When I was a kid, I had a pretty clear vision of the future.
And all of my ideas about what the future would hold came directly from television and movies.
Perhaps I wasn't a terribly imaginative child … but I digress.
I figured we'd all have flying cars, a la the Jetsons, by the time I was grown.
And I figured kids of the future would ride hover boards instead of boring old skateboards.
TV and movies also gave me the impression that we'd all have a lot more robots in our lives. I, personally, was looking forward to fewer chores thanks to my own Rosie.
While I haven't heard much in the news lately about accessible, land-based hover board technology (water hover boards are cheating!), there's still plenty of interesting news happening in the robot space—far beyond every cat's favorite home robot.
So this week’s FeedBlitz: Rewind the Week, I thought we would take a look at a few robot-themed news items that caught my attention.
Here goes!
Feds Spending Big on Personal Robot Trainers for Kids
Teaching kids is pretty labor-intensive. Whether you're teaching them to read or teaching them to eat healthy and exercise, it takes time and effort. But what if we could pass the chore off…to robots?
This week, Fox News reported on the National Science Foundation’s $10 million project called "Robots Helping Kids," which aims to get robots into both schools and homes in an effort to encourage kids to eat right and exercise, as well as to help teach English as a second language.
The five-year project is underway, with $2.15 million already having been spent. The Yale University-led project envisions creating robots that would serve as personal companions to kids for up to a year at a time.
Study Finds Robotic Surgery Doesn't Improve Results
Medicine is one area where the use of robots has been picking up steam. But one small study is casting doubt on whether at least one type of robot is actually benefitting patients.
The study found that in treatment for bladder cancer, results with a surgical robot were no better than traditional surgical methods. According to the Wall Street Journal article about the study, it was "a result that surprised researchers, who had expected the robotic technology to be superior to human hands alone."
Doctors often tout the benefits of the surgical robots, but the systems are pricy, often carrying a price tag of as much as $2 million each. Not surprisingly, Intuitive Surgical Inc., the maker of the robot in question, is calling the study "grossly misleading."
Roombots: Furniture that Builds Itself
I really hate putting together furniture (sorry, Ikea). So this idea really excites me: What if your furniture could put itself together?
And better yet, what if it could convert itself whenever you needed, say, from a chair to a sofa, or from a desk to a table, all by itself?
This is the goal of a project by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. The project aims to benefit not just lazy people like myself, but also those with limited mobility.
"Let’s say an elderly person is using a walker, the furniture could have modules attached for it to move out of the way in a cluttered apartment or have a stool follow the person and remain close by," said Auke Ijspeert, the lab's director.
If you ask me, that's way cooler than a Roomba.
Did you see any news items this week that caught your eye, robotic or otherwise?
Share them in comments—or tell me what robotic advances you're most looking forward to!
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