Servo - September 2010

bots IN BRIEF

HUMAN PURRSONALITY

It’s definitely true that human facial features are great at communicating emotional information, so there’s certainly something to be said for incorporating things like eyes and eyebrows into a robot. Flobi — a robot from Bielefeld University — is a good example of a conscious decision to make a humanoid robot head that is capable of recognizable human expressions while not being totally creepy.

Flobi relies on expressive elements that are almost cartoonish in their simplicity; 18 actuators move the eyes, eyelids, eyebrows, and mouth, and there are LEDs in Flobi’s cheeks so it blushes … ‘it’ because Flobi’s hair (all of the facial elements, in fact) can be easily changed to look male or female.

SWEET DEAL

This robot cookie jar was made by Vandor and is based on some of

Japan's ‘50s and ‘60s designs. The ceramic collectible stands about 8" tall and is supposedly no longer being made. What’s left is available at Amazon.

FOR THE BIRDS

More and more, people are starting to specifically request robot-assisted surgeries as opposed to having just a human operate on them. Now, researchers at Duke are working on an entirely autonomous robot arm that can take biopsies on humans based on ultrasound data. It works pretty well, at least so far on the dead turkeys that they’ve been practicing on.

“In the latest series of experiments, the robot guided the plunger to eight different locations on the simulated prostate tissue in 93 percent of its attempts.”

Hmmm ... wonder about that other 7 percent … At least the robot didn’t go berserk and wildly stab everything within reach.

In any case, the idea is that eventually (soon, perhaps?) robots will be able to (at the very least) take care of simple, routine medical procedures which will save patients both time and money.