When I heard the word “Robotics”, the first image that came to my mind was ASIMO. ASIMO, Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility, is considered one of the world most advanced humanoid robot designed and developed by Honda and it was introduced in 2000.
About 5 years ago, I saw ASIMO show at Disneyland in Anaheim and I remember that I was amazed by its flexible movement. Asimo ran, waved, walked up steps almost like human. Because of its human-friendly design and its natural movement, ASIMO did not look like those robots which attack people in the movies as Machiko Kusahara, a professor of Waseda University mentioned in the video presentation. Kusahara used Astro Boy as an example to explain that Japanese have always had a lovely mechanical doll image to robots. I feel that type of inspiration among Japanese engineers toward robots made it possible to create a human-friendly looking robot such as ASIMO.
Robots are manipulated by human and the computer system controls their movement. The innovation in robotics does not stop, and Emi Tamaki, a Ph.D.at Tokyo University introduces PossessedHand which controls not robots but the human hand by applying electrical stimulus to the muscles around user’s forearm. By sending information from computer to the muscle, PossessedHand controls the finger movement.
Tamaki believes that Possessedhand can be a useful tool for a rehabilitation purpose and I agree with her. It will be a great aid for those patients who have suffered a stroke or other types of injury that impairs muscle control. As Kusahara mentioned, Japanese robots have been created not just to be used as machinery but also to take care of elderly people and to help people at disaster. I hope for the advancement of technology in robotics and they will be used the areas where they are needed.
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I appreciate you sharing the technology behind possessed hands. Usually you see humans manipulating technology for the betterment of the human experience. However, in this blog, you shared the exact opposite where, in a sense, technology manipulates humans to better humans.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I do think in the near future technology and robotics will continue to help humans, but in the distant future when robots potentially gain consciousness, the out come will be unknown. Humans already have consistently shown our hate towards those different than us (races, religions, species, etc). So when and if robots gain the same capacity of human thought, the results could be very similar.