• According to British health chiefs, white is the new black…at least when it comes to keeping your house cool. They’re suggesting that all U.K. homes be painted white to combat global warming—a technique long used in hot Mediterranean countries like Greece.
• Turns out you’re not the only one who can prevent forest fires. Giant buzzsaw-wielding robots can do it, too!
• Don’t let the economy get you, er, down: Some jobless Americans are now eligible for a free year’s supply of Viagra and other drugs.
• Scientists are using human bile acids to make a replacement for mercury and plastic dental fillings. As if going to the dentist didn’t already leave a bad taste in your mouth.
• And lastly, check out what might be the world’s smallest cat. Itty bitty kitty committee, anyone?
The next big step in cancer treatment might be small enough to balance on a grain of salt.
Researchers at the Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa have developed a miniature crawling robot, called ViRob, that can crawl through your lungs, find a tumor, and zap it with drugs. The bot, which is one millimeter long and four millimeters from end to end, can snake its way through the body, slipping into blood vessels and navigating through the respiratory and digestive systems, Innerspace style.
Other mini-robots have been designed to take a voyage into the body. But thanks to tiny arms that help it grip vessel walls , ViRob is the first microbot that can tunnel between different body cavities. It’s controlled by an electromagnetic field outside of the robot that creates a vibration that propels ViRob forward.
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Robots really seem to be catching on as a tool for environmental defense. Even if they’re animal decoys: robot animals that look—and act—just like the real things. Why would such a machine be useful? Well, for one, they’re great at trapping would-be poachers.
Wildlife officials are up against a hunting season where for every animal killed legally, there’s another one killed illegally. State officers hide out near the strategically-placed decoys, and when poachers approach, the officers act quickly, jumping from bushes and shouting things like, “Game and Fish Department! Cease fire! Put down your weapon!”
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Here it is, a 15-gram helicopter that fits in your hand and looks like something out of a James Bond sequence. Except it’s not a movie prop—it’s the PD-100 Black Hornet.
With video cameras for eyes and fully-functional 4-inch rotor blades, the helicopter can lift off the ground in a matter of seconds and fly at 20 miles per hour. A built-in GPS system allows it to carefully navigate outdoor terrain without getting lost. Tests have shown that it can even handle windy conditions.
If the Norwegian company Prox Dynamics successfully manufactures the Hornet as planned, soldiers might soon begin to use them on the battlefield. The best part? The tiny aircraft is so small it can fit in their pockets.
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Turns out robots are not always the hardworking, sensible employees that companies intend them to be. A robot in Sweden has now cost a company $3,000 in fines, after nearly costing one employee his life.
Two years ago, a factory worker was performing maintenance on a robot used to lift heavy rocks. Thinking he had cut the power supply, the man approached the robot, who apparently was not deprived of power at all, since he grabbed the man’s head and wouldn’t let go.
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Teaching robots to walk was a piece of cake. But getting them to fly seemed much more difficult— until now. Say hello to the world’s first flying microbot!
Researchers at University of Waterloo built a prototype microrobot for maneuverability, powered it with a magnetic field, and used cameras and laser sensors to watch it hover softly over surfaces. Having the robot fly was a feat in and of itself, but engineering professor Behrad Khamesee tackled it knowing that the payoffs would be huge if the bot could help researchers move objects with more precision in the microscale environment.
A computer tracks the robot’s every flutter as it fetches objects on command, grabbing them with its microgrippers. When an externally controlled laser beam is turned on, the microgrippers heat up and open, and when the laser is off, they cool down and close. In the absence of electronic wires to control its flight, an array of electromagnets below the robot powers it, so it can “float freely” in the air.
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The CB2 baby robot has begun to grow up, and can now learn like a toddler. The two-year-old, four-foot-tall, 73-pound robot is now interacting with humans and “developing social skills,” just as its creators at Osaka University hoped it would.
Engineering professor Minoru Asada was interested in child development, so in 2007 he created a robot with a Biomimetic Body—a flexible and true-to-life machine built to act and learn like a child—so it can respond to humans in a way similar to how a baby reacts to its mother.
To make CB2 as human as possible, researchers built it with sensors and cameras to help it perceive the world, and gave it enough smarts to recognize emotion in others. Already, the robot has learned to walk, taking small strides as air pressure powers its 51 “muscles” into motion.
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It looks like a carp, swims like a carp, and may even smell like a carp. But a fish being released into the waters of northern Spain is really a pollution-detecting robot.
Scientists in the U.K. have developed a robotic fish with tiny chemical sensors that detect potentially hazardous pollutants in the water. Researchers plan to release the fish into the water by the end of next year, and if the first batch of five is successful, they hope to use the fish to detect pollution—both on the surface as well as dissolved—in water systems around the world.
At 1.5 meters in length, the fish will be about the size of a seal, and will swim and wriggle just like real fish, at a maximum speed of about one meter per second. Unlike other robotic fish that are operated by remote control, the robot fish will be able to navigate autonomously, swimming through port areas and transmitting information via Wi-Fi to a control center. It will even know when it has to go back and recharge, so it won’t be left stranded by a dead battery.
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She introduced herself as “cybernetic human HRP-4C” at her first press conference, and charmed her audience just as any supermodel would. She smiled, struck seductive poses, and even made mistakes that her inventors attributed to nerves. Except that this head-turner is a fashion-bot, and she’ll make her catwalk debut in Tokyo on March 23.
The model-bot met a smaller crew of journalists this week at Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology. They transmitted commands by Bluetooth and she acted accordingly, tapping into the 42 fashion-model-like movements that she’s been programmed to emulate. She gave the wrong facial expressions a couple times, but her inventors say that was because all the noisy cameras confused her sound recognition sensors.
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• Social networking can lead to increased isolation, health problems, and harmful immune responses. So does that mean we shouldn’t post this link to Facebook?
• They tried to make us go to virtual rehab but we said no, no, no.
• No bird is too extinct to show up on a dinner plate somewhere!
• New manually dexterous robots promise to save all the world’s problems. Well, not really, but they can play rock, paper, scissors.
• One nice thing about the economic collapse: The U.S. couldn’t afford to build massive space weapons, even if it wanted to!
