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Rise of the mimic-bots that act like we do: Human-machine teamwork.
An online magazine, Technology Marketing Corporation, based in the UK published an article, dated January 8, 2011, on a robot research project led by Professor Jong-Hwan Kim from the Electrical Engineering Department. The article follows below:
Technology Marketing Corporation
[January 08, 2011]
Rise of the mimic-bots that act like we do Human-machine teamwork
(New Scientist Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Rise of the mimic-bots that act like we doA robot inspired by human mirror neurons can interpret human gestures to learn how it should actNow follow meA robot inspired by human mirror neurons can interpret human gestures to learn how it should actA HUMAN and a robot face each other across the room. The human picks up a ball, tosses it towards the robot, and then pushes a toy car in the same direction.
Confused by two objects coming towards it at the same time, the robot flashes a question mark on a screen. Without speaking, the human makes a throwing gesture. The robot turns its attention to the ball and decides to throw it back.
In this case the robot"s actions were represented by software commands, but it will be only a small step to adapt the system to enable a real robot to infer a human"s wishes from their gestures.
Developed by Ji-Hyeong Han and Jong-Hwan Kim at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in Daejeon, the system is designed to respond to the actions of the person confronting it in the same way that our own brains do. The human brain contains specialised cells, called mirror neurons, that appear to fire in the same way when we watch an action being performed by others as they do when we perform the action ourselves. It is thought that this helps us to recognise or predict their intentions.
To perform the same feat, the robot observes what the person is doing, breaks the action down into a simple verbal description, and stores it in its memory. It compares the action it observes with a database of its own actions, and generates a simulation based on the closest match.
The robot also builds up a set of intentions or goals associated with an action. For example, a throwing gesture indicates that the human wants the robot to throw something back. The robot then connects the action "throw" with the object "ball" and adds this to its store of knowledge.
When the memory bank contains two possible intentions that fit the available information, the robot considers them both and determines which results in the most positive feedback from the human?- a smile or a nod, for example. If the robot is confused by conflicting information, it can request another gesture from the human. It also remembers details of each interaction, allowing it to respond more quickly when it finds itself in a situation it has encountered before.
The system should allow robots to interact more effectively with humans, using the same visual cues we use. "Of course, robots can recognise human intentions by understanding speech, but humans would have to make constant, explicit commands to the robot," says Han. "That would be pretty uncomfortable."Socially intelligent robots that can communicate with us through gesture and expression will need to develop a mental model of the person they are dealing with in order to understand their needs, says Chris Melhuish, director of the Bristol Robotics Laboratory in the UK. Using mirror neurons and humans" unique mimicking ability as an inspiration for building such robots could be quite interesting, he says.
Han now plans to test the system on a robot equipped with visual and other sensors to detect people"s gestures. He presented his work at the Robio conference in Tianjin, China, in December. nAs the population of many countries ages, elderly people may share more of their workload with robotic helpers or colleagues. In an effort to make such interactions as easy as possible, Chris Melhuish and colleagues at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory in the UK are leading a Europe-wide collaboration called Cooperative Human Robotic Interaction Systems that is equipping robots with software that recognises an object they are picking up before they hand it to a person. They also have eye-tracking technology that they use to monitor what humans are paying attention to. The goal is to develop robots that can learn to safely perform shared tasks with people, such as stirring a cake mixture as a human adds milk.
(c) 2011 Reed Business Information - UK. All Rights Reserved.
2011.01.10 View 9747 -
KAIST developed a plastic film board less sensitive to heat.
The research result was made the cover of magazine, Advanced Materials and is accredited to paving the way to commercialize flexible display screens and solar power cells.
Transparent plastic and glass cloths, which have a limited thermal expansion needed for the production of flexible display screens and solar power cells, were developed by Korean researchers.
The research, led by KAIST’s Professor Byoung-Soo Bae, was funded by the Engineering Research Center under the initiative of the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology and the National Research Foundation. The research result was printed as the cover paper of ‘Advanced Materials’ which is the leading magazine in the field of materials science.
Professor Bae’s team developed a hybrid material with the same properties as fiber glass. With the material, they created a transparent, plastic film sheet resistant to heat. Transparent plastic film sheets were used by researchers all over the world to develop devices such as flexible displays or solar power cells that can be fit into various living spaces. However, plastic films are heat sensitive and tend to expand as temperature increases, thereby making it difficult to produce displays or solar power cells.
The new transparent, plastic film screen shows that heat expansion index (13ppm/oC) similar to that of glass fiber (9ppm/oC) due to the presence of glass fibers; its heat resistance allows to be used for displays and solar power cells over 250oC.
Professor Bae’s team succeeded in producing a flexible thin plastic film available for use in LCD or AMOLED screens and thin solar power cells.
Professor Bae commented, “Not only the newly developed plastic film has superior qualities, compared to the old models, but also it is cheap to produce, potentially bringing forward the day when flexible displays and solar panels become commonplace. With the cooperation of various industries, research institutes and universities, we will strive to improve the existing design and develop it further.”
2011.01.05 View 12996 -
New Year's Message from President Nam-Pyo Suh
President Nam-Pyo Suh delivered a New Year’s message on January 3, 2011. While announcing plans to celebrate the 40th anniversary of KAIST throughout this year including a long-term development strategy for the university, Vision 2025, the president assessed the past accomplishments made in 2010 and laid out future prospects for 2011. The full text of his speech is attached below.
2011.01.05 View 8475
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Korea should find niche in space race, Korea Herald, December 20, 2010
A proud alumna of KAIST, Dr. Yi So-Yeon, who went to the International Space Station in the outer space for the first time as a Korean in 2009, had an interview with the Korea Herald. In the interview, she talks about her experience in working at the space station and her personal plans for the future as a researcher and astronaut. For the article, please click the link:
http://www.koreaherald.com/lifestyle/Detail.jsp?newsMLId=20101220000999
2010.12.21 View 9706
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KAIST sells eight HUBO 2 robots to US and Singapore.
HUBO, a humanoid robot developed by KAIST, has made its journey to the US and Singapore for the development of robotics engineering in those nations. Details on the movements of HOBO being exported aboard, please click the link of the news article:
http://www.slashgear.com/kaist-sells-eight-hubo-2-robots-to-us-and-singapore-14119320/
2010.12.20 View 10132
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A KAIST student earns 500 million won with "Virtual Finger" idea.
A student’s small idea was transformed into a viable technology, yielding 500 million won through the technology transfer.
In a mobile environment, it is difficult to hold the device and use its multi touch function, at the same time. A doctorate candidate of the KAIST Cultural Technology Graduate School, Hwang Sung Jae (28 years old), identified the inconvenience that it is hard to see the full screen of a mobile phone while manipulating it, and he invented a helper called “Virtual Thumb.”
The thumb allows a user to use only one finger to perform tasks that require the movements of several fingers like punching, zooming in/out and rotating the screen. When the user touches a screen, a virtual finger is created on the other side of the screen and mimics the motion of the user’s touching.
The ‘virtual Finger’ technology is based on the idea that came in second in the 2009 Korea Invention Patent Competition hosted by the Korea Intellectual Property Office and can be applied to any device that has a touch-based system which spans from a TV remote controller to a Tablet PC’s.
The Office of University and Industry Cooperation, KAIST, facilitated to turn Hwang’s idea into commercialization, and on October 18, Victronix, a Korean mobile phone manufacturer, bought a patent right for the technology at 500 million won.
2010.12.13 View 9357 -
The KAIST & GIT team developed a power generation technology using bendable thin film nano-materials.
Figure description: Flexible thin film nanomaterials produce electricity.
Can a heart implanted micro robot operate permanently?
Can cell phones and tiny robots implanted in the heart operate permanently without having their batteries charged?
It might sound like science fiction, but these things seem to be possible in the near future. The team of Prof. Keon Jae Lee (KAIST, Dept. of Materials Science and Engineering) and Prof. Zhong Lin Wang (Georgia Institute of Technology, Dept. of Materials Science and Engineering) has developed new forms of highly efficient, flexible nanogenerator technology using the freely bendable piezoelectric ceramic thin film nano-materials that can convert tiny movements of the human body (such as heart beats and blood flow) into electrical energy.
The piezoelectric effect refers to voltage generation when pressure or bending strength is applied to piezoelectric materials. The ceramics, containing a perovskite structure, have a high piezoelectric efficiency. Until now, it has been very difficult to use these ceramic materials to fabricate flexible electronic systems due to their brittle property.
The research team, however, has succeeded in developing a bio-eco-friendly ceramic thin film nanogenerator that is freely bendable without breakdown.
Nanogenerator technology, a power generating system without wires or batteries, combines nanotechnology with piezoelectrics that can be used not only in personal mobile electronics but also in bio-implantable sensors or as an energy source for micro robots. Energy sources in nature (wind, vibration, and sound) and biomechanical forces produced by the human body (heart beats, blood flow, and muscle contraction/relaxation) can infinitely produce nonpolluting energy. (Nanogenerator produces electricity by external forces: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvj0SsBqpBw)
Prof. Keon Jae Lee (KAIST) was involved in the first co-invention of “High Performance Flexible Single Crystal Electronics” during his PhD course at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. This nanogenerator technology, based on the previous invention, utilized the similar protocol of transferring ceramic thin film nano-materials on flexible substrates and produced voltage generation between electrodes.
Prof. Zhong Lin Wang (Georgia Tech, inventor of the nanogenerator) said, “This technology can be used to turn on an LED by slightly modifying circuits and operate touchable flexible displays. In addition, thin film nano-materials (‘barium titanate’) of this research have the property of both high efficiency and lead-free bio compatibility, which can be used in future medical applications.” This result is published in November online issue of ‘Nano Letters’ ACS journal.
<Video>
Youtube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvj0SsBqpBw
Thin Film Nanogenerator produces electricity by external forces.
2010.11.23 View 13995 -
Time: 50 Best Inventions of 2010--KAIST Online Electric Vehicle
Time, a magazine issued on November 22, 2010, has released a list of “50 Best Inventions of 2010” in its special article. KAIST’s Online Electric Vehicle (OLEV) was selected as one of the year’s biggest and coolest breakthroughs in science and technology.
For the article, please click the link: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2029497_2030622_2029703,00.html
2010.11.12 View 8851
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KAIST Student Earns Five Hundred Million Won on Virtual Thumb Idea.
Hwang Sung Jae, a PhD candidate at the Graduate School of Cultural Technology, developed a Virtual Thumb technology that allows multi-touch functions with one hand. Hwang got his idea from limitations of current mobile phones, including the covering of the screen by the use of fingers and the fact that multi-touch functions are hard to perform with one hand holding the mobile phone.
With this technology, one finger gives the same effect of using both fingers to perform a function. Using the Virtual Thumb that appears on a point corresponding to the point of physical touch, movements corresponding to actual touch movements are mimed to allow zooming in/out and various rotation angle based functions.
In addition, in situations where object rotation is unnecessary, many functions are subjectively matched using the change in rotational angle. It allows for various commands are simultaneously executed without activating a separate commanding menu. In the case of the zoom in command at a corner region, the corner can be zoomed in without moving the object to the center of the screen.
The Virtual Thumb technology can be applied as a middleware on touch-based apparatus including TV remote controls, eBook, mobile phones, tablet PCs, navigation systems and educational apparatus.
“I am honored that a small idea that developed during research can be developed into an actual commercialized technology,” said Hwang. “I will become a researcher who will add to the academic and industrial fields through creative research in the future.”
2010.11.05 View 8914 -
Professor Bae of Industrial Design Wins Good Design Award.
Professor Bae Sang Min’s research team of the Industrial Design Department received a G-Mark on the Product Design Section from the Good Design Awards 2010 organized by the Japan Industrial Design Promotion Organization through the exhibition of a Green Sharing Project, Heartea.
Heartea is a tumbler that allows the user to easily know the temperature of the liquid contained inside. Heartea is a name that combines Heart and Tea to refer to a tumbler that contains heart-warming tea.
Heartea was designed and produced by Professor Bae’s research team and was funded by GS Caltex. World Vision selected charity targets and oversaw distribution, and all of the sales income (about 200 million won) was donated as a scholarship to teenagers with financial difficulties.
The project has begun in 2006, and its accumulative sales are 1.7 billion won. Twenty million won is donated to 147 teenagers every year as scholarship, and through annual sharing camp, social leaders mentor teenagers to help them achieve their dreams.
The Good Design Award organized annually by Japan Industrial Design Promotion Organization has a fifty year tradition and is one of the world’s top four design contests with 6,000 submissions from 50 different countries participated.
Professor Bae’s team has won three of the top four design contests including the German Red Dot Product Award and the American IDEA Product Award.
Along with Heartea, both of foldable MP3 in 2008 and natural humidifier Lovepot in 2009 won an award from these four contests.
“Through continuous research, I hope to create the world’s best philanthropy design research center to help Third World countries and the neglected. I want to participate in creating a better world through design,” said Professor Bae.
2010.11.05 View 11176 -
Minister of Higher Education of Saudi Arabia Visited KAIST to Sign Agreement on Joint Research Projects
Khaled bin Mohammad Al-Anqari, the Minister of Higher Education of Saudi Arabia, visited KAIST on October 26th to conclude a joint agreement with KAIST.
The group of Saudi Arabian visitors included Abdullah bin Abdularhman Al-Othman, President of the King Saud University, Osama bin Sadiq Tayeb, President of King Abdulaziz University, and Khalid bin Salih Al-Sultan, President of the best Saudi Arabian technological university, King Fahad University of Petroleum and Minerals.
Through research agreement between KAIST and the King Saud University and King Fahad University of Petroleum and Minerals, joint research projects, mutual visitations of research professors, interchange of academic programs, joint seminars and scientific societies will be held to promote the lively interchange between higher education institutions of Korea and Saudi Arabia.
In particular, King Saud University and KAIST has signed an agreement on joint research projects in the fields of “Solar-Ocean Thermal Exchange Desalination,” “Develop New Energy Management Service for Residential and Commercial Customers Using Smart Metering and Sensor Network Information” and “Superior Production of Lactic Acid from Saudi Dates Using Bioprocess Technology.”
The projects will be funded by the Saudi Arabian government, and their scope will be determined in the future
“Compared to the robust industrial economic interactions between the Middle East and Korea, the interchange of the two countries’ higher education institutions has been poor,” said Jong Hyun Kim, Visiting Professor of Nuclear & Quantum Engineering Department of KAIST who will be conducting one of the joint programs with the Electrical Engineering Department of the King Saud University. “Like this joint research, I hope KAIST will, in many different ways, lead the way in cooperating and interacting with higher education institutions of the Middle EAST.”
Al-Anquari, Minister of Higher Education of Saudi Arabia, who showed great interest in KAIST’s innovative research and high technology development, expressed his will to put more effort into extending the interchange between universities of Saudi Arabia and of Korea, including KAIST.
2010.11.03 View 14180 -
2010 International Presidential Forum was held successfully.
On October 11th, the 2010 International Presidential Forum on “The Role of the Research University in an S&T Dominated Era: Expectation & Delivery” was held successfully at the Westin Chosun Hotel in Seoul. The third International Presidential Forum to be held, participants of the 2010 Presidential Forum engaged in an in-depth discussion about the direction that research universities should take in the 21st Century.
On its opening, President Nam Pyo Suh delivered a congratulatory message saying, “This forum is a meaningful gathering where research universities will suggest role models and find ways research universities can contribute to the progress of mankind in this century.”
Following, Lee Ki Jun, CEO of the Korean Federation of Science and Technology Societies said, “The common goal of the world’s research universities is to solve the problems mankind is facing together. I believe that the discussion we will hold today at the forum will point to the future direction of research universities.”
“To produce next generation engineers meeting global standards, exchange and dual degree programs between universities must be strengthened,” said Lars Pallesen, President of the Technical University of Denmark. “Research universities must support the exchange between students beyond cultural and national borders to adapt to the global market.”
Ichiro Okura, Vice President of Tokyo Institute of Technology, presented on the “Asian Science and Technology Pioneering Institutes of Research and Education, ASPIRE.” ASPIRE is a community created by the coalition between science and technology universities in the Far East. Its purpose is to contribute to sustainable global growth by educating high-quality human resources and lead Asia’s technology innovation based on science and technology development.
“For research universities to solve today’s global issues, universities must create new ideas by performing fundamental studies and developing innovative technology. The financial resources of universities must be focused with choices based on results,” remarked President Suh.
Zaini Ujang, Vice-President of the Universiti Teknologi Malaysia stated that “the Malaysian government is planning on converting from a ‘labor-intensive economy’ to an ‘innovative leading economy’ with the goal of joining the advanced countries by 2020. In today’s science and technology era where innovative technology is necessary, research universities have an important role of developing the knowledge environmental system to lead the world economy.” Vice-President Ujang then explained what strategies Malaysian research universities devised in the innovative leading economy era to create research universities that bring creativity and innovation.
Tod A. Laursen, President of KUSTAR, said that “KUSTAR has a leading role in bringing science and technology and manpower necessary in converting the oil-centered economy of UAE to a knowledge-based economy. KUSTAR will continuously strengthen international cooperation to become not only the best engineering university in the Arab region but in the world.”
At this year’s forum, thirty international presidents and vice presidents from 24 universities in 15 countries including Georgia Tech, Technical University of Denmark, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, University of Queensland, Tokyo University, Nanyang Technological University, University Teknologi Malaysia and Hong Kong Institute of Science and Technology along with forty national figures such as the presidents of Hanyang University and Handong Global University, governmental bureaucrats and representatives from national business and institutions participated.
2010.10.20 View 14913