Robotic 'Gray Goo'

The concept of 'gray goo', a robot comprised of billions of nanoparticles, has fascinated science fiction fans for decades. But most researchers have dismissed it as just a wild theory. Current robots are usually self-contained entities made of interdependent subcomponents, each with a specific function. If one part fails, the robot stops working. In robotic swarms, each robot is an independently functioning machine. In a new study, researchers at Columbia Engineering and MIT Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL), demonstrate for the first time a way to make a robot composed of many loosely coupled components, or particles. 

Unlike swarm or modular robots, each component is simple, and has no individual address or identity. In their system, which the researchers call a particle robot, each particle can perform only uniform volumetric oscillations (slightly expanding and contracting), but cannot move independently. The team, discovered that when they grouped thousands of these particles together in a sticky cluster and made them oscillate in reaction to a light source, the entire particle robot slowly began to move forward, towards the light. The robot has no single point of failure and no centralized control.

More information:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/03/190320141024.htm

VR Could Improve Your Balance

To a high degree, vision affects our ability to keep our balance, and balance affects our ability to move around. People with long-term dizziness sometimes rely a lot on their vision and do not use the very quick and effective balance system provided by sensory information from joints and muscles. VR could become an efficient tool for older people with balance problems or for rehabilitation following injuries or illness that affect balance and movement. In a new study, researchers have studied how the human balance system is affected by watching VR videos. Twenty healthy women and men took part in the study, in which they watched a VR simulation of a roller-coaster ride while standing on a platform which registered their postural stability. 

The researchers investigated how the participants' balance system was affected when visual information was disrupted by the experience of being in a VR environment which gave them a strong sensation of being in movement. The study shows that the human balance system can very quickly cease to rely on vision and use other senses instead, such as sensory information from the feet, joints and muscles to increase postural stability. Differences also emerged in how men and women are affected by watching a VR video. More women had difficulty maintaining their balance in a VR environment and they generally needed more practice before they learnt to use their other senses to increase postural stability.

More information:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/03/190318114550.htm

Facebook Reality Labs Creates Realistic Avatars

Facebook Reality Labs (FRL) believes AR and VR will be the primary way people work, play, and connect in the future. Dubbed ‘Codec Avatars’, the Pittsburgh office is using what they call groundbreaking 3D capture technology and AI systems to generate lifelike virtual avatars that could provide the basis of a quick and easy personal avatar creator of the future. The company says at this point these sorts of real-time, photorealistic avatars require quite the gear to achieve. The lab’s two capture studios—one for the face, and one for the body—are admittedly both large and impractical at this point. 

The ultimate goal however is to achieve all of this through lightweight headsets, although FRL Pittsburgh currently uses its own prototype Head Mounted Capture systems (HMCs) equipped with cameras, accelerometers, gyroscopes, magnetometers, infrared lighting, and microphones to capture the full range of human expression. Using a small group of participants, the lab captures 1GB of data per second in effort to create a database of physical traits. In the future, the hope is consumers will be able to create their own avatars without a capture studio and without much data either.

More information:

https://www.roadtovr.com/facebook-shows-off-research-aiming-deliver-truly-realistic-avatars/

Non-Invasive Biofluid Sensor

Researchers from the University of Cincinnati examined the potential bio-fluids to test human health with tiny, portable sensors. They developed wearable technology by creating the world's first continuous-testing device that samples sweat as effectively as blood but in a non-invasive way and over many hours. Remarkably, many of the innovations in the field of biosensors and sweat technology were developed in Cincinnati (i.e. the first glucose monitor for diabetes). 

Now researchers identified four waves of discovery when it comes to testing human health. First, doctors began drawing and shipping blood to labs in an invasive, time-consuming and labor-intensive process that patients still undergo today. After examining the use of saliva, tears and interstitial fluid, they concluded that sweat holds the most promise for non-invasive testing because it provides similar information as blood and its secretion rate can be controlled and measured.

More information:

https://techxplore.com/news/2019-03-noninvasive.html

Schizophrenia Patients May be Calmed by Video Games

People with schizophrenia can be trained by playing a video game to control the part of the brain linked to verbal hallucinations, researchers say. Patients in a small study were able to land a rocket in the game when it was connected to the brain region sensitive to speech and human voices. In time, the patients learnt to use the technique in their daily lives to reduce the power of hallucinations. But this is a small pilot study and the findings still need to be confirmed. The research team, from King's College London's Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience and the University of Roehampton, says the technique could be used to help schizophrenia patients who do not respond to medication.

People with the condition are known to have a more active auditory cortex, which means they are more sensitive to sounds and voices. All 12 patients in the study experienced nasty and threatening verbal hallucinations every day - a common symptom of schizophrenia. To try to control their symptoms, they were asked to play a video game while in an MRI scanner, using their own mental strategies to move a computerised rocket - and in doing so they were able to turn down the volume on the external voices they heard as well. all the patients in the study, who each had four turns in the MRI scanner, found that their voices became less external and more internal, making them less stressful. They were also better able to cope with them.

More information:

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-43003378

EEG Enlights the Subcortical Areas of Brain

The subcortical areas of the brain, situated in its deepest reaches, remain a mystery. Scientists are aware of the critical role they play in motor, emotional and associative activity but do not know precisely how they work. A number of serious diseases are directly linked to these areas, including Parkinson’s, Tourette syndrome and obsessive-compulsive disorders (OCD). Existing treatments for regulating and measuring the activity of the subcortical areas are highly invasive, and sometimes work without us really knowing how. Researchers from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, and Cologne University (Germany) decided to see whether a non-invasive method – electroencephalography (EEG) – could be employed in tandem with mathematical algorithms to measure this brain activity externally. They proved for the first time that this technique is able to record signals usually only seen by implanting electrodes in the brain. 

Current treatments, based on deep brain stimulation are highly invasive: implanting electrodes into the centre of the brain, which are stimulated electrically by an external stimulator. Although this technique has been shown to be effective in Parkinson’s, unfortunately it doesn’t work so well for OCD and Tourette syndrome. Since implanting electrodes is an extremely invasive technique, another method was called for to increase the number of subjects studied. Researchers were able to measure and record the electrical activity of the subcortical areas of four OCD and Tourette’s patients who had been given electrode implants. At the same time, these individuals were equipped with an EEG as the scientists measured the activity of the same areas from the surface. The mathematical algorithms that they developed meant that they could accurately interpret the data provided by the EEG and ascertain where the brain activity was coming from.

More information:

https://www.technologynetworks.com/neuroscience/news/gentle-method-unlocks-the-mysteries-of-the-deep-brain-316097