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Researchers give a robot the ability to control a person's arm (video)
Human-machine interaction just got a bit more... interesting. Researchers from France's Montpellier Laboratory of Informatics, Robotics, and Microelectronics have demonstrated a new technique that allows a robot to control a person's arm in order to accomplish a task together -- yes, you read that right. As you might expect, that's still being described as a proof of concept, and the current setup simply consists of a set of electrodes that are attached to the arm and used to direct the person to drop a ball into a hoop the robot is holding -- to keep things on the up and up, the human participants were blindfolded during the tests, which were successful. According to the researchers, however, that is just the beginning. They eventually see similar techniques being used in rehabilitation, and in other robot assistants that could help people with disabilities accomplish basic tasks -- they further note that this technique has the added benefit of being simpler and less expensive than standalone robotic systems. Video is after the break.
New robotic system could let surgeons operate on a beating heart
It may not have been put into practice just yet, but it looks like a new robotic-assisted system could one day let surgeons use a surgical robot (like Da Vinci system pictured at left) to operate on a beating human heart. That impressive development comes courtesy of a group of researchers at France's Montpellier Laboratory of Informatics, Robotics, and Microelectronics, and centers on a new 3D modeling system that can track the motion of the heart's surface as it beats. It can even apparently adjust for things like movement of the patient's chest wall during breathing, and predict the movements in a single step (unlike previous attempts that resulted in a delay). When paired with a robotic arm, the system would effectively let surgeons operate on a heart as if it were completely still. In addition to being generally amazing, the system could also potentially open up a number of new possibilities for heart surgery, not the least of which is the ability to operate on patients for whom the risks of surgery have previously outweighed the benefits.
