iCub, the Toddler Robot

(PhysOrg.com) -- A little humanoid robot called iCub is learning how to think for itself, bringing the world of science fiction to reality. The major goal of the "RobotCub" project is to study how humans learn and think, using a robot with the size and brain of a toddler, but the study is also expected to have practical applications in the near future.

The robot, with its cute white face and big eyes, is designed to learn from experience and adapt to changes in its environment, just like a human child. As iCub learns, the scientists behind it hope to learn about the development of cognition in humans. According to research director Peter Ford Dominey, the goal is to understand more about the ability of humans to cooperate, work together, and understand what others want us to do.

Human intelligence develops through interaction with the environment and other human beings, and mental processes are strongly connected to the physical body and its actions. The central hypothesis of the project is therefore that the best way to model the human mind is to create a humanoid that is controlled by realistic algorithms and allowed to explore the world like a real child.
Scientists are working on several versions of iCub in laboratories throughout Europe, attempting to perfect the robot's "brain", but the birthplace of iCub is the Italian Institute of Technology (ITT) in Genoa, Italy, where the RobotCub project began in 2004 under the leadership of Giulio Sandini.

The iCub robot stands at just over three feet high, or about the size of a three year old child. Its face has just a hint of a nose and mouth, and its big eyes allow it to see and track objects in its environment. Its body consists of many electronic circuits built into articulated trunk and limbs that give it a wide range of movements. Sensors allow the robot to feel, and some iCubs can speak. In a recent experiment in Lyon, France, iCub demonstrated that it could change roles in a game. iCub watched two humans play the "game", in which one lifted up a box to reveal a toy, and the second lifted up the toy and put it down again. The first person then replaced the box over the toy. Having watched the game, iCub could take the part of either "player".

This game may sound simple enough, but such learning capabilities put iCub at the forefront of robotics research. It also raises the question of what is consciousness. If iCub understands that someone has a goal, is that consciousness? asks Dominey.

As well as the scientific advancements expected from iCub studies, the robots may well have practical uses in the future. Suggestions include playing games with hospital physiotherapy patients to help in their recovery, and in the longer term, perhaps even in the next decade, iCub could become a helper in the home, making its own decisions on what needs to be done.
The five year project is supported by the European Commission. The software is open-source and the developers are open to forming further collaborations with laboratories around the world.

September 9th, 2009 by Lin Edwards for Physorg.com

Better Vision, With a Telescope Inside the Eye

A tiny telescope, already approved for use in Europe, can be implanted in one eye to help people with an advanced form of macular degeneration. The device takes the place of the natural lens.
A TINY glass telescope, the size of a pea, has been successfully implanted in the eyes of people with severely damaged retinas, helping them to read, watch television and better see familiar faces.
The new device is for people with an irreversible, advanced form of macular degeneration in which a blind spot develops in the central vision of both eyes.
In a brief, outpatient procedure, a corneal specialist implants the mini-telescope in one eye in place of its natural lens. The telescope magnifies images on the retina, extending them so they fall on healthy cells outside the damaged macula, said Allen W. Hill, chief executive of VisionCare Ophthalmic Technologies in Saratoga, Calif., the implant’s maker.
In March, an advisory panel to the Food and Drug Administration unanimously recommended approval of the device. VisionCare says it expects the F.D.A. to give its O.K. later this year. The device has already been approved for use in Europe.
The implanted telescope holds much promise for patients, typically elderly, who suffer from end-stage, age-related macular degeneration, or A.M.D., said Janet P. Szlyk, a member of the advisory panel. Dr. Szlyk is executive director of the Chicago Lighthouse for People Who Are Blind or Visually Impaired, a social services agency.
The device does not cure the disease, but it does improve visual acuity, she said. For example, a person who might usually see a blur when looking at a friend’s face might, with the help of the magnified image, see a blur only in the area of the person’s nose or mouth.
“People can use it to recognize faces in a social setting,” she said. ‘That’s a huge advance.”
The telescope is implanted in one eye for jobs like reading and facial recognition. The other eye, unaltered, is used for peripheral vision during other activities like walking. After implantation, extensive therapy is crucial, she said, to learn to deal with the different abilities of the eyes.
Ruth A. Boocks, 86, of Alpharetta, Ga., who received an implant of the device in March 2003 during clinical trials, said her brain learned to adapt quickly. Mrs. Boocks uses her new visual abilities in various ways — for instance, to read e-mail and the messages that scroll across the bottom of the screen when she’s watching television. “My goal was to read to the bottom of the eye charts,” she said. “But I didn’t quite make it.” (She has gotten to the third line from the bottom.)
“I feel like a young woman,” she added. “It’s opened a lot of opportunities for me.”
Henry L. Hudson, a retina specialist in Tucson, Ariz., and lead author of two papers on the telescope published in peer-reviewed journals, said the device was not for everyone with A.M.D. “Maybe only 20 out of every 100 candidates will get the telescope,” he said. “They may not be eligible because of the shape of their eyes,” or they may have another problem, like maintaining balance, that precludes their selection, he added.
After F.D.A. approval, VisionCare will apply to Medicare to cover the device, Mr. Hill said. “We anticipate that it will be seen as a covered benefit for the improvement of visual acuity,” he said.
The price of the device has not been set. Current tools for ameliorating low-vision problems, like glasses fitted with telescopes or reading machines, are typically not covered by insurance.
Dr. Bruce P. Rosenthal is chief of low-vision programs at Lighthouse International in New York City, where telescopes mounted on eyeglass frames, for instance, might be prescribed for people with A.M.D. to help them watch a sports event. He said that patients might be as well served by these glasses as by the new implants, and that he hoped long-term studies would compare the benefits of the two approaches.
“Even though studies on the implants have reported minimal complications, there can be complications when you are inserting anything in the eye,” he said. “Even routine cataract surgery can lead to loss of vision.”
Dr. Rosenthal said the implanted telescope might be beneficial for some patients, “especially if they don’t want other people to know they are visually impaired.” Telescopes mounted on eyeglasses bulge outward, often extending an inch or so beyond the frames.
But he is concerned that people using implants might have trouble with balance. “There is a potential for falling when a person has a big image from one eye and a normal-sized image from the other,” he said.
DURING trials of the device, there was no increase in the incidence of falls among participants, Dr. Hudson said. More than 200 patients received implants in the study, and the effects have been tracked in the group for the past five years.
“The vast majority of the patients have been able to adapt to the new state,” using one eye for ambulating and the other for reading, facial recognition and similar chores, he said. “The
average patient goes from legally blind to being able to read large-print books.”

By ANNE EISENBERG

Published: July 18, 2009
for New york times

Implantable Device Offers Continuous Cancer Monitoring

Surgical removal of a tissue sample is now the standard for diagnosing cancer. Such procedures, known as biopsies, are accurate but offer only a snapshot of the tumor at a single moment in time.
Monitoring a tumor for weeks or months after the biopsy and tracking its growth and how it responds to treatment would be much more valuable, says Michael J. Cima, Ph.D., who has developed the first implantable device that can do just that. Dr. Cima, professor of materials science and engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a member of the MIT-Harvard Center of Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence (CCNE), and his colleagues reported in the journal Biosensors and Bioelectronics that their device successfully tracked a tumor marker in mice for 1 month. Fellow MIT CCNE investigators Robert Langer, Ph.D., Al Charest, Ph.D., M.Sc., and Ralph Weissleder, M.D., Ph.D., also contributed to this work.
Such implants could one day provide up-to-the-minute information about what a tumor is doing—whether it is growing or shrinking, how it is responding to treatment, and whether it has metastasized or is about to do so. “What this does is basically take the lab and put it in the patient,” said Dr. Cima.
The devices, which could be implanted at the time of biopsy, also could be tailored to monitor chemotherapy agents, allowing doctors to determine whether cancer drugs are reaching the tumors. They also can be designed to measure acidity (pH) or oxygen levels, which reveal tumor metabolism and how it is responding to therapy.
The cylindrical, 5-millimeter implant is made of high-density polyethylene encased in a polycarbonate membrane with 10-nanometer-diameter pores. Magnetic nanoparticles coated with antibodies specific to the target molecules are loaded into the device. Target molecules enter the implant through the polycarbonate membrane, binding to the nanoparticles and causing them to clump together. That clumping can be detected by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) because the aggregated nanoparticles produce a marked change in the MRI signal associated with the implanted device. The researchers observed measurable changes within 1 day of implantation.
In the published work, the investigators transplanted human tumors into test mice and then used the implants to track levels of human chorionic gonadotropin, a hormone produced by the human tumor cells. Dr. Cima said he believes an implant to test for pH levels could be commercially available in a few years, followed by devices to test for complex chemicals such as other hormones and drugs.
This work, which is detailed in the paper “Implantable diagnostic device for cancer monitoring,” was supported by the NCI Alliance for Nanotechnology in Cancer, a comprehensive initiative designed to accelerate the application of nanotechnology to the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of cancer. An abstract is available at the journal’s Web site.
Provided by National Cancer Institute