Random Accesses

A microscopic robot hand, made of silicon and plastic balloons, could help perform surgery and defuse bombs.

The "microhand" is so tiny that when clenched into a fist it measures a little over one millimeter across, or roughly as thick as a dime. It is made using silicon finger bones and balloons for joints that inflate and deflate to flex the fingers.

The microhand is gentle but strong enough to pluck a single delicate fish egg from a sticky egg mass (Video).

Source; http://www.livescience.com/technology/061023_microhand.html

A "swarm" of simple-minded robots that teams up to move an object too heavy for them to manage individually has been demonstrated by robotics researchers.

The robots cannot communicate and must act only on what they can see around them. They follow simple rules to fulfil their task - mimicking the way insects work together in a swarm.

A video shows the six Swarm-bot robots gradually transporting a object lit with red LEDs over to a large white target.

Source: http://www.newscientisttech.com/article/dn10319-robot-swarm-works-together-to-shift-heavy-objects.html

Robotic technology is advancing apace and now a top team of European scientists and engineers hope to make the leap from single function ‘dumb’ machines to adaptive learning machines.

The concept of a cognitive robotic companion inspires some of the best science fiction but one day may be science fact following the work of the four-year COGNIRON project funded since January 2004 by the IST’s Future and Emerging Technologies initiative.

Source: http://istresults.cordis.lu/popup.cfm?section=news&tpl=article&ID=82530&AutoPrint=True

The machinery of the human body is wonderfully complex, especially in its moving parts. That's why recreating it in metal and plastic is commonly thought to be the stuff of science fiction, androids and bionic men.

But professor Hugh Herr, director of the Biomechatronics Group at MIT's Media Lab, and his group are developing machines called ``bio-hybrids," surgical implants that make old prosthetics look like dead wood.

``The amputee can think, contract muscles, and directly control the artificial leg. It's a blend between the body and a synthetic device."

Source: http://www.boston.com/news/globe/health_science/articles/2006/06/12/he_can_build_them_better_faster_sexier/

BabyBot, a robot modelled on the torso of a two year-old child, is helping researchers take the first, tottering steps towards understanding human perception, and could lead to the development of machines that can perceive and interact with their environment.

The researchers used BabyBot to test a model of the human sense of 'presence', a combination of senses like sight, hearing and touch. The work could have enormous applications in robotics, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine perception. The research is being funded under the European Commission’s FET (Future and Emerging Technologies) initiative of the IST programme, as part of the ADAPT project.

Source:http://istresults.cordis.lu/index.cfm/section/news/tpl/article/BrowsingType/Features/ID/81616