Humanoid Robot Helps Train Children with Autism
Vanderbilt researchers develop a humanoid robotic system to help teach autistic children to coordinate their attention with objects and other people in their environment.
Lessons From Cockroaches Could Inform Robotics
New insight obtained by studying the gait of cockroaches could provide valuable information on how biological systems stabilize. The research could help to develop more stable robots and provide doctors with better understanding on human gait abnormalities.
Researchers Build Robotic Bat Wing
Building a robotic bat wing, researchers have uncovered flight secrets of real bats: the function of ligaments, the elasticity of skin, the structural support of musculature, skeletal flexibility, upstroke and downstroke.
Neuroprosthesis Gives Rats the Ability to ‘Touch’ Infrared Light
Researchers have given rats the ability to “touch” infrared light by fitting them with an infrared detector wired to microscopic electrodes implanted in the part of the mammalian brain that processes tactile information. The study demonstrated that a novel sensory input could be processed by a cortical region specialized in another sense without “hijacking” the function of this brain area.
Researchers Describe Technology that Lets Spinal Cord Injured Man Control Robot Arm with Thoughts
Researchers describe how an electrode array sitting on top of the brain enabled a 30-year-old paralyzed man to control the movement of a character on a computer screen in three dimensions with just his thoughts. It also enabled him to move a robot arm to touch a friend’s hand for the first time in the seven years.
Insect Drives Robot to Track Down Smells
In a new study, a small, two-wheeled robot was driven by a male silkmoth to track down the sex pheromone usually given off by a female mate.
Musical Glove Improves Sensation, Mobility for People with Spinal Cord Injury
Georgia Tech researchers have created a wireless, musical glove that may improve sensation and motor skills for people with paralyzing spinal cord injury (SCI).
Robots Get a Feel for the World
Robots equipped with tactile sensor able to identify materials through touch, paving the way for more useful prostheses. What does a robot feel when it touches something? Little or nothing until now. But with the right sensors, actuators and software, robots can be given the sense of feel, or at least the ability to identify [...]
Pavlov’s Electronic Dog
Nanotechnology scientists and memory researchers at the Kiel University redesigned a mental learning process using electronic circuits. The bell rings and the dog starts drooling. Such a reaction was part of studies performed by Ivan Pavlov, a famous Russian psychologist and physiologist and winner of the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine in 1904. His [...]
Robot Reveals the Inner Workings of Brain Cells – Robotic Whole-Cell Patch Clamping
New method offers automated way to record electrical activity inside neurons in the living brain. Gaining access to the inner workings of a neuron in the living brain offers a wealth of useful information: its patterns of electrical activity, its shape, even a profile of which genes are turned on at a given moment. However, [...]
