Automaton

I have to admit that despite considering myself a good robot geek, and despite the fact that my first Roomba was named Optimus Grime, I had never actually seen the Transformers. Still, not knowing anything about the originals, the movie was decently entertaining...

Meet Zeno, a humanoid robot built by the founder of Hanson Robotics. Hanson Robotics is famous for their robotic humanoid faces -- among them Albert Einstein -- but many folks (including yours truly) find them pretty darn creepy. Despite the amazing technological achievement of detailed facial expression, Zeno is no exception to the uncanny valley.

Zeno is modeled after AstroBoy and the inventor's goal is to eventually have it on the consumer market to consumers for a few hundred bucks. Zeno has his very own blog here to keep you updated on his progress.

And to add to the creepiness, a fun fact: the inventor named his newborn son after his robot.

MIT grad student Conor Walsh and the leg exoskeleton he and other researchers have developed. [Photo: Samuel Au / MIT News]

MIT researchers have created a wearable robotic exoskeleton to help soldiers carry heavier loads on their backpacks. Powered legs like those could one day help elderly and disabled people gain more mobility and carry things around more easily, but since this is DARPA funded work soldiers have priority. Sorry, grandma.

The MIT exoskeleton consists of a pair of mechanical legs with a mounted backpack frame. The mechanical legs strap to the user's own legs and support much of the pack's weight by transferring it to the ground. The MIT researchers, led by Hugh Herr at Media Lab's Biomechatronics Group, report in the September issue of the International Journal of Humanoid Robotics that their prototype can take on 80 percent of an 36-kg load carried on a person's back.

And how does it work?

Raytheon is a large, well-known defense contractor with divisions all over the world. Sarcos Robotics is a small company in Utah that makes, among other things, animatronic and robotic characters for movies and amusement parks. And now Raytheon has bought Sarcos.

This article in Mass High Tech describes how Sarcos will be folded into the Integrated Defense Systems division in Massachusetts. In addition to its business of animatronics, Sarcos works on some medical devices and MEMS. Undoubtedly the MEMS technology will come in handy as part of Raytheon's defense systems, but perhaps there is another reason: Sarcos makes a robotic butterfly (link goes to Quicktime video). Perhaps Americans should be suspicious of military butterfly spies?

At any rate, take a look at Sarcos's website (especially their mildly intimidating jobs page). They do an excellent job of posting videos of their animals, humanoids, and other products. I like the juggling robot, below. I can't even do that.

Spectrum ran a feature on exoskeletons two years ago with some interesting details on the Sarcos system's force sensors, power unit, and hydraulic actuators, below:

For its part, the Salt Lake City–based Sarcos team, led by roboticist and inventor Stephen C. Jacobsen, has been working on what may be one of the strongest exoskeletons ever built. Earlier this year, at the demonstration the group did in Fort Belvoir, an engineer wearing the Sarcos robotic system was able to carry 84 kg [185 lb]—about the weight of an average size washing machine—without feeling the payload at all. Jacobsen, Sarcos's CEO and a mechanical engineering professor at the University of Utah, says that the new exoskeleton supports the payload's entire weight even if the wearer stands on one leg.

Like Bleex 2 [the UC Berkeley exo], the latest Sarcos system is a second-generation model that improves substantially over its predecessor. Jacobsen says that while wearing the exoskeleton, you can walk and run, and if you stumble, the system is fast enough to readjust its powered limbs to keep the payload's weight off your body.

The exoskeleton relies on a network of force sensors that are in touch with the wearer's body at certain points, such as underneath the feet. These special sensors, developed by Sarcos, feed data to a control computer that in turn commands the robotic limbs to move in harmony with the wearer's arms and legs without ever obstructing them. Jacobsen calls this method "get out of the way" control, and he says using the robotic suit requires no training. "You can step into the exoskeleton, and you can immediately run it," he says.

According to Jacobsen, what makes an exoskeleton an extremely hard problem is that conventional, off-the-shelf components won't work. Sarcos had to design and fabricate each piece and, in parallel, integrate all of them into its system. The exoskeleton's power unit was one of these many pieces the company had to engineer painstakingly. It's a special internal-combustion engine that can use a variety of fuels and deliver enough hydraulic power to the actuators to meet the great strength and speed the robotic limbs require.

But even more challenging, Jacobsen says, was developing yet another component: the servo valves that control the flow of the hydraulic fluid into the actuators. The valves had to be small, extremely reliable, resistant to high pressures, and highly efficient to preserve precious power, not to mention that some of their parts had to be machined to micrometer tolerances. To make things even harder, so many complex physical processes occur in the valves, Jacobsen insists that simulation software couldn't help in the design. His group, therefore, had to go through several iterations of prototypes to get the valve it needed.

Sarcos is now preparing for demonstrations scheduled over the next few months. Team members are especially busy with the exoskeleton's upper-extremity system, which will add strength to the wearer's arms. A person wearing the full-body system will be able not only to carry a payload on a backpack but also lift heavy items, a capability that is particularly useful for logistics operations such as loading and unloading cargo vehicles and moving things in a warehouse.

PS: When my colleague Harry Goldstein and I spoke with Sarcos for that article, the company had just began developing their exoskeleton's upper-extremity part. Now, as the video shows, it seems they've made significant progress. One thing, however, hasn't changed. Note in the video: the exo has a tether attached to it, probably feeding power or control signals to the suit. Sure, it's a prototype. It will be interesting to see how exoskeleton researchers will cut the umbilical cords of their creations.

IEEE Spectrum's Sarah Adee reports:

Dean Kamen's “Luke arm”—a prosthesis named for the remarkably lifelike prosthetic worn by Luke Skywalker in Star Wars—came to the end of its two-year funding last month. Its fate now rests in the hands of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which funded the project. If DARPA gives the project the green light—and some greenbacks—the state-of-the-art bionic arm will go into clinical trials. If all goes well, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration gives its approval, returning veterans could be wearing the new artificial limb by next year.

The Luke arm grew out of DARPA’s Revolutionizing Prosthetics program, which was created in 2005 to fund the development of two arms. The first initiative, the four-year, US $30.4 million Revolutionizing Prosthetics contract, to be completed in 2009, led by Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., seeks a fully functioning, neurally controlled prosthetic arm using technology that is still experimental. The latter, awarded to Deka Research and Development Corp., Kamen’s New Hampshire–based medical products company (perhaps best known for the Segway), is a two-year $18.1 million 2007 effort to give amputees an advanced prosthesis that could be available immediately “for people who want to literally strap it on and go.” Kamen’s team designed the Deka arm to be controlled with noninvasive measures, using an interface a bit like a joystick.

Continue reading...

Photo: Dirk van der Merwe

Spectrum associate editor Sally Adee on how researchers are looking for a way to connect prosthetics directly to the brain. [Click on the image below to go to the video player.]

Spectrum reports that Caltech researchers are developing a MEMS robotic device to insert and position electrodes in the brain. The system could enhance the performance of neural prosthetics, which have proved hard to implant accurately. The researchers haven't built the device yet, but they've devised control algorithms to guide the miniature robots to make good neural connections. From the article:

The Caltech team has designed a system that would make the procedure more predictable by attaching a tiny MEMS-based motor to each electrode on a multichannel electrode array and using an algorithm to direct the electrodes to individual neurons.

[...]

As the electrodes are driven into the tissue, the software starts taking sample recordings to detect spikes of electrical activity at the electrode tip. When the software detects spikes, it moves forward in small increments and tracks how the signals change. After determining whether the signal has improved or gotten worse, the algorithm moves the electrode to a new position and does more recording and comparing, driving the electrode in further if necessary until it finds the best signal. If the signal wanes, the algorithm will automatically adjust the electrode position to improve the signal.

Perhaps one day we'll be able to shop online for bionic body devices like soccer-programmed prosthetic legs or Google neural interfaces, but in the meantime check out Spectrum's Bionic Body Shop below to see the medical devices that are already out there (or almost).

The "shop" is part of our special report on the Singularity, the positive-feedback techno-explosion that will spring smarter-than-human intelligence into existence and make us invincible, or kill us. But here's the big question: Is the digital Apollo below wearing a Speedo or what?

The Bionic Body Shop
Advanced medical devices are the tools that enable humans and robots to merge, perhaps signalling the dawn of a technological singularity. How close are we now? Take a tour and shop around--we've been cramming more intricate engineering into our bodies than you might think.

PS: Can't read the text in the Flash animation? A larger version is here.