When it comes to physical therapy for children with motor skill impairments, the tools available right now are helpful but also are somewhat limited.

Georgia Tech’s Human Automation Systems Lab is looking to change that by making a tool that has thus far shown great results.  It consists of two items already in a large amount of homes, Microsoft Kinect and a display of some sort.  This new system, dubbed the SuperPop Project, is especially helpful with children with cerebral palsy.  This system, which the kids see as a game, actually helps build their upper arm motor function.

SuperPop is totally customizable by the therapist and tailored for each individual child.  While the child plays, the software will track the user’s joints and collect the data for later analyzing for progress.

This system could turn out to be revolutionary in the world of therapy and could do wonders for the general well being of the patients.

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The swarm of robots communicate with one another, assigning roles as to how best to play the music. There are at least two optimizations at play here: first, they figure out the fewest number of robots necessary to complete the task. Second, of the robots deployed, they figure out the shortest distance that they can possibly travel.

The cool thing is that these optimizations can be modified and adapted on the fly too. The first half of the video below shows the robots playing Beethoven’s Fur Elise at what they deem is a normal pace. When they tell the bots that they can play it three times slower, fewer robots are deployed for the task automatically. When they’re told that the music needs to be faster again, more bots jump onto the virtual piano. They all communicate with one another using internal cameras, special “hats” and cameras mounted around the room.

Playing the piano is cute and all, but you can see how this kind of swarm technology can have incredible military applications. I’m reminded of Prey by Michael Crichton. That swarm of nanobots was virtually unstoppable!

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Most of us have at least heard of the TV show Macgyver before. You know, about the guy who can basically take just about anything and turn it into a true solution to a problem? Well, that’s what Professor Mike Stilman and researchers at Georgia Tech are attempting to do with a robot creation of their own, aptly named the “Macgyver bot”.

Up until now, most robots have generally been designed to handle a few tasks at hand that are easy to understand and pre-programmed. This type of robot is quite a bit different and could eventually be perfect for emergency response, sending them into disaster zones and giving them the ability to analyze the situation and use the tools around them to complete their current missions.

More often we are seeing robots make their way into fire zones, war zones and other situations that are very intense and traditionally reserved for human response. Unfortunately, having to be told exactly how to get a job done limits their usefulness.

Creating a robot that actually thinks and analyzes is no small feat. According to Stilman:

“Our goal is to develop a robot that behaves like MacGyver, the television character from the 1980s who solved complex problems and escaped dangerous situations by using everyday objects and materials he found at hand.”

“We want to understand the basic cognitive processes that allow humans to take advantage of arbitrary objects in their environments as tools. We will achieve this by designing algorithms for robots that make tasks that are impossible for a robot alone possible for a robot with tools.”

The U.S. Navy has already shelled out a $900,000 grant aimed at helping the project along. As you probably already guessed, the robot is far from being ready for truly “dangerous situations” at this point. Below you can check out a video of the Golem Krang, a robot that will be the basis of the new Macgyver bot project.

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There is no denying that Inkjet Printers are infinitely useful these days. You can print reports, pictures, stickers, and bomb detectors- did I just say bomb detectors? Yes, I certainly did. Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have created a prototype wireless sensor that is capable of detecting explosives and uses simple inkjet printing techniques for production. The sensor is designed to detect traces of ammonia easily, which is often the key ingredient in explosives.

The new technology is the brain-child of Manos Tentzeris, a Professor at Georgia Tech, who designed the inkjet techniques for the project and aims to provide a detection system that is not only cheap but also easy to produce in mass.

The process of creating the sensor involves the printing carbon nanotubes onto specialized paper-like material and uses ink that consists of silver nanoparticles that can be passed through a standard inkjet printer. So what’s the significance of such a technology and why should we care? In today’s world there is a growing need for bomb detection methods in government buildings, airports, shipyards, and hell, even in schools these days. Unfortunately, today’s explosives detection methods come in two flavors: low cost with awful results, or get results with a very high cost. This new technology aims to bring us an effective way of sensing out explosives at a much more reasonable cost, while consuming less energy and requiring less specialized knowledge to operate.

If the device works as promised and lives up to the hype, it could provide a very important role in explosives detection around the world; thanks to its small design, low cost, and energy efficient form factor.

[Source via Gatech]

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Electromagnetic energy flows all around us, being transmitted from sources such as radio and television transmitters, mobile phone networks and satellite communications systems. Lately, there has been a lot of attention on the negative aspects of the electromagnetic spectrum, including the non-ionizing radiation we’re constantly exposed to that may cause cancer.

Despite the potential ill effects caused by such radiation, electromagnetic energy has some obvious benefits. Even better, there might be a way to take further advantage of it. Researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology have found a way to put all that electromagnetic energy floating around to use. They’ve managed to create a device that captures and harnesses ambient energy so it can be used to power small electronic devices like wireless sensors, microprocessors and communications chips.

“There is a large amount of electromagnetic energy all around us, but nobody has been able to tap into it,” said Manos Tentzeris, a professor at Georgia Tech. “We are using an ultra-wideband antenna that lets us exploit a variety of signals in different frequency ranges, giving us greatly increased power-gathering capability.”

The team combined sensors, antennas and energy scavenging capabilities to create the device and used inkjet printing technology to get it onto paper. The technology can take advantage of frequencies from FM radio to radar, a range of 100 Mhz to 15 GHz or higher; it can capture this energy, convert it from AC to DC, and then store it in capacitors and batteries. So far the team has been able to generate hundreds of milliwatts by harnessing the energy from TV bands. One milliwatt or more is enough to operate small electronic devices. They have also managed to operate a temperature sensor using electromagnetic energy captured from a television station that was half a kilometer away.

Applications include airport security, heat and stress sensing for defense, radio frequency identification tagging for manufacturing and shipping, and monitoring tasks in communications and power usage. Further applications include assisting solar devices with charging batteries, and acting as a system backup.

Photo by Gary Meek.

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