09-03-08 02.59 Cool Websites (#15)

Today I think we’ll have a good run down of the best robots, their manufacturers and the new good websites to look at in a cornucopia of related fields. We’ll start with Paro the Seal Robot. See this robot as the Japanese perception of the Bhutanese mantra of Gross National Happiness as opposed to Gross National Product.

In the field of neuroscience there are a range of of contributing disciplines. One key discipline is the field of psychophysics – it is ‘based on the assumption that the human perceptual system is a measureing instrument yielding results (experiences, judgments, responses) that may be systematically analyzed.’ Apart from Paro there were a number of interesting new robots at the International Robot Exhibition in Tokyo which ran from November 28th – December 1st 2007.

At the Portuguese robotics facility VisLab the team has been working with ‘Mirror Neurons for Recognition’. This has become a popular and key field in neuroscience. They proclaim their campaign goals to be 2-fold: 1) to realize an artificial system that learns to communicate with humans by means of body gestures and 2) to study the mechanisms used by the brain to learn and represent gestures.

Meanwhile here is Neko the robotic cat.

The philosophy behind Paro the seal robot is clear:

Unlike industrial robots, “Mental Commitment Robots” are developed to interact with human beings and to make them feel emotional attachment to the robots. Rather than using objective measures, these robots trigger more subjective evaluations, evoking psychological impressions such as “cuteness” and comfort. Mental Commitment Robots are designed to provide 3 types of effects: psychological, such as relaxation and motivation, physiological, such as improvement in vital signs, and social effects such as instigating communication among inpatients and caregivers.

If you’re interested in researching further into psychophysics this seems like a good place to start. Here is the Reactable – more of an experiment musical interface than a robot.

It will certainly be interesting to see how such research develops. It seems wise in an emerging field to focus on research done by the most skilled experts and in neuroscience Vilayanur Ramachandran certainly seems like the man at the moment. Is this prediction or knowledge? ‘Lets advance to a point of time where we know everything there is to know about the intricate circuitry and functioning of the human brain. With this knowledge, it would be possible for a neuroscientist to isolate your brain in a vat of nutrients and keep it alive and healthy indefinitely.’ Here’s his August 2007 piece on the Neurology of Self Awareness. This is a piece of 2D physics sandbox software made by a Finnish company called Phun.

Previous cool websites: (#1), (#2), (#3), (#4), (#5), (#6), (#7), (#8), (#9), (#10), (#11), (#12), (#13), (#14)