Qualcomm to Build Neuro-Inspired Chips

World’s largest smartphone chipmaker offers to custom-build very efficient neuro-inspired chips for phones, robots, and vision systems.

Qualcomm CTO Matt Grob said that by next year his company would take on partners to design and manufacture such chips for applications ranging from artificial vision sensors to robot controllers and even brain implants. The technology might also lead to smartphones that can sense and process information far more efficiently.

Qualcomm has already developed new software tools that simulate activity in the brain. These networks, which model the way individual neurons convey information through precisely timed spikes, allow developers to write and compile biologically inspired programs. Qualcomm is using this approach to build a class of processors called neural processing units (NPUs). It envisions NPUs that are massively parallel, reprogrammable, and capable of cognitive tasks like classification and prediction. “What we’re talking about is scale, making it into a platform,” said Grob during his talk. “We want to make it easier for researchers to make a part of the brain.”

For several years Qualcomm and Brain Corp, a separate company it has invested in, have been working on hardware and algorithms that attempt to mimic the processes of the human brain. The company calls the overall program Zeroth, borrowing from the science fiction author Isaac Asimov’s “Zeroth Law of Robotics” (which specifies that robots must not harm humanity).

“This ‘neuromorphic’ hardware is biologically inspired—a completely different architecture—and can solve a very different class of problems that conventional architecture is not good at,” Grob said in an interview after his talk. “It really uses physical structures derived from real neurons—parallel and distributed.”

Source: http://www.technologyreview.com/news/520211/qualcomm-to-build-neuro-inspired-chips/

Robots: Can biohybrid model sink or swim?

“The idea is to build a part biological, part machine robot,” says Daniel Frankel, a chemical engineer at Newcastle University and one of the lead scientists for the project. “We’re going to do that using genetic engineering – we’re changing the way the cells work so they can be read by electronics.” This ambitious project, which began in 2009 aims to build a swimming robot with cells that have been genetically engineered to act like eyes, cells that detect chemicals, and muscles that contract, says Frankel. “All of these components will eventually work together like an artificial organism.”

Frankel is now using the same approach to build the robot’s chemical sensors, working with Christopher Voigt, a biological engineer at MIT, to engineer hamster cells that give off nitric oxide in the presence of certain chemical compounds. The release of nitric oxide will allow the modified mammalian cells to communicate with Cyberplasm’s electronic “brain”.

The micro-robot, dubbed “Cyberplasm” could then perform hazardous underwater tasks, such as looking for submerged mines, and explore worlds inaccessible to humans.

Source: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20121010-sink-or-swim-for-biohybrid-robot
Link: http://cyberplasm.net/

BBC News - Self-sculpting sand robots are under development at MIT

Tiny robots that can join together to form functional tools and then split apart again after use might be ready for market in little more than a decade, according to researchers.

A team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology says it has developed about 30 prototype "smart pebbles" and the software to run them. Each processor can currently store 32 kilobytes of code and has only two kilobytes of working memory - so the algorithm powering the process had to be kept simple. "The idea is that they sense the border of the original shape - if a module detects it doesn't have a neighbour, it assumes it may be on the border of the shape," Mr Gilpin explained.


"But in 10 years you might see a product on the market that starts to rival traditional manufacturing approaches. I think we might all be surprised at how quickly this advances once people really start looking at the technology."

More details of the project will be presented to the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation in St Paul, Minnesota next month.


Source: BBC News - Self-sculpting sand robots are under development at MIT

Microrobot used to administer drugs in eyes

Microrobot used to administer drugs in eyes

Some scientists at the Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Systems in Switzerland are developing tiny, electromagnetically controlled microrobots that can swim on the surface of a patient’s eye. These robots then stay there for months, releasing drugs.
But knowing such a technology exists gives us hope that in the future we’ll have microrobots battling viruses in our bodies. What an epic battle that would be. Hit the break to watch a demonstration of the microrobot being tested on a dead pig’s eyeball: http://bcove.me/li84ci6u

Robotic age - Is it coming soon ????

An ethical code to prevent humans abusing robots, and vice versa, is being drawn up by South Korea.
The Ministry of Information and Communication has also predicted that every South Korean household will have a robot by between 2015 and 2020.
Other bodies are also thinking about the robotic future. Last year a UK government study predicted that in the next 50 years robots could demand the same rights as human beings.

ASIMOV'S LAWS OF ROBOTICS (From 1942):

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law

Read more in the BBC article http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6425927.stm