NewScITech

At age 32, Maggie Fermental suffered a stroke that left her right side paralyzed. After a year and a half of conventional therapy with minimal results, she tried a new kind of robotic therapy developed by MIT engineers. A study to appear in the April 2007 issue of the American Journal of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation shows that the device, which helped Fermental, also had positive results for five other severe stroke patients in a pilot clinical trial. Read the rest of this entry »

Scientists return this week to the world’s deepest known sinkhole, Cenote Zacatón in Mexico, to resume tests of a NASA-funded robot called DEPTHX, designed to survey and explore for life in one of Earth’s most extreme regions and potentially in outer space. Read the rest of this entry »

Borrowing ideas from speech recognition research, Johns Hopkins computer scientists are building mathematical models to represent the safest and most effective ways to perform surgery, including tasks such as suturing, dissecting and joining tissue. Read the rest of this entry »

In the face of techno-doomsday punditry, Sherry Turkle has long been a proponent of the positive. In her books, “The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit” and “Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet,” Turkle has explored the relationship between human and machine and found much to ponder and even praise. Read the rest of this entry »

Nothing can possibly go wrong … go wrong … go wrong …

The truth behind the old joke is that most robots are programmed with a fairly rigid “model” of what they and the world around them are like. If a robot is damaged or its environment changes unexpectedly, it can’t adapt. Read the rest of this entry »

Stanford scientists plan to make a robot capable of performing everyday tasks, such as unloading the dishwasher. By programming the robot with “intelligent” software that enables it to pick up objects it has never seen before, the scientists are one step closer to creating a real life Rosie, the robot maid from The Jetsons cartoon show. Read the rest of this entry »

That’s not how most people think of the holiday island of Tenerife, but for space scientists and engineers, the barren terrain here makes the ideal training ground for Europe’s latest mission to the Red Planet. Read the rest of this entry »

This awesome robot can ice skate! You have to see it with your own eyes. It is just awesome. Read the rest of this entry »

Video of a robot that was developed in Japan at the Waseda University. It was designed to help people in walking. Read the rest of this entry »

A Robot controlled by a cockroach. Look at this! Read the rest of this entry »

You have to see this cool Einstein Robot, it looks almost natural! When you consider that this is a robot, you will have to admit that people who made it know what they are doing. Read the rest of this entry »

As the title says, Self-Replicating Repairing Robots! Students from Cornell University have made really something cool.  Take a look at it yourself. Read the rest of this entry »

Carnegie Mellon University rolled out its latest unmanned combat prototype vehicle yesterday in a display of speed and mobility that would make a monster truck show look tame. Read the rest of this entry »

TOKYO (Reuters) - A two-legged robot being developed by Japanese scientists could one day carry the elderly and handicapped up stairs or inclines. Read the rest of this entry »

SALT LAKE CITY — University of Utah researchers will receive up to $10.3 million to help develop a new prosthetic arm that would work, feel and look like a real arm. The Utah work is a key part of a U.S. Department of Defense contract worth up to $55 million to develop the new device for soldiers and potentially others whose arms were amputated. Read the rest of this entry »