One of the major elements in every household of the future is a touchable and interactive surface. Today, there are many different ways to incorporate touch technologies which react on simple pressure or combine different technologies (like accelerometers or cameras and infrared detectors) in order simulate processes or increasing the precision. Some of these allow… »

Honda Research Institute Japan Co., Ltd. (HRI-JP), Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International (ATR) and Shimadzu Corporation have collaboratively developed the Brain Machine Interface (BMI) technology that uses electroencephalography (EEG) and near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) along with newly developed information extraction technology to enable control of a robot by human thought alone. It does not require any… »

A flying micro-robot has been developed by researchers at the University of Waterloo in Ontario. A research team, led by Professor Mir Behrad Khamesee, manipulates magnetic fields to levitate and move around three axes a robot weighing about three-hundredths of an ounce. The micro-robot discovery provides researchers with more control over the micro scale environment,… »

Are you an audiophile who still owns a vast collection of vinyl records? Now you can easily digitize and store your record library onto USB memory simply by inserting your USB memory stick into the USB port on the front, press the Start and Record buttons, and the DP-200USB converts your record into digital files…. »

As it is clear that mental processes are significantly shaped by the physical structure of the body and by its interaction with the environment,  European Commission is funding a 5 years long opened project related to that issue since 2005. Named RobotCub, the project aims to move this research agenda forward by providing a humanoid… »

Personal robots are an emerging technology with the potential to have a significant positive impact across broad applications in the public sector including eldercare, healthcare, education, and beyond. MDS (Mobile Dexterous Social) Robot is designed and built within the collaboration of the MIT Media Lab’s Personal Robots Group, UMASS Amherst’s Laboratory for Perceptual Robotics, Xitome… »

Nice spring weather isn’t enjoyable for everyone. Many people suffer from allergies they get when the pollen starts to spread around. Japan, and especially Tokyo, is a place where allergies are a big problem because of the omnipresence of cedar trees. These trees can be found everywhere in the country because they cover more than… »

Remember “Star Wars” and Luke’s artificial hand? Our reality isn’t too far away because Scottish company called Touch Bionics developed a “bionic hand” for amputees, called the i-LIMB. i-LIMB is one of the most sophisticated prosthetic hand commercially available, as it lets the wearer assume different grips by sensing electrical impulses in the muscles in… »