Patrick Millard | Art:Photography Blog

In a technological advance that opens up new possibilities in the fields of robotics and wearable computing, researchers at the University of Tokyo have developed a stretchable, rubbery material that conducts electricity and can be incorporated into electronic devices.The researchers — led by assistant professor Takao Someya of the University of Tokyo — were able to create elastic electronic circuits that could be stretched up to 1.7 times their original size without affecting performance, thanks to conductive wires made from a new carbon nanotube-polymer composite they developed.

In recent years, scientists have made advances in blending carbon nanotubes (good conductors of electricity) with polymers to make flexible conductive materials, but success has been limited because nanotubes tend to cluster together, causing the composite to harden when too many nanotubes are added. The University of Tokyo researchers were able to overcome this hurdle by mixing the nanotubes with an ionic liquid containing charged particles that keep the nanotubes evenly distributed and prevent them from clumping together. The result is a stretchable material that conducts electricity more than 500 times better than other commercially available carbon nanotube-polymer blends.

With the list of potential uses of stretchable electronic circuits limited only by the imagination, the researchers envision applications ranging from high-tech suits that enhance athletic performance and monitor the wearer’s physical condition, to soft machines with flexible mechanical parts. For robots, elastic electronic circuits will enable layers of soft, sensor-laden skin to be stretched tightly across the curves of their bodies, giving them both a more lifelike appearance and greater sensitivity to touch.

The research results were published in the online edition of Science (August 8).

Source | PinkTentacle

Thanks to No Tears Magazine for including selections from my body of work Formatting Gaia in their recent issue ‘Chaos & Order’.  You can download the magazine and find my work beginning on page 27.  There are a lot of great artists in the issue, so enjoy!

-Patrick Millard

Description of the Robotic Chair

The Robotic Chair (1984 - 2006) is a generic-looking wooden chair with the capacity to fall apart and put itself back together. With shuddering force the chair collapses to the floor then with persistence and determination proceeds to seek out its parts and upright itself. The Robotic Chair is distinguished in the world of objects for its capacity to elicit empathy, compassion and hope.

As an object, the chair has been a constant and trustworthy partner in the history of civil society. We depend on the chair to support our bodies as we depend upon the earth beneath our feet. The Robotic Chair stands in for the individual and a society over the course of a lifetime - falling apart, falling down, gathering oneself together, picking oneself up, again and again. The Robotic Chair articulately and concisely reminds us on a grand scale that there is magic - that there is hope.

The Robotic Chair seat houses a custom robot charged with the ambitious task of locating the scattered parts (legs and back), reassembling itself, then restoring itself to its former chair status. The chair acts autonomously guided by an overhead vision system and is not dependent on viewer presence or interaction to perform. The Robotic Chair is a collaborative project by artist Max Dean, professor/entrepreneur Raffaello D’Andrea and artist/industrial designer Matt Donovan.

Source | Robotic Chair

Check out this optofluidic microscope that was developed by the Changhuei Yang Research Group at California Institute of Technology :

This “microscopic microscope” operates without lenses but has the magnifying power of a top-quality optical microscope, can be used in the field to analyze blood samples for malaria or check water supplies for giardia and other pathogens, and can be mass-produced for around $10.”The whole thing is truly compact–it could be put in a cell phone–and it can use just sunlight for illumination, which makes it very appealing for Third-World applications,” says Changhuei Yang, assistant professor of electrical engineering and bioengineering at Caltech, who developed the device, dubbed an optofluidic microscope, along with his colleagues at Caltech.

The new instrument combines traditional computer-chip technology with microfluidics–the channeling of fluid flow at incredibly small scales. An entire optofluidic microscope chip is about the size of a quarter, although the part of the device that images objects is only the size of Washington’s nose on that quarter.

“Our research is motivated by the fact that microscopes have been around since the 16th century, and yet their basic design has undergone very little change and has proven prohibitively expensive to miniaturize. Our new design operates on a different principle and allows us to do away with lenses and bulky optical elements,” says Yang.

The fabrication of the microscopic chip is disarmingly simple. A layer of metal is coated onto a grid of charge-coupled device (CCD) sensor (the same sensors that are used in digital cameras). Then, a line of tiny holes, less than one-millionth of a meter in diameter, is punched into the metal, spaced five micrometers apart. Each hole corresponds to one pixel on the sensor array. A microfluidic channel, through which the liquid containing the sample to be analyzed will flow, is added on top of the metal and sensor array. The entire chip is illuminated from above; sunlight is sufficient.

When the sample is added, it flows–either by the simple force of gravity or drawn by an electric charge–horizontally across the line of holes in the metal. As cells or small organisms cross over the holes, one hole after another, the objects block the passage of light from above onto the sensor below. This produces a series of images, consisting of light and shadow, akin to the output of a pinhole camera.

Because the holes are slightly skewed, so that they create a diagonal line with respect to the direction of flow, the images overlap slightly. All of the images are then pieced together to create a surprisingly precise two-dimensional picture of the object.

Source | MedGadget

Researchers have found a cheap and easy way to store the energy made by solar power.

By Kevin Bullis

Researchers have made a major advance in inorganic chemistry that could lead to a cheap way to store energy from the sun. In so doing, they have solved one of the key problems in making solar energy a dominant source of electricity.

Daniel Nocera, a professor of chemistry at MIT, has developed a catalyst that can generate oxygen from a glass of water by splitting water molecules. The reaction frees hydrogen ions to make hydrogen gas. The catalyst, which is easy and cheap to make, could be used to generate vast amounts of hydrogen using sunlight to power the reactions. The hydrogen can then be burned or run through a fuel cell to generate electricity whenever it’s needed, including when the sun isn’t shining.

Solar power is ultimately limited by the fact that the solar cells only produce their peak output for a few hours each day. The proposed solution of using sunlight to split water, storing solar energy in the form of hydrogen, hasn’t been practical because the reaction required too much energy, and suitable catalysts were too expensive or used extremely rare materials. Nocera’s catalyst clears the way for cheap and abundant water-splitting technologies.

Nocera’s advance represents a key discovery in an effort by many chemical research groups to create artificial photosynthesis–mimicking how plants use sunlight to split water to make usable energy. “This discovery is simply groundbreaking,” says Karsten Meyer, a professor of chemistry at Friedrich Alexander University, in Germany. “Nocera has probably put a lot of researchers out of business.” For solar power, Meyer says, “this is probably the most important single discovery of the century.”

The new catalyst marks a radical departure from earlier attempts. Researchers, including Nocera, have tried to design molecular catalysts in which the location of each atom is precisely known and the catalyst is made to last as long as possible. The new catalyst, however, is amorphous–it doesn’t have a regular structure–and it’s relatively unstable, breaking down as it does its work. But the catalyst is able to constantly repair itself, so it can continue working.

In his experimental system, Nocera immerses an indium tin oxide electrode in water mixed with cobalt and potassium phosphate. He applies a voltage to the electrode, and cobalt, potassium, and phosphate accumulate on the electrode, forming the catalyst. The catalyst oxidizes the water to form oxygen gas and free hydrogen ions. At another electrode, this one coated with a platinum catalyst, hydrogen ions form hydrogen gas. As it works, the cobalt-based catalyst breaks down, but cobalt and potassium phosphate in the solution soon re-form on the electrode, repairing the catalyst.

Nocera created the catalyst as part of a research program whose goal was to develop artificial photosynthesis that works more efficiently than photosynthesis and produces useful fuels, such as hydrogen. Nocera has solved one of the most challenging parts of artificial photosynthesis: generating oxygen from water. Two more steps remain. One is replacing the expensive platinum catalyst for making hydrogen from hydrogen ions with a catalyst based on a cheap and abundant metal, as Nocera has done with the oxygen catalyst.

Finding a cheaper catalyst for making hydrogen shouldn’t be too difficult, says John Turner, a principal investigator at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, in Golden, CO. Indeed, Nocera says that he has promising new materials that might work, and other researchers also have likely candidates. The second remaining step in artificial photosynthesis is developing a material that absorbs sunlight, generating the electrons needed to power the water-splitting catalysts. That will allow Nocera’s catalyst to run directly on sunlight; right now, it runs on electricity taken from an outlet.

There’s also still much engineering work to be done before Nocera’s catalyst is incorporated into commercial devices. It will, for example, be necessary to improve the rate at which his catalyst produces oxygen. Nocera and others are confident that the engineering can be done quickly because the catalyst is easy to make, allowing a lot of researchers to start working with it without delay. “The beauty of this system is, it’s so simple that many people can immediately jump on it and make it better,” says Thomas Moore, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at Arizona State University.

Source | Technology Review

By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER

SAN FRANCISCO — The thud of the morning newspaper landing on front porches may one day be replaced with the beep of downloads onto a cellphone.

Verve Wireless believes it can save the dying local newspaper by making it mobile. It offers publishers the technology to create Web sites for cellphones. The company, based in Encinitas, Calif., already provides mobile versions of 4,000 newspapers from 140 publishers, including Freedom Communications, the McClatchy Company and The New York Times Company’s Regional Media Group. The Associated Press, its biggest customer, is betting that Verve has the solution to the nagging problem of dwindling print readership. It led a $3 million round of financing in Verve, a rare investment for the news organization.

People are increasingly using their phones to surf the Web. Of the 95 million mobile Internet subscribers in the United States, 40 million actively use their phones to go online, twice the number of two years ago, according to Nielsen Mobile. After portal sites and e-mail services, newspaper content — weather, news, politics, city guides, sports and entertainment — is most popular among mobile users.

Verve’s chief executive, Art Howe, says he is convinced that people will always want local news and information — just not in the format of a print newspaper. But to be useful to readers, mobile versions of Web sites “cannot just be Internet lite,” Mr. Howe warned. The A.P. recently released a popular iPhone application developed by Verve that lets users scan the day’s headlines, send articles to friends and save articles to read later.

“Mobile is actually a better way to reach people than print or even Web. It’s versatile, immediate, travels and is just as compelling,” said Mr. Howe, a Pulitzer Prize-winning former reporter and former owner of 50 local papers.

The problem, said Verve’s president, Tom Kenney, is that local papers do not have the resources, expertise or relationships with cellphone carriers to build mobile sites themselves. Verve does it for them, in exchange for a cut of ad revenue.

Publishers can upload local ads to their cellphone sites using Verve’s software or have Verve place national ad campaigns on their sites. Verve can deliver a particular ad to, say, people age 21 to 30 who live downtown and have searched for articles about the bar scene. Philadelphia Magazine, for example, sent readers of its Verve-developed Web site a text message offering $4 grapefruit cocktails and half-price appetizers at a local bar.

Mobile companies hope that this kind of ad customization could persuade advertisers to pay more for ads on cellphones than they do for Web ads. So far, few do. Advertisers will spend only $1.6 billion on mobile ads this year, while spending $26 billion online, predicts eMarketer, a marketing research firm.

Media General, which runs newspapers and television stations, mostly in the Southeast, uses Verve for 79 mobile Web sites. Tim Repsher, who oversees Media General’s mobile products, said he chose Verve because he would not have to hire new staff members to figure out how to publish newspapers on cellphones. Mobile readership quadrupled in a year, with readers using the site to read breaking news and hurricane reports and get updates during power failures.

Newspapers cannot afford to be late to cellphones, said Greg Sterling, who studies the mobile Internet for Opus Research, a consulting firm. “It’s important and smart for newspapers to get out in front on the mobile phenomenon and not make the mistake they made in waiting too long to embrace the Internet.”

Source | New York Times

By LiveScience Staff

Artificial wombs and experiments on human embryos grown in the lab will be commonplace and no big deal ethically in 30 years, several scientists predict.

They envision a scenario just like test-tube babies, which shocked us 30 years ago but now are fairly routine and acceptable to most people.

That is one of many predictions about the future of assisted reproduction and other baby-related medical advances in a special news report, “Making Babies: The Next 30 Years,” in the July 16 issue of the journal Nature.

Here are some of the report’s other predictions:

• Newborns and 100-year-olds alike could have children. Infertility will be eradicated.
• Labs will be able to generate sperm and eggs for anybody.
• Human embryos will be made from sperm and egg cells derived from pluripotent stem cells (the kind that can develop into any of the body’s cell types).
• Fetuses will freely float in artificial placentas or uteruses of fluid, with umbilical cords attached to machines.
• “Genetic cassettes” will be inserted at the embryonic stage to correct diseases such as Huntington’s.
• Since embryos will be grown in labs, mutations to embryos could be corrected and improvements could be engineered. Yet there will be no “designer babies ” because no single gene is that predictive of a “perfect” child.
• In vitro fertilization (IVF) will become as cheap as $100 and available for women in developing countries and those who are socially shunned or harmed because they are infertile.

Even if there is widespread availability of IVF, it is unclear if people will choose it over the conventional approach — sex, said Susannah Baruch, director of reproductive genetics at the Genetics and Public Policy Center at Johns Hopkins University in Washington D.C.

“The old-fashioned way is cheaper and more fun and that won’t change in 30 years,” she told Nature.

Other experts interviewed by Helen Pearson for the report include Davor Solter, developmental biologist at the Institute of Medical Biology in Singapore, Alan Trounson, an IVF pioneer and director of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, Alastair Sutcliffe, a pediatrician who studies the health of children after IVF at University College London, Scott Gelfand, director of the Ethics Center at Oklahoma State University, Miodrag Stojkovic, stem-cell biologist at the Prince Philip Centre of Investigation in Spain, Zev Rosenwaks, director of the Center for Reproductive Medicine and Infertility in New York, and Regine Sitruk-Ware, reproductive endocrinologist and executive director of research and development at the Population Council in New York.

Source | LiveScience

Engineers at the University of Kitakyushu have developed an underwater survey robot that looks good enough to eat. “Tai-robot-kun,” a 7-kilogram (15.4 lb) robotic sea bream (red snapper) with a silicone body covered in realistically hand-painted scales, features a unique propulsion system that allows it to move its tail and drift silently through the water like a real fish. (Watch a video.)









The robotic fish can swim for an hour on a full battery charge, and it relies on a ballast system similar to those used in submarines to adjust its buoyancy and depth.

Tai-robot-kun’s creator, professor Ikuo Yamamoto, says the robot can easily be mass-produced, outfitted with various cameras and sensors, and released into the sea to perform a wide range of oceanographic survey tasks. He adds that because the robot swims silently and looks like a real fish, it would be able to gather data without alarming the creatures it encounters.

Yamamoto and his team are also reportedly developing a robotic manta ray that uses some of the same technology.

Source | Robot Watch via Pink Tentacle

Actroid DER-2, Kokoro’s uncannily lifelike fembot, has made her acting debut in a TV commercial for Kincho’s Preshower UV insect repellent/sunscreen spray. Titled “The Woman Who Doesn’t Rust,” the 15-second commercial spot shows Actroid outdoors at a campground, where she recommends using Preshower because, as a female, her skin is important. After a few squirts of the spray, she cheerily adds, “Surprisingly, I don’t rust.” (Watch it.)

Source | Pink Tentacle

July 15 - 20, 2008
Suzhou, China

RoboCup’s ultimate goal is to develop a team of fully autonomous humanoid robots that can win against the human world champion team in soccer by 2050.

In 2007, 321 teams from 39 countries participated in events ranging from four-legged and humanoid robotic soccer games to search-and-rescue competitions.

The 12th annual RoboCup International Symposium will be held in conjunction with RoboCup 2008. It is the core meeting for the presentation and discussion of scientific contributions in diverse areas related to the four main RoboCup threads: RoboCupSoccer, RoboCupRescue, RoboCup@Home and RoboCupJunior.

Sample symposium presentations from 2007 include “Robot Building for Preschoolers,” “Multi-robot Cooperative Localization,” and “A Fuzzy Controller for Autonomous Negotiation of Stairs.”

http://robocup-cn.org/