Engineering Robotics & Other FYI

In an effort to create safer cars, Nissan engineers have been studying the movements of schools of fish and have now developed robots to mimic their nimble motions.

The three wheeled robots determine where obstacles are and how to avoid them by using a laser range finder and radio communications. Read article for more

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Biomedical engineers at Duke University Medical Center have developed a handheld device to help doctors see the back of a newborn’s eye in an effort to detect and prevent retinopathy of prematurity (RoP).

The technology has been around for almost a decade, but only in the past two years has the “spectral domain optical coherence tomography” been applied to examining retinal diseases in children. Read CNET article for more

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Activelink, a subsidiary of Panasonic, has released video of a new “Dual Arm Amplification Robot.” The 500-pound robot allows a human user to operate arms and lift 220-pounds “with the flick of a wrist.”

The robot is being compared to the “power loader” from the movie Aliens. Activelink projects the new device to lift “heavy loads in industrial and disaster-relief situations.”
See article more images and video

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