Social robot interacts naturally with young children

In cooperation with a consortium of European universities and companies, researchers at the Tilburg center for Cognition and Communication (TiCC) at Tilburg University are developing a social robot that is designed to interact naturally with young children to help them learn English or Dutch. The experiment that was launched in Tilburg is the first in the world in which a social robot offers a language program for toddlers from various cultural and language backgrounds. The ultimate aim of the project is to develop a series of language programs in various domains, for instance, numbers and spatial concepts.

As a result of increasing globalization, it is crucial to learn at least one foreign language. For immigrant children who speak a different language at home, for instance, it is vitally important that they learn the school language at an early age. Better language skills will allow them to perform better in school and improve their chances to successfully integrate into our society. Children's sensitive period for first as well as for second-language acquisition begins at a very early age. This is why the project opted to do experiments in preschool settings. In close cooperation with the Service bureau Kinderopvang in Tilburg, five preschools and daycare centers were selected. The parents of all three-year-olds were approached and a large group agreed to participate because they whole-heartedly support this study.

By the beginning of July, the researchers will complete their first experiment, in which they investigated the best way for the robot to communicate with three-year-olds such that they experience the interaction as safe and pleasant, and to ensure that it is sufficiently educational. The contact between the robot and the children is filmed. In general, the toddlers react positively and spontaneously to the robot. The first research results are expected in August.

Source: Phys.org

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Geek Speak: The insatiable thirst of Curiousity . . .

The truest fruit of technology lies in the way it empowers the human race. A technology is usually considered empowering when it can reach out to the youngest minds of the society and inspire them to add to its value. This is a fact that is reiterated day upon day at Kidobotikz. It so happens that on my every passing day here at Kidobotikz, I discover some amazing stories.

Students who join kidobotikz are known for their resolute and unflinching love for the field of robotics. These young makers make it a point to spend their weekends and vacations doing what they love best - building robots. However, when this desire turns into a passion what these kids do to satiate their curiosity and maker instinct is as good as anybody’s guess. More often than not, the results arising from such passively pursued projects are remarkable beyond measure. My tryst with such stories is something I relish.

Meet Gireesh Suresh, an integral cog of Kidobotikz’s R&D team and a passionate faculty member of the Kidobotikz team. An armchair expert on robotics since his high school days, Gireesh takes pride in being able to help Kids of learn the concepts of this amazing field. Gireesh who has not been here for long enough already has an interesting story to share. He is currently associated with guiding a student on a project for which the student had approached Kidobotikz. The student Smritika, who is an alumni of Kidobotikz, wanted to pursue a project where she would be exploring the possibility of using a Passive Infrared (PIR) sensor to detect human presence in an area. This concept is quite revolutionary wherein it finds applications ranging from Automatic doors in office lobbies to autonomously operated corridor lights in a library. It also finds potential applications in disaster management scenarios wherein trapped victims can be detected using the device.

While all of this is regular at Kidobotikz, the interesting twist is the fact that Smritika is actually not in India. She resides with her parents in Dubai. When she wanted to pursue this project, she couldn’t find a local makerspace where a school student could be accommodated. Thanks to special efforts from Kidobotikz, Smritika now receives guidance and gets her doubt clarified on the project from Gireesh via Skype.  Her guide Gireesh is all praise for the young girl. “From getting to know about the PIR sensor and deciding it potential use, it took her a very short duration. This shows the impact and influence robotics has on kids’ intellectual acumen.”  

Happy Roboting ! !

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Olive robotic suitcase brings new meaning to carry on luggage

Air travel is already stressful enough without having to trek long distances through what are essentially giant coach stations while dragging a bag on wheels behind you. There have been a number of attempts to relieve this situation in recent years with foldable scooters and bags that can follow its owner's smartphone, but Olive ups the ante by combining the two with full-on robotics.

Billed as the world's first intelligent suitcase, Olive can provide reminders, tell its owner to hurry if time is short, and has a built-in scale to warn about excess weight. If the gate is a bit far, a pair of foot rests fold out and Olive becomes a two-wheel balancing Segway-like vehicles that can carry its owner at a walking pace to the destination. Once there, the robot's battery can charge portable devices.

According to Ikap, Olive connects with its owner's smartphone or other devices using Wi-Fi or Bluetooth via an app that allows for full control. The app can locate the bag wherever it is using GPS and 3G/4G technology, and it has an automatic lock/unlock mechanism in case it's left unattended as well as provide alarms if it's disturbed. The lock also works with NFC technology, so keys are redundant.

Olive uses skeleton tracking to follow its owner

Ikap Robotics took out first place in the Service Robotics section of the 2016 Automatica Start-up World Competition held in Munich last month and the company says it is currently seeking investment and collaboration to further develop and manufacture Olive. We tried to contact the makers regarding the current state of development of Olive, its estimated price and potential availability, and will update this story if we hear back.

The video below shows Olive strutting its stuff.

Source: Olive Robotics, Gizmag

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Geek Speak: When pupils become masters . . .

Kidobotikz is a place of where one gets to discover wonderful realities. When one enters Kidobotikz classrooms, it is usually a beehive of robotic nonchalance. Students are generally oblivious to the surroundings and spend their time learning the essential concepts of robotics. However, there’s an entire breed of students at kidobotikz who are involved in something far more phenomenal. They don’t just gain something from the robotics community. They strive to give something back to the vast pool of knowledge in the robotics community.

Meet Mathivanan, Associate engineer at Kidobotikz. He is not your average trainer in an educational institution. He has a much more important purpose here at Kidobotikz. This electrical engineering graduate from Puducherry always wanted to create an impact in students and wanted to teach them the knowledge of robotics which he learnt by himself. This desire of his is precisely what inspired him to join Kidobotikz. Here at Kidobotikz, he helps bright young minds realize their dreams. He helps students build new projects and working models. Every time a Kidobotikz student or alumni desires to create a new concept in his or her own area of interest, he or she she is allotted a faculty at Kidobotikz. These faculty help the students conceptualize their ideas, brainstorm the technicalities and finally implement all of them to create a working prototype, not much unlike an incubation center. The students approach the faculty as and when they find time to collaborate on the project and successfully make it work.  

Mathivanan is currently associated on a project with Hemanth, a 7th grader from St.John’s Matriculation Higher Secondary School. The project which is as novel as it is futuristic. Hemanth who had an idea to develop a home automation system spent some time brainstorming this idea with his mentor and the final result was a concept which was simpler yet had a much more powerful impact on the daily life. Hemanth, who had a fascination for IoT devices, is now developing a device that will protect the household wiring from overloading by keeping real time surveillance of the load on the system. The device, claims Mathivanan, which is halfway through to successful completion will be capable of keeping track of the power consumption through the household fuse and intimate the user instantly in dire situations. It is capable of sending instant updates via a GSM transmitter which will relay the information directly onto the user’s mobile phones. It also capable of autonomously turning off the power supply in case of threat to the system. This will help in preventing short circuits, power surges, detecting power theft and will optimise the overall power consumption by a household. Under Mathivanan’s guidance, Hemanth is also working on to add an additional feature to the device wherein the device will notify the user the total consumption of power in terms of the bill amount by factoring in the power tariff. The knowledge of robotics has the potential to not only shape the future of our children, but that of the entire society and its way of life.

Happy Roboting ! !

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Yamaha designs an autonomous boat optimised for dam surveying

Dams have a variety of roles including irrigation, flood prevention, and power generation. When it comes to maintaining a dam, there's more to worry about than stopping the walls from falling down. Silt buildup can damage a dam's ability to effectively collect water, which means they need to be scanned and dredged periodically. Yamaha has developed an autonomous boat designed to make the mundane task of dam and lake bed sediment surveying a little bit easier.

BREEZE10, developed by Yamaha, is an electric FRP (Fiber Reinforced Polymer) craft approximately three meters in length which has been developed to enable easy mounting of measurement equipment such as narrow multibeam sonar, such as R2Sonic's "Sonic2024", to aid in measurement work, such as domestic dam silt level measurement.

Yamaha's Breeze10 uses a satellite positioning system in combination with azimuth angle data for autonomous navigation, with routes able to be saved for use again when resurveying. Measuring 3.2 m (10.4 ft) long with a beam of 1.2 m (3.9 ft), the craft is compact enough to fit in a large minivan.

Sonar sensors can be fitted quickly and easily thanks to a dedicated mounting point in the center of the underside of the craft, and an 0.5 kW electric motor allows for operation in shallow water. Range anxiety shouldn't be a problem, with the 20 AH lithium-ion battery and 1.6-kW on-board generator promising six hours of continuous running.

Although it can operate in fully autonomous mode, Yamaha has also included two other drive modes, allowing remote control or giving full control to an on-board driver. That driver isn't going to be winning any drag races with the Breeze10's four knot (7.2 km/h) top speed, but that's not really the point.

Yamaha is hoping its design will be able to transfer into surveillance and defense roles in the future, but for now it's expected to find a home with commercial surveyors when it launches in August.

Source: Yamaha, Gizmag

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Scientists make Robotic ray with rat cells and steer it with light

Soft robots are nothing new, but they're generally made with a mix of circuitry and silicone or other rubber-like materials. Researchers from a variety of universities have just announced in the journal Science that they took a different approach. A team headed by University of Illinois scientist Sung-Jin Park has developed a bio-inspired swimming robot that mimics a ray fish can be guided by light. Dr.Park and his team built a 1/10th-scale version of a ray fish with a microfabricated gold skeleton and a rubber body powered by rat heart muscle cells. The cardiomyocytes were genetically engineered to respond to light cues, so that the undulatory movements propelling the robot through water would follow a light source. To create their robotic ray, they engineered some pretty special heart cells and attached them to a golden skeleton. Inspired by the relatively simple shape and swimming methods of batoid fish like stingrays and skates, the group first built a framework for the robotic fish from gold. The golden skeleton was designed in such a way that it could store energy when it was flexed upward. Meanwhile, some members of the team were busy bioengineering rat heart cells known as cardiomyocytes to make them sensitive to light.

The heart cells – about 200,000 of them, to be exact – were then placed atop the gold framework. When they were stimulated by light, they contracted, causing the artificial skeleton to bend in a downward motion. Then, once the heart cells relaxed, the framework could flex downward using the energy it had stored. This created a swimming motion that could propel the half-muscle, half-machine creation through water. By altering the position of the light pulses, the robotic ray could be steered left or right, and by adjusting the light's frequency, the speed of the tiny robot could be controlled. The researchers had so much success in steering the robot that they were able to maneuver it through a basic obstacle course. Optogenetics allows for phototactic guidance, steering, and turning maneuvers. Optical stimulation induced sequential muscle activation via serpentine-patterned muscle circuits, leading to coordinated undulatory swimming. The speed and direction of the ray was controlled by modulating light frequency and by independently eliciting right and left fins, allowing the biohybrid machine to maneuver through an obstacle course.

You can watch the little hybrid ray in action in the following video.

Source: Gizmag, Science

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Geek Speak: Jeffin Sam

7 days and counting ! That’s how we at Team Kidobotikz are now keeping track of the news articles that have sprung up around the city commemorating the unique achievement of our kids. The news has spread across the country as a wildfire and we’ve received accolades in heaps. Credit in it’s entirety belongs to the students, the parents and the volunteers  who helped us dearly in this unique achievement. In the past couple of days we’ve been featured on a myriad of media platforms ranging from news aggregator apps such as Wrap-up to weekend tabloids such as the Hindu Downtown. Not to forget a good number of Tamil magazines who have covered our event. We owe a great deal of gratitude to all of the media personnel who were wanted to highlight our efforts and help it reach a large audience.

Meanwhile, back at Kidobotikz, it’s Sunday and our students are back. I met a few of them yesterday and was chronicling their experience at school after the world record. I came across quite a few interesting stories. I’ve met a lot of interesting students here at Kidobotikz. Infact, all the students I meet are usually interesting in their own right. But there’s one thing that’s quite common among all of them. Each of them is voluble and bubbly. Their energy and enthusiasm usually rubs on to me even as I talk to them. However, all that changed today. I come across a rather interesting student with whom I am engaged in a constant struggle to get words out of him .

Meet Jeffin Sam, the introvert. He is here a good one week after the world record. This guy is modesty personified. I inquire him as to how his friends reacted about his world record and he says they all don’t know much about the event .Quite perplexed, I ask him why and he says he never told anybody. So I ask him as to why he didn’t tell anybody to which he says the poster was stuck on the notice board of his school, Jawahar Vidyalaya, for everyone to see; so he chose to not bother anybody about it. Most people would prefer to boast about such an achievement, but that line of thought seems to have been lost on our gentleman. One look at him and you realise he has a composure that many of us would envy and is adept at what he wants to do. I ask him a few more questions to which most of his answers were quite crisp and in a low baritone. This 8th grader, who is pursuing his advanced level at Kidobotikz has already made up his mind to pursue robotics as a career. He says his favourite kind of robots are ATV Robots, a bunch of which he has build at home. But, he aspires to build an airworthy Quadcopter someday.

Happy Roboting ! !   

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