skin might eliminate those little reminders we call scars.
For those with poor judgment skills, this spells an end to disquieting reminders of our own stupidity.
Image Credit: Vrije Universiteit Brussel / Prof. Dr. ir. Bram Vanderborght Continue reading

Posted in Human Robots

#431427 Why the Best Healthcare Hacks Are the ...

Technology has the potential to solve some of our most intractable healthcare problems. In fact, it’s already doing so, with inventions getting us closer to a medical Tricorder, and progress toward 3D printed organs, and AIs that can do point-of-care diagnosis.
No doubt these applications of cutting-edge tech will continue to push the needle on progress in medicine, diagnosis, and treatment. But what if some of the healthcare hacks we need most aren’t high-tech at all?
According to Dr. Darshak Sanghavi, this is exactly the case. In a talk at Singularity University’s Exponential Medicine last week, Sanghavi told the audience, “We often think in extremely complex ways, but I think a lot of the improvements in health at scale can be done in an analog way.”
Sanghavi is the chief medical officer and senior vice president of translation at OptumLabs, and was previously director of preventive and population health at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, where he oversaw the development of large pilot programs aimed at improving healthcare costs and quality.
“How can we improve health at scale, not for only a small number of people, but for entire populations?” Sanghavi asked. With programs that benefit a small group of people, he explained, what tends to happen is that the average health of a population improves, but the disparities across the group worsen.
“My mantra became, ‘The denominator is everybody,’” he said. He shared details of some low-tech but crucial fixes he believes could vastly benefit the US healthcare system.
1. Regulatory Hacking
Healthcare regulations are ultimately what drive many aspects of patient care, for better or worse. Worse because the mind-boggling complexity of regulations (exhibit A: the Affordable Care Act is reportedly about 20,000 pages long) can make it hard for people to get the care they need at a cost they can afford, but better because, as Sanghavi explained, tweaking these regulations in the right way can result in across-the-board improvements in a given population’s health.
An adjustment to Medicare hospitalization rules makes for a relevant example. The code was updated to state that if people who left the hospital were re-admitted within 30 days, that hospital had to pay a penalty. The result was hospitals taking more care to ensure patients were released not only in good health, but also with a solid understanding of what they had to do to take care of themselves going forward. “Here, arguably the writing of a few lines of regulatory code resulted in a remarkable decrease in 30-day re-admissions, and the savings of several billion dollars,” Sanghavi said.
2. Long-Term Focus
It’s easy to focus on healthcare hacks that have immediate, visible results—but what about fixes whose benefits take years to manifest? How can we motivate hospitals, regulators, and doctors to take action when they know they won’t see changes anytime soon?
“I call this the reality TV problem,” Sanghavi said. “Reality shows don’t really care about who’s the most talented recording artist—they care about getting the most viewers. That is exactly how we think about health care.”
Sanghavi’s team wanted to address this problem for heart attacks. They found they could reliably determine someone’s 10-year risk of having a heart attack based on a simple risk profile. Rather than monitoring patients’ cholesterol, blood pressure, weight, and other individual factors, the team took the average 10-year risk across entire provider panels, then made providers responsible for controlling those populations.
“Every percentage point you lower that risk, by hook or by crook, you get some people to stop smoking, you get some people on cholesterol medication. It’s patient-centered decision-making, and the provider then makes money. This is the world’s first predictive analytic model, at scale, that’s actually being paid for at scale,” he said.
3. Aligned Incentives
If hospitals are held accountable for the health of the communities they’re based in, those hospitals need to have the right incentives to follow through. “Hospitals have to spend money on community benefit, but linking that benefit to a meaningful population health metric can catalyze significant improvements,” Sanghavi said.
Darshak Sanghavi speaking at Singularity University’s 2017 Exponential Medicine Summit in San Diego, CA.
He used smoking cessation as an example. His team designed a program where hospitals were given a score (determined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) based on the smoking rate in the counties where they’re located, then given monetary incentives to improve their score. Improving their score, in turn, resulted in better health for their communities, which meant fewer patients to treat for smoking-related health problems.
4. Social Determinants of Health
Social determinants of health include factors like housing, income, family, and food security. The answer to getting people to pay attention to these factors at scale, and creating aligned incentives, Sanghavi said, is “Very simple. We just have to measure it to start with, and measure it universally.”
His team was behind a $157 million pilot program called Accountable Health Communities that went live this year. The program requires all Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries get screened for various social determinants of health. With all that data being collected, analysts can pinpoint local trends, then target funds to address the underlying problem, whether it’s job training, drug use, or nutritional education. “You’re then free to invest the dollars where they’re needed…this is how we can improve health at scale, with very simple changes in the incentive structures that are created,” he said.
5. ‘Securitizing’ Public Health
Sanghavi’s final point tied back to his discussion of aligning incentives. As misguided as it may seem, the reality is that financial incentives can make a huge difference in healthcare outcomes, from both a patient and a provider perspective.
Sanghavi’s team did an experiment in which they created outcome benchmarks for three major health problems that exist across geographically diverse areas: smoking, adolescent pregnancy, and binge drinking. The team proposed measuring the baseline of these issues then creating what they called a social impact bond. If communities were able to lower their frequency of these conditions by a given percent within a stated period of time, they’d get paid for it.
“What that did was essentially say, ‘you have a buyer for this outcome if you can achieve it,’” Sanghavi said. “And you can try to get there in any way you like.” The program is currently in CMS clearance.
AI and Robots Not Required
Using robots to perform surgery and artificial intelligence to diagnose disease will undoubtedly benefit doctors and patients around the US and the world. But Sanghavi’s talk made it clear that our healthcare system needs much more than this, and that improving population health on a large scale is really a low-tech project—one involving more regulatory and financial innovation than technological innovation.
“The things that get measured are the things that get changed,” he said. “If we choose the right outcomes to predict long-term benefit, and we pay for those outcomes, that’s the way to make progress.”
Image Credit: Wonderful Nature / Shutterstock.com Continue reading

Posted in Human Robots

#431175 Servosila introduces Mobile Robots ...

Servosila introduces a new member of the family of Servosila “Engineer” robots, a UGV called “Radio Engineer”. This new variant of the well-known backpack-transportable robot features a Software Defined Radio (SDR) payload module integrated into the robotic vehicle.

“Several of our key customers had asked us to enable an Electronic Warfare (EW) or Cognitive Radio applications in our robots”, – says a spokesman for the company, “By integrating a Software Defined Radio (SDR) module into our robotic platforms we cater to both requirements. Radio spectrum analysis, radio signal detection, jamming, and radio relay are important features for EOD robots such as ours. Servosila continues to serve the customers by pushing the boundaries of what their Servosila robots can do. Our partners in the research world and academia shall also greatly benefit from the new functionality that gives them more means of achieving their research goals.”
Photo Credit: Servosila – www.servosila.com
Coupling a programmable mobile robot with a software-defined radio creates a powerful platform for developing innovative applications that mix mobility and artificial intelligence with modern radio technologies. The new robotic radio applications include localized frequency hopping pattern analysis, OFDM waveform recognition, outdoor signal triangulation, cognitive mesh networking, automatic area search for radio emitters, passive or active mobile robotic radars, mobile base stations, mobile radio scanners, and many others.

A rotating head of the robot with mounts for external antennae acts as a pan-and-tilt device thus enabling various scanning and tracking applications. The neck of the robotic head is equipped with a pair of highly accurate Servosila-made servos with a pointing precision of 3.0 angular minutes. This means that the robot can point its antennae with an unprecedented accuracy.

Researchers and academia can benefit from the platform’s support for GnuRadio, an open source software framework for developing SDR applications. An on-board Intel i7 computer capable of executing OpenCL code, is internally connected to the SDR payload module. This makes it possible to execute most existing GnuRadio applications directly on the robot’s on-board computer. Other sensors of the robot such as a GPS sensor, an IMU or a thermal vision camera contribute into sensor fusion algorithms.

Since Servosila “Engineer” mobile robots are primarily designed for outdoor use, the SDR module is fully enclosed into a hardened body of the robot which provides protection in case of dust, rain, snow or impacts with obstacles while the robot is on the move. The robot and its SDR payload module are both powered by an on-board battery thus making the entire robotic radio platform independent of external power supplies.

Servosila plans to start shipping the SDR-equipped robots to international customers in October, 2017.

Web: https://www.servosila.com
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/servosila/videos

About the Company
Servosila is a robotics technology company that designs, produces and markets a range of mobile robots, robotic arms, servo drives, harmonic reduction gears, robotic control systems as well as software packages that make the robots intelligent. Servosila provides consulting, training and operations support services to various customers around the world. The company markets its products and services directly or through a network of partners who provide tailored and localized services that meet specific procurement, support or operational needs.
Press Release above is by: Servosila
The post Servosila introduces Mobile Robots equipped with Software Defined Radio (SDR) payloads appeared first on Roboticmagazine. Continue reading

Posted in Human Robots

#431058 How to Make Your First Chatbot With the ...

You’re probably wondering what Game of Thrones has to do with chatbots and artificial intelligence. Before I explain this weird connection, I need to warn you that this article may contain some serious spoilers. Continue with your reading only if you are a passionate GoT follower, who watches new episodes immediately after they come out.
Why are chatbots so important anyway?
According to the study “When Will AI Exceed Human Performance?,” researchers believe there is a 50% chance artificial intelligence could take over all human jobs by around the year 2060. This technology has already replaced dozens of customer service and sales positions and helped businesses make substantial savings.
Apart from the obvious business advantages, chatbot creation can be fun. You can create an artificial personality with a strong attitude and a unique set of traits and flaws. It’s like creating a new character for your favorite TV show. That’s why I decided to explain the most important elements of the chatbot creation process by using the TV characters we all know and love (or hate).
Why Game of Thrones?
Game of Thrones is the most popular TV show in the world. More than 10 million viewers watched the seventh season premiere, and you have probably seen internet users fanatically discussing the series’ characters, storyline, and possible endings.
Apart from writing about chatbots, I’m also a GoT fanatic, and I will base this chatbot on one of the characters from my favorite series. But before you find out the name of my bot, you should read a few lines about incredible free tools that allow us to build chatbots without coding.
Are chatbots expensive?
Today, you can create a chatbot even if you don’t know how to code. Most chatbot building platforms offer at least one free plan that allows you to use basic functionalities, create your bot, deploy it to Facebook Messenger, and analyze its performance. Free plans usually allow your bot to talk to a limited number of users.
Why should you personalize your bot?
Every platform will ask you to write a bot’s name before you start designing conversations. You will also be able to add the bot’s photograph and bio. Personalizing your bot is the only way to ensure that you will stick to the same personality and storyline throughout the building process. Users often see chatbots as people, and by giving your bot an identity, you will make sure that it doesn’t sound like it has multiple personality disorder.
I think connecting my chatbot with a GoT character will help readers understand the process of chatbot creation.
And the name of our GoT chatbot is…
…Cersei. She is mean, pragmatic, and fearless and she would do anything to stay on the Iron Throne. Many people would rather hang out with Daenerys or Jon Snow. These characters are honest, noble and good-hearted, which means their actions are often predictable.
Cersei, on the other hand, is the queen of intrigues. As the meanest and the most vengeful character in the series, she has an evil plan for everybody who steps on her toes. While viewers can easily guess where Jon and Daenerys stand, there are dozens of questions they would like to ask Cersei. But before we start talking to our bot, we need to build her personality by using the most basic elements of chatbot interaction.
Choosing the bot’s name on Botsify.
Welcome / Greeting Message
The welcome message is the greeting Cersei says to every commoner who clicks on the ‘start conversation’ button. She is not a welcoming person (ask Sansa), except if you are a banker from Braavos. Her introductory message may sound something like this:
“Dear {{user_full_name}}, My name is Cersei of the House Lannister, the First of Her Name, Queen of the Andals and the First Men, Protector of the Seven Kingdoms. You can ask me questions, and I will answer them. If the question is not worth answering, I will redirect you to Ser Gregor Clegane, who will give you a step-by-step course on how to talk to the Queen of Westeros.”
Creating the welcome message on Chatfuel
Default Message / Answer
In the bot game, users, bots, and their creators often need to learn from failed attempts and mistakes. The default message is the text Cersei will send whenever you ask her a question she doesn’t understand. Knowing Cersei, it would sound something like this:
“Ser Gregor, please escort {{user_full_name}} to the dungeon.”
Creating default message on Botsify
Menu
To avoid calling out the Mountain every time someone asks her a question, Cersei might give you a few (safe) options to choose. The best way to do this is by using a menu function. We can classify the questions people want to ask Cersei in several different categories:

Iron Throne
Relationship with Jaime — OK, this isn’t a “safe option,” get ready to get close and personal with Sir Gregor Clegane.
War plans
Euron Greyjoy

After users choose a menu item, Cersei can give them a default response on the topic or set up a plot that will make their lives miserable. Knowing Cersei, she will probably go for the second option.
Adding chatbot menu on Botsify
Stories / Blocks
This feature allows us to build a longer Cersei-to-user interaction. The structure of stories and blocks is different on every chatbot platform, but most of them use keywords and phrases for finding out the user’s intention.

Keywords — where the bot recognizes a certain keyword within the user’s reply. Users who have chosen the ‘war plans’ option might ask Cersei how is she planning to defeat Daenerys’s dragons. We can add ‘dragon’ and ‘dragons’ as keywords, and connect them with an answer that will sound something like this:

“Dragons are not invulnerable as you may think. Maester Qyburn is developing a weapon that will bring them down for good!”
Adding keywords on Chatfuel
People may also ask her about White Walkers. Do you plan to join Daenerys and Jon Snow in a fight against White Walkers? After we add ‘White Walker’ and ‘White Walkers’ on the keyword list, Cersei will answer:
“White Walkers? Do you think the Queen of Westeros has enough free time to think about creatures from fairy tales and legends?”
Adding Keywords on Botsify

Phrases — are more complex syntaxes that the bot can be trained to recognize. Many people would like to ask Cersei if she’s going to marry Euron Greyjoy after the war ends. We can add ‘Euron’ as a keyword, but then we won’t be sure what answer the user is expecting. Instead, we can use the phrase ‘(Will you) marry Euron Greyjoy (after the war?)’. Just to be sure, we should also add a few alternative phrases like ‘(Do you plan on) marrying Euron Greyjoy (after the war),’ ‘(Will you) end up with Euron Greyjoy (after the war?)’, ‘(Will) Euron Greyjoy be the new King?’ etc. Cersei would probably answer this inquiry in her style:

“Of course not, Euron is a useful idiot. I will use his fleet and send him back to the Iron Islands, where he belongs.”
Adding phrases on Botsify
Forms
We have already asked Cersei several questions, and now she would like to ask us something. She can do so by using the form/user input feature. Most tools allow us to add a question and the criteria for checking the users’ answer. If the user provides us the answer that is compliant to the predefined form (like email address, phone number, or a ZIP code), the bot will identify and extract the answer. If the answer doesn’t fit into the predefined criteria, the bot will notify the user and ask him/her to try again.
If Cersei would ask you a question, she would probably want to know your address so she could send her guards to fill your basement with barrels of wildfire.
Creating forms on Botsify
Templates
If you have problems building your first chatbot, templates can help you create the basic conversation structure. Unfortunately, not all platforms offer this feature for free. Snatchbot currently has the most comprehensive list of free templates. There you can choose a pre-built layout. The template selection ranges from simple FAQ bots to ones created for a specific industry, like banking, airline, healthcare, or e-commerce.
Choosing templates on Snatchbot
Plugins
Most tools also provide plugins that can be used for making the conversations more meaningful. These plugins allow Cersei to send images, audio and video files. She can unleash her creativity and make you suffer by sending you her favorite GoT execution videos.

With the help of integrations, Cersei can talk to you on Facebook Messenger, Telegram, WeChat, Slack, and many other communication apps. She can also sell her fan gear and ask you for donations by integrating in-bot payments from PayPal accounts. Her sales pitch will probably sound something like this:
“Gold wins wars! Would you rather invest your funds in a member of a respected family, who always pays her debts, or in the chaotic war endeavor of a crazy revolutionary, whose strength lies in three flying lizards? If your pockets are full of gold, you are already on my side. Now you can complete your checkout on PayPal.”
Chatbot building is now easier than ever, and even small businesses are starting to use the incredible benefits of artificial intelligence. If you still don’t believe that chatbots can replace customer service representatives, I suggest you try to develop a bot based on your favorite TV show, movie or book character and talk with him/her for a while. This way, you will be able to understand the concept that stands behind this amazing technology and use it to improve your business.
Now I’m off to talk to Cersei. Maybe she will feed me some Season 8 spoilers.
This article was originally published by Chatbots Magazine. Read the original post here.
Image credits for screenshots in post: Branislav Srdanovic
Banner stock media provided by new_vision_studio / Pond5 Continue reading

Posted in Human Robots

#430955 This Inspiring Teenager Wants to Save ...

It’s not every day you meet a high school student who’s been building functional robots since age 10. Then again, Mihir Garimella is definitely not your average teenager.
When I sat down to interview him recently at Singularity University’s Global Summit, that much was clear.
Mihir’s curiosity for robotics began at age two when his parents brought home a pet dog—well, a robotic dog. A few years passed with this robotic companion by his side, and Mihir became fascinated with how software and hardware could bring inanimate objects to “life.”
When he was 10, Mihir built a robotic violin tuner called Robo-Mozart to help him address a teacher’s complaints about his always-out-of-tune violin. The robot analyzes the sound of the violin, determines which strings are out of tune, and then uses motors to turn the tuning pegs.
Robo-Mozart and other earlier projects helped Mihir realize he could use robotics to solve real problems. Fast-forward to age 14 and Flybot, a tiny, low-cost emergency response drone that won Mihir top honors in his age category at the 2015 Google Science Fair.

The small drone is propelled by four rotors and is designed to mimic how fruit flies can speedily see and react to surrounding threats. It’s a design idea that hit Mihir when he and his family returned home after a long vacation to discover they had left bananas on their kitchen counter. The house was filled with fruit flies.
After many failed attempts to swat the flies, Mihir started wondering how these tiny creatures with small brains and horrible vision were such masterful escape artists. He began digging through research papers on fruit flies and came to an interesting conclusion.
Since fruit flies can’t see a lot of detail, they compensate by processing visual information very fast—ten times faster than people do.
“That’s what enables them to escape so effectively,” says Mihir.
Escaping a threat for a fruit fly could mean quickly avoiding a fatal swat from a human hand. Applied to a search-and-response drone, the scenario shifts—picture a drone instantaneously detecting and avoiding a falling ceiling while searching for survivors inside a collapsing building.

Now, at 17, Mihir is still pushing Flybot forward. He’s developing software to enable the drone to operate autonomously and hopes it will be able to navigate environments such as a burning building, or a structure that’s been hit by an earthquake. The drone is also equipped with intelligent sensors to collect spatial data it will use to maneuver around obstacles and detect things like a trapped person or the location of a gas leak.
For everyone concerned about robots eating jobs, Flybot is a perfect example of how technology can aid existing jobs.
Flybot could substitute for a first responder entering a dangerous situation or help a firefighter make a quicker rescue by showing where victims are trapped. With its small and fast design, the drone could also presumably carry out an initial search-and-rescue sweep in just a few minutes.
Mihir is committed to commercializing the product and keeping it within a $250–$500 price range, which is a fraction of the cost of many current emergency response drones. He hopes the low cost will allow the technology to be used in developing countries.
Next month, Mihir starts his freshman year at Stanford, where he plans to keep up his research and create a company to continue work on the drone.
When I asked Mihir what fuels him, he said, “Curiosity is a great skill for inventors. It lets you find inspiration in a lot of places that you may not look. If I had started by trying to build an escape algorithm for these drones, I wouldn’t know where to start. But looking at fruit flies and getting inspired by them, it gave me a really good place to look for inspiration.”
It’s a bit mind boggling how much Mihir has accomplished by age 17, but I suspect he’s just getting started.
Image Credit: Google Science Fair via YouTube Continue reading

Posted in Human Robots