HeartLander is being Commericalised ....

In April this year I posted an article on Heartlander, "a miniature mobile robot that delivers minimally invasive therapy to the surface of the beating heart".


Over the weekend I received an email from the people who developed Heartlander letting me know that Heartlander is now being commericalised, information can now be found at the website for HeartLander Surgical's website.

Info on this website tell us that HeartLander is "currently on its third generation, the device is only 8.5mm in diameter. Enhancements could shrink HeartLander to 3mm". Pretty amazing.

Weirdest robotic application I have ever seen ....

I was helping my son do an assignment on taste - he chose to do his assignment on the tongue. We needed a picture of the tongue, so I typed tongue into Google Image search.

I could hardly believe that I found Robotic Cow Tongues .... WTF, a linked image is shown below.

A robotic cow tongue - believe it or not ....

The actual article on robotic cow tongues was published in September 2007. These works of art were by Korean artist Doo Sung Yoo and were featured on the we make money not art web site, which has a section specially devoted to Robots.

Not so weird ....

Below is a picture of one of the featured robotic art works from the we make money not art web site - Artificial Curiosity by France Cadet exhibited at the numeriscausa gallery in France. A video of other pieces from this exhibit, with French narrative, is also available.

Gaude Mihi ('amuse me', 'entertain me'), image linked from here.

"As soon as the robot feels a presence it starts balancing itself. All the robot wants is to have fun without any consideration whatsoever for the entertainment of its owner, it rejects 'interactivity' (the presence of a proximity sensor is not enough to qualify the piece as really interactive) and participation, redefining in the process the roles of the toy and the player." (text from here)

DSTO unveils SPIKER and RASP

There was an online article in Sacrificial robot will save soldiers' lives on a robot developed by the Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO). This robot is called SPIKER, Special Purpose IED Killer Experimental Robot and costs around $15,000 - approximately 10% of the cost of current bomb disposal robots.

SPIKER - Image linked from Australian Department of Defense web site.

The article goes on to mention another robot developed by the DSTO, the RASP - Remote Advanced Sensor Platform. RASP will be used to track down radioactive materials.

RASP - Image linked from Australian Department of Defense web site.

Alternate use for an Industrial Robot ....

I received this video in an email and thought it was too good not to share. This is the best use I've seen for an Industrial Robot .... NOT for the faint hearted.

This video is called 'Lunchtime at the Ford Factory' and it looks like the original was uploaded to FILECABI.NET.

Wonder if they did an OH&S risk assessment before starting this project.

TAFE's Digi-Girls ICT Week Activity

Tribotix have been an Industry Partner of TAFE's Digi-Girl program for over 3 years now and we will be again be assisting with the delivery of the highly successful robotics program from 29th July ~ 30th July at Meadowbank TAFE. This delivery is part of National ICT Careers Week activities in NSW.

Below is a promotional video showing a sample of what happens over the 2 days.

Digi-Girls Robotics

This program is great fun, and also gives the Year 9~12 girls and insite in career opportunites in Engineering and Computer Science.

Uni of Newcastle's NUManoids win SPL at RoboCup

The University of Newcastle's NUManoids have won the 2-legged league in the Standard Platform League at RoboCup in Suzhou, China. The NUManoid team replaced the NUBots (Sony Aibo based team) early this year, the NUBots have retired after winning RoboCup 2006 and having finished in the top 3 at RoboCup since entering (2002~2007).


After reaching the semi-finals Stephan Chalup, one of the Academic supervisors with the team, said "this is a very good result given this year’s short preparation time and selection of strong competitors". Stephan went on to say that "tomorrow the NUManoids will play in the final match of the league against a very strong American team which is a joint effort of Carnegie Mellon University and Georgia Tech".

The final was decided by Penalty shoot-out (the penalty shootout was judged based on the time to score a goal) where the NUManoids were victorious 1-0.

Full results of the competition can be viewed here.

The NUManoid team is lead by Naomi Henderson, this is the first year Naomi has had this responsibility. As well as being a 'robot soccer playing programming guru' Naomi describes herself as "a post graduate uni student who programs robots to play soccer by day and a 'cupcake ninja' by night".

Naomi's hidden talent was brought to our attention by a Blog on CNET.com. Have a look for yourself at Naomi's work, an example of which is shown below.


Everyone at Tribotix would like to pass on our congratulations to all associated with the NUManoids - they continually achieve excellent results through simple hard work, congratulations ....

HyKim Case Study at ASK-OSS

Last Month I attended TechGirls, an event organised by Youth Connections, to promote Engineering and IT options for girls. At this event I was lucky enough to meet Pia Waugh, Pia's is a very active person in the Australian Linux & Open Source communities being:

• appointed Research Co-ordinator of the Australian Service for Knowledge of Open Source Software project (ASK-OSS),
• a former President & (2003~2004) and Vice President (2005-2007) of Linux Australia, and
  
• Project Leader for the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project in Australia.
  

Pia has put together a case study for HyKim on Australian Service for Knowledge of Open Source Software (ASK-OSS) web site. It's great that people in the open-source community are starting to take an interest in our work.