Machine/flesh. That’s what I’ve taken to calling this process of integrating machinery into our and, as I newly realized, other animals’ flesh. My new realization was courtesy of a television ad for Absolut Greyhound Vodka. First, here’s the very, very long (3 mins. 39 secs.) ad/music video version,

I gather the dogs are mostly or, possibly, all animation. Still, the robotic dogs are very thought-provoking.  It’s kind of fascinating to me that I found a very unusual, futuristic, and thought-provoking idea embedded in advertising so I dug around online to find a March 2012 article by Rae Ann Fera, about the ad campaign, written for the Fast (Company} Co-Create website,

In the real world, music and cocktails go hand in hand. In an Absolut world, music and cocktails come with racing robotic greyhounds remotely controlled by a trio of DJs, spurred on by a cast of characters that make Lady Gaga look casual.

…

“Greyhound”–which is the title of the drink, the video, and the actual music track–is a three-minute visual feast created by TBWA\Chiat\Day that sees three groups of couture-sporting racing enthusiasts converge on the Bonneville Salt Flats to watch some robotic greyhounds speed across the parched plains, all while sipping light pink Absolut Greyhounds. While the fabulous people in the desert give each other the “my team’s going to win” stink-eye, the three members of Swedish House Mafia are off in a desolate bunker remotely controlling the robodogs to a photo-finish while ensconced in holographic orbs. …

…

Given that “Greyhound” is part music video, part ad, it will be distributed across a number of channels. “When it come to our target, music is their number one passion point and they live in the digital space so the campaign is really going to primarily TV and digital,” says Absolut’s Kouchnir [Maxime Kouchnir, Vice President, Vodkas, Pernod Ricard USA].

The advertisers, of course, are trying to sell vodka by digitally creating a greyhound that’s part robot/part flesh and then setting the stage for this race with music, fashion, cocktails, and an open-ended result. But, if one thinks of advertising as a reflection of culture, then these animated robot/flesh greyhounds suggest that something is percolating in the zeitgeist.

I have other examples on this blog  but here are a few recent  nonadvertising items I’ve come across that support my thesis. First, I found an April 27, 2012 article (MIT Media Lab Hosts The Future) by Neal Ungerleider for Fast Company, from the article,

This week, MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology] Media Lab researchers and minds from around the world got together to discuss artificial implantable memories, computers that understand emotion… and Microsoft-funded robotic teddy bears. Will the next Guitar Hero soon be discovered?

….

Then there are the scientists who will be able to plant artificial memories in your head. Ted Berger of the University of Southern California is developing prosthetic brain implants that mimic the mind. Apart from turning recipients into cyborgs, the brain prostheses actually create fake memories, science fiction movie style: In experiments, researchers successfully turned long-term memories on and off in lab rats. Berger hopes in the future, once primate testing is complete, to create brain implants for Alzheimer’s and stroke patients to help restore function.

While erasing and/or creating memories may seem a bit distant from our current experience, the BBC May 3, 2012 news article by Fergus Walsh, describes another machine/flesh project at the human clinical trials stage. Retinal implants have placed in two British men,

The two patients, Chris James and Robin Millar, lost their vision due to a condition known as retinitis pigmentosa, where the photoreceptor cells at the back of the eye gradually cease to function.

The wafer-thin, 3mm square microelectronic chip has 1,500 light-sensitive pixels which take over the function of the photoreceptor rods and cones.

The surgery involves placing it behind the retina from where a fine cable runs to a control unit under the skin behind the ear.

I believe this is the project I described in Aug. 18, 2011 posting (scroll down 2/3 of the way), which has 30 participants in the clinical trials, worldwide.

It sometimes seems that we’re not creating new life through biological means, synthetic or otherwise, but, rather, with our machines, which we are integrating into our own and other animal’s flesh.

Machine/flesh. That’s what I’ve taken to calling this process of integrating machinery into our and, as I newly realized, other animals’ flesh. My new realization was courtesy of a television ad for Absolut Greyhound Vodka. First, here’s the very, very long (3 mins. 39 secs.) ad/music video version,

I gather the dogs are mostly or, possibly, all animation. Still, the robotic dogs are very thought-provoking.  It’s kind of fascinating to me that I found a very unusual, futuristic, and thought-provoking idea embedded in advertising so I dug around online to find a March 2012 article by Rae Ann Fera, about the ad campaign, written for the Fast (Company} Co-Create website,

In the real world, music and cocktails go hand in hand. In an Absolut world, music and cocktails come with racing robotic greyhounds remotely controlled by a trio of DJs, spurred on by a cast of characters that make Lady Gaga look casual.

…

“Greyhound”–which is the title of the drink, the video, and the actual music track–is a three-minute visual feast created by TBWA\Chiat\Day that sees three groups of couture-sporting racing enthusiasts converge on the Bonneville Salt Flats to watch some robotic greyhounds speed across the parched plains, all while sipping light pink Absolut Greyhounds. While the fabulous people in the desert give each other the “my team’s going to win” stink-eye, the three members of Swedish House Mafia are off in a desolate bunker remotely controlling the robodogs to a photo-finish while ensconced in holographic orbs. …

…

Given that “Greyhound” is part music video, part ad, it will be distributed across a number of channels. “When it come to our target, music is their number one passion point and they live in the digital space so the campaign is really going to primarily TV and digital,” says Absolut’s Kouchnir [Maxime Kouchnir, Vice President, Vodkas, Pernod Ricard USA].

The advertisers, of course, are trying to sell vodka by digitally creating a greyhound that’s part robot/part flesh and then setting the stage for this race with music, fashion, cocktails, and an open-ended result. But, if one thinks of advertising as a reflection of culture, then these animated robot/flesh greyhounds suggest that something is percolating in the zeitgeist.

I have other examples on this blog  but here are a few recent  nonadvertising items I’ve come across that support my thesis. First, I found an April 27, 2012 article (MIT Media Lab Hosts The Future) by Neal Ungerleider for Fast Company, from the article,

This week, MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology] Media Lab researchers and minds from around the world got together to discuss artificial implantable memories, computers that understand emotion… and Microsoft-funded robotic teddy bears. Will the next Guitar Hero soon be discovered?

….

Then there are the scientists who will be able to plant artificial memories in your head. Ted Berger of the University of Southern California is developing prosthetic brain implants that mimic the mind. Apart from turning recipients into cyborgs, the brain prostheses actually create fake memories, science fiction movie style: In experiments, researchers successfully turned long-term memories on and off in lab rats. Berger hopes in the future, once primate testing is complete, to create brain implants for Alzheimer’s and stroke patients to help restore function.

While erasing and/or creating memories may seem a bit distant from our current experience, the BBC May 3, 2012 news article by Fergus Walsh, describes another machine/flesh project at the human clinical trials stage. Retinal implants have placed in two British men,

The two patients, Chris James and Robin Millar, lost their vision due to a condition known as retinitis pigmentosa, where the photoreceptor cells at the back of the eye gradually cease to function.

The wafer-thin, 3mm square microelectronic chip has 1,500 light-sensitive pixels which take over the function of the photoreceptor rods and cones.

The surgery involves placing it behind the retina from where a fine cable runs to a control unit under the skin behind the ear.

I believe this is the project I described in Aug. 18, 2011 posting (scroll down 2/3 of the way), which has 30 participants in the clinical trials, worldwide.

It sometimes seems that we’re not creating new life through biological means, synthetic or otherwise, but, rather, with our machines, which we are integrating into our own and other animal’s flesh.

Crowdfunding (raising funds by posting a project, on a website designed for the purpose, and asking for money in return for rewards you will give to the funders) seems to be everywhere at the moment. I tried it last year for one of my projects and had one failure and one partial success. It’s certainly an interesting process to go through and I’m fascinated with the current interest from scientists. According to an April 25, 2012 posting by Michael Ho on Techdirt, there are at least four crowdfunding websites for science projects.

In addition to the ones Ho cites, I found the #SciFund Challenge, which is being held from May 1  – May 31, 2012. From their home page,

Last fall, scientists raised $76,230 for their research in the first round of the #SciFund Challenge. The second round launches on May 1, 2012!

What? The #SciFund Challenge is a grand experiment in science funding. Can scientists raise money for their research by convincing the general public to open their wallets for small-amount donations? In more and more fields – from music to dance to journalism – people are raising lots of money for projects in precisely this way. The process is called crowdfunding. The first round of the #SciFund Challenge showed that this model can work for funding scientific research. Now, let’s take it to the next level!

Who? Well over 140 scientists, from across the globe, have signed for the second round of the #SciFund Challenge.

When? From May 1- May 31, 2012, scientists participating in the #SciFund Challenge will each conduct their own crowdfunding campaigns for their own research. But even though each scientist will be fundraising for their own research, participants won’t be on their own.  In the month of April, #SciFund scientists will be trained how to run a crowdfunding campaign. And, through the Challenge, participants will be connected together to increase the chances that everyone succeeds.

How do I learn more? Read the blog! You can also contact one of the #SciFund Challenge organizers with any questions: Jai Ranganathan (jai.ranganathan@gmail.com). If you would like to be informed about future rounds of the #SciFund Challenge, please sign up for our mailing list.

From the About page (I have removed several links),

The #SciFund Challenge is an experiment – can scientists use crowdfunding to fund their research? The current rate of funding for science proposals in the U.S. is ~20%. The current rate for crowdfunding statues of RoboCop in Detroit is 135% – to the tune of $67,436. Perhaps Scientists can do better by tapping this reservoir of funds from an interested public. …

The #SciFund Challenge is also a way to get scientists to directly engage with the public. Crowdfunding forces scientists to build public interaction and outreach into their research from day one. It’s a new mechanism to couple science and society, and one that we think has a lot of promise. …

Founders
The founders of the #SciFund Challenge are Dr. Jai Ranganathan  and Dr. Jarrett Byrnes. We are biologists – ecologists, actually – and each spends too much time in the science online scene. Jai ran a weekly science podcast, called Curiouser and Curiouser for Miller-McCune magazine, and Jarrett is the big boss over at the science blog I’m a Chordata! Urochordata! On Twitter, you can find Jai at @jranganathan and jai.ranganathan@gmail.com and Jarrett at @jebyrnes.

On another note and in response to my April 18, 2012 posting about Lego robots being used to grow bones,  I received a notice about a project to raise funds on Kickstarter. As I’m not a Lego afficionado, it took a little digging to figure out the project.

In my April 18, 2012 posting the scientists used a robot that they built with a Lego Mindstorms kit. The beams used to create a base for the robots limit builders and a team from Denmark (Lasse Mogensen and Soren Jensen), which is the home of Lego, have developed a base (a rectangular plate, 21 x 30 holes), which would allow scientists and others to create larger, more robust and complex robots. They call their project, MinuteBot Base,

There are ways to combine the MinuteBot Base plates, which are fully compatible with Lego products, in case a single base does not suffice.

Here’s the MinuteBot Base Kickstarter page where you can find more information and diagrams. The group has raised almost 1/2 of the funds they’ve requested with some 20 days left in their campaign. The group has contacted Michelle Oyen, who’s one of the scientists cited in my April 18, 2012 posting (from their April 25, 2012 email to me),

We are in contact with Michelle Oyen who expressed interest in our products:

“Please let me know if I can be of use in the future, and if you are interested in collaborating on more ideas regarding using Lego Mindstorms for biomedical/bioengineering research!”

The group also has a second project, a MinuteBot Bearing, which they (represented by team member, Dorota Sauer)  have entered in a contest for a prize of $10,000. From the MinuteBot Bearing page on the Boca Bearing contest website,

What was your goal in building this project?

To design a turntable with a perfect interface with LEGO Mindstorms and with improved mechanical properties. The broader vision is to make a kit consisting of robust elements designed for higher precision and durability using industrial components. Robotics made in minutes. That’s MinuteBot.

Does your project help to solve a problem? If so what problem?

LEGO Mindstorms is very easy to program but as it is a toy the precision, durability and mechanical integrity is limited. The MinuteBot Bearing is based on industry-grade ball bearings providing the needed mechanical performance of the turntable.

What makes your idea unique?

The combination of user friendliness, the interface with LEGO Mindstorms and the good mechanical performance makes MinuteBot Bearing unique.

You can find out more information about the team and the products at the MinuteBot website.

Getting back to Michael Ho and his posting about the science-specific crowdfunding sites, here are two listings I’ve excerpted from his April 25, 2012 posting,

Petridish.org has a couple fully-funded projects with about $10,000 worth of donations. One project aims to look for exomoons, and another will look for new species of ants in Madagascar.
Microryza is another crowdfunding site for scientists aimed at the journey of learning something new — which is its own reward. Will backers still be fascinated by a collection of negative results?

Good luck to them all!

Crowdfunding (raising funds by posting a project, on a website designed for the purpose, and asking for money in return for rewards you will give to the funders) seems to be everywhere at the moment. I tried it last year for one of my projects and had one failure and one partial success. It’s certainly an interesting process to go through and I’m fascinated with the current interest from scientists. According to an April 25, 2012 posting by Michael Ho on Techdirt, there are at least four crowdfunding websites for science projects.

In addition to the ones Ho cites, I found the #SciFund Challenge, which is being held from May 1  – May 31, 2012. From their home page,

Last fall, scientists raised $76,230 for their research in the first round of the #SciFund Challenge. The second round launches on May 1, 2012!

What? The #SciFund Challenge is a grand experiment in science funding. Can scientists raise money for their research by convincing the general public to open their wallets for small-amount donations? In more and more fields – from music to dance to journalism – people are raising lots of money for projects in precisely this way. The process is called crowdfunding. The first round of the #SciFund Challenge showed that this model can work for funding scientific research. Now, let’s take it to the next level!

Who? Well over 140 scientists, from across the globe, have signed for the second round of the #SciFund Challenge.

When? From May 1- May 31, 2012, scientists participating in the #SciFund Challenge will each conduct their own crowdfunding campaigns for their own research. But even though each scientist will be fundraising for their own research, participants won’t be on their own.  In the month of April, #SciFund scientists will be trained how to run a crowdfunding campaign. And, through the Challenge, participants will be connected together to increase the chances that everyone succeeds.

How do I learn more? Read the blog! You can also contact one of the #SciFund Challenge organizers with any questions: Jai Ranganathan (jai.ranganathan@gmail.com). If you would like to be informed about future rounds of the #SciFund Challenge, please sign up for our mailing list.

From the About page (I have removed several links),

The #SciFund Challenge is an experiment – can scientists use crowdfunding to fund their research? The current rate of funding for science proposals in the U.S. is ~20%. The current rate for crowdfunding statues of RoboCop in Detroit is 135% – to the tune of $67,436. Perhaps Scientists can do better by tapping this reservoir of funds from an interested public. …

The #SciFund Challenge is also a way to get scientists to directly engage with the public. Crowdfunding forces scientists to build public interaction and outreach into their research from day one. It’s a new mechanism to couple science and society, and one that we think has a lot of promise. …

Founders
The founders of the #SciFund Challenge are Dr. Jai Ranganathan  and Dr. Jarrett Byrnes. We are biologists – ecologists, actually – and each spends too much time in the science online scene. Jai ran a weekly science podcast, called Curiouser and Curiouser for Miller-McCune magazine, and Jarrett is the big boss over at the science blog I’m a Chordata! Urochordata! On Twitter, you can find Jai at @jranganathan and jai.ranganathan@gmail.com and Jarrett at @jebyrnes.

On another note and in response to my April 18, 2012 posting about Lego robots being used to grow bones,  I received a notice about a project to raise funds on Kickstarter. As I’m not a Lego afficionado, it took a little digging to figure out the project.

In my April 18, 2012 posting the scientists used a robot that they built with a Lego Mindstorms kit. The beams used to create a base for the robots limit builders and a team from Denmark (Lasse Mogensen and Soren Jensen), which is the home of Lego, have developed a base (a rectangular plate, 21 x 30 holes), which would allow scientists and others to create larger, more robust and complex robots. They call their project, MinuteBot Base,

There are ways to combine the MinuteBot Base plates, which are fully compatible with Lego products, in case a single base does not suffice.

Here’s the MinuteBot Base Kickstarter page where you can find more information and diagrams. The group has raised almost 1/2 of the funds they’ve requested with some 20 days left in their campaign. The group has contacted Michelle Oyen, who’s one of the scientists cited in my April 18, 2012 posting (from their April 25, 2012 email to me),

We are in contact with Michelle Oyen who expressed interest in our products:

“Please let me know if I can be of use in the future, and if you are interested in collaborating on more ideas regarding using Lego Mindstorms for biomedical/bioengineering research!”

The group also has a second project, a MinuteBot Bearing, which they (represented by team member, Dorota Sauer)  have entered in a contest for a prize of $10,000. From the MinuteBot Bearing page on the Boca Bearing contest website,

What was your goal in building this project?

To design a turntable with a perfect interface with LEGO Mindstorms and with improved mechanical properties. The broader vision is to make a kit consisting of robust elements designed for higher precision and durability using industrial components. Robotics made in minutes. That’s MinuteBot.

Does your project help to solve a problem? If so what problem?

LEGO Mindstorms is very easy to program but as it is a toy the precision, durability and mechanical integrity is limited. The MinuteBot Bearing is based on industry-grade ball bearings providing the needed mechanical performance of the turntable.

What makes your idea unique?

The combination of user friendliness, the interface with LEGO Mindstorms and the good mechanical performance makes MinuteBot Bearing unique.

You can find out more information about the team and the products at the MinuteBot website.

Getting back to Michael Ho and his posting about the science-specific crowdfunding sites, here are two listings I’ve excerpted from his April 25, 2012 posting,

Petridish.org has a couple fully-funded projects with about $10,000 worth of donations. One project aims to look for exomoons, and another will look for new species of ants in Madagascar.
Microryza is another crowdfunding site for scientists aimed at the journey of learning something new — which is its own reward. Will backers still be fascinated by a collection of negative results?

Good luck to them all!

I’ve decided to do a roundup of the various brain-related projects I’ve been coming across in the last several months. I was inspired by this article (Real-life Jedi: Pushing the limits of mind control) by Katia Moskvitch,

You don’t have to be a Jedi to make things move with your mind.

Granted, we may not be able to lift a spaceship out of a swamp like Yoda does in The Empire Strikes Back, but it is possible to steer a model car, drive a wheelchair and control a robotic exoskeleton with just your thoughts.

…

We are standing in a testing room at IBM’s Emerging Technologies lab in Winchester, England.

On my head is a strange headset that looks like a black plastic squid. Its 14 tendrils, each capped with a moistened electrode, are supposed to detect specific brain signals.

In front of us is a computer screen, displaying an image of a floating cube.

As I think about pushing it, the cube responds by drifting into the distance.

Moskvitch goes on to discuss a number of projects that translate thought into movement via various pieces of equipment before she mentions a project at Brown University (US) where researchers are implanting computer chips into brains,

Headsets and helmets offer cheap, easy-to-use ways of tapping into the mind. But there are other,

Imagine some kind of a wireless computer device in your head that you’ll use for mind control – what if people hacked into that”

…

At Brown Institute for Brain Science in the US, scientists are busy inserting chips right into the human brain.

The technology, dubbed BrainGate, sends mental commands directly to a PC.

Subjects still have to be physically “plugged” into a computer via cables coming out of their heads, in a setup reminiscent of the film The Matrix. However, the team is now working on miniaturising the chips and making them wireless.

The researchers are recruiting for human clinical trials, from the BrainGate Clinical Trials webpage,

Clinical Trials – Now Recruiting

The purpose of the first phase of the pilot clinical study of the BrainGate2 Neural Interface System is to obtain preliminary device safety information and to demonstrate the feasibility of people with tetraplegia using the System to control a computer cursor and other assistive devices with their thoughts. Another goal of the study is to determine the participants’ ability to operate communication software, such as e-mail, simply by imagining the movement of their own hand. The study is invasive and requires surgery.

Individuals with limited or no ability to use both hands due to cervical spinal cord injury, brainstem stroke, muscular dystrophy, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) or other motor neuron diseases are being recruited into a clinical study at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Stanford University Medical Center. Clinical trial participants must live within a three-hour drive of Boston, MA or Palo Alto, CA. Clinical trial sites at other locations may be opened in the future. The study requires a commitment of 13 months.

They have been recruiting since at least November 2011, from the Nov. 14, 2011 news item by Tanya Lewis on MedicalXpress,

Stanford University researchers are enrolling participants in a pioneering study investigating the feasibility of people with paralysis using a technology that interfaces directly with the brain to control computer cursors, robotic arms and other assistive devices.

…

The pilot clinical trial, known as BrainGate2, is based on technology developed at Brown University and is led by researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital, Brown and the Providence Veterans Affairs Medical Center. The researchers have now invited the Stanford team to establish the only trial site outside of New England.

Under development since 2002, BrainGate is a combination of hardware and software that directly senses electrical signals in the brain that control movement. The device — a baby-aspirin-sized array of electrodes — is implanted in the cerebral cortex (the outer layer of the brain) and records its signals; computer algorithms then translate the signals into digital instructions that may allow people with paralysis to control external devices.

Confusingly, there seemto be two BrainGate organizations. One appears to be a research entity where a number of institutions collaborate and the other is some sort of jointly held company. From the About Us webpage of the BrainGate research entity,

In the late 1990s, the initial translation of fundamental neuroengineering research from “bench to bedside” – that is, to pilot clinical testing – would require a level of financial commitment ($10s of millions) available only from private sources. In 2002, a Brown University spin-off/startup medical device company, Cyberkinetics, Inc. (later, Cyberkinetics Neurotechnology Systems, Inc.) was formed to collect the regulatory permissions and financial resources required to launch pilot clinical trials of a first-generation neural interface system. The company’s efforts and substantial initial capital investment led to the translation of the preclinical research at Brown University to an initial human device, the BrainGate Neural Interface System [Caution: Investigational Device. Limited by Federal Law to Investigational Use]. The BrainGate system uses a brain-implantable sensor to detect neural signals that are then decoded to provide control signals for assistive technologies. In 2004, Cyberkinetics received from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) the first of two Investigational Device Exemptions (IDEs) to perform this research. Hospitals in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Illinois were established as clinical sites for the pilot clinical trial run by Cyberkinetics. Four trial participants with tetraplegia (decreased ability to use the arms and legs) were enrolled in the study and further helped to develop the BrainGate device. Initial results from these trials have been published or presented, with additional publications in preparation.

While scientific progress towards the creation of this promising technology has been steady and encouraging, Cyberkinetics’ financial sponsorship of the BrainGate research – without which the research could not have been started – began to wane. In 2007, in response to business pressures and changes in the capital markets, Cyberkinetics turned its focus to other medical devices. Although Cyberkinetics’ own funds became unavailable for BrainGate research, the research continued through grants and subcontracts from federal sources. By early 2008 it became clear that Cyberkinetics would eventually need to withdraw completely from directing the pilot clinical trials of the BrainGate device. Also in 2008, Cyberkinetics spun off its device manufacturing to new ownership, BlackRock Microsystems, Inc., which now produces and is further developing research products as well as clinically-validated (510(k)-cleared) implantable neural recording devices.

Beginning in mid 2008, with the agreement of Cyberkinetics, a new, fully academically-based IDE application (for the “BrainGate2 Neural Interface System”) was developed to continue this important research. In May 2009, the FDA provided a new IDE for the BrainGate2 pilot clinical trial. [Caution: Investigational Device. Limited by Federal Law to Investigational Use.] The BrainGate2 pilot clinical trial is directed by faculty in the Department of Neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital, a teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School; the research is performed in close scientific collaboration with Brown University’s Department of Neuroscience, School of Engineering, and Brown Institute for Brain Sciences, and the Rehabilitation Research and Development Service of the U.S. Department of Veteran’s Affairs at the Providence VA Medical Center. Additionally, in late 2011, Stanford University joined the BrainGate Research Team as a clinical site and is currently enrolling participants in the clinical trial. This interdisciplinary research team includes scientific partners from the Functional Electrical Stimulation Center at Case Western Reserve University and the Cleveland VA Medical Center. As was true of the decades of fundamental, preclinical research that provided the basis for the recent clinical studies, funding for BrainGate research is now entirely from federal and philanthropic sources.

The BrainGate Research Team at Brown University, Massachusetts General Hospital, Stanford University, and Providence VA Medical Center comprises physicians, scientists, and engineers working together to advance understanding of human brain function and to develop neurotechnologies for people with neurologic disease, injury, or limb loss.

I think they’re saying there was a reverse takeover of Cyberkinetics, from the BrainGate company About webpage,

The BrainGate™ Co. is a privately-held firm focused on the advancement of the BrainGate™ Neural Interface System.  The Company owns the Intellectual property of the BrainGate™ system as well as new technology being developed by the BrainGate company.  In addition, the Company also owns  the intellectual property of Cyberkinetics which it purchased in April 2009.

Meanwhile, in Europe there are two projects BrainAble and the Human Brain Project. The BrainAble project is similar to BrainGate in that it is intended for people with injuries but they seem to be concentrating on a helmet or cap for thought transmission (as per Moskovitch’s experience at the beginning of this posting). From the Feb. 28, 2012 news item on Science Daily,

In the 2009 film Surrogates, humans live vicariously through robots while safely remaining in their own homes. That sci-fi future is still a long way off, but recent advances in technology, supported by EU funding, are bringing this technology a step closer to reality in order to give disabled people more autonomy and independence than ever before.

…

“Our aim is to give people with motor disabilities as much autonomy as technology currently allows and in turn greatly improve their quality of life,” says Felip Miralles at Barcelona Digital Technology Centre, a Spanish ICT research centre.

Mr. Miralles is coordinating the BrainAble* project (http://www.brainable.org/), a three-year initiative supported by EUR 2.3 million in funding from the European Commission to develop and integrate a range of different technologies, services and applications into a commercial system for people with motor disabilities.

Here’s more from the BrainAble home page,

In terms of HCI [human-computer interface], BrainAble improves both direct and indirect interaction between the user and his smart home. Direct control is upgraded by creating tools that allow controlling inner and outer environments using a “hybrid” Brain Computer Interface (BNCI) system able to take into account other sources of information such as measures of boredom, confusion, frustration by means of the so-called physiological and affective sensors.

Furthermore, interaction is enhanced by means of Ambient Intelligence (AmI) focused on creating a proactive and context-aware environments by adding intelligence to the user’s surroundings. AmI’s main purpose is to aid and facilitate the user’s living conditions by creating proactive environments to provide assistance.

Human-Computer Interfaces are complemented by an intelligent Virtual Reality-based user interface with avatars and scenarios that will help the disabled move around freely, and interact with any sort of devices. Even more the VR will provide self-expression assets using music, pictures and text, communicate online and offline with other people, play games to counteract cognitive decline, and get trained in new functionalities and tasks.

Perhaps this video helps,

Another European project, NeuroCare, which I discussed in my March 5, 2012 posting, is focused on creating neural implants to replace damaged and/or destroyed sensory cells in the eye or the ear.

The Human Brain Project is, despite its title, a neuromorphic engineering project (although the researchers do mention some medical applications on the project’s home page)  in common with the work being done at the University of Michigan/HRL Labs mentioned in my April 19, 2012 posting (A step closer to artificial synapses courtesy of memritors) about that project. From the April 11, 2012 news item about the Human Brain Project on Science Daily,

Researchers at the EPFL [Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne] have discovered rules that relate the genes that a neuron switches on and off, to the shape of that neuron, its electrical properties and its location in the brain.

The discovery, using state-of-the-art informatics tools, increases the likelihood that it will be possible to predict much of the fundamental structure and function of the brain without having to measure every aspect of it. That in turn makes the Holy Grail of modelling the brain in silico — the goal of the proposed Human Brain Project — a more realistic, less Herculean, prospect. “It is the door that opens to a world of predictive biology,” says Henry Markram, the senior author on the study, which is published this week in PLoS ONE.

Here’s a bit more about the Human Brain Project (from the home page),

Today, simulating a single neuron requires the full power of a laptop computer. But the brain has billions of neurons and simulating all them simultaneously is a huge challenge. To get round this problem, the project will develop novel techniques of multi-level simulation in which only groups of neurons that are highly active are simulated in detail. But even in this way, simulating the complete human brain will require a computer a thousand times more powerful than the most powerful machine available today. This means that some of the key players in the Human Brain Project will be specialists in supercomputing. Their task: to work with industry to provide the project with the computing power it will need at each stage of its work.

The Human Brain Project will impact many different areas of society. Brain simulation will provide new insights into the basic causes of neurological diseases such as autism, depression, Parkinson’s, and Alzheimer’s. It will give us new ways of testing drugs and understanding the way they work. It will provide a test platform for new drugs that directly target the causes of disease and that have fewer side effects than current treatments. It will allow us to design prosthetic devices to help people with disabilities. The benefits are potentially huge. As world populations grow older, more than a third will be affected by some kind of brain disease. Brain simulation provides us with a powerful new strategy to tackle the problem.

The project also promises to become a source of new Information Technologies. Unlike the computers of today, the brain has the ability to repair itself, to take decisions, to learn, and to think creatively – all while consuming no more energy than an electric light bulb. The Human Brain Project will bring these capabilities to a new generation of neuromorphic computing devices, with circuitry directly derived from the circuitry of the brain. The new devices will help us to build a new generation of genuinely intelligent robots to help us at work and in our daily lives.

The Human Brain Project builds on the work of the Blue Brain Project. Led by Henry Markram of the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), the Blue Brain Project has already taken an essential first towards simulation of the complete brain. Over the last six years, the project has developed a prototype facility with the tools, know-how and supercomputing technology necessary to build brain models, potentially of any species at any stage in its development. As a proof of concept, the project has successfully built the first ever, detailed model of the neocortical column, one of the brain’s basic building blocks.

The Human Brain Project is a flagship project  in contention for the 1B Euro research prize that I’ve mentioned in the context of the GRAPHENE-CA flagship project (my Feb. 13, 2012 posting gives a better description of these flagship projects while mentioned both GRAPHENE-CA and another brain-computer interface project, PRESENCCIA).

Part of the reason for doing this roundup, is the opportunity to look at a number of these projects in one posting; the effect is more overwhelming than I expected.

For anyone who’s interested in Markram’s paper (open access),

Georges Khazen, Sean L. Hill, Felix Schürmann, Henry Markram. Combinatorial Expression Rules of Ion Channel Genes in Juvenile Rat (Rattus norvegicus) Neocortical Neurons. PLoS ONE, 2012; 7 (4): e34786 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0034786

I do have earlier postings on brains and neuroprostheses, one of the more recent ones is this March 16, 2012 posting. Meanwhile, there are  new announcements from Northwestern University (US) and the US National Institutes of Health (National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke). From the April 18, 2012 news item (originating from the National Institutes of Health) on Science Daily,

An artificial connection between the brain and muscles can restore complex hand movements in monkeys following paralysis, according to a study funded by the National Institutes of Health.

In a report in the journal Nature, researchers describe how they combined two pieces of technology to create a neuroprosthesis — a device that replaces lost or impaired nervous system function. One piece is a multi-electrode array implanted directly into the brain which serves as a brain-computer interface (BCI). The array allows researchers to detect the activity of about 100 brain cells and decipher the signals that generate arm and hand movements. The second piece is a functional electrical stimulation (FES) device that delivers electrical current to the paralyzed muscles, causing them to contract. The brain array activates the FES device directly, bypassing the spinal cord to allow intentional, brain-controlled muscle contractions and restore movement.

From the April 19, 2012 news item (originating from Northwestern University) on Science Daily,

A new Northwestern Medicine brain-machine technology delivers messages from the brain directly to the muscles — bypassing the spinal cord — to enable voluntary and complex movement of a paralyzed hand. The device could eventually be tested on, and perhaps aid, paralyzed patients.

…

The research was done in monkeys, whose electrical brain and muscle signals were recorded by implanted electrodes when they grasped a ball, lifted it and released it into a small tube. Those recordings allowed the researchers to develop an algorithm or “decoder” that enabled them to process the brain signals and predict the patterns of muscle activity when the monkeys wanted to move the ball.

These experiments were performed by Christian Ethier, a post-doctoral fellow, and Emily Oby, a graduate student in neuroscience, both at the Feinberg School of Medicine. The researchers gave the monkeys a local anesthetic to block nerve activity at the elbow, causing temporary, painless paralysis of the hand. With the help of the special devices in the brain and the arm — together called a neuroprosthesis — the monkeys’ brain signals were used to control tiny electric currents delivered in less than 40 milliseconds to their muscles, causing them to contract, and allowing the monkeys to pick up the ball and complete the task nearly as well as they did before.

“The monkey won’t use his hand perfectly, but there is a process of motor learning that we think is very similar to the process you go through when you learn to use a new computer mouse or a different tennis racquet. Things are different and you learn to adjust to them,” said Miller [Lee E. Miller], also a professor of physiology and of physical medicine and rehabilitation at Feinberg and a Sensory Motor Performance Program lab chief at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago.

The National Institutes of Health news item supplies a little history and background for this latest breakthrough while the Northwestern University news item offers more technical details more technical details.

You can find the researchers’ paper with this citation (assuming you can get past the paywall,

C. Ethier, E. R. Oby, M. J. Bauman, L. E. Miller. Restoration of grasp following paralysis through brain-controlled stimulation of muscles. Nature, 2012; DOI: 10.1038/nature10987

I was surprised to find the Health Research Fund of Québec listed as one of the funders but perhaps Christian Ethier has some connection with the province.

Researchers from HRL Laboratories and the University of Michigan have built what they claim is a type of artificial synapse by using memristors. From the March 29, 2012 news item on Nanowerk,

In a step toward computers that mimic the parallel processing of complex biological brains, researchers from HRL Laboratories, LLC, and the University of Michigan have built a type of artificial synapse.

They have demonstrated the first functioning “memristor” array stacked on a conventional complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) circuit. Memristors combine the functions of memory and logic like the synapses of biological brains.

…

The researchers developed a vertically integrated hybrid electronic circuit by combining the novel memristor developed at the University of Michigan with wafer scale heterogeneous process integration methodology and CMOS read/write circuitry developed at HRL. “This hybrid circuit is a critical advance in developing intelligent machines,” said HRL SyNAPSE program manager and principal investigator Narayan Srinivasa. “We have created a multi-bit fully addressable memory storage capability with a density of up to 30 Gbits/cm², which is unprecedented in microelectronics.”

Industry is seeking hybrid systems such as this one, the researchers say. Dubbed “R-RAM,” they could shatter the looming limits of Moore’s Law, which predicts a doubling of transistor density and therefore chip speed every two years.

“We’re reaching the fundamental limits of transistor scaling. This hybrid integration opens many opportunities for greater memory capacity and higher performance of conventional computers.  It has great potential in future non-volatile memory that would improve upon today’s Flash, as well as reconfigurable circuits,” said Wei Lu, an associate professor at the U-M Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science whose group developed the memristor array.

This work is being done as part of a DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) project titled, SyNAPSE, from the news item,

The work is part of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) SyNAPSE Program, or Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics. Since 2008, the HRL-led SyNAPSE team has been developing a new paradigm for “neuromorphic computing” modeled after biology.

While I haven’t come across HRL Laboratories before, I have mentioned Dr. Wei Lu and his work with memristors in my April 15, 2010 posting. As for HRL Laboratories, they were founded in 1948 by Howard Hughes as the Hughes Research Laboratories (from the company’s History page),

HRL Laboratories continues the legacy of technology advances that began at Hughes Research Laboratories, established by Howard Hughes in 1948. HRL Laboratories, LLC, was organized as a limited liability company (LLC) on December 17, 1997 and received its first patent on September 12, 2000. With more than 750 patents to our name since then and counting, we’re proud of our talented group of researchers, who continue the long tradition of technical excellence in innovation.

First Laser
One of Hughes’ most notable achievements came in 1960 with the demonstration of the world’s first laser which used a synthetic ruby crystal. The ruby laser became the basis of a multibillion-dollar laser range finder business for Hughes. In 2010 during the 50th anniversary of the laser, HRL was designated a Physics Historic Site by the American Physical Society and was selected an IEEE Milestones location as the facility where the first working laser was demonstrated.

HRL has organized its researchers in a number of teams, the one of most interest in this context is the Center for Neural and Emergent Systems,

Part of HRL’s Information and Systems Sciences Laboratory, the Center for Neural and Emergent Systems (CNES) is dedicated to exploring and developing an innovative neural & emergent computing paradigm for creating intelligent, efficient machines that can interact with, react and adapt to, evolve, and learn from their environments.

CNES was founded on the principle that all intelligent systems are open thermodynamic systems capable of self-organization, whereby structural order emerges from disorder as a natural consequence of exchanging energy, matter or entropy with their environments.

These systems exist in a state far from equilibrium where the evolution of complex behaviors cannot be readily predicted from purely local interactions between the system’s parts. Rather, the emergent order and structure of the system arises from manifold interactions of its parts. These emergent systems contain amplifying-damping loops as a result of which very small perturbations can cause large effects or no effect at all. They become adaptive when the component relationships within the system become tuned for a particular set of tasks.

CNES promotes the idea that the neural system in the brain is an example of such a complex adaptive system. A key goal of CNES is to explain how computations in the brain can help explain the realization of complex behaviors such as perception, planning, decision making and navigation due to brain-body-environment interactions.

This has reminded me of HP Labs and their work with memristors (I have many postings, too many to list here) and understand that they will be rolling out ‘memristor-based’ products in 2013. From the  Oct. 8, 2011 article by Peter Clarke for EE Times,

The ‘memristor’ two-terminal non-volatile memory technology, in development at Hewlett Packard Co. since 2008, is on track to be in the market and taking share from flash memory within 18 months, according to Stan Williams, senior fellow at HP Labs.

“We have a lot of big plans for it and we’re working with Hynix Semiconductor to launch a replacement for flash in the summer of 2013 and also to address the solid-state drive market,” Williams told the audience of the International Electronics Forum, being held here [Seville, Spain].

Dr. Michelle Oyen, team leader and lecturer in the engineering department [Cambridge University, UK], added: “Research is a funny thing because you might think that we order everything up from scientific catalogues – but actually a lot of the things we use around the lab are household items, things that we picked up at the local home goods store – so our Lego robots just fit in with that mind-set.”

That was from the March 28, 2012 news item (Growing bones with Lego) on physorg.com. Oyen’s group at Cambridge University uses the robots to grow synthetic bones as they discuss in this video (from the Cambridge University webpage hosting the March 27, 2012 news release about Lego robots in the lab [it was part of a Google Science Fair promotion],

Here’s a bit more about the robots and about the team’s bone project (from the Cambridge University news release),

 “To make the bone-like substance you take a sample, then you dip it into one beaker of calcium and protein, then rinse it in some water and dip in into another beaker of phosphate and protein – you have to do it over and over and over again to build up the compound, [as seen in the video]” says Daniel Strange, one of the PhD students working on the research.

…

After a bit of investigation the researchers decided to build cranes from a Lego Mindstorms robotics kit, which contains microprocessors, motors, and sensors that can be programmed to perform basic tasks on repeat. The sample is tied to string at the end of the crane which then dips it in the different solutions.

The team quickly discovered that the miniature machines made from the famous plastic blocks vastly reduced the human time cost of creating the bone samples: “the great thing about the robots is once you tell them what to do they can do it very precisely over and over again – so a day later I can come back and see a fully made sample,” says Strange.

…

Bone defects can result from trauma, infection and the removal of tumours, and beyond a certain size of trauma bone is unable to regenerate itself. Current treatments include bone grafts, which can be risky and greatly increase recovery time.

The team at Cambridge are working on hydroxyapatite–gelatin composites to create synthetic bone, and the work is generating considerable interest due to the low energy costs and improved similarity to the tissues they are intended to replace.

Oyen and Strange have published a paper (behind a paywall), Biomimetic bone-like composites fabricated through an automated alternate soaking process, about their biomimetic work and attempts to create scaffolding (synthetic bone) in the journal Acta Biomaterialia. Here’s the abstract,

Hydroxyapatite–gelatin composites have been proposed as suitable scaffolds for bone and dentin tissue regeneration. There is considerable interest in producing these scaffolds using biomimetic methods due to their low energy costs and potential to create composites similar to the tissues they are intended to replace. Here an existing process used to coat a surface with hydroxyapatite under near physiological conditions, the alternate soaking process, is modified and automated using an inexpensive “off the shelf” robotics kit. The process is initially used to precipitate calcium phosphate coatings. Then, in contrast to previous utilizations of the alternate soaking process, gelatin was added directly to the solutions in order to co-precipitate hydroxyapatite–gelatin composites. Samples were investigated by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy, energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy and nanoindentation. Calcium phosphate coatings formed by the alternate soaking process exhibited different calcium to phosphate ratios, with correspondingly distinct structural morphologies. The coatings demonstrated an interconnected structure with measurable mechanical properties, even though they were 95% porous. In contrast, hydroxyapatite–gelatin composite coatings over 2 mm thick could be formed with little visible porosity. The hydroxyapatite–gelatin composites demonstrate a composition and mechanical properties similar to those of cortical bone.

The presolicitation proposer’s webcast takes place April 16, 2012 according to this notice,

Robotics Challenge Virtual Proposer Day
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is sponsoring a virtual Proposers’ Day Workshop for the potential proposer community, for the Robotics Challenge program. The virtual workshop will be held on April 16, 2012 via a live webcast from 12:00 PM to 4:00 PM EDT.

The goals of the Proposer Day are: (a) to introduce the science and technology community (industry, academia, and Government) to the Robotics Challenge program vision and goals; (b) to engage investigators that may have capabilities to develop elements of interest and relevance to the Robotics Challenge goals; and (c) to encourage and promote teaming arrangements among organizations that have the relevant expertise, research facilities, and capabilities for executing research and development responsive to the Robotics Challenge program goals. Aside from traditional robotics researchers, a successful team will likely combine cutting edge advancements and expertise from the areas of mechanism design and control systems, embedded controls, biophysics, machine-human interface, modeling & simulation, gaming and autonomy. The Proposers’ Day will include overview presentations by various government personnel (both internal and external to DARPA) and a Q&A session.

Program Goals and Description:

The primary goal of the DARPA Robotics Challenge program is to develop ground robotic capabilities to execute complex tasks in dangerous, degraded, human-engineered environments. The program will focus on robots that can use available human tools, ranging from hand tools to vehicles. The program aims to advance the key robotic technologies of supervised autonomy, mounted mobility, dismounted mobility, dexterity, strength, and platform endurance. Supervised autonomy will be developed to allow robot control by non-expert operators, to lower operator workload, and to allow effective operation despite low fidelity (low bandwidth, high latency, intermittent) communications.

DARPA intends to solicit innovative research proposals in the area of robotics for disaster response. Proposed research should investigate innovative approaches that enable revolutionary advances in science, devices, or systems. Specifically excluded is research that primarily results in evolutionary improvements to the existing state of practice.

A secondary program goal is to make ground robot software development more accessible, and lower software acquisition cost while increasing capability. This will be accomplished by creating and providing Government Furnished Equipment (GFE) to some performers in the form of a robotic hardware platform with arms, legs, torso, and head, called the GFE Platform. Availability of the GFE Platform will allow teams without hardware expertise or hardware to participate.

A parallel secondary program goal is to make ground robot systems development (both hardware and software) more accessible, and lower acquisition cost while increasing capability. This will be accomplished by creating and providing GFE in the form of an open-source, real-time, operator-interactive, virtual test-bed simulator, called the GFE Simulator. The GFE Simulator will be populated with models of robots, robot components, and field environments. The accuracy of the models will be rigorously validated on a physical test-bed.

The creation of a widely available, validated, affordable, community supported and enhanced virtual test environment will play a catalytic role, similar to the role the Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis (SPICE) played for integrated circuits, allowing new hardware and software designs to be evaluated without the need for physical prototyping. This simulator will lower the barrier for companies to enter the robotics market by allowing them to quickly explore and test new designs at minimal cost with high confidence in the results. It will also catalyze disaggregation of robot software, hardware, and component suppliers, leading to increased competition, increased innovation, and lower cost.

DARPA anticipates that the GFE Simulator will also enhance Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education. For example in the For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST) competition, by allowing students to virtually prototype the design and control of robots, then compare experimental and simulated results – a fundamental lesson in the engineering skill of modeling.

Registration Information:
Participants must register for the Proposers’ Day workshop through the registration website by Friday, April 13th at Noon EDT.  The Proposer Day meeting is unclassified and open to the general public.

Here is the DARPA Robotics Challenge Notice webpage. You can find the 42-page document (DARPA-BAA-12-39 [DARPA Robotics Challenge]) listing all the proposal details and eligibility here. It looks like Canadians or Canadian teams and other can apply although I suggest you confirm this by contacting these folks directly at DARPA-BAA-12-39@darpa.mil.

There are some general details here in the April 11, 2012 news item on physorg.com,

DARPA’s Robotics Challenge will launch in October 2012.  Teams are sought to compete in challenges involving staged disaster-response scenarios in which robots will have to successfully navigate a series of physical tasks corresponding to anticipated, real-world disaster-response requirements.

The proposal due date is May 31, 2012, according to the 42-page DARPA-BAA-12-39 (DARPA Robotics Challenge) document.

I’ve heard of print-on-demand (POD) books before but not robots as per the April 4, 2012 article on BBC News online (link to National Science Foundation removed),

Researchers aim to build a desktop technology that would allow an average person to design and print a machine within 24 hours.

The team says that making it easier to create specialised robots could have a “profound impact on society”.

The effort is being funded by a $10m (£6.3m) grant from the National Science Foundation [NSF].

The Virginia-based organization [NSF] described the move as a “game changing investment”.

“It has the potential to democratise and personalise automation to meet the needs of individual users – whether for search and rescue workers in remote areas of the world or educators in classrooms around the US – possibilities for social impact abound,” said spokeswoman Lisa-Joy Zgorski.

The April 3, 2012 MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) news item by Abby Abazorius provides more detail,

“This research envisions a whole new way of thinking about the design and manufacturing of robots, and could have a profound impact on society,” says MIT Professor Daniela Rus, leader of the project and a principal investigator at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). “We believe that it has the potential to transform manufacturing and to democratize access to robots.”

“Our goal is to develop technology that enables anyone to manufacture their own customized robot. This is truly a game changer,” says Professor Vijay Kumar, who is leading the team from the University of Pennsylvania. “It could allow for the rapid design and manufacture of customized goods, and change the way we teach science and technology in high schools.”

The five-year project, called “An Expedition in Computing for Compiling Printable Programmable Machines,” brings together a team of researchers from MIT, the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University, and is funded as part of the NSF’s “Expeditions in Computing” program.

It currently takes years to produce, program and design a functioning robot, and is an extremely expensive process, involving hardware and software design, machine learning and vision, and advanced programming techniques. The new project would automate the process of producing functional 3-D devices and allow individuals to design and build functional robots from materials as easily accessible as a sheet of paper.

…
Researchers hope to create a platform that would allow an individual to identify a household problem that needs assistance; then head to a local printing store to select a blueprint, from a library of robotic designs; and then customize an easy-to-use robotic device that could solve the problem. Within 24 hours, the robot would be printed, assembled, fully programmed and ready for action.

By altering the way in which machines can be produced, designed and built, the project could have far reaching implications for a variety of fields.

“This project aims to dramatically reduce the development time for a variety of useful robots, opening the doors to potential applications in manufacturing, education, personalized health care and even disaster relief,” says Rob Wood, an associate professor at Harvard University.

…
Thus far, the research team has prototyped two machines for designing, printing and programming, including an insect-like robot that could be used for exploring a contaminated area and a gripper that could be used by people with limited mobility.

Here’s a video demonstrating a few of the prototypes the team has developed (an “insect-like robot that could be used for exploring a contaminated area and a gripper that could be used by people with limited mobility”).

You can find out more about the CSAIL project at MIT here.

Other research collaborators on the five-year NSF project include Visiting Scientist Martin Demaine, Associate Professor Wojciech Matusik, Professor Martin Rinard, and Assistant Professor Sangbae Kim of MIT. Besides Wood (Harvard) and Kumar (UPenn), the team also includes Associate Professor Andre DeHon, Professor Sanjeev Khanna and Professor Insup Lee, all from UPenn.

In reading about some of the latest work on artificial skin and feeling, I was reminded of a passage from a description of the ‘uncanny valley’ by Masahiro Mori (excerpted from my March 10, 2011 posting about robots [geminoid robots, in particular])

… this kind of prosthetic hand is too real and when we notice it is prosthetic, we have a sense of strangeness. So if we shake the hand, we are surprised by the lack of soft tissue and cold temperature.

According to a March 29, 2012 news item on Nanowerk, this state of affairs is about to change,

Sooner than later, robots may have the ability to “feel.” In a paper published online March 26 in Advanced Functional Materials (“Mechanical Resuscitation of Chemical Oscillations in Belousov–Zhabotinsky Gels”), a team of researchers from the University of Pittsburgh [Pitt] and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) demonstrated that a nonoscillating gel can be resuscitated in a fashion similar to a medical cardiopulmonary resuscitation. These findings pave the way for the development of a wide range of new applications that sense mechanical stimuli and respond chemically—a natural phenomenon few materials have been able to mimic.

…

“Think of it like human skin, which can provide signals to the brain that something on the body is deformed or hurt,” says Balazs [Anna Balazs, Distinguished Professor of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering in Pitt's Swanson School of Engineering]. “This gel has numerous far-reaching applications, such as artificial skin that could be sensory—a holy grail in robotics.”

The Pitt March 29, 2012 news release reveals some of the personal motivation behind the research,

“My mother would often tease me when I was young, saying I was like a mimosa plant— shy and bashful,” says Balazs. “As a result, I became fascinated with the plant and its unique hide-and-seek qualities—the plant leaves fold inward and droop when touched or shaken, reopening just minutes later. I knew there had to be a scientific application regarding touch, which led me to studies like this in mechanical and chemical energy.”

Here’s a more technical description of the joint Pitt/MIT research team’s work (from the Pitt news release),

A team of researchers at Pitt made predictions regarding the behavior of Belousov-Zhabotinsky (BZ) gel, a material that was first fabricated in the late 1990s and shown to pulsate in the absence of any external stimuli. In fact, under certain conditions, the gel sitting in a petri dish resembles a beating heart.

Along with her colleagues, [Balazs] predicted that BZ gel not previously oscillating could be re-excited by mechanical pressure. The prediction was actualized by MIT researchers, who proved that chemical oscillations can be triggered by mechanically compressing the BZ gel beyond a critical stress.

I’m always fascinated by what motivates people and so Balazs’s story about the mimosa strikes me as both charming and instructive as to the sources for creative inspiration in any field.

If I read the news release rightly, we’ve still got a long way to go before ‘seeing’ robots with skin that can ‘feel’.