ABB's latest industrial robot can glide along a rail while performing complex tasks at high speed. One robot, many jobs - humans just can't win when it comes to manufacturing.

The modern factory is the natural habitat for the latest generation of industrial robots, and we’re seeing some impressive results from that environment’s natural artificial selection. One of ABB’s latest robots can glide along a horizontal rail for up to 33m while performing complex tasks or carrying a payload of 150 kg. The IRB 6620LX is a five axes robotic arm suitable for welding, grinding, assembly, or materials handling. According to its press release, it’s only been on sale since October, so I doubt its permeated through to your local factory. Still, seeing this thing in action, I can just imagine a whole plant full of these things zipping around back and forth, juggling multiple tasks on the same line. Watch the 6620LX get put through its paces in the video below, and don’t miss the “robot-view” footage starting at 0:47.

Sometimes I find myself cheerleading robots just because they look cool. Which I’m totally okay with, but I don’t want to ignore the bigger picture here. Sure, ABB makes some impressive bots, and the 6620LX even beats the old “soda can” trick we love so much by dodging at high speeds through wine glasses (0:52). More importantly though, industrial robots as a whole are getting more versatile, able to work in many different applications using the same basic platform. The 6620LX could be spot welding a car in one factory, and moving baked goods in another. The same goes for all the other industrial robot arms we’ve seen lately. Robots have already taken over manufacturing to such a degree that we can see entire factories with a minimum of human workers. Now we’re creating the next generation of these industrial juggernauts, and they’re only going to increase their dominance in the field. As automation and robotics continue to advance we’ll see manufacturing continue through this mechanized revolution. The end result is likely to be cheaper goods, faster production, and a shift in the human labor force. That’s an exciting and scary prospect. And it’s amazing to watch in action.

[image and video credit: ABB Robotics]
[source: ABB Robotics]

At MAGIC, teams of robot vehicles will have to work together to complete missions, like disarming roadside bombs.

Soldiers have to use teamwork to explore their surroundings and accomplish their mission. Robots, which are becoming increasingly important parts of militaries all over the world, need to have the same skills. That’s where MAGIC comes in. The Multi Autonomous Ground-robotics International Challenge seeks to encourage engineers all over the world to develop teams of autonomous robots that can work together to accomplish military tasks. MAGIC 2010 is sponsored by the US and Australian Departments of Defense and will take place in an undisclosed location near Adelaide, AUS in November. A large pool of applicants has already been narrowed down to 10, with teams from Japan, Australia, US, Turkey, and Canada. Five will receive $100,000 in funding to help complete prototypes of their bots. The top three finishers at MAGIC 2010 will receive $750k, $250k, and $100k prizes and will be given opportunities to work with the US and Australian governments to develop their bots. This competition could do for military robots what the DARPA Grand Challenge did for autonomous cars. We’ve got an interesting simulation video for you below that demonstrates the kind of robotic teamwork that MAGIC is all about. Watch it below.

While other military robots are armed, MAGIC is seeking to develop robots that don’t use traditional weapons. In the challenge robot teams will have to find targets, and then identify them (using “laser painting”) for neutralization. These machines will be ground vehicles (on treads or wheels) so they’ll be in danger from the threats they identify. Static targets will correlate to IEDs or other explosives, and engineers will have to disable bots that are too close to a simulated explosion. Moving targets (standing in for soldiers) can also disable robots in the simulation and yet still have to be identified and neutralized. There will even be one robot from every team (randomly picked) that will be “destroyed” by a “sniper”. It’s tough out there in the Outback. Part of the challenge for the robot teams will be to accomplish their mission while facing these dynamic threats.

Along with dealing with multiple types of threats, the robots competing in MAGIC are themselves divided into types of jobs. Some bots will be sensors, locating and identifying threats and relaying targets to disruptors. Disruptor robots use lasers to “paint” a target and thus neutralize it. This simulates marking a target for artillery fire or drone strikes. Different teams will pursue various configurations and sizes of teams. Virginia Tech is reportedly going to include “jamming” bots to confuse enemy threats. The group from University of Western Australia (whose bots are called MAGIC Intelligent Autonomous Navigators or MAGICIAN) is looking to form a 7 bot force, but teams could be as small as just three robots.

Because MAGIC is aimed at pulling in new talent and new approaches to the field of military support robots, no group that actively receives funding from a government is allowed to participate. This means that Lockheed Martin, Boeing and others can’t even compete. As such, most teams are comprised of university research labs paired with private firms. Even without the major defense contractors involved, most of the groups are from the US. Of the 10 finalist teams, 5 are American, 2 are Australian, one is Turkish, one Japanese, and one Canadian.

It will be interesting to see if the non-governmental approach to recruiting talent into the field will succeed. Certainly the cash prizes and potential contracts are an enticing offer. We’ve seen good results from the XPrize and DARPA Grand Challenge, MAGIC might produce similar interest in getting robots to work together in military strike forces.

We’ll have to wait until November to see what kind of robotic mayhem MAGIC produces. With each team or robots required to work autonomously and in tandem, the opportunities for catastrophic failure abound. I’m sure there will be at least one bot that gets stuck running in circles or that keeps trying to disarm a tree. Still, the level of investment is great enough that we could see some really successful work as well. Once robots are intelligent enough to work in tandem, and on their own, it opens the door to larger forms of swarm robotics. Who knows, the military robot reconnaissance strike force of today could help design the cancer fighting nanobot swarms of the future. We could also be giving robots the social tools they need to overthrow us. Not to mention the military prowess…hold on, has anybody thought this one through? I’m starting a competition that gets robots to knit quietly in a corner. Much safer.

[video credit: MAGIC 2010]
[sources: DSTO: MAGIC 2010, Virginia Tech News, University of Western Australia News]

This robot journalist can explore its surroundings, take pictures, interview people, perform internet searches, and publish online. Ok, I'm about to lose my job.

Robots are after my job. Researchers at the Intelligent Systems Informatics Lab (ISI) at Tokyo University have developed a journalist robot that can autonomously explore its environment and report what it finds. The robot detects changes in its surroundings, decides if they are relevant, and then takes pictures with its on board camera. It can query nearby people for information, and it uses internet searches to further round out its understanding. If something appears newsworthy, the robot will even write a short article and publish it to the web. Charlie Catlett, from Argonne National Labs, seemed impressed with the bot, and it made a splash at the most recent meeting of the Information Processing Society of Japan. By combining real world and internet research, the journalist robot is taking a step beyond other automated systems. Give it enough time, and robots like these could become a valued asset for news feeds everywhere.

We’ve seen a growing trend for automated journalism in the last year. There’s software that can write a decent sports story or even generate original news video by compiling images and opinions from the web. Journalist robots, however, are really taking the phenomenon to another level. This is the first robot I’ve seen that gathers primary source information from people in the field. That’s real journalism, even if it’s at a primitive level. What’s more, if our experiences with crowd-navigated robots have shown us anything it’s that people seem to like helping bots in need. Robot journalists can go to areas too dangerous for human reporters. Back in 2002, MIT created the Afghan eXplorer robot to cover the war there. Of course, that robot was a teleoperated shell while the ISI bot is autonomous. Which means that we can make a huge number of these bots, send them out into the field unsupervised, and have them generate a new era of robot written media. People may even want to read it. Of course, human journalists are likely to be preferred for years to come. After all, the robot can’t take pictures, do independent research, interview witnesses, work under extreme stress, pull an all-nighter make pithy pop culture references.

An older model of the journalist robot shows some of its components, including a base adapted from a Segway.

The robot journalist compiles information from both live and online sources to generate its article.

[image credits: Charlie Catlett via Twitter, ISI Lab]
[source: IEEE, ISI Lab (Google Translated), University of Tokyo Proposals (Google Translated), BBC News]

Gymnast robot No. 7 comes with automatic gripping hands. It wants that bar so badly!

Robot enthusiast Hinamitetu (aka Taro Tetubou) is on the road to building the perfect artificial gymnast. It’s a long journey. His last creation, the No. 6, was able to do a full release somersault (kovacs) on the high bar. The next iteration in robot gymnastics, the No. 7, has fully automatic hands. Place a bar in there, and the 3kg bot latches on with amazing speed. That’s a skill that comes in handy when you tumbling through the air. As always, watching a Hinamitetu bot in action is as much about the comedy as it is about the gymnastic prowess. I love the evil robot eyes and the defiant stare. Check out No. 7’s successful performance in the video below. We’ve also included some of the blooper footage to give you a chuckle. Keep up the good work Hina-san, I want to see the No. 8 stick a dismount!

BONUS BLOOPER FOOTAGE:

Here Hinamitetu pays homage to the Olympics but No. 7 doesn’t seem to have caught the spirit of the occasion…nor the high bar. Watch until the end to see the robot get thrown onto the bar and catch it. Wow, pretty cool! Plus there’s a rare glimpse of Hina-san himself.

Help, I’m stuck!

[screen capture and video credits: Hinamitetu]
[source: Hinamitetu]

Genes from microorganisms allow neurons to be controlled by light pulses via fiber optics.

What do you get when you combine microorganisms and fiber optics? Mind control over mice and rats. Karl Deisseroth and his team at Stanford University have been making serious inroads into discovering how the brain works through optogenetics. The genes of certain algae and archae are spliced into rodent neurons, making them respond to light. Blue light turns the neuron on. Yellow light turns the neuron off. A fiber optic cable is connected into a living mouse or rat with the spliced genes allowing scientists to expose different neurons to different lights. The results are astounding. Stimulate the right hemisphere of a mouse, and it runs in circles to the left. Check it out in the video below!

Of course the applications for optogenetics go far beyond making mice run in circles. Deisseroth is able to target different neuron types, not just hemispheres of the brain. As he explains in the following video of a presentation at Stanford, such targeting gave give insight into the neurological mechanisms behind psychological conditions like depression (~14:55). By targeting the hypothalamus, scientists are even able to create basal wants and desires in animals (13:30). Deisseroth also gives an indepth look at the microorganisms and cell mechanisms that enable the photonic brain control (5:30), and how narcolepsy is triggered by stimuli in animals and humans (11:30).

The genetically modified rodent neurons contain proteins from algae and archae that were introduced via a virus. By pairing those proteins with receptors in the cell, Deisseroth has created a genetically encoded optical tool called an optoXR. These tools allow for control in the brain with great spatial and temporal resolution (as published in Nature, 2009). Deisseroth can control individual signaling pathways in neurons on a timescale of tens of milliseconds. According to Technology Review, the Deisseroth Lab used this signaling pathway control to induce drug-addicted type behavior in mice: The animals were allowed to roam freely through an area, but given light-pulses to the brain when they were in a designated “pleasure room”. Eventually, the mice learned to spend most of their time in that room.

As Deisseroth mentions in his talk, this can be pretty scary stuff. For now his group is working on understanding models of depression and other mental illnesses so that they can improve treatment. Eventually, optogenetics may give rise to technologies which could be used to affect human psychology directly through the brain. That’s delicate territory. What happens when genetic manipulation and miniaturized electronics allow us to directly target parts of our brain and stimulate them as we wish? What happens if we understand how to stimulate the hypothalamus and make anyone hungry? Or angry? Or aroused? We’ve already seen implants that seek to treat epilepsy, or connect our motor neurons to computers. The idea of putting a device in our heads to regulate our emotions isn’t completely impossible. Luckily it will take years of research before we are faced with the necessity of answering these questions.

But they are coming. The Deisseroth Lab isn’t the only team pursuing optogenetics. MIT Media Labs recently published in Nature to describe its own techniques for manipulating rodent brains while they are still alive. Optogenetics has become a proven avenue of research that is only going to become more intense as it continues to produce remarkable results. Human brain control, either to treat depression or something more nefarious, is years away. For mice, mind control is already here. A little scary, but hey, at least they get to hang out in the pleasure room as much as they like.

[image credit: Deisseroth Lab]
[video credits: Stanford University]
[sources: Stanford University Video, Karl Deisseroth Lab, Nature, MIT Media Lab]

Touch Revolution's NIM1000 could put an Android touchscreen into any appliance. Anybody want to browse the web on my microwave?

The Android platform is reaching beyond mobile phones and is poised to conquer all the electronic machines in your home. San Francisco based Touch Revolution has created a seven inch touchscreen module, the NIM1000, that can be easily adapted into major appliances. At CES 2010, TR debuted prototypes for a washing machine, office printer, office phone, and even a microwave. These Android enabled devices would function like normal except with touchscreen commands, endless Apps, and USB, Ethernet, or WiFi connectivity. On the microwave, for instance, a user may want to download recipes, look up nutritional information, or just listen to Pandora while they cook. If successful, products like these may be a sign that every object in our lives is on the path to becoming a droid. Check out a video of the Touch Revolution prototypes in the video from CNN Money below (skip to 1:11).

CES 2010 saw the NIM1000 in many different possible appliances. Here is the Android washer. It can help you with stains, wash times, etc.

Eventually we may reach a point where everything around us is made from tiny computers that can change shape to match our needs, so called programmable matter. At that point, the digital and the physical will be interchangeable. To reach that stage, however, we’ll first have to introduce computer-like intelligence into our world appliance by appliance. That’s exactly what the Touch Revolution module is doing. A company makes a washing machine, TR helps them embed the NIM1000, and now that company has a smart washer. Smart microwaves, smart office phones, smart printers…the list will grow as easily as the market allows. It’s unclear, however, whether or not these Android enabled devices will actually sell. Jonathan Bloom from CNN Money seems to agree:

(skip to 1:11 to see the Touch Revolution examples)

It’s not that these devices aren’t cool, it’s that the market for them has to be built. Most people buying a microwave probably don’t worry about whether or not it can download music. Give them enough advertising, however, and they may start to, especially after they try the devices for a while. I certainly never counted on my mobile phone to show me where a restaurant was until I got an iPhone. Now, I’m one of those people who checks out their screen when they get lost before even thinking of looking around with my eyes. Hmm…maybe smart phones make a dumb user? A post for another time.

The NIM1000 in an office phone doesn't make a lot of sense to me. You probably have a desktop computer on hand, why do you need a smart non-mobile phone? Still, who knows, maybe there's a market for this.

The other question to ask is if the Touch Revolution module actually has what it takes to appeal to manufacturers who want to add “smart” in front of all their products. The NIM1000 has a good screen – at 7 inches it’s not too big for smaller devices, but it’s still big enough to boast a crisp 800×480 resolution. It has a 806 MHz ARM processor, and can handle the full complement of Android Applications available. The NIM1000 is also capable enough that Touch Revolution has developed a tablet shell for it. This TR Android tablet is no iPad, but it is pretty capable and does speak to the versatility of the module. Of course, TR is courting all major partners by offering a complete NIM development kit. Whether or not TR strikes it big depends on how many big name manufacturers decide to pick up that kit and smarten up their appliances.

The NIM1000 tablet is an interesting idea, and it may encourage others to get into the Android module game. Can't sell your module to manufacturers? Just slap on a tablet shell and see if it will do better in that retail market. Also, it may be a sign that instead of every appliance having an Android module, you can have just one tablet that plugs into each device as you use it.

Whether or not the NIM1000 starts cropping up all over BestBuy and Sears, I think the concept of an Android enabled module is a winning one. It doesn’t even have to be Android. Apple, or anyone else, could develop a smart-phone-like touchscreen that can be incorporated easily into other “dumb” electronics. At some point, all the appliances in your home or office could not only be web-enabled, they could speak to each other. Your oven could warn your thermostat that the kitchen’s about to get too hot. Your TV could tell your car which cartoon your kids were watching so they can continue viewing when they have to go for a ride. All of them could display your emails, texts, and social network feeds – you’d never have to unplug from the grid. Actually, come to think of it, that sounds a little scary. But it could also lead to a world where every object is “alive” with digital information. I think that’s cool enough to risk the scary bits.

[image credits:OhGizmo!, Touch Revolution]
[video credits: CNN Money]
[sources: Touch Revolution]

Mark Roth gave a great talk at TED describing how hydrogen sulfide may be the key to putting humans into suspended animation.

As anyone who reads science fiction will tell you, suspended animation is where your body is put into a state of preservation, not really living, but not dead either. It’s like a chemically induced version of hibernation, and it could help you stay alive on the way to a hospital after getting seriously hurt. Mark Roth was part of a larger DARPA initiative to extend soldier survivability after injury on the battlefield. From that research, Roth discovered that hydrogen sulfide (H2S), in small quantities, would put mammals in what was essentially a state of suspended animation. Hydrogen sulfide is toxic (it was used in chemical warfare in WWI) but in the right doses it can actively bond to oxygen receptors in your body. Replacing the need for oxygen allows mammals to lower their metabolic rates to absurdly low levels, but once the H2S is removed animals recover without any nasty side effects. Roth has found then what seems to be the perfect formula for keeping people alive after trauma. His newly formed company, Ikaria, is currently in phase II clinical trials for a liquid hydrogen sulfide product. In just a few years, suspended animation may be a common tool in hospitals and trauma centers all over the world. It almost sounds too incredible to believe. Watch Roth give an enthusiastic and really enjoyable talk at TED 2010 in the video below that explains his work and its amazing potential.

There’s a golden window after trauma, about an hour, and if you make it to a hospital in that time you have an incredibly higher statistical chance of surviving. Roth has found ways to extend that window to six hours. That’s how long he got mice to stay in hydrogen sulfide suspended animation and be revived successfully. Furthermore, those mice survived the process with only 60% of their blood! That level of blood loss represents a sever trauma – a gunshot wound or partial loss of limb. (Discussed in video around 13:00).

Hydrogen sulfide deanimation may have uses outside of severe trauma however. As Roth mentions around 14:00, H2S treatments has shown to provide a 70% reduction in damage during heart surgery in animals. Similar numbers were found for other major organ operations. Suspended animation may help the body cope with injuries and dangers of surgery. That means millions of people around the world could benefit with some well timed poison in their veins.

Roth hasn’t just experimented with poisoning animals, he’s also frozen and suffocated them, too. As he discusses in his opening, about 50% of all people who are frozen for 3 hours without a heartbeat and then resuscitated manage to live. Low oxygen levels can kill you, but very low oxygen levels (10 ppm) actually puts you in suspended animation (~5:10). Roth experimented with animals in suspended animation and found that they were protected against death from freezing (6:30). In all these cases, suspended animation kept animals alive in conditions that would normally kill them. It makes you wonder if cryogenics and long term space exploration might not be such crazy ideas.

Mark Roth has gotten a lot of attention for his work, and a MacArthur “genius” grant. Yet when you hear him describe the process by which he came to use hydrogen sulfide in his work (around 8:40) it seems more luck than genius. But that’s one of the marks of a great scientist. Most researchers are pretty smart, great researchers are smart enough to recognize luck and take advantage of it.

With a liquid dose of H2S in phase II trials, it will likely be several years before we see a suspended animation treatment on the market. Roth’s company, however, is already distributing products with a related benefit. Ikaria’s INOMAX (nitric oxide therapy) is used to treat newborns with hypoxic respiratory failure. Saving the lives of infants is clearly good news in of itself, but it has an added bonus here. With a product currently on sale, Ikaria could have the funding and savvy to gets its H2S treatments out that much sooner. Which means Roth’s vision of using suspended animation to save lives and help us achieve immortality is something to bet on. Just one of the many ways in which small doses of poison make life a little better.

[screen capture and video credit: TED 2010]
[sources: TED, Roth Lab, Ikaria]

Inside this fMRI machine a test subject in Kyoto is having his mind read to determine which image he sees.

If you had to nominate one modern technology as a mind reading device, the fMRI looks like a good bet. By measuring blood flow fMRI can track activity in your brain, and this opens the window to your mind – it may even allow us to figure out what your eyes are seeing at any given moment. The ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories in Kyoto, Japan is able to show a geometric pattern to a test subject and then have a computer program recreate that image by analyzing brain activity gathered by fMRI (NIPS 2009). Scientists at UC Berkeley have used fMRI to study the visual cortex to encode images as brain activity and decode brain activity into images. In other words, for a given image they know how your brain will react, and for a given brain reaction they know the image that would cause it. Researchers at UCB have even managed to do the same with video – their decoding system can create a rough facsimile of what a subject was watching at the time. This is incredible! I had a chance to talk with Jack Gallant of UC Berkeley about these attempts to see what the brain sees. While this technology is still in its very early stages, the work already finished is truly astounding. Check out a video discussing ATR, and pics of research from UCB after the break.

fMRIs have been used in several different attempts to “read minds”. Carnegie Mellon is working on a system that can track how your brain responds when you see different words. When you read “apple”, the CM fMRI can measure your brain activity and know you weren’t looking at “badger” or “football”. Similarly, Microsoft Research has used EEG to categorize which kinds of images you are watching (an animal versus a face, for instance). They may use the technology to help automatically tag images at high speeds. Work at ATR and UCB, however, is a step in another direction. These are the groups which are asking: “if I can monitor your brain, can I reconstruct the image that was on your retina?” They are actively pursuing a means to take brain activity and translate it into something other humans could look at and understand.

The work at UCB, headed by Jack Gallant, has been underway for several years. He, Thomas Naselaris, and colleagues determined how a random image from a database of thousands could be viewed by a subject and then identified by a computer program that monitored brain activity through fMRI (as published in Nature, 2008). In September of 2009 they took that work one step further and developed the means to use semantic, structural, and prior information to accurately reconstruct an image (as published in Neuron). Were you staring at a house on a river? UCB’s computer program can use structural and semantic clues to figure this out and choose among a set of prior images which agree with the one in front of you. It may not be the same house on a river, but it will look close.

The images on the left were shown to test subjects at UC Berkeley while their brains were scanned by fMRI. Then a computer program used its understanding of how the brain codes structural and semantic information to guess which image, among thousands best fit the activity it saw in the fMRI (see on the right). While the left and right images aren't identical, they all agree semantically and structurally. A similar process has been shown to work with video.

The semantic input is an interesting twist. As with the work done at CMU and Microsoft, UCB’s work shed some light on the function of voxels (volumetric pixels, basically a 3D section) in different locations in the brain. Groups of voxel in the brain could be used to process a particular kind of visual structure, another group could be used to categorize a particular set of objects. While Gallant is adamant that fMRI is actually a clumsy tool (“we only work with it because it’s the best we have”) it can help scientists label patterns of voxels as coding for different kinds of images. Look at a face and one part of your brain lights up, look at a truck, and another part is activated. Get enough such semantic voxels labeled, and you’ve got a good tool to help identify any image you might show a subject. It seems likely that the first mind reading machines of the future will need to use such voxel-based semantic clues to help them guess what you’re seeing.

What I really find exciting about the research at UCB, is that they’ve already started to decode moving images. As reported at the Society for Neuroscience, Shinji Nishimoto (part of Gallant’s team) showed test subjects a long series of videos (hours of DVD trailers) while recording their brain activity with fMRI to understand how the brain encodes video data. A computer program then took this encoding process and used it to guess how the subject’s brain should respond to other videos (taken from YouTube). According to Gallant, the total length of this YouTube footage was equal to about 6 months of continuous video. That’s a lot of “Charlie Bit my Finger!”

So now you have a computer program that knows pretty well what each video in its collection should do to someone’s brain if they watched it. What do you do next? You show a test subject a completely new video (“the target”). The computer reads their brain and says, which of my video clips best fits this new activity? It finds the best matching one second clip of video and puts it into a compilation. As the subject keeps watching the target video, the computer is assembling this Frankenstein’s Monster of clips. The end result is a movie montage that jumps back and forth among thousands of videos. That montage, surprisingly, gives a fairly accurate portrayal of what the test subject saw in the target.

According to Gallant, fMRI is really limited in its spatial and temporal resolution. You can’t get much better than one second, and the voxels aren’t as small as neurons. Still, the fact that we can scan a brain and reconstruct what they are looking at in any form is astounding. Whatever technology replaces fMRI with better resolution is only going to increase the accuracy of these reconstructed images.

As always when computers are reaching towards your brain, the fear of invasion of privacy becomes paramount. We’ve already seen how governments are planning to use brain scans in security checks, could they start judging us for what we see? Could they even know what we are dreaming?

Possibly yes, but not yet. Brain scanning science is still in its (rather lengthy) infancy. And fMRI, the best technology at this point for reading brain activity, requires you to hold perfectly still in a huge machine with powerful magnets. Not the sort of thing you could secretly install in someone’s home without them knowing. One day, though, it’s possible we’ll engineer a device that can really capture exactly what you are seeing (or imagining) and record it. Memories could be recorded directly. Maybe even more abstract concepts could be observed – ATR is working to categorize visual art by the way that it stimulates brain activity. Once we get machines to look inside our brains its only a short hop to getting our brains linked together. Borg, here we come!

[image credit: UC Berkeley]
[screen capture and video credit: NTD World News]
[sources: Nature, Neuron, Jack Gallant, ATR Website (Google Translated), NIPS]

QR Stuff makes it easy to place a matrix code where anyone can scan it: on your chest.

Matrix codes are like bar codes on steroids. To the naked eye, they look deceptively like a series of dots in a rectangular pattern. They’re being used by Japanese companies to identify buildings, by zany German engineers to greet the world via Google Earth using crop circles, and in augmented reality, to tell the viewing device how to create the imaginary object in the user’s field of vision. But one of the most exciting applications is individual users’ ability to encode URLs or other information of their own choosing into articles of clothing. QR Stuff, for example, allows the user to generate a code indicating a personal URL (say, a blog, or a Facebook profile), and print it on a t-shirt.  When a code-savvy stranger recognizes that you’re wearing a matrix code, they can take a picture of it with their phone and translate it into the related URL with a free app like NeoReader. You could have a whole wardrobe of augmented clothing; some days you wear a shirt that indicates your Facebook profile, and some days it’s your Twitter page. The services are (mostly) free, and the code is (mostly) in the public domain. The only thing you have to pay for is the shirt.

Wearing a personal matrix code is like saying: Want to know more about me? Start here. It may lead to a song, or the website of your favorite charity, or an augmented reality image of your World of Warcraft avatar, or a 500-point online quiz that the user has to pass before getting your email address. And that’s not just a novelty. It represents a sea change in the way that individuals get in touch with each other after meeting in the real world. It also represents a sea change in how businesses will reach out to consumers. Google has started sending out QR-code enabled window decals to businesses that it deems “Favorite Places,” and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Consider phone numbers. You meet someone you like: did you “get the digits?” You know, the sequence of arbitrary numbers that are the gateway to interacting with that person through a massive system that was, for many years, the definitive way to communicate across distances? When Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, it wasn’t part of a scheme to cause people to identify themselves to likeable strangers with a series of numbers. It just happened. Similarly, real-life relationships are increasingly defined by online relationships in pre-defined categories. You and I are either friends on Facebook, or we’re not. Facebook has no setting for “acquaintance.”

Matrix code as crop circle.

Companies like W-41 are making their own matrix-enabled shirts. Interestingly, W-41 also offers guidance as to how their products will smooth customers’ social transactions: their ads depict attractive young people wearing shirts with codes on the back while facing the other direction, simultaneously offering their code to the world, but being unaware of its use on a case-by-case basis. Surely the animated demo is meant to put users at ease, but it made me wince. Is it necessary to wear our codes on our backs, in order to save our interlocutors the awkwardness of raising their phones to capture the codes while we’re watching? The situation begs for tech that allows the data to be captured as unobtrusively as it’s displayed (doesn’t it?).

Halftone DataGlyph of "Lenna". The zoomed image (right) shows the data glyph distortion.

Speaking of displaying data unobtrusively. Data matrix codes are cool, but they all have a recognizable look about them that is destined to be associated with this decade as much as denim jackets are forever tied to the 1980s. The technology sure to replace them is already here; it’s just proprietary, expensive and impossible to implement by hand: data glyphs. Data glyphs, invented by Rob Tow, who reminisces about them here, are like matrix codes so intricate that they can be seamlessly hidden in unrelated images. The tiny blots of ink that make up a painting can either slant to the right or the left, and the difference can be effected at a scale so minute that it’s imperceptible to the human eye. What we’re talking about is no less than the ability to discreetly encode information about anything inside of an image of anything else. The image on your glyphed-out t-shirt might look like a picture of the Mona Lisa to the naked eye, but when viewed through a mobile device, it could be revealed as a ten thousand word personal manifesto, or a video game, or a movie.

Like telephone poles and printing presses, matrix codes will be remembered in the future as the hallmarks of a fundamentally new and different way of seeing the world. Even if, in the greater scheme of things, they themselves will only be visible for a short time.

Singularity Hub URL as represented by a QR code.

[image credits: QR Stuff, public domain, Google, Playboy (as per fair use)]
[sources: QR Stuff, X-41, Rob Tow (via TauZero)]

Justin Bieber rose quickly from YouTube to world wide fame due to the strength of his talent and accelerating media. Others are sure to follow faster and faster.

Two years ago almost no one knew who he was, now he’s had an ongoing run of Top 40 hits, a platinum album, and a throng of adoring teenage fans. Justin Bieber is the 16 year old poster-child for the modern version of a meteoric rise to fame. He was discovered from his videos on YouTube, and his managers helped him build a rabid radio, internet, and video following. His first album went on sale in November 2009 and went platinum just two months later. By Christmas, he was singing for the Obamas at the White House on national television. The thing is, Bieber’s story may be remarkable now, but it won’t be for long. Besides his considerable talent, the pop star was the beneficiary of some powerful trends: the viral nature of YouTube videos, the ability for memes to spread rapidly through social networking, and the self-referencing and amplifying attention of the major media. We’ve seen rises to fame before but the speed at which they happen are accelerating. The forces that turn an unknown into a celebrity have strengthened in the past decade, and will continue to swell in the years ahead. Other performers that can tap into these powers will experience the same sort of exponential rise in fame. In other words, ladies and gentleman, the Biebers are coming.

Viral marketing, self propagating news cycles, internet memes – these are all symptoms of the same phenomenon: accelerating media. Attention breeds more attention. The free exhange of information on the internet allows one person’s interest to spark another person’s interest with a speed and power that has never been seen before. There are the cute examples: millions of people watched an English boy bite his brother’s finger on YouTube. However, viral information exchange also played an important role in the 2008 US elections, the recent protests in Iran, and the ongoing ‘War on Terror’.

Here we compare Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga, and Oprah on Google Trends. Notice that Gaga has a much higher volume, but that Bieber is rising quickly, outpacing Oprah in just a few months time.

The effect extends beyond the internet. 24 hour TV News channels fill their time by referencing their own work, getting experts to discuss the impact of the news they just reported – they amplify the importance of each news tidbit until it becomes a media frenzy (i.e. Balloon Boy). Radios play the same Top 40 music – reinforcing sales for albums that already have sold well. All these different systems interact with each other creating a feedback loop that allows a talented young Canadian to turn into an overnight sensation.

Bieber, or his managers, are poised to make millions due to this feedback loop. Yet that’s a paltry sum compared to others who harness the forces of accelerating media. Online social network games have become a billion dollar industry. Farmville on Facebook gained more than 11 million players in less than two months. MafiaWars has had a similar rise on various social networks and there are many more games coming up. How is accelerating media responsible for the success of these games? Well, with social networking, we have become the media.

That’s right, part of the power of accelerating media arises as each and every connected individual becoming a micro-feed of news, opinions, and content. Instead of each nation having a few major TV channels and news networks, the world now has billions of individuals disseminating information. And they’re all connected, or they will be. Right now, language barriers still prevent populations from easily sharing their media in a meaningful way. That’s quickly changing, and universal translation tools will soon break down these last barriers and create a global network of interconnected users.

In other words, the web that helps strengthen accelerating media is itself going to become more powerful in the upcoming years. Bieber is an example of how a Canadian singer quickly accelerated into becoming a pop sensation in English speaking parts of the world. Imagine what will happen when language barriers fall down and social networking becomes a greater part of our lives. The next Bieber could be singing in Portuguese in some small town outside of Rio or he could be making people laugh in Chinese in a bar in Beijing, or he could be moving hearts in a play for the deaf in Zaire. This new Bieber won’t have a following of millions, his fans will top out at over a billion.

Somewhere the next Bieber is about to go from singing in his room to starring on MTV.

Those little funny videos on YouTube aren’t so funny anymore. The same trends that make them popular are fueling billion dollar industries, making millionaire muscians overnight, and shaping politics everywhere. Mobile phones and the internet have amplified the world’s interconnectedness. New technologies like smart phones, brain computer interfaces, and augmented reality are going to increase it even further. So get ready for the consequences (and opportunities) of accelerating media. Anyone or any idea could blow up into a global phenomenon. This process only takes months today, it could take just minutes in the future. Positive feedback loops and the viral spread of attention are the defining forces of Media 2.0. Those who want proof need look no further than this.

[image credit: Kevin Aranibar via WikiCommons, Google Trends]
[screen captures: Justin Bieber (KidRauhl)]
[source: Justin Bieber (KidRauhl), MSNBC, Zynga, Farmville, Bloomberg]

Professor Ross King with robot scientist Adam. Although the cost and large size of the robot makes it impractical to have one in every laboratory, both factors should decrease over time. Remember how the very first computers could fill an entire room?

When it comes to being a scientist, Adam is quite the standout. No, he is not a Nobel Prize Laureate or even a prodigy. He’s more like a prototype – the first robot to design, perform, and interpret a series of scientific experiments leading to a new discovery. As anyone who has taken a high school science class can confirm, taking detailed notes is an integral part of doing science. Unfortunately, this is one area where even the most dedicated scientists can fall short. Unless of course that scientist is a robot that can record the experiments as they are being performed. As if the development of an autonomous robot with a knack for science wasn’t impressive enough, Adam quickly wowed his creators by solving a yeast genetics puzzle that had baffled researchers for decades! And it’s not difficult to imagine the advantages of a robot scientist in the laboratory. Adam and his counterparts will significantly increase the rates at which important advancements are made, inching us closer to the time when robots are more our colleagues than our tools. Check out the video below to see Adam carrying out a typical experiment.

Automation of human tasks is a natural goal of robotics development. We have already seen many areas where automation has become the standard. And even science has seen the advent of nearly autonomous software programs that can deduce principles of physics. As artificial intelligence continues to evolve however, we are beginning to see the introduction of robotics in many “high-skill” fields such as research and medicine. In their report in the journal Science, Professor Ross King and his group at Aberystwyth University describe Adam as the ultimate laboratory companion. Unlike mere humans, Adam doesn’t tire or lose focus while performing repetitive tasks. But don’t mistake Adam as just a high-tech minion.

His developers introduced him to a yeast genetics mystery that had eluded discovery for quite some time. As with all living organisms, yeast have proteins called enzymes that catalyze many of the chemical reactions necessary for life to occur. Each of these enzymes is encoded in the yeast’s genome, but a few of these enzymes were difficult to link to particular genes. For decades, geneticists had toiled to figure out which genes encode a few of these “orphan” enzymes.

Dr. King and colleagues gave Adam a database containing information on the enzymes, the chemicals and reagents to do the experiments, and access to the yeast cultures. After that, a human technician only came around to refill the necessary reagents and remove the waste products generated from the experiments (evidently, Adam is unable to perform those lowly tasks!). So what did Adam find? After multiple rounds of experimentation and analysis, Adam found exactly which yeast genes encode which “orphan” enzymes! The human scientists then went to work to verify his findings by doing the experiments manually. Eureka! Adam had indeed solved the problem!

While scientists may be breaking out in a sweat at the thought of a robot taking over their job, the importance of automation in science can’t be overstated. Despite the vast amounts of money spent on scientific research today, it can still take years, if not decades, before a discovery makes its way to the general public, whether it’s a new technology or a new treatment for a disease. Part of this delay comes from the limitations in human workers, i.e. fatigue, errors, etc. With robot scientists working around the clock and contributing to scientific knowledge, we can significantly speed up the rate at which important and potentially life-saving discoveries are made. And though some may be hesitant to accept the ever-increasing roles of robots in our world, I, for one, think it will only serve to enhance our lives!

[image credit: Aberystwyth University]
[video credit: Ffab productions, ltd]
[Sources: Computational Biology Group, Aberystwyth University, Science Journal]

It looks like a Star Wars torture device, but the DaVinci is a world class surgical robot.

Robotic surgery is experiencing explosive growth in America’s operating rooms, and the unquestioned industry leader in this field is the DaVinci robot, made by Intuitive Surgical. How pervasive has this robot become? Put it this way, only 14% of prostate surgeries in the US last year took place not using the DaVinci. It has grown from 210 systems seven years ago to 1,395 today. Although typically used for smaller surgeries like prostate removal and hysterectomies, it was recently used for a kidney transplant, and more complicated procedures are expected in the future. The DaVinci is really just the first wave of robotic surgery as technology continues to push clumsy human hands out of the operating room.

Although the business end bears a disquieting resemblance to the torture probe in Star Wars, robot surgery is pretty amazing to watch. There’s a  TED talk about the DaVinci from a year ago; it’s worth looking at again (after the jump).

The DaVinci is controlled using two joystick-like arms and several foot pedals. These controls move articulated robotic arms that can be fitted with a huge variety of different tools. In a typical surgery, doctors only have to cut a 1-2 cm hole to allow three or four arms to enter into the patient’s body. The controls then convert every five inches of the doctor’s movement to one inch of movement inside the patient, allowing for improved fine motor actions. The doctor sits at a station, often outside the actual operating room, and uses the built in 3-D monitor for vision as he completes the surgery. According to the DaVinci makers, using a robot leads to less tissue trauma, requires fewer surgical assistants, and is less physically taxing for the surgeon.

However, the company line on the DaVinci’s effectiveness is far from the last word. According to a large study of Medicare patients, robotic prostate surgery led to fewer in-hospital complications, but had worse results for impotence and incontinence (I know which one of those bullets I’d choose to take, just saying). Costing a cool $1.7 million, plus a $100,000+ annual service fee, inconclusive results are a bit hard to stomach. There are two reasons why this ostensibly advanced surgical method can lead to mixed results. First, the DaVinci provides no tactile feedback. Doctors have to learn to use the visual environment for clues they would otherwise get by feel. Of course, with the development of haptic feedback, this flaw might be remedied soon.

The second problem is that it just takes time to get used to a whole new way of performing surgery. To help with that problem, Simulated Surgical Systems has recently unveiled the RoSS surgical simulator. The simulator is modeled on the DaVinci and allows aspiring robo-surgeons to practice their technique with virtual patients before dealing with the real thing.

This will cost more than an Xbox.

DaVinci has also made waves with its decision to direct its marketing towards consumers, in some cases even taking out billboard ads. Hospitals and doctors report having to buy the machines out of necessity, after losing so many patients to other hospitals that offer the robotic procedure. I find it telling that patients are so demanding of this new technology. Scientists worry about the public’s reaction to future advances in genetic engineering and stem-cell research, but patients seem perfectly fine with using a robot to perform surgery, even if the doctor isn’t in the room.

And while the doctor might currently not be in the room, in the future he may not even be in the country. Way back in 2001 US surgeons used a DaVinci predecessor system to perform a gall bladder surgery in France, via a secured fiber-optic connection. Although this hasn’t seemed to have caught on in regular hospital use, the US military is currently developing “trauma pods” based on a scaled down version of the DaVinci. Front line troops would carry these into battle, allowing doctors to perform complex operations while safely at base.

These systems are pointing us towards the future of surgery, which will use smaller and smaller tools to make operations less invasive, more precise, and more effective. We’re not going to get to nanobot based medicine overnight, but the DaVinci is part of the bridge that will get us there.

[image credits: WikiCommons, Simulated Surgical Systems]
[video credit: TED MED]
[sources: Chattanooga Times, NY Times]

Worth1000's robot animal Photoshop contest gives new meaning to "iron horse".

The Internet loves animals, and it loves photoshop. Worth1000.com decided to harness that double love and start a Photoshop contest to see who could create the coolest robotic animals on the web. Artists took pictures of real animals and filled them with images of gears, wires, and electronic gizmos. The results look pretty amazing. There are cybernetic reptiles, android mammals, and even a robot chicken. Take a good look at some of these cool robot-animal pics below; we’ve got tons and there are many more on the Worth1000 website.

There’s still a big gap between the creativity of artificial intelligence and the creativity of humanity. We’re way out ahead for now. Looking at these pics, however, I wonder how long it will take until a computer is savvy enough to use Photoshop on its own. Pattern recognition is difficult for AI (another area where we’re still in the lead) but once a computer could tell that a bunch of wires has the same basic shape as a giraffe’s neck…well, I think the artwork might make itself. Which is very cool.

Seth Green, eat your heart out

Scientists really are making cyborg beetles and robotic hummingbirds, why not a android anaconda or a missile-toting toad? Picking which of these concepts might actually make it from Photoshop to the engineering bench isn’t easy. Besides looking good, these pics demonstrate how our concepts of the future are usually just mash-ups of the things around us today. Accelerating technologies mess with our abilities to accurately predict what is possible. You can look at this contest and just see a bunch of crazy science fiction animals that look sweet. Me, I see ideas that someone, someday, is going to want to make a reality. If case that does happen, I call dibs on the rhino-tank.

Do rhinos really need a turret to cause damage?

Cyborg insects are being developed. Battle toads...not so much.

[all images hosted on Worth1000.com]
[source: Worth1000.com]

Hans Keirstead is the scientists behind the first embryonic stem cell clinical trial in the US. He explains the hurdles that research faces to becoming a viable medical therapy.

Hans Keirstead used embryonic stem cells to help paralyzed rats walk again. His research is the basis for the first FDA approved clinical trial for the use of embryonic stem cells (ESC) - currently underway by Geron and aimed at treating spinal cord injuries. After years of controversy in the first part of the decade, ESC trials have finally started on the path that may let them deliver on the vast promises of stem cell enabled medicine. Yet we have already seen how autologous stem cell therapies (those which use a patient’s own cells) are becoming available in the U.S and all over the world. Why the hold up on ESC treatments? Autologous therapies are part of the medical practice of individual doctors, given to their individual patients. Geron’s clinical trials hope to usher in a new wave of globally used drugs and procedures. The rigorous science needed to obtain FDA approval for such widespread treatments is not easily achieved, but many still lament the slow process. To all of us wondering why ESCs are not yet available in every hospital across the world, Hans Keirstead has an explanation. He doesn’t make an impassioned plea, or take a rhetorically defensive stance. In just 5 minutes Keirstead walks us through the fundamental hurdles that scientists face as they try to bring ESC therapies to fruition. Everyone who wants an intellectual and scientific explanation of stem cell research should watch the video below.

Besides genetics, the application of stem cells is the defining medical technology of the early 21st century. With it we may be able to revolutionize organ transplants and develop treatments for conditions ranging from blindness to AIDS. Autologous treatments hold remarkable promise, but so too do ESC derived drugs which may use the cells of one individual to treat thousands. With so many hopes pinned to stem cell therapies it’s no wonder that many are frustrated at their unavailability and seek to obtain them outside the US. We can lament the slow process of FDA approval, and the seemingly needless politicking and bureaucracy that surrounds it. However, as we seek the benefits of advanced technologies it’s important to remember the very real and necessary scientific steps that they must proceed through before we can all safely enjoy them. Many thanks to Dr. Keirstead and CIRM for the brief but precise video explaining just that.

[screen capture and video credit: CIRM]
[source: University California Irvine, CIRM]

The W PhoneWatch has all your mobile needs in a tiny wrist mounted package. Not very practical, but completely awesome looking.

I geeked out this past summer when I saw LG’s cool watch phone. Sadly, it was only available in the UK. Well someone at Kempler & Strauss must have heard my jealous pleas, because they’re selling their own watch phone here in the US and around the world. The W PhoneWatch has a 1.5 inch touchscreen with a respectable 128×128 resolution, a camera with MPEG4 video capabilities (128×104), built-in MP3 player, and a modest price tag: $199. Best of all, it’s GSM unlocked, so you can take a chip from another phone, plug it in, and you’re good to go. It comes with a BlueTooth headset that can double as a stylus, and despite the claims of K&S that the W PhoneWatch is fingertip friendly, at 1.5 inches that stylus will be a necessity. I know watch phones are impractical, but just looking at this thing makes me want to go all Dick Tracey and get one. Judge for yourself by watching the promo video from K&S below.

There are actually many watch phones on the market. Most are cheaper devices out of China, with moderate to fair capabilities. Others are more expensive than the W PhoneWatch and don’t seem to have its size or versatility. Still, as reasonably priced and functional as the K&S phone may be, I can’t imagine actually using it as anything but a status symbol. I’m all for miniaturization, and putting a mobile phone, a clock, a MP3 player, and a video camera all on your wrist is the essence of tiny badassery (if only it could do video calling too!). However, no wrist mounted interface is going to do those capabilities justice. You can make tinier devices, but our hands aren’t going to get smaller along with them. K&S have tried to solve the problem by including a remote (the BlueTooth headset) but if you have to use one device to access another you sort of lose the novelty of the watch phone anyway.

I think that personal augmented reality systems like Pranav Mistry’s Sixth Sense have got it right. Instead of shrinking the phone to the size of a watch, switch to a projector system and the phone and watch can be any size you want. Pico projectors let the interface be larger than the device, and that’s going to be a key concept as miniaturization continues. The only real advantage watch phones have is style – I’m sure even Mistry would admit that his system is anything but suave looking. With that in mind I’ll support you if you go and buy a W PhoneWatch. Yeah, it’s impractical, but sometimes you just need to look like a super-spy.

[image credit: Kempler&Strauss]
[video credit: Kempler&Strauss (part of VNA Group)]
[source: Kempler&Strauss]