KILLER robots will soon outnumber human soldiers by 10-to-one. But by when? A US army expert says just wait until 2023.

During a recent weapons test of armed robots in Georgia, weapons systems developer Scott Hartley declared: "ten years from now, there will probably be one soldier for every 10 robots. Each soldier could have one or five robots flanking him, looking for enemies, scanning for land mines."

The demonstration at Fort Bennington required robots to accurately shoot a heavy M240 machine gun at ranges of up to 800m.

Other weapons fired by the semi-intelligent machines included a grenade launcher and even a Javelin fire-and-forget anti-tank missile.

Hartley, of 5D robotics, assured reporters that the machines were not just killers. "Robots can save lives," he said.

Meanwhile, moves are afoot to counter the increase in intensity that robotic warfare entails.

New human body armour is being developed with the aim of greatly enhancing protection and mobility.

The inspiration?

Desktop 3D printers and fish scales.

The unusual "dragon fish", to be precise. The slender, spikey fish is regarded as having one of the sturdiest and most flexible forms of animal armour.

"We want to understand how the scales interact with each other to provide mobility, but then also how the scales, at a global level, provide structure, rigidity and flexibility at the same time,"an MIT researcher told LiveScience.

Called biomimic armour because it mimics nature, scientists hope to use 3D printing to copy more accurately the minute variations in the scales that allow them to be so strong and mobile.

The "dragon fish" which is the inspiration for a new form of body armour, inset above, manufactured by 3D printers. Source: Supplied

It is these minute differences in each scale that may enable armour to be tailored to the human shape and vulnerable areas such as elbows and underarms.

The armour is not only intended for use by the military. Ceramic versions could be used by firefighters who enter dangerous burning structures, the researchers say. 

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Fifteen minutes into the series premiere of Almost Human, a robot gets casually pushed out of a moving car. He, or maybe it’s an it, despite the fact that the MX model of police bot has a distinctly male face and male voice, tumbles onto the highway and is immediately pulverized by other vehicles. The show’s protagonist, Detective John Kennex (played by Karl Urban) doesn’t register anything. Not the dark pleasure of someone whose just destroyed an uppity printer, or the momentary panic that might follow destroying millions of dollars (one can only assume) worth of property, while also endangering the driving public. He pulls the passenger-side door shut, and goes about his grizzled business.

As narrative beats go, this brief bit of robocide gets a lot done. It establishes that Kennex does not like androids, who, during the time he’s spent in a coma, have become mandatory partners for all human cops. It also queues up his next partner, a mothballed model whose entire line was pulled from service because of its aggravating tendency to experience feelings, and, correspondingly, suffer the occasional emotional breakdown. DRN, pronounced Dorian (played by Michael Ealy) is the more human of the two police officers, a big robotic softie who has to remind his fleshier counterpart to open up. Dorian has to endure neo-racist quips and dismissals—“Synthetic off,” Kennex commands during an early interaction, inspiring the same reaction Dorian that any human might have—as well as the strangely casual threat of being the second robot partner in a row to be sent hurtling down the interstate. The intention is obvious. We’re meant to root for Kennex, but connect with the plight of Dorian. And nowhere within the first or second episodes of the Almost Human is there a hint of a robot uprising to come. Technology in 2048, we’re told, is unregulated and out of control. Sentient machines are part of the solution, not the problem.

For mainstream science fiction, this an interesting departure. It addresses, in its oafish, Hollywood way, the growing global discussion of robot ethics and robot rights, a largely preemptive attempt to lay the groundwork for the culpability of machines and their makers. That Almost Human intersects those issues might not be coincidental. The show’s executive producer, J.J. Abrams, became part of first batch of Director’s Fellows at MIT’s Media Lab earlier this year, where he chatted with researcher Kate Darling about the then-in-development series. Darling, who co-taught a class on robot rights with Larry Lessig at Harvard Law School, has become increasingly drawn into topics related to robot law and ethics. That informal meeting led to a one-hour conference call with show’s writers and series creator J.H. Wyman, where they dug into her research about how humans and robots currently interact, and might in the future.

“They asked me how society is going to perceive robots in the future,” says Darling. “I told them, That’s kind of up to you. These TV shows and movies tend to shape popular perception of robots more than anything else.” Fictional stories about robots, as enemies of our species, are then echoed by robotics articles in the popular press. “The way this show is made is going to shape the debate over this technology.”

There are familiar sci-fi tropes in Almost Human, such as the noble robotic exception, whose emotional intelligence evokes empathy in the viewer, even while we dismiss the setting’s other advanced automatons as soulless hardware, or vessels for malice. It’s the role filled by the T-800 in Terminator 2, with its learning mode and heroic sacrifice. Or Roy Batty in Blade Runner, showing mercy in the rain. Even the lamentable 1992 TV show Mann & Machine featured an android cop coming to grips with her feelings.

That fictional roboticists could so effortlessly create machines capable of real emotions—an accomplishment almost incomprehensible in its complexity, the artificial intelligence field’s equivalent of building a teleportation chamber—is standard-issue Hollywood hand-waving. But where Almost Human diverges from the norm is in showing a society that takes for granted the integration of robots. If there were debates about arming fully-autonomous police bots, or letting sexbots sell their wares, they appear to have been settled by 2048. Advanced weapons and unsettling biotech might be running amok, but robots are fully under control.

As Darling points out, it isn’t J.J. Abrams' or J.H. Wyman’s responsibility to detail the legal battles and societal hurdles that will stand in the way of humans putting assault rifles in the hands of robots, and shrugging off the occasional gunning down of a bystander. “Sci-fi nerds, who are really into this stuff, will probably be disappointed in this show, and think it needs to look at those gray areas,” says Darling (a self-described sci-fi nerd, and fan of the show). “It terms of change public perception, though, the first step is to simply raise this issue, that we might actually accept robots as life-like creatures in society.”

What’s most compelling about Almost Human, at least in terms of its potential impact on human-robot interaction, isn’t its exploration of what it feels like to be a feeling robot. The nuances and ramifications of a technological capability that’s indistinguishable from magic can make for great stories, and poor scientific speculation. What’s relevant is how we feel about robots.

In that regard, the show doesn’t mesh with Darling’s own research, much of which focuses on how humans sympathize with the unfeeling machines of our own era, robots that don’t even simulate emotions, much less experience them. In her work, which includes studying the online reactions posted on a video of the Pleo robotic dinosaur toy beingbeaten, strangled, and otherwise abused, and the sense of loss that military personnel feel when their bomb-disposal bots are irreparably damaged, the evidence is consistent. “We’re going to empathize with those things. Even when they are not designed to elicit emotional responses from humans, we bond with them,” says Darling.

Robotic partners, for example, will become something like a buddy, or at least a pet. Kennex may not have developed an attachment to the MX he pushed into traffic—it was their first day together—but the curt, master-and-slave tone that other officers seem to use with their partners seems unrealistic. Dorian may be a born charmer, but the faceless, voiceless explosive-ordinance-disposal robots that receive ad hoc military funerals in Afghanistan aren’t exactly the life of the party. Surly as they are, the MXs would grow on their human counterparts. “I don’t even know how you could design robots to minimize the empathy we eventually feel for them,” says Darling.

It might not matter, though, what the show’s humans think of their bots. Fiction is for our benefit, not its characters. If one of the goals of Almost Human is to change our perception of robots, the end of the second episode was a solid start. An illegally-manufactured sexbot is slated for deactivation. Dorian, being Dorian, requests to be there. She is not a very bright bot, and it’s unclear whether she has rudimentary emotions, or is merely programmed to create bonds through familiarity, to better service clients. So it’s unclear whether she understands why she’s in this white, antiseptic room, her back against an upright stretcher-like platform, with a technician milling about behind her. Maybe she’s afraid. Maybe not.

“Where am I going?” she asks, smiling a little.

“To a better place.”

“Will you be there?” she asks.

He pauses. “I will remember you.”

She dies.

Robophobia is pervasive, and deeply-ingrained, and often pretty fun. But if you watch that scene, and it does nothing, brace yourself: You might not be human, either. 

For centuries, humans looking to tame the skies have tried to mimic the movements of birds and insects. But engineers building flying machines have now found an unlikely muse: the ocean-dwelling jellyfish. 

A tiny flying robot built at a lab in New York University mimics the gently puffing movements of the efficient swimmer's gelatinous bulb — not to paddle through water, but to stay aloft in air. 

"Our [robot] is an aerial jellyfish if you will," Leif Ristroph, assistant professor of mathematics at NYU who designed the tiny machine, told NBC News. The four-winged robot is wire-connected to a power source. Like an umbrella, the robot's four wings collapse and open, "squirting" the air downward and allowing it to lift off. 

"No one’s ever built this, and as far as we know nature never built it either to fly in air," said Ristroph, who was to present his design at the Fluid Dynamics Conference in Washington on Sunday. "Maybe that indicates that it’s a bad idea? In any case we got it to work, so maybe not that bad." 

Leif Ristroph / NYU. The jelly-bot rests beside a quarter.

Water and air are both fluids, so the rules governing movement in either media are similar. Buoyancy helps stay afloat in water, but the real difficulty staying up in air is generating a lift to balance the body weight of the craft, Ristroph explained. 

Other flying robots, like the tiny robotic bee built at Harvard's Wyss Institute, or the H2bird flapping-wing drone built at a lab at Berkeley, sense the direction and location and adjust their movements to stay in the air. 

But Ristroph's pint-sized robots are "sort of dumb," he said. With no fancy sensors, the bots' physical design ensures that they stay upright just by opening and flapping their wings.

"That's the beauty of the design," Ristroph said, "It doesn't need a 'smart' design to help it recover."

Very tiny flying robots, each just centimeters across like his demo prototype, are best suited to adopt this spare design. And how might they ever be used? "[You'd] make a hundred of them and throw 'em up into the air and monitor the air quality above NYC — the pollutants or CO2," Ristroph said, making for a "nice peace-time application." 

Researchers have found a way to extract dinosaur bones and other fossils from rock without picking up a hammer and chisel. The target fossil for the new study was a specimen that had been dug up from a German clay pit in the early 1900s. The object, still encased in much of the rock that had entombed it, had been slathered in concrete and then transported back to a museum in Berlin—which was struck by a bomb during World War II, sending the specimen and hundreds of others into a jumbled heap of rubble. Most of the fossils that weren’t blasted to dust had had their labels burned, so no one could identify what the remaining concrete jackets held or where they had been dug up. Technology to the rescue: A CT scan of one such lump (left, main image) revealed that it held a vertebra (plastic model, right) from a Plateosaurus(artist’s concept, inset), the researchers report online today in Radiology. That, in turn, allowed the researchers to determine where the fossil had originally been unearthed, among other details. Scientists have long used CT scans to peek inside fossil-bearing rocks, but the increasing use of 3D printers now enables them to make endless numbers of exact copies of those relics. Because CT scans are noninvasive, the approach minimizes the risk of shattering or otherwise damaging a rare fossil while trying to extract it from its rocky tomb. The technique might even help museum folk speed up their analyses: By knowing what’s inside a lump of rock, researchers can determine which fossils are worth extracting, and which ones can wait.

Humans have always longed for immortality. Tens of thousands of years ago, Neanderthals were burying their dead in fetal poses, suggesting hope for posthumous rebirth. In Neolithic times, we entombed food alongside corpses so they’d have something to snack on in the spirit realm. Cuneiform tablets from Nineveh, among the oldest written documents, shimmer with accounts of quests for eternal life. Early humans all tried to make sense of the senselessness of death. They did so through stories about outliving the end, about attaining a never-ending existence in the beyond. Those mythologies became codified into institutional religions that remain with us millennia later.

To this day, immortality is usually conceptualized as a kind of secondary life that occurs after death. The idea emerged from our fear of dying, from the knowledge that our days our numbered, from the sense that life must go on in some way. The basic premise of spiritual immortality is simple: We die, but our soul or consciousness doesn’t. An energy or force within us outlives its mortal container, ending up in an afterlife or hurled back into rebirth. Three quarters of Americans believe in some form of life after death.

But there’s another, more materialist side to the equation: Trying to live forever physically. In imperial China, numerous emperors died after consuming toxic elixirs of everlasting life. One of the main goals of alchemy was the attainment of physical immortality. Such approaches may not have succeeded in the past, but driven by recent advances in science and technology, a tricked-out version of humanity’s oldest and fondest dream is gaining followers.

Physical immortality is a seductive conceit and its allure gains in luster with each new technological breakthrough. Despite the fact that there are no documented examples of anything immortal in nature, there’s an increasing sense that science will soon figure out how to end mortality altogether.

All we need is to do, experts tell us, is lengthen telomeres, target sirtuins or activate CREB1, the brain’s latest “longevity molecule.” Nonprofit organizations like the Immortality Institute and the Methuselah Foundation have been established “to conquer the blight of involuntary death.” And every year, more conferences — with names like Humanity+ or the Global Future 2045 International Congress — pop up purporting to reveal the latest breakthroughs in attaining technologically enabled eternity.

The reality is that we have seen breakthroughs in the field of organ regeneration and molecular biologists have uncovered ways to extend the life spans of worms, fruit flies and mice. So far, however, these findings haven’t yielded any human applications. In 2009, aiming to staunch the hype, the National Institute on Aging announced that “no treatments have been proven to slow or reverse the aging process.”

That’s not stopping people from trying.

Longer Life Spans, But Still an Expiration Date

Beyond stoking the embers of our primal need to believe, how did the concept of physical immortality become so popular in recent times? Part of the answer lies in increases to life expectancy. From the dawn of the Homo genus up to the 19th century, an average life lasted approximately 25 to 40 years. Largely due to basic realizations about hygiene, life spans have increased significantly over the past century and a half. Today, anyone above the poverty threshold can anticipate living 70 to 90 years unless an accident, disease or disaster strikes — or immortality becomes real.

Will life expectancy continue climbing? Some demographers argue that we’ve reached a peak, while others suggest that 125 is a reasonable target for baby boomers. Radical life-extensionists speak of “Plastic Omega” (omega being the end of life, and plastic being malleable). No one knows for sure.

For the most part, we don’t question the idea that every problem is solvable by the rational mind, that humanity’s biggest challenge — death itself — will one day be met. But is progress an inviolable fact of history or just a story we tell ourselves? Not everything progresses. Have our emotions evolved since Shakespeare’s time?

Our ability to program computers has accelerated our faith in the possibility of overcoming death. Early software developers spoke of coding personality into electronic circuits and reanimating it at will. They hypothesized that, in combining cybernetics with DNA, they’d find the formula for immortality.

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The development of robots capable of operating in a melange of disarray and hazards will allow relief agencies to reduce the danger to disaster victims and first responders alike. This is the goal of DARPA's multi-year Robotics Challenge, which in December will pit a variety of robots and software against a series of eight real-world tasks that might be encountered in actual disaster situations.

The DARPA Robotics Challenge is aimed at developing a robot that can work with humans at disaster sites, combining their strengths to overcome their weaknesses. While DARPA's Track A teams are developing their own robots as well as the software to attempt DARPA's challenges, Track B/C teams have been supplied with a Boston Dynamics ATLAS humanoid robot for which they will develop disaster-busting software.

The ATLAS humanoid robot is 74 in (188 cm) in height, 30 in (76 cm) from shoulder to shoulder, 22 in (56 cm) thick at the chest, and weighs 330 lb (150 kg) with its hydraulic power controller. It has 28 degrees of freedom in its basic skeleton and features an on-board control computer to convert higher-level commands it receives into the lower-level commands that actually direct the robot how to move. The power (480 three-phase VAC at 30 amps) and commands (via 10 Gbps fiber optic Ethernet) are supplied through a tether.

The virtual first round of the challenge was completed in June, involving a competition taking place in the Robotics Challenge Simulator. Six Track A teams and seven Track B/C teams qualified to continue on to the DARPA Robotics Trials to be held at Homestead Speedway in Florida on December 20-21, 2013.

The Track B winner was Team IHMC, from the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, which took the competition with a score 25 percent higher than Worcester Polytechnic's second-place showing. They took delivery of their ATLAS on August 14, and wasted no time in transferring the virtual ATLAS's software onto this impressive piece of hardware.

While the ATLAS appears in the video above to be a bit weak at the ankles, this is the type of problem expected to appear when transitioning from a model of a robot to controlling the real thing. Hopefully it will all get sorted before the trials, in which we are likely to see if these robots can stand up after a fall. The Boston Dynamics video below further demonstrates the obstacle-beating and exceptional balance capabilities of the humanoid robot.

ATLAS is designed to be able to carry out a range of movements, so that the robot can use as many tools and accesses designed for human use as possible; for example, this Worchester Polytechnic utility vehicle modified for the ATLAS trials with a field computer and a 480 volt generator.

To test these abilities and skills in the December trials, all robots will be tasked to complete the following: Driving a utility vehicle, walking across rubble, restoring access to a blocked entryway, opening a door and entering a building, climbing a ladder and walking (or crawling) across a catwalk, finding and closing a valve to stop the flow from a leaking pipe, and attaching a fire hose or other connector.

While the overall disaster scenario can be envisaged from these tasks, in this December's trial they will be taken on one at a time. Multiple attempts will not be allowed, nor will safety harnesses. If you break your robot, you break your robot. Let's wish the participants better luck than that.

Source: DARPA

Researchers have discovered a way to see chemicals at work behind bone. In the future, they hope to develop their technique as a way of watching chemical messages as they blip through the brain, underneath the skull.

The work is still preliminary. So far, the researchers have tested their method in… a cut of lamb shoulder. A team of chemists and bioengineers from Northwestern University injected chemically modified gold nanoparticles inside their raw lamb meat, then shined laser light at the bone on the other side of the injection. Using Raman spectroscopy methods, the scientists found they could detect the gold through the bone, Chemical & Engineering News reports.

If this technique does work in living brains, scientists would have to get the gold particles to attach to the brain chemicals they want to study. That way, when the laser detects the gold particles, it would be detecting the brain chemical, too. The Northwestern team plans to try to attach the neurotransmitter dopamine to their nanogold, Chemical & Engineering News reports.

Another important consideration? Making sure such injections are safe for the living creatures that will get them, whether lab animals or people.

[Chemical & Engineering News]

Augmented reality (AR) provides a live view of a physical, real-world environment whose are augmented by computer-generated input such as information, sound, video, graphics, or GPS data. AR has been in existence for quite a while. In the 1990s, Boeing used it with head mounted displays to aid in aircraft wiring assembly. The person doing the complex wiring on an aircraft would have a screen in front of them, and overlaid onto that screen would be the data showing where to put the wires, what the right color wires was, what the wire did, etc.

Today, AR isn’t just for complex technical tasks. It’s something within reach to the masses thanks to various smart phone apps. For example, I got my first AR app for my smart phone in 2010. With it, I can use the app and my phone’s camera, aim it at a distant mountain range, and the AR app gives me the names of the mountains overlaid on the image. I touch a button and can get more information about the mountains, including the elevation, natural fauna, etc. How is this possible? The app uses the phone’s GPS, digital compass, and motion sensors to detect where I’m pointing.

Now let’s take the application of AR a step further—to what we’ll be seeing in the near future as more sensors are used in smart phones. Suppose you’re walking down a busy shopping district searching for a shoe store that sells high-end Italian men’s and women’s shoes. You may even have a particular brand in mind. You could point your phone’s camera to get an image of the street ahead of you, and the AR app will overlay the names of each store that sells shoes and provide a list of which brands each store carries. You could then click on an information button to get store hours.

And if the AR app can do this outside the store, it can do it inside as well. Suppose you’re in a large warehouse store searching for laundry detergent. Instead of wandering the aisles, you could tell your phone what you’re looking for and then pan around the store with the camera and AR app activated. As you move over various sections of the store, you’d see a little arrow appear showing you exactly where the laundry detergent is.

Adding a social element to AR is another interesting development. For example, AR is being used by a start-up company in San Francisco called CrowdOptic that can recognize which direction a crowd of people have their phones pointing. They can then invite others using that app to see what all those phones are seeing. For example, at a NASCAR race, fans who can’t see the entire track could point their phones at a distant turn and get photos and videos gathered by others who are closer to the action.

AR is a game changer for business, for sports, and for social media, just to name a few. Of course, all this is just the beginning. Over the next few years, AR will change not only the way you use your phone, but also the way you see and interact with the world.

Daniel Burrus is considered one of the world’s leading technology forecasters and innovation experts, and is the founder and CEO of Burrus Research. He is the author of six books including The New York Times best seller Flash Foresight.

The European Space Agency has successfully deployed its trio of mapping satellites, dubbed Swarm, and is ready to start some serious scanning of the Earth's changing magnetic fields.

The Swarm payload was launched from the Plesetsk cosmodrome in Northern Russia on Friday evening and has now split into its three constituent satellites. Two will orbit the Earth in tandem on a polar path at an altitude of 450km, while the third will fly above them at 530km once the the launch and early orbit phase (LEOP) is complete.

"We've had a trouble-free LEOP and the satellites are performing beyond expectation," said flight operations director Pier Paolo Emanuelli in a statement. "We're looking forward to an excellent mission."

The ESA team is now focused on starting up the Swarm's main telemetry systems in preparation for magnetic mapping operations. The mission is going to help scientists understand the strange phenomenon of magnetic-pole shifts that the Earth is currently undergoing.

While early explorers thought the magnetic poles on our planet were fixed, geological evidence shows that they change roughly every 250,000 years – but as far as geoscientists can tell, they haven't shifted significantly in over double that time period since their last big switchover.

But NASA reports that the Earth's magnetic North Pole has been moving further north at a rate of 40 miles per year, four times the speed it displayed a century ago. At the same time, the magnetic field is weakening slightly.

The Earth's magnetic field is a key element in protecting the fragile life forms on the surface from dangerous solar radiation. While you would expect this protection to lessen somewhat during a shift in poles, it's nothing too much to worry about, Todd Hoeksema, a solar physicist at Stanford's Wilcox Solar Observatory told The Reg.

"The same systems that are vulnerable now, such as power systems, would face increased risks, but your radio and telephone are still going to work. And this isn't something that happens overnight – we'd have a warning," he said.

Hoeksema is something of an expert in the field and has been mapping the Sun's magnetic pole shift, which has been ongoing for the last year. But he told us that the Earth's poles are expected to shift from a binary pole system to one with four poles. This will pose something of a problem for compass makers, but life as we know it will still carry on just fine, he said.

ESA's Swarm mission will now spend the next four years mapping our magnetosphere, how it reacts with solar winds, and how the rate of change is proceeding. A full magnetic shift should take a thousand years or so, so no need to panic yet. ®

Diving shipwrecks can be dangerous work. As their name implies, these deep sea curiosities are underwater disaster zones that could trap an unwary diver. Robotic vehicles can help, but most are too big to explore the nooks and crannies and others get their power via a tether to the mothership and that limits their reach.

A new robot called U-CAT is small enough to fit into the tiny spaces of shipwrecks and it lacks a tether, which would otherwise hamper its movement. The robot imitates a turtle with its four mechanical “flippers” that allow it to hover, turn in place and move forward and backward.

“Conventional underwater robots use propellers for locomotion. Fin propulsors of U-CAT can drive the robot in all directions without disturbing water and beating up silt from the bottom, which would decrease visibility inside the shipwreck”, said Taavi Salumäe, designer of the U-CAT and researcher in the Centre for Biorobotics at the Tallinn University of Technology, in a press release.

U-CAT carries a camera that can take footage of a wreck, allowing researchers to reconstruct the inside and target areas that look more interesting for follow-up later.

Being able to get around -- and not reduce visibility -- is key in a shipwreck dive, as is getting into small spaces. Besides that, U-CAT is relatively cheap. Maarja Kruusmaa, head of the Centre for Biorobotics, told Discovery News that smart as the robot is, it might still get stuck or lost. “This way it won’t bankrupt the archeologist,” she said.

The little robot will first be tested in the Baltic sea, and then get a big test in the Mediterranean, where it will work with bigger robots and archeologists on the ARROWS project, an EU initiative to develop robots for use in underwater archaeology.

Credit: Centre for Biorobotics, Tallinn University of Technology

Often equipped with two arms, strange hands, and even stranger-looking heads, a new breed of jack-of-all-trades industrial robot could change the face of automation. And the place to see the latest examples of these dual-arm manufacturing machines was the International Robot Exhibition (IREX) in Tokyo earlier this month.

We're putting together an in-depth article and video on the dual-arm, adaptable industrial robots we saw at IREX. But today we're going to focus on one of them, because that's a new robot we've never covered before.

It's a new prototype from Japanese electronics company Seiko Epson. The robot doesn't have a name yet (the company calls it simply "autonomous dual-arm robot"), but we can't help noticing that it looks like E.T. Epson plans to market it by early 2016.

Epson is no stranger to industrial manufacturing robots, boasting the lion's share of global SCARA robot sales (one model pictured below). However, specialized industrial robots aren't easily assigned new jobs, since they're often carefully integrated into permanent positions in the production line. In the past, the main solution has been manual labor. The new generation of adaptable robots could change that with a combination of sensing, delicate manipulation, and the ability to learn new tasks more easily.

"In the future, a commercial version of this autonomous dual-arm robot will make it possible to easily automate a wide range of tasks that previously had to be performed by hand," said Hideo Hirao, chief operating officer of Epson's industrial solutions division. The robot could be moved from one end of a production line, where it assembles goods, to the other end where it picks up and places objects into packages, he added.

Epson provides some more details in a press release:

"Epson's autonomous dual-arm robot is able to accurately recognize the position and orientation of objects in three-dimensional space. The two robot arms are equipped with newly developed force sensors that give the robot human-like control over the force exerted by the arms, enabling the robots to transport and assemble objects without damaging them. A multipurpose end effector can grasp, clamp, and insert objects of various shapes and sizes. The robot can be made to perform a wide range of tasks simply by teaching it objects and task scenarios."

If all that sounds like what we've heard about other robots like Rethink Robotics' Baxter, ABB's Frida, or Kawada Industries' Nextage, it's no coincidence. That's definitely one of the hottest trends in industrial robotics. However, there remains the rather important issue of price, which Epson is not yet ready to disclose. If the company's dual-arm robot has a competitive price, Epson—already a big player in the SCARA market—is in a strong position to enter this new era of manufacturing automation.

The choices in wearable electronics, including Google Glass and a wave of smartwatches, are quickly multiplying. But those pesky batteries—they still need to be plugged into something to charge up. What if your watch strap could contain the battery components, along with a flexible solar cell? Voilà: No more plugging in.

Others have turned to piezoelectrics and nanomaterials to get wearable tech going, but a group at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology decided to work a lithium-ion battery right into the fabric.

"Although considerable progresses have been seen for wearable electronics, lithium rechargeable batteries, the power sources of the devices, do not keep pace with such progresses due to tenuous mechanical stabilities, causing them to remain as the limiting elements in the entire technology," wrote researchers led by Yong-Hee Lee in Nano Letters. To that end, they tested various materials which they enmeshed in the wristband.

They came up with a fabric-based battery comprising a nickel-coated polyester yarn as the current collector, polyurethane as a binder holding materials together, and a polyurethane separator. The resulting battery can withstand repeated folding and unfolding and still function, a requirement for any tech that's actually going to wrap around the wrist or be worn in other ways. The batteries exhibited "decent" cycling and rate performance, the researchers wrote. Just as importantly, they said, the methods for fabricating this type of battery already exist and should be scalable quickly.

To keep it charged, they added solar cells—flexible polymer cells (PCDTBT, specifically) on polyethylene naphthalate—to the same bits of fabric. The wristband solar panel achieved a conversion efficiency of 5.49 percent, not bad for flexible polymer cells of this type.

This is all pointing toward a future where your glasses, watch, shirt, and even the walls of your home are transformed by electronics. They'll be data nodes capable of medical monitoring, communications, or whatever else you can dream up. And they won't ever need to plug into a power source.

Russia has presented a new humanlike robot, which may be delivered to the International Space Station to perform 90 percent of risky operations in open space instead of cosmonauts.

The SAR- 401 prototype was revealed to journalists at the Yury Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Moscow Region’s Star City on Wednesday. 

The robot was developed in 2013 and is currently being tested terrestrially, Vyacheslav Sychkov, executive director of the Android Technics company said. 

It’s vital for the android to achieve maximum precision in its every move, he added. 

The operating principle for the robot is based on the machine repeating movements performed by a human operator. 

“We’re working on two possible control scenarios: an emergency scenario when the robot is managed from Earth and routine operations when it’s managed from inside the ISS,” Sychkov is cited as saying by the ITAR-TASS news agency. 

The developers plan to make the SAR- 401 compatible with the European Robotic Arm manipulator in the Russian segment of the ISS. 

“The robot has a base point in order to attach it to the manipulator,” the Android Technics head explained. 

The android will also be used as a communications system as it’s equipped with hardware capable of receiving messages from Earth and passing it to the station’s crew. 

It’s not yet clear if the robot will be stored inside the ISS and then delivered to the work areas or be permanently housed on the station’s outer shell. 

In case of the second scenario, the android will most likely be put in a special container, in which optimum temperature conditions will be maintained, Sychkov said. 

When asked about the cost of the SAR- 401 project, the Android Technics head replied that “the work isn’t yet completed, so it’s currently impossible to evaluate the whole program.” 

But the Russian robot will be “a lot cheaper” than its American counterpart, already working at the ISS, he added. 

The developers expect that in the future the android will perform over 90 percent of open space operations at the ISS. 

The Cosmonaut Training Center plans to review a list of works on the station’s outer shell, currently performed by the cosmonauts, to determine which can be taken on by the SAR- 401. 

“In general, its work will be replacement of equipment, checking and maintenance,” Sychkov explained. 
Robots v. Humans 

Meanwhile, the head of the Cosmonaut Training Center, Sergey Krikalyov, stressed that the androids won’t be able to replace people in space in the near future. 

“A robot can never become a full substitute for a man. It’s interaction, not replacement we’re talking about,” he stressed. 

According to Krikalyov, the newly presented robot may undergo a number of enhancements before it’ll be actually sent into space. 

NASA’s Robonaut-2 was launched into orbit in 2011. The US android was designed to assist the crew inside the station as it lacks the kind of protection needed to exist in open space.   

This August, the first Japanese robot astronaut arrived at the station. The main task of the small android, named Kirobo, is to see how humans and robots can interact in space as his capabilities include voice recognition and speech synthesis.

http://rt.com/news/humanlike-robot-russia-iss-387/

Worried that machines will someday control the human race? If so, relax.

Researchers at the University at Buffalo and elsewhere are helping to advance technology that allows people to control robots with their minds. UB isn't focused on world domination, but rather applying these brain-computer interface (BCI) devices to manufacturing, medicine and other fields.

"The technology has practical applications that we're only beginning to explore," said Thenkurussi "Kesh" Kesavadas, PhD, UB professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and director of UB's Virtual Reality Laboratory. "For example, it could help paraplegic patients to control assistive devices, or it could help factory workers perform advanced manufacturing tasks."

While it sounds like something from X-Men and other science fiction stories, BCI technology has been available to the public for a few years. Devices range from relatively inexpensive novelty items to sophisticated instruments that sell for tens of thousands of dollars.

Products vary but they generally include a helmet equipped with many sensors. The sensors read electrical signals – electroencephalograms – from brain activity and transmit them wirelessly to a computer. The computer then sends signals to the robot to control the robot's movement.

Thus far, most research has involved more expensive BCI devices that, unlike what's described above, are inserted into the brain. They have been used mostly to help disabled people.

UB research differs because it relies on a relatively inexpensive, non-invasive instrument (it retails for $750) that fits on the head like a hat and is outfitted with only 14 sensors.

Kesavadas recently demonstrated the technology with Pramod Chembrammel, a doctoral student in his lab.  Chembrammel, who trained with the instrument for a few days, used the device to control a robotic arm. He used the arm to insert a wood peg into a hole and rotate the peg.

"It was incredible to see the robot respond to my thoughts," Chembrammel said. "On top of that, it wasn't even that difficult to learn how to use the device."

The video shows that a simple set of instructions can be combined to execute more complex robotic actions, Kesavadas said. Such robots could be used by factory workers to perform hands-free assembly of products, or carry out tasks like drilling or welding.

The potential advantage, Kesavadas said, is that BCI-controlled devices could reduce the tedium of repetitious tasks and improve worker safety and productivity. The devices can also leverage the worker's decision-making skills, such as identifying a faulty part in an automated assembly line.

Kesavadas, a leader in developing virtual reality tools, plans to continue studying BCI technology. The research could lead to the first, extensive instructional guides for using BCI-controlled devices.

Roadside bombs, childhood abuse, car accidents—they form memories that can shape (and damage) us for a lifetime. Now, a handful of studies have shown that we’re on the verge of erasing and even rewriting memories. The hope is that this research will lead to medical treatments, especially for addiction and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Researchers have known for decades that memories are unreliable. They’re particularly adjustable when actively recalled because at that point they’re pulled out of a stable molecular state. Last spring, scientists published a study performed at the University of Washington in which adult volunteers completed a survey about their eating and drinking habits before age 16. A week later, they were given personalized analyses of their answers that stated—falsely—that they had gotten sick from rum or vodka as a teen. One in five not only didn’t notice the lie, but also recalled false memories about it and rated that beverage as less desirable than they had before. Studies like these point to possible treatments for mental health problems. Both PTSD and addiction disorders hinge on memories that can trigger problematic behaviors, such as crippling fear caused by loud noises or cravings brought about by the sight of drug paraphernalia.

Studies have found chemical compounds that can be used to subdue or even delete memories.Several studies have found chemical compounds that can be used to subdue or even delete memories in mice (and maybe someday in people). In June, a report led by an Emory University researcher showed that SR-8993, a drug that acts on the brain’s opioid receptors, can prevent a fear memory from forming. Researchers strapped mice to a wooden board for two hours—a stressful experience that later gave them a heightened sense of fear similar to PTSD. But mice given SR-8993 before or after the stressful incident were less likely to end up this way. Another study identified a drug, Latrunculin A, that can erase memories days later. The researchers trained rodents to consume methamphetamine in an environment with distinctive visual, tactile, and scent cues such as black walls, gridded floors, and the scent of vanilla or peppermint. Rodents that were injected with Latrunculin A two days later didn’t seek out meth when returned to that environment, but others did. Latrunculin A is known to mess up scaffolding that supports connections between neurons. Considering how broadly these two drugs affect the brain, there’s a possibility of serious side effects.

To make more targeted treatments, researchers will ultimately need to understand how the brain’s neurons encode each memory. Last year, Susumu Tonegawa at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology reported that individual memories in mice leave telltale molecular signatures in the brain’s hippocampus region. In July, his group caused mice to falsely associate an old memory with a new context—essentially creating a false memory. First, they genetically engineered a mouse so that when its hippocampal cells were activated, they would be tagged with a protein that the researchers could switch on later. Then, they put the mouse in an unfamiliar cage. The next day, they moved it to a strikingly different cage (smelly with black walls). Then, at precisely the same time, they gave it an uncomfortable shock and switched on the tagging protein to briefly activate cells that had been active in the old cage. When they put the mouse back in the old cage, it froze as if afraid—as if it had a false memory of being shocked there.

The idea of scientists manipulating memory does, naturally, sound a bit creepy. But it also points to some possible good: treatment for millions of people tormented by real memories. And that’s something worth remembering. 

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos unveiled a new plan by Amazon to deliver packages to customer’s homes within 30 minutes using drones. The plan was announced on the CBS show 60 minutes, and Amazon has since posted a video (embedded below) and a Frequently Asked Questions page.

The biggest obstacle for Amazon may not be technological, but rather legal. The company claims to be ready to launch in 2015, so long as the FAA’s rules allow for them to enable air delivery.  Currently small drones like those Amazon plans to use, are not permitted to fly in U.S. airspace without special permission.  The FAA’s primary concerns regarding drones in U.S. airspace revolve around safety, particularly the drone’s inability to sense and avoid other aircraft.  However, some groups are also concerned with the privacy implications of drones equipped with cameras.

In early November, the FAA released a “roadmap” detailing the wider use of drones in U.S. airspace.  That document outlined the “regulations, technologies, standards and policies” needed for integrating drones into the national airspace.

The FAA is concerned with a host of issues within the agency’s regulatory purview.  Prior to allowing drones to operate in the national airspace, the FAA must develop rules for pilot/operator training, control station policies and certification requirements, issues related to the drone’s data link and communication capabilities, airworthiness standards and other issues to include:

• Developing minimum standards for Sense and Avoid (SAA), Control and Communications (C2), and separation assurance to meet new or existing operational and regulatory requirements for specified airspace;
• Understanding the privacy, security, and environmental implications of UAS operations and working with relevant departments and agencies to proactively coordinate and align these considerations with the UAS regulatory structure;
• And developing acceptable UAS design standards that consider the aircraft size, performance, mode of control, intended operational environment, and mission criticality.

While aviation regulations have existed for decades, until recently, few of those regulations were developed with unmanned aircraft in mind.  The FAA plans to finalize regulations by 2015, however in 2012 they missed one of their regulatory deadlines, and experts believe the FAA may be unable to meet the 2015 deadline imposed on the agency by Congress.

A Silicon Valley company has introduced what may prove the next generation in night watchmen – a 5-foot-tall, 300-pound crime-fighting robot designed to stand sentry in the wee hours of the night.

The K5 Autonomous Data Machine is intended “to augment private security services on corporate campuses and in large, vacant buildings and warehouses," according to its developer, Knightscope, which added, "Tedious and monotonous monitoring should be handled by the K5, leaving ‘hands-on’ activities to security personnel.”

“We founded Knightscope after what happened at Sandy Hook,” the company’s co-founder William Santana Li told the New York Times. “You are never going to have an armed officer in every school.”

But while Li hailed the robot as a breakthrough to be widely deployed in “schools, shopping centers, hotels, auto dealerships, stadiums, casinos, law enforcement agencies, seaports, and airports,” throughout the country, some are more uncertain over the tangential effects of turning over the reins to a robot.

“This is like R2-D2’s evil twin,” Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy and Information Center, a privacy rights consortium located in Washington, D.C., explained to The Times.

“Once you enter public space and collect images and sound recordings, you have entered another realm. This is the kind of pervasive surveillance that has put people on edge.”

Knightscope says the K5 “utilizes a combination of autonomous robots and predictive analytics to provide a commanding but friendly physical presence while gathering important real-time on-site data with numerous sensors.

“Data collected through these sensors,” the company adds, “is processed through our predictive analytics engine, combined with existing business, government and crowd-sourced social data sets, and subsequently assigned an alert level that determines when the community and the authorities should be notified of a concern.”

A Youtube video of the K5 in action shows something that looks like a remote-control vacuum cleaner sizing up the license plate numbers of vehicles parked in an unidentified parking lot.

The Times writes the robot – whose sticker price has not been revealed -- will employ a video camera, thermal imaging sensors, a laser range finder, radar, air quality sensors, as well as a microphone.

Knightscope adds the robot will also utilize GPS, a night-vision camera, and biological, chemical and radiation detection systems.

Predictably, Knightscope is effusive about the robot’s potential upside, calling its introduction, “The Birth of a New Hometown Hero.”

“Imagine a friend that can see, hear, feel and smell that would tirelessly watch over your neighborhood, keep your loved ones safe and put a smile on anyone walking by your business,” the company crows about the K5. “Imagine if we could utilize technology to make our communities stronger and safer . . . together.”

“We don’t want to think about ‘RoboCop’ or ‘Terminator,’” Li told The Times. “We prefer to think of a mashup ‘Batman,’ ‘Minority Report’ and R2-D2 . . . We want to give the humans the ability to do the strategic work”

NeuroPace has received FDA pre-market approval for the NeuroPace RNS System, used to treat medically refractory partial epilepsy. The battery powered device is implanted in the cranium and monitors electrical activity in the brain. If abnormal activity is detected, electrical impulses are sent to the seizure focus in the brain via leads, helping to prevent the onset of a seizure. The RNS System also comes with a programmer for physicians to non-invasively set the detection and stimulation parameters for the implanted device, and has the ability to view the patients electrocorticogram (ECoG) in real time and upload previously recorded ECoGs stored on the RNS implant.

Results from clinical studies show significant benefits for patients, with a 37.9% reduction in seizure frequency for subjects with active implants. Follow up with patients two years post-implant showed that over half experienced a reduction in seizures of 50% or more. The device also met the FDA safety criteria by demonstrating equivalency to current devices and procedures From the announcement, the FDA approved indication:

“The RNS System is indicated for use as an adjunctive therapy in reducing the frequency of seizures in individuals 18 years of age or older with partial onset seizures who have undergone diagnostic testing that localized no more than two epileptogenic foci, are refractory to two or more antiepileptic medications, and currently have frequent and disabling seizures (motor partial seizures, complex partial seizures and/or secondarily generalized seizures).”

Flashbacks: NeuroPace: Maybe First Since Jesus to Prevent and Treat Epilepsy…;Neuropace Implantable Epilepsy Device Showing Positive Signs in Initial Clinical Study…; NeuroPace Seeks FDA Approval for Its RNS System…

Product page: NeuroPace RNS System…

Press release: FDA Grants Premarket Approval (PMA) for the NeuroPace® RNS® System to treat Medically Refractory Epilepsy…

Although some people might find the idea of love with a machine repulsive, experts predict that as the technology advances and robots become more human-like, we will view our silicon cousins in a friendlier light. As the future unfolds, robots will fill more roles as family caregivers, household servants, and voice-enabled avatars that manage our driverless cars, automated homes, and entertainment systems.

New Zealand researchers see a bright future for robot caregivers in this 2-min. YouTube Video. Although people have purchased inflatable sex toys for years (see video), as crude as today's 'bots may seem, experts predict that as we trek into the future, robotics development will advance exponentially, and we will eventually accept and enjoy the 'human' qualities programmed into our silicon wonders.

Today's machines can vacuum homes, stand in as pets, explore planets, and assist in surgeries. Future 'bots will allow handicapped patients to control prosthetic limbs; and latest drone technologies include swarms of mosquito-sized flying 'botsthat could search collapsed buildings for trapped victims; or wield crippling stings to terrorists or criminals holding victims hostage. However, some fear security concerns.

Technologies to build robots that perceive their surroundings, move by themselves, and perform tasks without human oversight should reach fruition by mid-2030s, experts say. By mid-2040s, these marvels could ​exhibit a human-like mind, with fleshy skin; and possess traits vital for a loving partner.

Jason Nemeth, in his essay, "Should Robots Feel" believes love-companion robots will be practical in the future, and may one day satisfy all our intimate desires. Nemeth is not sure whether human/robot love will experience higher success rates than love between two humans, but he says tomorrow's robots will unlock the possibilities, and humans eager to experiment will take it from there.

Carnegie Mellon's Hans Moravec believes that by late 2020s, we will create robots in humanoid form. These 'bots would 'drink wine' for fuel, breathe air like us, and appear amazingly human-like.

Design tricks like these, along with soft 'nanoskin' will make tomorrow's 'bots seem uncannily human, encouraging us to perceive them as friends. Author Ray Kurzweil says tomorrow's 'droids could quickly learn to flesh out our positive feelings, providing an addictive allure almost impossible for us to resist.

David Levy, author of Love and Sex with Robots, predicts that as robots become more sophisticated, growing numbers of adventurous humans will enter into intimate relationships with these intelligent 'bots.

A robot partner would be the perfect mate, never showing boredom or being inattentive, Levy says. You will always be the focus and centerpiece of their existence and you never need worry about their being unfaithful or going astray, because loyalty and being faithful will be embedded into their programming.

According to a Fox News article, researchers recently released a study, Robots, Men and Sex Tourism; predicting lifelike sex robots in brothels by mid-century. View 4-min. video.

What about the seamy side of, say, robo escorts. Would this be legal where human prostitution is not?

Today, millions are without regular sex lives or relationships. A world where everyone has someone to love and to be loved might even achieve global peace; a dream humanity has always hoped to realize.

Another area to consider is robot rights. Tomorrows 'bots may prompt lawmakers to make it illegal to turn off' a robot without their permission. In addition, should robots and humans marry? If future robots can evoke true love, robot-human marriages might one day become socially acceptable and legal.

As wild as human-machine relationships may seem today, there are reasons to think that love and sex with robots will happen. Robots are already better in math, logic, chess, and games like Jeopardy. With an intelligent mind and beautiful sexy human-like body, tomorrow's 'bots could easily capture our hearts.

This futuristic journey winds around unknown turns; but whether you love it or hate it; strong public interest suggests human-machine romances could become reality by mid-century. Comments welcome.

THEY'RE famed for their limitless sense of possibility, whether it's mapping the world's streets or creating driverless cars.

Now Google bosses have turned their sights on a much more complex subject - the human body.

The tech giant has recently embarked on a series of high profile hires for its new venture Calico, a company which wants to extend human life by up to 100 years.

Short for California Life Company, Calico is headed up by Art Levinson, the former CEO of biotech company Genentech and Apple board member, who this week announced the elite recruits on Google+.

Pharmaceutical guru Hal Barron will serve as President of research and development, while David Botsein, the former head of Princeton's Genome Unit will be chief scientific officer.

Genetics expert Cynthia Kenyon and oncology expert Robert Cohen will also join the company.

So far the company, which is backed by Google but run as a separate entity, has kept its cards close to its chest with no details on the amount of funding they have received.

However it fits with co-founder Larry Page's vision that Google should think about big ideas that can make the world exponentially better.

Google co-founders Sergey Brin (L) and Larry Page have plans well beyond search and email.

"OK … so you're probably thinking wow! That's a lot different from what Google does today. And you're right. But as we explained in our first letter to shareholders, there's tremendous potential for technology more generally to improve people's lives," Mr Pageposted on Google+ when the new venture was announced.

"So don't be surprised if we invest in projects that seem strange or speculative compared with our existing internet businesses. And please remember that new investments like this are very small by comparison to our core business."

It comes after the company hired Ray Kurzweil as engineering director, the 65-year-old credited with inventing speech recognition technology who also has unusual views on mortality.

The futurist and inventor is renowned for publishing The Singularity , a book which envisions a world where man and machine merge to create the path to immortality.

He also takes 150 supplements a day to keep his body in optimum condition until the "nanotechnology revolution" takes place.

"Biology is a software process. Our bodies are made up of trillions of cells, each governed by this process. You and I are walking around with outdated software running in our bodies, which evolved in a very different era," Kurzweil said in an interview with Maclean's.

"At that point, we can have little robots, sometimes called nanobots, that augment your immune system. We can create an immune system that recognises all disease, and if a new disease emerged, it could be reprogrammed to deal with new pathogens," he said.

Google's not the only one getting on board with immortality.

Russian millionaire Dmitry Itskov's 2045 Initiative is working on building an avatar with a human brain, where one's personality can be transferred at the end of their human life.

Oracle billionaire Larry Ellison donated $445 million to fight ageing diseases, while PayPal founder Peter Thiel also gave $3.5 million to work on anti-ageing efforts, the LA Timesreports.