While Amazon makes a splash with drones, Google invests in robot technologies. Depending on your profession, that could be bad news.

Not to be outdone by Amazon.com and its widely hyped plan to automate home delivery using drones, Google has revealed that it made seven discreet acquisitions in the past six months with an eye toward enhancing its competence as a maker of robots.

The acquired companies -- Autofuss, Bot & Dolly, Holomni, Industrial Perception, Meka, Redwood Robotics, and Schaft -- develop robotic and automation systems or focus on design and advertising.

As reported by John Markoff in The New York Times, the effort is being led by Andy Rubin, who, appropriately enough, headed Google Android business until earlier this year. It is seen at the company as a "moonshot," the term Google gives to projects of exceptional ambition, such as its self-driving cars and balloon-borne Internet access points.

Google's robotics group doesn't yet have a formal place in the company's corporate structure. It's not part of Google X, the company's experimental laboratory, because the goal is to deliver products relatively soon. The group's first products are expected to meet the needs of automated manufacturing and logistics, something like the systems Amazon employs in its highly automated warehouses.

The question this venture raises is: How many people will become unemployed because of these robots? Speculating that Google could try to put its recently launched Shopping Express service into the hands of robots, Markoff wrote, "Perhaps someday, there will be automated delivery to the doorstep, which for now is dependent on humans."

The article happens to quote Andrew McAfee, a principal research scientist at the MIT Center for Digital Business, who opines that there's a massive automation opportunity because there are still people who walk around manufacturing floors and distribution centers to move objects.

This the same Andrew McAfee who, in a 2012 TED talk, declared that droids are coming for our jobs, a subject he explores in his coming book, The Second Machine Age.

"I think within the lifetimes of most of the people in this room, we're going to transition into an economy that is very productive but that just doesn't need a lot of human workers, and managing that transition is going to be the greatest challenge that our society faces," McAfee said in his presentation.

Paradoxically, he then declared his optimism and implied this challenge will be solved. He concluded by echoing the words of Jeopardy champion Ken Jennings at his defeat by IBM's Watson: "I, for one, welcome our new computer overlords." 

Perhaps Google should be investing in armed robots to suppress those who might rise up against our new computer overlords, because not everyone will be so sanguine about being made redundant and idle. Wars have been fought for less.

In a blog post published Monday in response to a recent New Yorker article on Google's self-driving cars, Lee Vinsel, assistant professor of science and technology studies at Stevens Institute of Technology, argues that author overlooks the social consequences of technology. He then castigates Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos for (in a recent 60 Minutes interview) dismissing the fate of independent booksellers as the inevitable result of advancing technology, rather than acknowledging Amazon's role in transforming the book business.

"Bezos's statement is a beautiful example of someone using the notion of technological determinism -- the idea that technological change drives social change -- to absolve himself of responsibility," Vinsel wrote. "Remember all you Amazon.com workers, when you work all day in warehouses without heat and air conditioning and go home exhausted and underpaid, that's just the future happening to you. Many of my friends have outright hatred for Walmart. They should save some of their spleen for Mr. Bezos."

Vinsel insists that Bezos likes drones because they don't have human rights. Bezos, were he inclined to argue the point, might phrase it differently: Drones don't have human expenses. But purely economic rationale leads to the inevitable conclusion that humans are expendable, at least as workers. They're still necessary as customers, but they don't buy much if they don't have jobs.

The paradox of McAfee's rosy view about the apparently decreasing need for human workers is that the data he presents doesn't point toward a happy ending. It suggests fewer and fewer people will have jobs.

To get to a happy ending, McAfee relies on a report about how the arrival of mobile phones in Kerala, India, improved the lives of local fishermen, and on his assertion that economies run not on capital or labor, but on ideas.

Both are problematic examples. Phones augment human activity, communication specifically. They don't replace human activity. The fishermen in Kerala might be less enthusiastic if confronted by an automated trawler. Likewise, ideas matter, but they are not independent of social context. Nor are they particularly meaningful without capital and a stable political and legal framework. Economics truly is the dismal science when the social welfare of people is factored out of the equation.

In a phone interview, McAfee made it clear he's comfortable with the paradox, and said he believes advancing technology is simultaneously the best news we have and the biggest challenge we face.

"Technological progress is the only free lunch that economists believe in," he observed.

Without doubt, technology has brought amazing benefits to the world and will continue to do so. But McAfee acknowledges current technological trends might be different. Automation in previous eras created a lot of displacement, he said, but there was always new demand for labor created at all different levels of skill.

"Even after we electrified the factories, we developed a large, stable middle class," McAfee told us. "What I'm seeing that might be different this time is that technology is encroaching more deeply into the bundle of things that humans do."

What this means is that at some point in the future, computers and robots could become so smart and capable that most people will have nothing to offer a potential employer.

Vinsel in his post discusses the rise of "dark factories" that operate with few human workers and muses that the automated systems being developed by Amazon, Google, and other technology companies could bring us a dark transportation system, run by a skeleton crew of people. It would be efficient, and perhaps even safe. But would it be worth the cost in human opportunity?

To reconcile McAfee's views, you have to understand he's talking about two different time frames. In the short term, he says, the robots will not take our jobs.

"The right thing to do in the short term is to encourage economic growth, to encourage employment growth," McAfee says, noting that jobs tend to increase as the economy grows. He does suggest a possible course of action: Tax something other than income to raise public revenue and to accommodate the changing labor market. Maybe it's time to draft a robot tax so that our mechanized replacements can fund our retirement.

Long-term, he isn't so sure. Asked whether we need to embrace a welfare state or a police state to adapt to a world that has no need for, say, 30% of its population, McAfee said, "Nobody knows the answer to that question."

Apply now for the InformationWeek Elite 100, which recognizes the most innovative users of technology to advance a company's business goals. Winners will be recognized at the InformationWeek Conference, March 31 and April 1 in Las Vegas.

For only $2,499, you too can micromanage from your bedroom using Double. The robot syncs with your iPad via Bluetooth, and anyone with the access to your account can log in and use the device over a Wi-Fi network. With such ease, don't be surprised when you show up to work one day and everyone is a little more robotic.

Designed to compete in the DARPA Robotics Challenge, this "female" robot could be the precursor to robo-astronauts that will help colonize Mars.

What if NASA's Robonaut grew legs and indulged in steroids? The result might be close to what NASA has unveiled: Valkyrie is a humanoid machine billed as a "superhero robot."

Developed at the Johnson Space Center, Valkyrie is a 6.2-foot, 275-pound hulk designed to compete in the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC).

It will go toe to toe with the Terminator-like Atlas robot from Boston Dynamics in what's shaping up to be an amazing modern-day duel.

In an interesting twist, Valkyrie seems to be a girl. While officially genderless, "Valkyrie" (a nickname, since the official designation is R5) evokes the goddess-like females of Norse myth.

Its Iron Man-style glowing chest ring nestles in a pronounced bosom that contains linear actuators for waist rotation.

"We really wanted to design the appearance of this robot to be one that when you saw it (you'd say) 'Wow. That's awesome,'" Nicolaus Radford of the NASA JSC Dextrous Robotics Lab says in the video below by IEEE Spectrum.

"When we were designing the robot, we were thinking about the competition from day one, and we wanted a very modular system. Specifically with the arm, we can yank one bolt and one connector, and we can take the arm off. It happens in a matter of minutes."

Valkyrie has 44 degrees of freedom, or axes of rotation in its joints, meaning it's a relatively flexible machine in terms of movement. Its power source is a battery stored in a backpack that can provide it with about an hour of juice.

Its sensors include sonar and LIDAR, as well as head, arm, abdomen, and leg cameras so operators can see whatever the robot is doing from multiple viewpoints.

Developed with the University of Texas and Texas A&M University, Valkyrie can walk around untethered, and pick up and manipulate objects, which are essential skills for the DARPA challenge.

The DRC is designed to help evolve machines that can cope with disasters and hazardous environments like nuclear power plant accidents. Participants will be presented with tasks such as driving a utility vehicle, walking over uneven terrain, clearing debris, breaking through a wall, closing a valve, and connecting a fire hose.

NASA, however, sees the DRC as part of its mission to explore space.

"NASA saw a considerable overlap between what the DRC was trying to accomplish and NASA's goals as an agency," says Radford. "We want to get to Mars. Likely, NASA will send robots ahead of the astronauts to the planet. These robots will start preparing the way for the human explorers, and when the humans arrive, the robots and the humans will work together."

The DARPA challenge gets going this month with a preliminary competition. Check out more details on Valkyrie in the vid below.

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) – It looks like science fiction, but it’s reality.

A human-sized robot named CHIMP has been created by Carnegie Mellon’s University’s National Robotics Engineering Center in Lawrenceville, and it’s getting ready for a big challenge.

At five-foot-two inches, with arms and legs, the robot resembles a person’s frame. Only it weighs 400 pounds and cost more than $3 million to develop.

“When we have an event, and we can’t send in humans because it’s a bad scene, these are the things that can make a difference and keep you out of harms ways,” said Eric Meyhofer who’s part of the team working on robot.

Robots like CHIMP for instance, could respond to disasters such as the meltdown of the nuclear plant in Japan after an earthquake and tsunami.

From inside a trailer, a team of people control what CHIMP is doing. They can see the robot’s surroundings through CHIMP’S cameras and laser sensors.

CHIMP can turn valves, clear debris, travel rough terrain and even grab a fire hose.

“The robot is kind of like a baby,” said David Stager, who is stationed inside the trailer that reminds you of NASA master control. “So we’re teaching it how to do things faster and faster each day.”

They’re practicing night and day because CHIMP will compete in a contest run by the group that comes up with new technology for the U.S. military.

The DARPA contest will be held in Miami next week. As many as 17-robots will compete at the trials, with the finals being next December.

Tony Stentz, is the director of the National Robotics Engineering Center: “CHIMP will need to do eight tasks that would simulate what a person would do in a disaster response scenario.”

Whether they win or not, Stentz says they will keep working with the technology they developed in building CHIMP.

Phoenix will be reborn – this time as a reality TV star. Mars One, a Dutch organisation based around the wacky idea of putting a human colony on the Red Planet and turning it into a TV show, says it will launch a copy of NASA's Phoenix Mars lander in 2018.

How the group will fund the robotic mission is unclear but if successful, it could be the first private venture to land on Mars.

The lander would be part of a precursor mission to lay the foundations for the Martian colonists, due to arrive in 2025. "The goal is to demonstrate a few of the technologies that we need for the manned mission," says Mars One CEOBas Lansdorp.

That means the non-profit organisation is already looking at its first delay. Mars One had originally said it would launch a robotic mission in 2016, before humans land in 2023.

Solar testing

Speaking on 10 December at the National Press Club in Washington DC, Lansdorp announced that the organisation has teamed up with spaceflight veteran Lockheed Martin, which designed the NASA lander, to build Mars One's version.

There will be a few tweaks. The original Phoenix spacecraft, which landed on Mars in 2008, used a robotic arm to scoop up and analyse soil. Mars One's lander will attempt to extract water from the surface and test flexible solar panels.

Mars One's plan includes a communications satellite, to be built by UK company Surrey Satellite Technology, that will relay live video feed of the planet's surface broadcast by the lander.

The Phoenix mission cost $475 million. It is unclear how much the clone will cost and how Mars One will pay for it and for the orbiter. Lansdorp says the organisation is in discussions with partners to fund specific components.

Mars One has also launched a crowdfunding campaign. But Lansdorp expects the Phoenix clone to be cheaper than the original as, unlike NASA, Mars One isn't starting from scratch. Lockheed Martin is already building a new version of Phoenix for NASA's 2016 InSight mission, which should bring down costs. "Mars One is going to be an easier customer to deal with because we require less paperwork," Lansdorp adds.

Optimistic launch date

So might the Mars One lander actually happen? "Landing on Mars is incredibly difficult, and I salute their ambition," says Bruce Banerdt, who leads NASA's InSight mission.

He points out that Lockheed Martin has the experience to land on Mars, so Mars One has a chance. "If Lockheed Martin commits to this project it will be difficult to dismiss it out of hand," Banerdt says.

However, he thinks that a 2018 launch is optimistic, given that InSight has been in development since 2010. He also says that Mars One will need space-agency expertise for other elements of the mission, from high-resolution images of landing sites to deep-space communications. Another planned private mission to Mars – Inspiration Mars – recently asked NASA for help with funding.

Lansdorp is prepared for teething problems, which he doesn't see as a deal-breaker. "If this mission isn't successful, we'll just send a copy two years later," he says.

The machines are coming for some of our jobs. Be afraid or welcome our new robot overlords, as you prefer.

The robots are coming, and they want our jobs. That's progress. In the 20th century, they wanted our women.

Actually, the robots don't want all of our jobs. They're said to be capable of competing for about 47% of them, at least in the US, given current technological expectations. So only half of us will need to retrain. The other option is to join the Resistance. Who knew The Terminator was an employment double entendre?

The other half of us should get used to being lonely on the job, which may evolve into making sure our mechanized colleagues don't malfunction or do something unexpected. Small consolation though it may be, if you're the last human on the factory floor, you won't need to worry about turning out the lights when you leave. That's the sort of task robots do very well.

Google's acquisition of seven robotics and technology companies in the past six months and its decision to give its nascent robotics business to former Android chief Andy Rubin suggests a serious commitment to automation. This isn't a Google Wave-style expeditionary mission. It's a beachhead that will allow the company to expand beyond the ocean of ones and zeroes and into the territory of manufacturing, logistics, and commerce.

Automation has been a reality in manufacturing for years. But now that we're getting to the point of changing state laws to allow driverless vehicles, it's clear the robot revolution won't remain confined to factories.

Google's competitors are advancing the state of the art. Last year, Amazon bought Kiva Systems, the maker of the robots it uses to carry goods in its warehouses, for $775 million.

In fact, robots are already here among us. You just don't see them because they're hard to recognize, or they operate outside the public view.

According to the International Federation of Robotics, industrial robot shipments in the US increased 9% from 2011 to a record 22,414 units in 2012. From 2014 to 2016, global robot installations are expected to increase an average of 6% per year. At the end of 2012, there were 1.2 million to 1.5 million operational industrial robots in the world.

Losing a job to a machine may be a tragedy on a personal level, but it could be quite desirable on a macroeconomic scale. An Information Technology and Innovation Foundation paper published in September argues that fear of robots amounts to neo-Luddism, and that we should deploy more robots to increase productivity, which will improve the economy.

Though the paper veers from supported argument to dubious speculation in places (as when it states, "There is no upward limit to our desire to consume"), it may be that things will work out in the end between humans and robots -- at least in terms of our relationship with deferential, unarmed machines. But it's worth wondering whether the ITIF will change its tune when robots become capable of filling executive and managerial roles.

Click the image above to explore a few jobs that robots are already doing or have demonstrated the ability to do. Be afraid or welcome our new robot overlords, as you prefer.

Read more...

Psychologists from the University of Exeter are leading a major project looking at how robots can enable people to interact in public spaces – without actually being there.

The £2 million three-year project, Being There: Humans and Robots in Public Spaces, funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), will examine how robotics can help to bridge the gap between the way we communicate in person and online.

It brings together researchers from the Universities of Exeter, Bath and Oxford, Queen Mary University of London and the Bristol Robotics Laboratory (BRL) to look at the social and technological aspects of being able to appear in public in proxy forms, via a range of advanced robotics platforms. The BRL is a collaborative partnership between the University of the West of England and the University of Bristol.

The research team will be using an advanced programmable humanoid robot, called 'Nao,' that they will take into public spaces around Bristol and Bath to measure human interaction with robots.

Nao will be controlled remotely and its controllers will be able to see and speak through its eyes and mouth, while directing where it looks and walks.

The project aims to enhance the public realm as a space where people can interact under conditions of privacy and equality, where the social benefits of being with other people are maximised, and barriers to being in public spaces are reduced.

Professor Mark Levine of the University of Exeter said: "Being able to interact with others in public space plays an important role in the well-being of individuals and societies. Sadly, many people are unable to do this – because they are ill, housebound or unable to travel. However, if a robot proxy can act for them – and can transmit back the full experience of being with others - we can help to reduce social isolation and increase civic participation.

"We are very excited by the opportunities that new technologies offer to help us extend our research on helping behaviour and social interactions in public spaces. We hope our work on human-robot interactions will contribute to the public spaces of the future."

The research team will create a 'living laboratory', using state-of-the-art technologies to measure how people respond to and interact with other people who are acting through a robot representative.

Supporting this process, digital creative from Bristol's iShed will work alongside the researchers, bringing their expertise in public engagement to help bring the research out of the lab and into a range of public spaces in Bristol.

Professor Mark Levine, Dr Miriam Koschate-Reis and Dr Huseyin Cakal from the University of Exeter's Department of Psychology will produce a series of experiments in laboratory and semi-public spaces which will deepen understanding of the relationship between social identities, social interactions and the spread of emotion in groups.

3D printing will allow production on the small-scale to be as efficient as large scale production - its existence and growth will both challenge and complete traditional manufacturing.

When music was a physical item – a vinyl record, a tape or a CD – ownership could be verified and quality could be assured. In the last decade, music progressively morphed into little more than a file which can be easily shared and edited. Now, the vast and rapid technological advances being catalysed by three dimensional printing could see this phenomenon repeated for a much wider range of products.

The 3D printing industry is predicted to be worth over $8bn globally by 2020. Physical items, mass produced and bought in outlet stores, will become replicable and editable by anyone with knowledge of computer-aided drawing and access to a 3D printer. 

Already, 3D printing technology is being used to manufacture a wide array of items – from auto parts and prototypes to human skin and organs. In a world where mass-manufacturing takes place on scales never seen before, 3D printing is starting to spell big changes for the way the world thinks about production. This inevitably means we will face new frontiers in global trade as well.

The technology underlying 3D printers has been around since the 1970s, but the devices have come into prominence only in recent years, as patent expiry and new innovation have led to drastic decreases in the price of the devices. To fully appreciate the way 3D printing might impact our lives, consider this: in under an hour, your $2,000 3D printer can turn a couple of metres of coiled plastic filament into anything from jewellery and artworks to gadgets and kitchen tools. By far the more significant applications of 3D printing are in industry. At that scale, the material can be plastic, wood, glass, metal and more. Industrial 3D printers can use as many as 10 materials at a time to make complex, multi-component objects relatively cheaply.

It is too early to describe the emergence of 3D printing as a new industrial revolution (although The New Scientist has done just that). But as the technology becomes faster, cheaper and more sophisticated, it will have wide-reaching impacts on industry and the global economy.

A more efficient 3D printing process would allow industry an opportunity it never had before: for production on the small-scale to be as efficient as large scale production. Think about it: using the techniques of traditional manufacturing, the production of one-off items and prototypes is very costly or impossible as the absence of specialised machines and moulds makes production labour-intensive. This labour-intensity has driven many types of production offshore. The flight of relatively low-skilled manufacturing jobs to nations with lower wage rates and a comparative advantage in manufacturing has been one of the largest structural economic shifts over the past 30 years.

The advent of widespread 3D printing makes it possible for some forms of one-off manufacturing and prototyping to return. For 3D printers, it doesn’t matter if one item or one thousand items are produced; the price of production per item remains constant.

As a result, 3D printing has the capability of bringing the design process and the manufacturing process closer together. With greater ease of innovation, small and medium-sized enterprises will be able to experiment more readily with new ideas, and then see the fruits of their creativity produced quickly and with fewer hurdles than at present. This is not to say, of course, that 3D printing will ever completely replace assembly lines or machining. It will more likely serve to complement, rather than compete with traditional manufacturing.

It also brings challenges, like when plans were released for a working gun which could be produced by anyone with access to a 3D printer – an issue covered in a very recent 60 Minutes piece by Ray Martin. This, like many web-based developments, is incredibly difficult for government to regulate and monitor effectively.

This goes further than just the question of intellectual property. 3D printing and similar technologies have led to a further blurring of the lines between goods and services. There are challenges for global trade as a result, associated with measurement, assigning property rights and responsibility for quality assurance. But the opportunities dwarf the challenges. As the WTO observed in its 2013 World Trade Report, the possibility to edit and create physical objects through 3D printing will feed the burgeoning global middle class desire for variety and individuality in their goods. This is just one of many technological advances challenging us to change our way of thinking about international trade and economic growth. Advances in robotics, data sharing and medical technology are others.

Australia needs to set itself up to take advantage of the opportunities presented by these new technologies. By defining our role in new global value chains and mastering the technology via investment in education and broadband, we can use our greatest asset – the creativity, adaptability and innovation of our population – to create a new generation of broad-based prosperity here at home.

BIOENGINEERS dream of growing spare parts for our worn-out or diseased bodies. They have already succeeded with some tissues, but one has always eluded them: the brain. Now a team in Sweden has taken the first step towards this ultimate goal.

Growing artificial body parts in the lab starts with a scaffold. This acts as a template on which to grow cells from the patient's body. This has been successfully used to grow lymph nodes, heart cells and voice boxes from a person's stem cells. Bioengineers have even grown and transplanted anartificial kidney in a rat.

Growing nerve tissue in the lab is much more difficult, though. In the brain, new neural cells grow in a complex and specialised matrix of proteins. This matrix is so important that damaged nerve cells don't regenerate without it. But its complexity is difficult to reproduce. To try to get round this problem,Paolo Macchiarini and Silvia Baiguera at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, and colleagues combined a scaffold made from gelatin with a tiny amount of rat brain tissue that had already had its cells removed. This "decellularised" tissue, they hoped, would provide enough of the crucial biochemical cues to enable seeded cells to develop as they would in the brain.

When the team added mesenchymal stem cells – taken from another rat's bone marrow – to the mix, they found evidence that the stem cells had started to develop into neural cells (Biomaterials, doi.org/qfh).

The method has the advantage of combining the benefits of natural tissue with the mechanical properties of an artificial matrix, says Alex Seifalian, a regenerative medicine specialist at University College London, who wasn't involved in the study.

There is a long way to go before any sort of clinical application could be considered, but Macchiarini envisages that a scaffold seeded with neural cells could help people with neurodegenerative disease. The death of brain cells is what causes symptoms in conditions such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.

It might also be possible one day to use transplants of bioengineered tissue to replace parts of the brain damaged, for example, by a gunshot, Macchiarini says, and to provide a matrix for native cells to grow into.

"We expect that a patient's central nervous system cells could migrate into the implanted scaffold, adhere to it, grow and contribute to neural tissue regeneration," he says.

Seifalian says that in someone with cell loss from a neurodegenerative disease or brain damage, a scaffold such as this would be useful as a last resort. Of the numerous stages to go through before this method gets to the clinic, not least is the need to confirm the degree of integration of the scaffold within natural tissue in the brain, he says. There also needs to be a way to measure any functional improvement in brain activity.

Charles Lieber at Harvard University says the work could represent a significant advance for neural tissue engineering and regenerative neural treatments.

This article appeared in print under the headline "First steps to lab-grown brain tissue"

At the Wearable Futures conference, London designer and researcher Shamees Aden debuted a running shoe concept that will put your worn out kicks to shame. The shoes, which he's developing with University of Southern Denmark professor Martin Hanczyc, are 3D printed from a synthetic biological material that can repair itself overnight.

The running shoes are the product of Aden's study of protocells. The basic protocell molecules are not themselves alive, but can be combined to create living organisms. Mixing different protocells creates different properties, and allows them to be programmed to behave differently depending on heat, light, and pressure. The shoes' unique construction allows them to be 3D printed to the exact size of the user's foot, so they would fit like a second skin. While running, the shoes would react to pressure and movement, providing extra cushioning when needed.

"The cells have the capability to inflate and deflate and to respond to pressure," Aden tells Dezeen. "As you're running on different grounds and textures it's able to inflate or deflate depending on the pressure you put onto it and could help support you as a runner."

After the run, the shoes would be placed in a jar filled with living liquid protocell. The liquid works almost as a recharger or a reviver, keeping the living organisms in the shoes healthy and helping them rejuvenate. The liquid can also be dyed any color, so the shoes would take on the hue of its liquid protocell charger.

It's an interesting concept that not only blurs the line between living and non-living organisms, but also pushes the boundaries of 3D printing. According to Aden, the technology is nearly here, and these shoes could become a reality by 2050.

3D printing will allow production on the small-scale to be as efficient as large scale production - its existence and growth will both challenge and complete traditional manufacturing

When music was a physical item – a vinyl record, a tape or a CD – ownership could be verified and quality could be assured. In the last decade, music progressively morphed into little more than a file which can be easily shared and edited. Now, the vast and rapid technological advances being catalysed by three dimensional printing could see this phenomenon repeated for a much wider range of products.

The 3D printing industry is predicted to be worth over $8bn globally by 2020. Physical items, mass produced and bought in outlet stores, will become replicable and editable by anyone with knowledge of computer-aided drawing and access to a 3D printer. 

Already, 3D printing technology is being used to manufacture a wide array of items – from auto parts and prototypes to human skin and organs. In a world where mass-manufacturing takes place on scales never seen before, 3D printing is starting to spell big changes for the way the world thinks about production. This inevitably means we will face new frontiers in global trade as well.

The technology underlying 3D printers has been around since the 1970s, but the devices have come into prominence only in recent years, as patent expiry and new innovation have led to drastic decreases in the price of the devices. To fully appreciate the way 3D printing might impact our lives, consider this: in under an hour, your $2,000 3D printer can turn a couple of metres of coiled plastic filament into anything from jewellery and artworks to gadgets and kitchen tools. By far the more significant applications of 3D printing are in industry. At that scale, the material can be plastic, wood, glass, metal and more. Industrial 3D printers can use as many as 10 materials at a time to make complex, multi-component objects relatively cheaply.

It is too early to describe the emergence of 3D printing as a new industrial revolution (although The New Scientist has done just that). But as the technology becomes faster, cheaper and more sophisticated, it will have wide-reaching impacts on industry and the global economy.

A more efficient 3D printing process would allow industry an opportunity it never had before: for production on the small-scale to be as efficient as large scale production. Think about it: using the techniques of traditional manufacturing, the production of one-off items and prototypes is very costly or impossible as the absence of specialised machines and moulds makes production labour-intensive. This labour-intensity has driven many types of production offshore. The flight of relatively low-skilled manufacturing jobs to nations with lower wage rates and a comparative advantage in manufacturing has been one of the largest structural economic shifts over the past 30 years.

The advent of widespread 3D printing makes it possible for some forms of one-off manufacturing and prototyping to return. For 3D printers, it doesn’t matter if one item or one thousand items are produced; the price of production per item remains constant.

As a result, 3D printing has the capability of bringing the design process and the manufacturing process closer together. With greater ease of innovation, small and medium-sized enterprises will be able to experiment more readily with new ideas, and then see the fruits of their creativity produced quickly and with fewer hurdles than at present. This is not to say, of course, that 3D printing will ever completely replace assembly lines or machining. It will more likely serve to complement, rather than compete with traditional manufacturing.

It also brings challenges, like when plans were released for a working gun which could be produced by anyone with access to a 3D printer – an issue covered in a very recent 60 Minutes piece by Ray Martin. This, like many web-based developments, is incredibly difficult for government to regulate and monitor effectively.

This goes further than just the question of intellectual property. 3D printing and similar technologies have led to a further blurring of the lines between goods and services. There are challenges for global trade as a result, associated with measurement, assigning property rights and responsibility for quality assurance. But the opportunities dwarf the challenges. As the WTO observed in its 2013 World Trade Report, the possibility to edit and create physical objects through 3D printing will feed the burgeoning global middle class desire for variety and individuality in their goods. This is just one of many technological advances challenging us to change our way of thinking about international trade and economic growth. Advances in robotics, data sharing and medical technology are others.

Australia needs to set itself up to take advantage of the opportunities presented by these new technologies. By defining our role in new global value chains and mastering the technology via investment in education and broadband, we can use our greatest asset – the creativity, adaptability and innovation of our population – to create a new generation of broad-based prosperity here at home.

The US Senate has voted to extend a ban on the production and use of plastic guns for another ten years. The move was prompted by the threat of mass at-home 3D gun printing. Are 3D printing technologies useful or harmful and what else can they produce? VoR’s experts look into the issue.

The 2nd amendment to the US Constitution protects the right of individuals to keep and bear arms. Over the next decade, however, those arms will be made from anything but plastic. No sooner had plastic guns, light and invisible to metal detectors and X-ray scanners, become possible thanks to 3D printers than they were banned over fears that crimes may be surging.

The problem with 3D printers is that anyone who has it at home can create both lethal guns and their non-lethal replicas and use them to commit robberies or other crimes, said Andrei Masalovich, President of the Inforus IT consortium.

“If a gun is made from modern plastic, no scanner will detect it. You can walk through a metal detector, unstopped, and then take out a plastic gun looking exactly like a real one out of your pocket. It’s a serious problem and there is a special law prohibiting such stunts at airports. With the appearance of 3D printing, anyone can take cheap plastic and make an item imitating a lethal or health-threatening object. And that’s got nothing to do with terrorism. Terrorists and organized crime groups have long procured themselves undetectable plastic knifes and single-shot guns made from thermoplastic with a 3D printer and containing no metal,” he told the Voice of Russia.

In May 2013, a 25-year-old US citizen, Cody Wilson, invented a thermoplastic 3D-printed handgun that fires real bullets. Its sole steel component is a firing pin made from an ordinary nail. Wilson posted a blueprint of his 3D Liberator rifle on the Internet. Experts from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives made two copies of his gun and test-fired them: one exploded, the other successfully fired eight shots. Liberator’s blueprint had been downloaded 100,000 times before the government ordered its removal.

With 3D printers being sold at fairly affordable prices starting from $3,000, virtually anyone can make himself or herself a toy gun.

3D printing technologies originated about three decades ago and were first employed in car manufacturing. There are 3D printers for industrial and at-home use, ink-jet and laser, using thermoplastic, iron chips, wood chips, plaster and even biological cells as initial printing staff.

Biomodelling is a promising branch of 3D printing, said Albert Yefimov, director for IT cluster projects at the Skolovo Foundation.

“It means you can virtually model human organs with a 3D printer. Different physical principles will be applied, of course, to create organic tissue, but the idea is the same – slowly printing one layer atop another. Russian scientists, for example, have 3D-printed a human liver using an ink-jet printer. Liver tissue is fairly heterogeneous, which enabled them to create an artificial liver looking exactly like a real one. They filled the cartridge with liver cells and the machine printed the tissue layer by layer,” Yefimov said.

 While 3D bio-printing is only just being tested in research centers, non-organic 3D printing is conquering consumer markets. “Whatever you invent we will print!” is the motto of 3D Fabrication Laboratories (FabLabs) opened in various cities of the world, including Moscow.

Robonaut 2's space legs have been a not-secret since astronaut Rick Mastracchio posted a picture of them to Twitter back in January. Or at least, that's the first time we saw 'em. Since then, pictures have popped up all over the place, since anyone taking the Level 9 Tour at NASA's Johnson Space Center had a halfway decent chance of getting a peek. What we haven't seen, though, is much in the way of footage of Robonaut legging itself around. Finally, we've got some video of that, which we can summarize in one word: wiggly.

These legs are not for walking, obviously, because Robonaut is designed for space, where it doesn't need legs that'll be able to successfully stand up to gravity, as it where. Rather, Robonaut's legs are more like secondary arms with secondary hands, that the robot will use to climb around the outside of the International Space Station, and to hold itself in place as it works with its primary arms and hands.

With its seven-jointed legs fully extended, Robonaut can span a gap of nearly three meters. Cameras and grippers on the ends of the legs lets the robot see where it's grabbing, and there are already plenty of rails and sockets on the ISS to help Robonaut get from place to place. The legs will be functional inside the station as well, and the Robonaut torso currently on duty in space is scheduled to receive this upgrade early next year.

Now, it would be pretty cool if NASA had a humanoid robot with actual reallegs that could walk around on Earth and do stuff, and it would be even cooler if we got an early look at that robot and were able to share with you in the next day or two. Wouldn't that be cool? Yep, sure would be.

Yep.

[ NASA ]

SAN FRANCISCO — BigDog, Cheetah, WildCat and Atlas have joined Google’s growing robot menagerie.

Google confirmed on Friday that it had completed the acquisition of Boston Dynamics, an engineering company that has designed mobile research robots for the Pentagon. The company, based in Waltham, Mass., has gained an international reputation for machines that walk with an uncanny sense of balance and even — cheetahlike — run faster than the fastest humans.

It is the eighth robotics company that Google has acquired in the last half-year. Executives at the Internet giant are circumspect about what exactly they plan to do with their robot collection. But Boston Dynamics and its animal kingdom-themed machines bring significant cachet to Google’s robotic efforts, which are being led by Andy Rubin, the Google executive who spearheaded the development of Android, the world’s most widely used smartphone software.

The deal is also the clearest indication yet that Google is intent on building a new class of autonomous systems that might do anything from warehouse work to package delivery and even elder care.

Boston Dynamics was founded in 1992 by Marc Raibert, a former professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It has not sold robots commercially, but has pushed the limits of mobile and off-road robotics technology, mostly for Pentagon clients like the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or Darpa. Early on, the company also did consulting work for Sony on consumer robots like the Aibo robotic dog.

Boston Dynamics’ walking robots have a reputation for being extraordinarily agile, able to walk over rough terrain and handle surfaces that in some cases are challenging even for humans.

A video of one of its robots named BigDog shows a noisy, gas-powered, four-legged, walking robot that climbs hills, travels through snow, skitters precariously on ice and even manages to stay upright in response to a well-placed human kick. BigDog development started in 2003 in partnership with the British robot maker Foster-Miller, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Harvard.

The video has been viewed more than 15 million times since it was posted on YouTube in 2008.

More recently, Boston Dynamics distributed a video of a four-legged robot named WildCat, galloping in high-speed circles in a parking lot.

Although the videos frequently inspire comments that the robots will evolve into scary killing machines straight out of the “Terminator” movies, Dr. Raibert has said in the past that he does not consider his company to be a military contractor — it is merely trying to advance robotics technology. Google executives said the company would honor existing military contracts, but that it did not plan to move toward becoming a military contractor on its own.

Under a $10.8 million contract, Boston Dynamics is currently supplying Darpa with a set of humanoid robots named Atlas to participate in the Darpa Robotics Challenge, a two-year contest with a $2 million prize. The contest’s goal is creating a class of robots that can operate in natural disasters and catastrophes like the nuclear power plant meltdown in Fukushima, Japan.

“Competitions like the Darpa Robotics Challenge stretch participants to try to solve problems that matter and we hope to learn from the teams’ insights around disaster relief,” Mr. Rubin said in a statement released by Google.

Boston Dynamics has also designed robots that can climb walls and trees as well as other two- and four-legged walking robots, a neat match to Mr. Rubin’s notion that “computers are starting to sprout legs and move around in the environment.”

A recent video shows a robot named Cheetah running on a treadmill. This year, the robot was clocked running 29 miles per hour, surpassing the previous legged robot land speed record of 13.1 m.p.h., set in 1999. That’s about one mile per hour faster than Jamaica’sUsain Bolt, the two-time Olympic gold medalist in the 100-meter dash. But it’s far short of a real cheetah, which can hit 65 m.p.h.

Google’s other robotics acquisitions include companies in the United States and Japan that have pioneered a range of technologies including software for advanced robot arms, grasping technology and computer vision. Mr. Rubin has also said that he is interested in advancing sensor technology.

Mr. Rubin has called his robotics effort a “moonshot,” but has declined to describe specific products that might come from the project. He has, however, also said that he does not expect initial product development to go on for years, indicating that Google commercial robots of some nature could be available in the next several years.

Google declined to say how much it paid for its newest robotics acquisition and said that it did not plan to release financial information on any of the other companies it has recently bought.

Dr. Raibert is known as the father of walking robots in the United States. He originally created the Leg Lab, a research laboratory to explore walking machines at Carnegie Mellon University in 1980. He then moved the laboratory to M.I.T. before leaving academia to build engineering systems for the military and Sony.

His research in walking robots began with a pogo-stick project called “the hopper,” which he used to test basic concepts.

Computer scientists at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University have joined forces to put powerful probabilistic reasoning algorithms in the hands of bioengineers.

In a new paper presented at the Neural Information Processing Systems conference on December 7, Ryan P. Adams and Nils Napp have shown that an important class of artificial intelligence algorithms could be implemented using chemical reactions.

These algorithms, which use a technique called "message passing inference on factor graphs," are a mathematical coupling of ideas from graph theory and probability. They represent the state of the art in machine learning and are already critical components of everyday tools ranging from search engines and fraud detection to error correction in mobile phones.

Adams' and Napp's work demonstrates that some aspects of artificial intelligence (AI) could be implemented at microscopic scales using molecules. In the long term, the researchers say, such theoretical developments could open the door for "smart drugs" that can automatically detect, diagnose, and treat a variety of diseases using a cocktail of chemicals that can perform AI-type reasoning.

"We understand a lot about building AI systems that can learn and adapt at macroscopic scales; these algorithms live behind the scenes in many of the devices we interact with every day," says Adams, an assistant professor of computer science at SEAS whose Intelligent Probabilistic Systems group focuses on machine learning and computational statistics. "This work shows that it is possible to also build intelligent machines at tiny scales, without needing anything that looks like a regular computer. This kind of chemical-based AI will be necessary for constructing therapies that sense and adapt to their environment. The hope is to eventually have drugs that can specialize themselves to your personal chemistry and can diagnose or treat a range of pathologies."

Adams and Napp designed a tool that can take probabilistic representations of unknowns in the world (probabilistic graphical models, in the language of machine learning) and compile them into a set of chemical reactions that estimate quantities that cannot be observed directly. The key insight is that the dynamics of chemical reactions map directly onto the two types of computational steps that computer scientists would normally perform in silico to achieve the same end.

This insight opens up interesting new questions for computer scientists working on statistical machine learning, such as how to develop novel algorithms and models that are specifically tailored to tackling the uncertainty molecular engineers typically face. In addition to the long-term possibilities for smart therapeutics, it could also open the door for analyzing natural biological reaction pathways and regulatory networks as mechanisms that are performing statistical inference. Just like robots, biological cells must estimate external environmental states and act on them; designing artificial systems that perform these tasks could give scientists a better understanding of how such problems might be solved on a molecular level inside living systems.

"There is much ongoing research to develop chemical computational devices," says Napp, a postdoctoral fellow at the Wyss Institute, working on the Bioinspired Robotics platform, and a member of the Self-organizing Systems Research group at SEAS. Both groups are led by Radhika Nagpal, the Fred Kavli Professor of Computer Science at SEAS and a Wyss core faculty member. At the Wyss Institute, a portion of Napp's research involves developing new types of robotic devices that move and adapt like living creatures.

"What makes this project different is that, instead of aiming for general computation, we focused on efficiently translating particular algorithms that have been successful at solving difficult problems in areas like robotics into molecular descriptions," Napp explains. "For example, these algorithms allow today's robots to make complex decisions and reliably use noisy sensors. It is really exciting to think about what these tools might be able to do for building better molecular machines."

Indeed, the field of machine learning is revolutionizing many areas of science and engineering. The ability to extract useful insights from vast amounts of weak and incomplete information is not only fueling the current interest in "big data," but has also enabled rapid progress in more traditional disciplines such as computer vision, estimation, and robotics, where data are available but difficult to interpret. Bioengineers often face similar challenges, as many molecular pathways are still poorly characterized and available data are corrupted by random noise.

Using machine learning, these challenges can now be overcome by modeling the dependencies between random variables and using them to extract and accumulate the small amounts of information each random event provides.

"Probabilistic graphical models are particularly efficient tools for computing estimates of unobserved phenomena," says Adams. "It's very exciting to find that these tools map so well to the world of cell biology."

Some of the most sophisticated robots that exist today are heading to Florida this week for a Defense Department competition.

Seventeen humanoid units will be evaluated Friday and Saturday at Homestead Miami Speedway for how well they can complete tasks including getting into an all-terrain vehicle and driving it, and opening doors.

It's all stuff people can do. But the mission for the teams in the competition is to make robots that could function in disaster zones where the conditions could be threatening to humans.

Hopeful: The robot designed at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Mellon University is called CHIMP - for CMU Highly Intelligent Mobile Platform. It is just over 5 feet tall and is one of 10 robots that were designed and built from scratch over the last 14 months for the DARPA challenge

Helping out: The mission for the teams in the competition is to make robots that could function in disaster zones where the conditions could be threatening to humans. During practice runs at CMU, it took CHIMP several minutes to open a door or attach a fire hose to a water faucet

Trials: Seventeen humanoid units will be evaluated Friday and Saturday at Homestead Miami Speedway for how well they can complete tasks including getting into an all-terrain vehicle and driving it, and opening doors. This is NASA's RoboSimian unit

It's advanced but not sci-fi. The robots, which move far slower than humans, are controlled by people telling them what action to take.

The top bots will move into the finals next year. The winning team gets $2 million as part of a project of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. 

The entry by defense contractor Lockheed Martin's Advanced Technology Laboratories, made with help from students at the University of Pennsylvania and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York, has been tested in an industrial park in Pennsauken.

The labs did well enough in the virtual version of the competition this year to be supplied a prebuilt robot and allowed to continue to this month's round of the DARPA challenge.

Preparation: Lockheed Martin's robot rests in Pennsauken, N.J., on Thursday, before engineers begin work with the humanoid robot made for the competition. The 6-foot tall, 300-pound robot is one of seventeen humanoid robots that will be evaluated

Tinkering: Engineer Dave Kotfif examines a hand on the same robot. The winners have a chance of claiming $2 million

Humanoid: The formidable frame of NASA's Valkyrie robot will stomp out of the stuff of sci-fi fantasy and into present day reality at the upcoming DARPA Robotic Challenge. The 6 foot, 2 inch tall automaton was designed by a team of engineers at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas in just nine months

Competitors:  Florian from Team ViGIR, eveloped in Virginia, Oregon and Germany

Competitors:  the robot from Team KAIST, of Daejeon Metro City, Republic of Korea

With the machine already built, Lockheed's team was responsible for the software. 

'We want the system to be intuitive to untrained operators,' said Bill Borgia, the director of Lockheed's intelligent robotics laboratory.

During a practice session last week, an engineer used a joystick and a computer mouse to tell the 6-foot tall, 300-pound robot where - and how - to move as it picked up pieces of rubble.

In a real-life rubble removing situation, the controller might not be close to the robot. That's why the operators did their work from behind a black curtain. 

They had monitors to show the view from a camera on the robot, but they could not see the whole action from the outside.

The robot designed at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Mellon University is called CHIMP - for CMU Highly Intelligent Mobile Platform. 

It is just over 5 feet tall and is one of 10 robots that were designed and built from scratch over the last 14 months for the DARPA challenge. 

Other teams are using their software on robots supplied by DARPA.

Arms out: The robot from Team Mojavaton of Grand Junction, Colorado. This machine is 4 feet 10 inches tall and has a wingspan of 6 feet

Greetings: SCHAFT Inc. has built a bipedal robot - walking on two legs presents a major engineering challenge

Anthony Stentz is the director of the National Robotics Engineering Center at Carnegie Mellon and the lead researcher on CHIMP.

'We wanted to design a robot that had roughly human form, so that it fits in the environment that humans operate in. 

'But we didn't want to take on the difficult task of building a machine that it too humanlike,' Stentz said. 

For example, walking on two legs presents a major engineering challenge, so CHIMP rolls on treads, like a small tank. It has treads on its arms, too, and gets down on all fours to go over rough terrain.

Like other robots in the competition, CHIMP gets some commands from humans but also has the ability to make limited decisions. 

'So we are telling it what to do, and it's deciding how to do it,' Stentz said. 

Stentz said many people don't really understand how difficult it is to get a machine to do even simple tasks. Robots excel in doing particular things such as welding a car part on an assembly line. 

But search and rescue missions take place in vastly different and constantly changing environments.

Climber: This design is from Drexel University in Philadelphia

Leggy: Chiron from Kairos Autonomi Salt Lake City, Utah. This robot has a height of 36 inches and weight of 150 lbs

During practice runs at CMU, it took CHIMP several minutes to open a door or attach a fire hose to a water faucet. 

While less exciting than fictional robots' capabilities, those tasks are more complicated and varied than robots usually do, such as vacuuming a room.

'We think that the public ends up with a sense that robots are far more capable than they are,' Stentz said of how Hollywood portrays the machines.

Altering the surface of orthopaedic implants has already helped patients – and nanotech can fight infections too

One of medicine's primary objectives is to trick the body into doing something it doesn't want to do. We try to convince our immune systems to attack cancer cells (our immune systems don't normally attack our own bodies), we try to convince neurons to regrow (another unnatural phenomenon), and we try to convince the body to accept foreign bits, such as someone else's kidney or a fake bone. In order to accomplish this, we try to make parts of our bodies we don't want, such as cancers, look foreign. We try to make foreign bits that we do want, such as orthopaedic implants, look natural. Nanotechnology, as you might have guessed, can help us do just that.

Slippery slopes

At the nanoscale, there aren't many smooth surfaces in our bodies. Cells are covered with bumpy molecules that help them recognise each other and stick together. Between the cells the extracellular matrix – a mesh of proteins, carbohydrates, and other molecules – helps migrating cells find their destination. Smooth, metal hip implants don't look anything like biological surfaces. Many companies now coat bone implants with nanoscale-textured hydroxyapatite, a mineral found in bone. This hydroxyapatite coating tricks the body into incorporating the implant as though it was a real bone.

Encouraging bone growth

Hydroxyapatite coating can make the implants "stickier", but to have a truly successful implant, the surrounding normal bone needs to grow around the implant. Titanium nanotubes, built to resemble the proteins that our bodies use to stick cells together, could encourage this kind of integration. In experimental models they encourage the growth of osteoblasts, the cells that synthesise bone. If osteoblasts grow around the new implant, they could produce new bone all around it. Titanium nanotubes are being developed by a number of groups, and could be used in future dental and orthopaedic implants. Researchers are also trying to embed drugs that encourage bone growth into hydroxyapatite coatings.

Fighting infection

The antimicrobial properties of nanosilver have been discussed in a previous post, and post-operation bacterial infections are a serious and common problem in orthopaedics. Nanosilver is used in bandages and other wound-healing materials, and is being investigated for potential use on the surfaces of orthopaedic implants. One potential problem is that silver nanoparticles also inhibit the growth of osteoblasts, so fighting infection and encouraging bone growth might not be simultaneously achievable with silver. Other, more creative solutions are needed.

Companies such as Amedica coat implants with silicon nitride to simultaneously decrease bacterial growth and encourage the formation of bone. Unlike silver, silicon nitride seems to be able to do both at the same time. This could be because at the nanoscale the silicon nitride is textured in a way that attracts osteoblasts and repels bacteria.

Nanosensors

Thomas Webster is one of medical nanotechnology's pioneers. NanoShield, one of the nine start-up companies that has sprung from Dr Webster's work, is developing a nanosensor that can measure how well an implant is doing. Carbon nanotubes on the implant detect what kind of cells are attached to the implant, and transmit this information through an embedded microchip. Each cell in the body has different electrical properties, and these properties can tell the nanosensor if an osteoblast, an inflammatory cell, or a bacterium is attached. A nanostructured film on the implant could then release drugs, such as antimicrobials or anti-inflammatory molecules, depending on which type of cell is detected by the nanosensor.

Altering the surface of orthopaedic implants with nanotechnology has already improved the kinds of fake bones patients receive today. Further trickery will undoubtedly make them even better, and convince our own bones to grow around the imposter implant.

The fusion of nanotechnology and medicine is changing healthcare as we know it. Organizations and government entities are investing huge amounts in nanotech R&D; life science technology innovators across the world are delivering new products and technologies that almost seem straight from a sci-fi movie.

Take the "lab-on-a-chip" (LOC) concept, for example. Originally based on technology pursued by the U.S. military for detection of biological and chemical warfare agents, the LOC is now being used to examine DNA strands to identify cancer. Soon, researchers expect to have an LOC capable of rendering a complete diagnostic workup using just a drop of blood of urine.

Researchers at MIT have developed a lab test that can detect the presence of blood clots that lead to heart attacks and stroke. They began by modifying a previously developed injectable nanoparticle test for colorectal cancer. Because blood clots are formed from a protein interaction that requires the enzyme thrombin, the researchers added a thrombin sensor to the nanoparticle.

After the particles are injected into the blood stream, they interact with thrombin causing peptides to be released into the urine. A simple urine dipstick to test for the presence of these specific peptides alerts doctors to the presence of blood clots. The new test has potential applications in emergency medicine by giving doctors a diagnostic tool to quickly identify blood clots, as well as prophylactically in postsurgical patients, who could be given a set of dipsticks to take home after a procedure. Patients could test their urine each day and alert their surgeon if a blood clot forms.

Nanotechnology could be used to detect blood clots.

Pharmaceutical companies, most notably GlaxoSmithKline, are developing the latest iteration of implanted electroceuticals. Since most of the body's functions are controlled by electrical stimuli, researchers at GSK are pinpointing specific electric pathways and attempting to activate or inhibit certain ones to correct disease. Bioelectric medical devices could be used to control appetite, decrease blood pressure and stimulate insulin production in response to rising blood sugar.

ElectroCore Medical is exploring electroceuticals as a treatment for cluster and migraine headaches. The company's vagal nerve stimulator is also being developed as a treatment for asthma, epilepsy and irritable bowel syndrome. While GSK is blocking efferent signals in the brain with its implantable devices, ElectroCore is targeting afferent signals and its devices are not implanted and therefore avoid invasive insertion procedures. 

Nanotubes are being used to reduce dental implant failures by medical researchers at Michigan Technical University and the University of Illinois at Chicago. Implants fail due to infection or separation from the surrounding bone. Using titanium nanotubes loaded with anti-inflammatory and antibiotic agents, researchers found that bone cells grew more vigorously around the implants, and the implants had a much lower rate of rejection and infection.

Expect to see more nanotech advances in the war on cancer in the near future: Researchers in Sweden have just discovered that nanoparticles can overcome drug-resistant breast cancer cells. They hope to use their findings to develop a targeted form of chemotherapy that can be directed to a specific part of a tumor cell to attack the disease while limiting collateral damage and adverse patient reactions.

This year, the health and fitness theme has rocketed with a boost of wearable technology and all kinds of other sensory devices that help enhance physical abilities. In 2013, food brands became more health-conscious, design labels sought for solutions to make physical activity and moderate eating experiences more sophisticated, and tech brands channeled their expertise into making pieces that extend the limits of what a human body can do.

Below, there are six major trends, along with sub-trends, that have been mainstreaming in this field throughout 2013.

Physical disability as incentive to innovate

Physical illnesses are now positioned not as an end of the life journey but rather as a transition to a whole new level. The lack of ability to do something in a traditional way is now perceived as a gap that is to be filled with new solutions based on a creative technological approach. Tech-powered projects are emerging fast to support physically challenged individuals in the process of overcoming the boundaries.

Left to right: 1. The active accessible icon 2. Cortex 3. Sign Language Ring

• Image of a disabled person gets a positive facelift. This year, some cities across the USA, including NYC, agreed to adopt a new, energy-packed sign that symbolizes wheelchair accessibility. Guinness launchedan emotional heartwarming video featuring a team of friends in wheelchairs who are playing basketball. In the end of the ad, five of six friends get up except one, a guy with a physical disability who stays in the chair. After the game, all of them go to a pub to celebrate their friendship with beer.

• Prosthesis as a technological masterpiece. The rapid development of bionic technologies allows to create artificial body parts that look similar to the real ones and offer similar level of performance. In February, Channel 4 aired a documentary titled “How to Build a Bionic Man” that explores the innovation in this field—on the dedicated site, one can also bionicise their body online. Mind-controlled prosthesis start a new era in the niche, bringing new possibilities to people who don’t have limbs. 3D-printing technologies allow to reduce the time and cost of creating artificial body parts—from arms to eyes—and also can be used in creating chick casts for fractured bones, like Cortex.

• Improving the damaged sensory experience. The blind people are getting a chance to experience the world in a better way with a range of new devices. These include the Kinect Eyes-Free yoga instructor that analyzes the movement and gives audio instructions, and also the UltraBike ultrasound sensor kit that enables visually impaired people to ride a bicycle and “see” the obstacles. Bikes get equipped with special device featuring sensors that detect various objects ahead and alert the rider through vibrating handlebars. Yahoo! created a dispenser that creates 3D replicas of everyday objects for blind kids—children name the objects they would like to touch, and the machine produces the tiny copies of these items right away. The Sign Language Ring allows deaf people to communicate freely with any person—the rings analyze the moves of fingers and then translate the words and phrases into an audible form through a special bracelet.   

What to expect: From the practical point of view, disability coupled with technology now means even more than ability in its basic form. With the rise of bionic science and easy-to-create 3D body parts, it’s possible to deliver missing body limbs and organs that are almost as good as original ones. With the development of transport technology and sensory devices, physically challenged people can get the same amount of activity as healthier people. Mind-controlled prosthesis and other devices are to dominate in the life of people who lost physical ability, partly or completely. A human body becomes a strategic design and technology project of the coming years.

To sum up, the year of 2013 can be characterized by the boost of conscious food consumption (eating less, opting for healthier food), tracking all body signals (both physical and mental), and the rise of technology aimed to drive more ability into the live of the handicapped.

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Bionic legs that use sensors and a control system to allow amputees to seamlessly traverse almost any terrain; robotic arms with a sophisticated brain-computer interface (BMI) allow paralyzed patients to closely match the speed and coordination of a typical human limb; even a computerized bladder that could eventually alert patients with spinal cord injury when to go to the bathroom.

These are just some examples of BMIs that harness electrical activity produced by neurons in the brain to control the movement of a variety of robotic devices. The hope is that in the not-too-distant future, patients with a variety of neurologic disorders may recover their mobility and leave their wheelchair and other clumsy assistive devices behind.

The field of robot-assisted healthcare is burgeoning, but although the technology is evolving rapidly, such issues as regulatory approvals, clinician training, and high costs stand in the way of biomedical robotics eventually becoming part of everyday medicine.

New research into robotic and neuroprosthetic technologies, along with several review and perspective articles examining the state of the art in this field, was highlighted November 6 in a special issue of Science Translational Medicine.

Robotic Legs

In 1 report, Michael Goldfarb, PhD, professor, mechanical engineering, and professor, physical medicine and rehabilitation, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, and colleagues describe components of the latest robotic leg technology. These components include ankle and knee motors, knee and ankle angle sensors, and heel and toe ground force reaction sensors.

The sensors replace aspects of the peripheral nervous system. Combined information from these sensors is fed into a microcontroller, which provides the equivalent function of the central nervous system (CNS).

To measure information from the CNS, and to act in unison with it, electrodes can be implanted in the peripheral nerves or motor cortex. Because the robotic limb is isolated from the metabolic power supply (the circulatory system), the prosthesis has its own power supply, often an electric battery.

Since the robotic prosthesis can emulate all aspects of muscular function, it can reproduce many biomechanical features that aren't possible with conventional prostheses. For example, users have enhanced gait symmetry and stable, controlled movements and can better negotiate slopes and stairs.

They're also less likely to fall. "[R]ecent studies indicate that the annual incidence of falls in the lower-limb amputee population exceeds that of the elderly population, the rate of seeking medical attention as a result of such falling is comparable with that of the institution-living elderly, and the incidence of falling (and consequently requiring medical attention) is higher in younger amputees than in older amputees, presumably because younger amputees are less restrained in their choice of activities and terrain," Dr. Goldfarb and colleagues write.

Another benefit of this new robotic leg is that unlike energetically passive prostheses, it doesn't necessitate compensatory movements that increase the stress on intact joints, which can lead to musculoskeletal degeneration.

The authors point out that studies on the biomechanical benefits of robotic leg prostheses with physical sensor interfaces have appeared in the literature and the devices have started to emerge on the commercial market.

Future models promise to be even more functional, and the authors expect that the full promise of robotic prostheses will increasingly be realized. The result, they said, should be improvement in patient mobility and quality of life.

Moving Arms

Similar translational technology is being applied to other limbs. Researchers have developed a robotic arm that patients with spinal cord injury and other paralyzed patients can learn to maneuver via a sophisticated brain-computer interface.

In one example, reported last December in The Lancet, surgeons using stereotactic image guidance with structural and functional MRI implanted 2 microelectrodes into the left motor cortex of a woman with chronic tetraplegia due to spinocerebellar degeneration. This allowed researchers to pinpoint and record neuronal activity when the woman was asked to imagine using her hand and arm.

After some practice, the woman was able to grasp items and fluidly move the hand with the coordination, skill, and speed of an able-bodied person.

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