Using robotics to close the achievement gap in mathematics education is the goal of a one-day symposium at the University of Redlands Feb. 24. Organized by the C-STEM Center at the University of California, Davis, in collaboration with Redlands Unified School District and the University of Redlands, the meeting will bring together teachers, administrators and other educators to share experiences and hands-on training in using coding and robotics as tools to teach math.

Full program information is available here.

The UC Davis Center for Integrated Computing and STEM Education, or C-STEM,develops tools and curricula for using small robots to teach algebra, mathematics and programming. The centers programs are in use in schools in California and across the country and are particularly effective in reaching children who have struggled with or disengaged from math in elementary and middle school.

All the centers software and curricula are available through the centerswebsite. The C-STEM center also organizes professional development classes for teachers and summer camps at multiple locations.

The center was founded and is led by Professor Harry Cheng, UC Davis Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering.

See more here:

University of Redlands Hosts UC Davis Symposium on Robotics in Math Teaching - UC Davis

Todays your last day to score early-bird pricing on tickets to TC Sessions: Robotics + AI 2020, which takes place on March 3. If you want to keep $150 in your wallet, beat the deadline and buy your ticket here before the clock strikes 11:59 p.m. (PT) tonight!

Our one-day conference dedicated to robotics and AI the good, the bad and the challenging features interviews, panel discussions, Q&As, workshops and demos. Join roughly 1,500 experts, visionaries, creators, founders, investors, researchers and engineers. Rub elbows, network and engage with current and aspiring leaders, as well as students poised to drive future innovation.

We have a stellar line up, and just because were biased doesnt mean were wrong. I mean come on assistive robots, ethics and AI, the state of VC investment and robot demos. And thats just for starters. Here are a couple of specific examples (peruse the full agenda right here):

And in case you havent heard, weve added Pitch Night, a mini pitch-off, into the mix this year. Were accepting applications until tomorrow, February 1. This is no time for fence-sitting! Apply to compete in Pitch Night now. TechCrunch editors will review the applications and choose 10 startups to pitch at a private event the night before the conference. A panel of VC judges will select five teams as finalists. Those founders will pitch again the next day live from the Main Stage. Its awesome exposure that could take your startup to the next level.

If you love robots, you need to be at TC Sessions: Robotics + AI 2020 on March 3. And theres no point paying more than necessary. Todays the last day to buy an early-bird ticket. Buy yours before the deadline expires at 11:59 p.m. (PT) and save $150.

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at TC Sessions: Robotics + AI 2020? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

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Last day for early-bird tickets to TC Sessions: Robotics + AI 2020 - TechCrunch

ALBANY, New York, Feb. 4, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The optimism in the global warehouse robotics market comes from the benefits derived from the implementation of artificial intelligence and machine learning in a warehouse setting. Warehousing has come a long way from those days when it was a labor-intensive trade to this day when man and machines work together in every step of the supply chain.

The warehousing industry is expected to witness significant demand in the deployment of robotic systems as it enables companies to optimize workflows, lessen the cost of labor, and increase the bottom line. The growing awareness about workplace safety, improved production quality, and rising demand for automation are likely to present lucrative opportunities for growth of the global warehouse robotics market. These growth inducing factors are estimated to propel the warehouse robotics market expand at a CAGR of ~ 12% from 2019 to 2027, touch market valuation of ~ US$ 9.5 bn by 2027. End-use industries of the market in the review are anticipated to leverage on the benefits offered by warehouse robotics to improve their return on investment (ROI), make the flow of materials more efficient, and better productivity.

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Increasingly one should be searching for future logistics solutions in robotics, automation, and artificial intelligence (AI) a significant facet of several robotic solutions Robotics in the manufacturing industry is well established since many years and it is expected that the applications within the periphery of warehouse operations will be increasingly mainstreamed, notes TMR

Key Findings of the Market Study

Explore 179 pages of in-depth research, granular insights, and a comprehensive country-level projections. Gain business intelligence on warehouse robotics market by Robot Type: ASRS, Articulated Robot, Gantry Cartesian Robot, Collaborative Robot, and SCARA; Application: Palletizing, Transfer and Transport, and Picking and Packaging; End-use Industry: Food and Beverages, Pharmaceutical, E-commerce, Automotive, Chemical, and Rubber and Plastic) from 2019 2027athttps://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/warehouse-robotics-market.html

Warehouse Robotics Market: Key Driving Factors

According to the findings of the global warehouse robotics market by TMR, the growth of the market is fuelled by the clear and tangible benefits that warehouse robotics bring to several businesses. Augmented efficiency and cutting down of expenses are some of the apparent outcomes for most of the companies. However, businesses could also find less obvious ways of benefitting from robotic technology.

Deployment of warehouse robotics results in fewer errors. Human errors could prove to be costly for the business. It also ensures increased safety in the workplace as robots takeover hazardous jobs that could put the life and health of workers at jeopardy. In addition, deployment of robots can boost the image of the brand. Accelerated movement of goods inside the warehouse and across the supply chain ensures the faster accomplishment of tasks and delivery, which could present the company as a better brand.

View Detailed Table of Contents at https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/report-toc/42617

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are in particular serving as a platform for the generation of promising opportunities for the global warehouse robotics market. Increasing demand for industrial robots from the small and medium enterprises sector is a manifestation of their resolution to keep up with the cutting-edge technology and efficiency. It is despite that fact that deployment of warehouse robotic technology is usually a luxury for the often resource-strapped small and medium enterprises.

Key Impediments for Warehouse Robotics Market Players

According to the study, the key restraints hampering the market growth comprise:

Market: Region-wise Analysis

Analyze Warehouse Robotics market growth in 30+ countries including Chile, China, Argentina, and Australia. Request a sample of the study,

Competition Landscape

According to the findings of the study by Transparency Market Research, several e-commerce companies are entering into collaborations with the providers of the robotic system to automate their facilities. This upgradation is expected to meet up with the changing preference of consumers who now prefer speed and accuracy.

The global warehouse robotics market is highly competitive and fragmented with the presence of numerous players. These players are making use of various aggressive strategies to acquire a larger chunk of the warehouse robotics market.

Key companies in the Warehouse Robotics market include Honeywell Intelligrated, Yaskawa Electric Corporation, Bastian Solutions, Inc., Omron Corporation, Amazon Robotics LLC, and Fetch Robotics, Inc.

Warehouse Robotics Marketby Robot Type

Warehouse Robotics Market by Application

Warehouse Robotics Market by End-Use Industry

Warehouse Robotics Market by Geography

Explore Transparency Market Research's award-winning coverage of the Global Electronics & Semiconductor Industry:

Warehouse Management Systems Market Report projects the global warehouse management systems market to register a promising CAGR of 14.1% from 2017 to 2025. By the end of 2025, the market will be worth US$4,658.0 mn, predicts the report.

Warehouse Automation Solutions Market Warehouse Automation Solutions Market study analyses the key trends, innovations, regulatory policies, and key strategies adopted by leading players in this evolving landscape

Robotics Market Global Robotics Market will attract a revenue worth US$147.26 bn by 2025 end rising at a healthy 17.4% CAGR over the forecast period from 2017 to 2025.

Agriculture Robots Market-The global agriculture robots market is anticipated to expand at a CAGR of 24.1% within the forecast period of 2016 to 2024. Previously, the market was valued at US$1.01 bn at the end of 2016, in terms of revenue.

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About Transparency Market ResearchTransparency Market Research is a global market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. Our experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.

Our data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts, so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With a broad research and analysis capability, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques in developing distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.

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Warehouse Robotics Market to Expand at Growth Rate of ~ 12% CAGR From 2019 to 2027 to Reach US$ 9.5 Bn Through 2027: Transparency Market Research -...

]]> Quarantines in major cities in China, especially in Wuhan where the virus originated, pose serious logistical challenges. Credit: Shutterstock.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has declared a global emergency after a new coronavirus causing severe lung disease emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan and began to spread across the country and internationally.

The new addition to the coronavirus family causes a fever, followed by a dry cough and shortness of breath. Only one in five cases are thought to be severe and generally healthy people can expect to make a full recovery from infection, but the young, elderly and immunocompromised may not be so fortunate. Nearly 500 people have died in China since the initial outbreak of the disease in December, which has been codenamed 2019-nCoV.

Confirmed cases of 2019-nCoV have now bypassed 24,000.

The new virus is moderately infectious, with each infected person expected to pass it onto two or three other people. As such, the main way to prevent people who have become infected from spreading the virus to others involves limiting their movement and treating them in isolation.

As such, many patients suspected to have 2019-nCoV have been placed under quarantine to minimise the spread of the disease. China has taken the decision to restrict travel in and out of cities in Hubei province, of which Wuhan is the capital.

Doctors in the US have been using a telehealth machine to treat the first person in the country admitted to hospital with 2019-nCoV. The man is currently being held in a specially designed two-bed isolated area at Providence Regional Medical Center in Washington.

The room was set up five years ago during the Ebola crisis, but this is the first time its ever been used. It is away from other units at the hospital and even has a separate air filter. There is only one entry point for the unit which is guarded by security officers and visitors are required to wear full-body protection including a controlled air purifying respirator helmet.

Using a robot equipped with a camera, microphone and stethoscope, the patient has been able to consult with clinicians without coming into direct contact with them.

Providence Regional Medical Center chief of infectious diseases Dr George Diaz told CNN: The nursing staff in the room move the robot around so we can see the patient in the screen, talk to him.

This isnt the only robot thats being used to interact with quarantined people. A hotel in Hangzhou is being used to isolate more than 300 people suspected to have the virus, and has been using a robot to deliver food to their bedrooms. The hotel guests were on the same flight as travellers from Wuhan, and will remain in the hotel for two weeks as a precautionary measure.

Multiple food delivery robots have been deployed on all 16 stories of the hotel.

Likewise in Guangzhou City, at the Guangdong Provincial Peoples Hospital, autonomous delivery robots are being used to transport drugs around the hospital. The robots are loaded up with medicines and given instructions of where in the hospital to go to, and then head to their destination unaided. Theyre able to open and close doors and take the lift without any human assistance.

One robot is able to carry out the delivery tasks of three people, making the entire drug delivery process faster and reducing the risk of clinical staff contracting 2019-nCoV and spreading it throughout the hospital.

As well helping to minimise the potential spread of infection, robotics are being used for disinfection purposes.

Xenex robots, which are manufactured in San Antonio, use pulsed xenon ultraviolet-C (UVC) light to wipe out pathogens. The company says its devices are currently being used to clean hospital rooms where there have been suspected cases of the new coronavirus. The robot can clean a room in as little as five minutes.

Speaking to Forbes, Xenex spokesperson Melinda Hart said: Our science team has been on the phone non-stop with hospitals to discuss protocols for disinfecting rooms and areas where suspect patients have been and are being treated. Weve also been in contact with government contacts in China and the US to explore how quickly we could export robots to China.

Meanwhile LA-based Dimer UVC Innovations, which has developed a germ-killing robot designed to sanitise aeroplanes, has offered its services to three US airports to address the coronavirus outbreak.

Known as GermFalcon, the robot also uses UVC light to kill viruses and bacteria. Its designed to be pushed down the aisle of an aeroplane and has wings which hang over the seats to expose all surfaces to the light. GermFalcon is now being used at the Los Angeles International Airport, San Francisco International Airport and John F. Kennedy International Airport as part of their emergency response efforts.

Noble though these efforts are, theres a chance they might not all be entirely necessary. Many of the people quarantined, such as those in the Hangzhou hotel, arent displaying symptoms of the disease.

The jurys still out on whether 2019-nCoV can spread before a patient is symptomatic. Previous epidemic coronaviruses like severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) could not be spread by a carrier of the disease before they began to feel unwell. However, a woman from Shanghai on a business trip to Germany is believed to have passed the disease onto her European colleagues, despite not becoming ill until she was on her flight home.

Even if the coronavirus can be spread by people with no symptoms, who may be infected for two to 14 days before they start to feel sick, people who are sneezing and coughing are far more likely to spread the disease. Quarantining people for weeks on end who may not be ill, and going so far as to have a robot deliver their meals, may be a recipe for social tension.

Additionally, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) note that health workers interacting with 2019-nCoV patients should be able to protect themselves with a gown, gloves, eye protection and an N95 face mask. Isolating patients within hospitals makes perfect sense, but the risk of a clinician contracting coronavirus is minimal and casts Guangdong Provincial Peoples Hospitals drug delivery robots in a slightly different light. Technology can be lifesaving, but its overuse can breed fear and misunderstanding among patients and clinicians alike.

Robots are flashy and advanced, and if they can help contribute to stopping a global outbreak of a serious disease then their contributions should be welcomed. But doubling down on practices like handwashing, and reinforcing the importance of clear international communication, will be more important to stopping 2019-nCoVs spread than all the UVC light in the world.

The rest is here:

Coronavirus is the latst target of the robotics industry - Medical Device Network

Nike, the worlds largest sportswear company, has integrated robots from Geek+ into its Japan warehouse. (See video below.)

Geek+, a provider of smart logistics solutions, has powered same-day delivery for Nike in Japan, providing advanced robotics solutions to Nikes new distribution center in Chiba.

The installation uses more than 200 robots from Geek+s goods-to-person P series robot range.

The smart robots carry Nike products and packages directly to the warehouse worker, reducing costs, increasing picking efficiency and making daily work easier on the warehouse operators.

With the rapid growth of e-commerce, labor shortage in the logistics industry has become a serious economic issue.

Although warehouses globally are still mainly manually operated, the need for automation and new robotics technologies is fast increasing in order to meet demand and challenges brought by the massive growth of online platforms.

Major retailers such as Nike are introducing robots to meet that increasing demand and transform their logistics operations.

Smart robots guarantee lower cost, efficiency, flexibility and safety in the warehouse, says Geek+.

With Geek+, Nike has been able to introduce same-day delivery to its Japan customers.

Geek+ provides logistics solutions that are tailored to customer operations and contribute to solving operational problems in various industries, from retail and apparel to manufacturing sites.

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Nike integrates robots from Geek+ into its Japan warehouse - Robotics and Automation News

ELKHART A local robotics team that is part of the ETHOS Innovation Center and Granger Exploration and Robotics Studio has punched its ticket to compete in an international tournament this spring.

In December, seven local ETHOS teams competed in Indianas FIRST LEGO League State Championship in Fort Wayne. One of those teams, 31195 Heroes, placed second out of 48 teams made up of students between the ages of 9 and 14.

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Heroes off to international robotics contest - The Elkhart Truth

Animal-like, four-legged robots have been a crowd-pleaser since Boston Dynamics BigDog, and Stanfords Doggo shows how the technology can be made open source, accessible and educational. Doggos creators will bring the diminutive robot, plus its smaller and larger siblings Pupper and Woofer, to TC Sessions: Robotics + AI on March 3.

P.S. Early-bird ticket sales end this Friday book your tickets today and save $150.

We first heard of Doggo last year when the Stanford Robotics Club showed off the highly capable design, which uses mostly off-the-shelf parts and can be assembled by anyone as long as anyone has considerable experience building robots and a couple thousand dollars to spend.

Still, a couple thousand is an order of magnitude or two lower than most quadrupedal robots go for, and project lead Nathan Kau told TechCrunch theyve seen a ton of interest.

I had no idea how many people were going to pick it up, he said. Its complicated! But I get emails every day from people building this thing, from all over. The first team to get it running, to my knowledge, was in Sri Lanka.

In order to further push the lower bounds of who can build and experiment with a robot like this, the team is building a smaller, even less expensive robot called Pupper. They hope to get the cost down to the level where even high school clubs can afford one.

Its less than $500 in development materials if you make it by yourself, said Kau. We imagine that if it becomes a kit and we have a partnership with the part manufacturers, it could be much less. We built it as a platform for learning, so it uses a Raspberry Pi and everything is programmed in Python. Its about as complicated as building a drone, Id say.

Youll be able to see Doggo and Pupper in action at the event, and theyll be joined by one more robot: Woofer, a jumbo-sized step up from the others. Its earlier in development than the other two, but to keep things simple it shares much of its codebase with the others.

Grab your tickets to the show today and get to see these awesome robots in person and hear from todays leading minds in the industry. Early-bird tickets expire this Friday, January 31, so book yours today and save $150 before prices go up.

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Stanfords Doggo quadrupedal robot and siblings Pupper and Woofer are coming to TC Sessions: Robotics + AI - TechCrunch

When you hear the word cyborg, scenes from the 1980s films RoboCop or The Terminator might spring to mind. But the futuristic characters made famous in those films may no longer be mere science fiction. We are at the advent of an era where digital technology and artificial intelligence are moving more deeply into our human biological sphere. Humans are already able to control a robotic arm with their minds. Cyborgshumans whose skills and abilities exceed those of others because of electrical or mechanical elements built into the bodyare already among us.

But innovators are pushing the human-machine boundary even further. While prosthetic limbs are tied in with a persons nervous system, future blends of biology and technology may be seen in computers that are wired into our brains.

Our ability to technologically enhance our physical capabilitiesthe hardware of our human systems, you could saywill likely reshape our social world. Will these changes bring new forms of dominance and exploitation? Will unaltered humans be subjected to a permanent underclass or left behind altogether? And what will it mean to be humanor will some of us be more than human?

Initial answers may be closer than we think.

Physicist Max Tegmark, MIT professor and president of the Future of Life Institute, considers the recent advances in artificial intelligence and technology through an evolutionary lens to imagine us as more than human. He categorizes all life into three levels. In his view, the vast majority of lifefrom bacteria to mice, iguanas to lobstersfalls into what he calls Life 1.0. These creatures survive and replicate, but they cannot redesign themselves within their lifetime. They evolve and learn over many generations.

Moving up, somewhere between Life 1.0 and 2.0, Tegmark classifies animals such as some primates, cetaceans, and corvids that have the ability to intermesh biology and culture. These animals are able to learn complex new skills, like how to use tools. Humans take this to an extreme, and Tegmark categorizes humans as Life 2.0. Through extensive language, social intelligence, and culture, Life 2.0 individuals can jump into new environments independently of genetic constraints. (If you missed it, we wrote about how body modification, as one example, makes us more socially human in part I, Your Body as a Map, of this pair of posts.)

Just think about how our ability to learn a new language within our lifetime is a bit like adding a software package to a computer. We can add an infinite number of self upgrades during our lifetime and pass our knowledge on to future generations. We also can manipulate other life forms to our own ends on a grand scalefrom cattle farming to harnessing bacteria in the preparation of fermented foods like cheese.

But with the leaps were seeing in artificial intelligence, neuroscience, and biotechnology, our concept of animal and human could compete with the most imaginative Hollywood film. Life 3.0 doesnt yet exist on Earth, but Tegmark argues that in the future, we will see a technological life-form that can design both its hardware (which neither 1.0 or 2.0 can do) and its software (which currently only 2.0 can do).

Even in the near future, humans may be somewhere in between life-forms 2.0 and 3.0. In 2016, Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, co-founded Neuralink, a company that aims to develop a braincomputer interface. Musk says his goal is to help human beings merge with software and be in sync with advances in artificial intelligence.

Whether people will volunteer to have a robot insert wires into their brain that are attached to a tiny chip implant remains to be seen. But humans across cultures have embraced a variety of technologies in surprising ways.

Today over 5 billion people have access to mobile phones. By 2025, around 71 percent of the worlds population is expected to be connected. The thought that virtually every aspect of a persons day might be influenced by a smartphone or something like it once seemed like science fiction. But as the number of digital natives grows, our relationship with technology does too.

Some of us readily anthropomorphize our gadgets and give our apps and devices names such as Siri or Alexa. We talk to them, allow them to control our surroundings, finances, shopping, and schedules. Yet many hesitate when it comes to embedding technology in our bodies if we are otherwise physically healthy.

Take, for example, microchips inserted under the skin, which can be used to pay for your shopping as well as a bus ride home. This is little different from a credit card in your back pocket, save for the convenience of not having to remember to take it with you.

Our resistance may be influenced by the yuck factor of new or different technologies or cultural shifts. But over time, what we think of as disgusting or offensive may become normalized. Lab-grown meat, for example, has gone from being a scientific and economic fantasy to something that might well be in stores by 2022. Similarly, eating insects, for those unused to the idea in the West, has become more accepted as a sustainable source of protein.

Even if more of us grow to accept the idea of implants, is Life 3.0 a genuine possibility? For now, mindcontrolled prosthetics are the closest innovation that hints at a Neuralink-type future. Such prosthetics are still in relatively early stages of development and not universally available. Nonetheless, as far as Musk is concerned, many of us are already cyborgs, with an indepth digital version of ourselves in the form of social media, email, and much more. His team, or others, may well inch us toward a version of Life 3.0.

Other early signs of how technologically integrated lives might function and impact our individual lives and societies are visible in places such as Scandinavia, where checks and cash are on their way out. In Denmark, for example, the majority of citizens make payments using their mobile phones. The absence of cash has had a direct effect on homeless people. Without smartphones of their own, homeless individuals were unable to receive payments for the newspapers they sold to earn money.

The solution was to provide homeless people with smartphones (and thus mobile payment methods). No longer a luxury, mobile phones became a basic tool vital for anyone engaging in modern society in Denmark.

As soon as we move into the idea of integrated technology as a social essential, we recognize a thorny possibility: a world where a new path to social or class dominance emergesperhaps a division between those who can and those who cannot afford to interface with technology. It begins to sound like the plot of the 20th-century dystopian novel Brave New World.

In that new world, would the Life 2.0 human without enhancements be relegated to a servile underclass? Perhaps this reflects a false dichotomy. After all, millions of people living in relatively remote regions around the planet have been able to fast-track to mobile technology, effectively skipping over earlier versions of the telephone and other communication technologies.

Nonetheless, developers of integrated technologies involving invasive surgery would be wise to consider the social ramifications of their work. Today we can accurately reconstruct the wealth distribution of an entire nation based on individual phone records. Can we predict the negative social impacts of a future Life 3.0? If contemporary clues are any answer, yes, we can. But whether we choose to ameliorate those impacts or not still lies within our control.

Matthew Gwynfryn Thomas is a data scientist and anthropologist working in the nonprofit sector in London, U.K. His current work combines machine learning and social science to address the needs of people in crisis. He has also written popular science articles for a variety of outlets, includingBioNews, SciDev.Net, and the Wellcome Trust Blog. Follow him on Twitter@matthewgthomas

Djuke Veldhuis is an anthropologist and science writer based at Monash University in Australia, where she is a course director in the B.Sc. advancedglobal challenges degree program. Her Ph.D. research examined the effects of rapid socioeconomic change on the health and well-being of people in Papua New Guinea. She has written for a series of popular science outlets, including SciDev.Net,Asia Research News, andNew Scientist. Follow her on Twitter@DjukeVeldhuis

A version of this article was originally published at the Conversation and has been republished here with permission.

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'More than human': How neural implants, robotics and artificial intelligence are redefining who we are - Genetic Literacy Project

DUBLIN--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The "Robotic Catheter Systems Market Research Report: By Type, Technology, Application, Component, End User, Geographical Outlook - Global Industry Analysis and Forecast to 2024" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

Witnessing a CAGR of 5.2% during the forecast period (2019-2024), the global robotic catheter systems market is predicted to grow to $656.8 million by 2024, witnessing a significant jump in its revenue from $493.5 million in 2018.

The major drivers of the market are the rising prevalence of cardiovascular diseases and reduced occupational hazards for cardiologists. These systems are medical robots that work through a joy stick or a remote to perform various diagnostic and therapeutic procedures, such as the stent implantation, myocardial biopsy, ablation, and coronary angiogram, among others.

The robotic catheter systems market is categorized into Middle East & Africa, Latin America, Asia-Pacific, Europe, and North America based on region. In 2018, the highest revenue generator in the market was North America, and in the forecast period as well, it would continue to dominate the market, in terms of revenue. The major driving factors of the regional market are the high adoption of these systems for cardiovascular diagnostic and therapeutic procedures in hospitals and clinics and the large presence of key manufacturers.

The robotic catheter systems market is witnessing the trend of digitization of instruments, which has been a key factor in the evolution of integrated and automated cardiovascular interventional labs. The advancements in the robotic technology are taking place rapidly, which, in turn, is helping hospitals cut down on catheterization lab costs, particularly in remote areas. The operational efficiency of cath labs has massively improved due to the commercialization of such systems. Even though these systems are pretty expensive, they are being heavily deployed owing to the advantages they offer over conventional catheterization procedures.

One of the major factors driving the growth of the robotic catheter systems market are the reduced risk of occupational hazards for cardiologists. Many surgeons have reported suffering from occupational hazards while performing interventional cardiology procedures. The modem catheterization laboratories extensively use ionizing radiation in the form of X-rays, which put the practitioners at a risk of malignancy, including in the head and neck region. Even though they wear lead aprons, their long-term use may result in orthopedic injuries. To make conducting procedures safer for surgeons, robotic catheter systems are being deployed.

With the technological advancements, the robotic catheter systems market would witness remarkable growth due to the extensive testing of these systems in the clinical trials. Catheterized cardiovascular procedures, such as catheter ablation, are popularly used in modern medicine, but robot-assisted catheterized procedures have not become as popular as their conventional counterparts due to the scarcity of skilled professionals. Companies, such as CorPath, Amigo, Sensei, and Niobe are commercializing robot catheterization systems, which may contribute in the demand for training people for operating the technology, thereby making them popular among patients and surgeons.

Hence, the market for robotic catheter systems is set to advance in the forecast period as the requirement for safer technologies for carrying out cardiovascular procedures is rising.

Key Topics Covered:

Chapter 1. Research Background

1.1 Research Objectives

1.2 Market Definition

1.3 Research Scope

1.3.1 Market Segmentation by Type

1.3.2 Market Segmentation by Technology

1.3.3 Market Segmentation by Application

1.3.4 Market Segmentation by Component

1.3.5 Market Segmentation by End User

1.3.6 Market Segmentation by Geography

1.3.7 Analysis Period

1.3.8 Market Data Reporting Unit

1.4 Key Stakeholders

Chapter 2. Research Methodology

2.1 Secondary Research

2.2 Primary Research

2.2.1 Breakdown of Primary Research Respondents

2.2.1.1 By region

2.2.1.2 By industry participant

2.2.1.3 By company type

2.3 Market Size Estimation

2.4 Data Triangulation

2.5 Assumptions for the Study

Chapter 3. Executive Summary

Chapter 4. Introduction

4.1 Definition of Market Segments

4.2 Market Dynamics

4.2.1 Trends

4.2.2 Drivers

4.2.3 Restraints

4.2.4 Opportunities

4.3 Porter's Five Forces Analysis

4.4 Regulatory Framework Analysis

4.5 Upcoming and Emerging Technologies

4.6 Pricing of Robotic Catheter Systems

Chapter 5. Global Market Size and Forecast

5.1 By Type

5.2 By Technology

5.3 By Application

5.4 By Component

5.5 By End User

5.6 By Region

Chapter 6. North America Market Size and Forecast

6.1 By Type

6.2 By Technology

6.3 By Application

6.4 By Component

6.5 By End User

6.6 By Country

Chapter 7. Europe Market Size and Forecast

Chapter 8. APAC Market Size and Forecast

Chapter 9. LATAM Market Size and Forecast

Chapter 10. MEA Market Size and Forecast

Chapter 11. Strategic Developments of the Key Players

11.1 Product Launches

11.2 Acquisitions

11.3 Agreement, Partnership, and Collaborations

Chapter 12. Company Profiles

12.1 Stereotaxis Inc.

12.2 Corindus Vascular Robotics Inc.

12.3 Catheter Precision Inc.

12.4 Hansen Medical Inc.

12.5 Intuitive Surgical Inc.

12.6 Magnetecs Corporation

12.7 Boston Scientific Corporation

12.8 Abbott Laboratories

12.9 Biosense Webster Inc.

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/ur7kvc

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Global Robotic Catheter Systems Market Expected to Grow in Value from $493.5 Million in 2018 to $656.8 Million in 2024 - ResearchAndMarkets.com -...

For the roboticist who has everything, heres something new: a soft robot hand that sweats.

Designed to handle scenarios where long operating hours might lead to a robot overheating and its performance degrading, this three-fingered gripper stays cool by borrowing one of humanitys greatest attributes: our sweat glands.

The ability to perspire is one of the most remarkable features of humans, material scientist T.J. Wallin, one of the grippers designers, told reporters during a briefing. Were not the fastest animals, but early humans found success as persistent hunters, using our ability to run and stay cool via sweating to physically exhaust our prey.

Hollow, pressurized reservoirs inside the fingers are filled with water and connected to the surface via ducts made of heat-reactive plastic. When the plastic hits a certain temperature, the pores open and water is pushed to the surface. There, it evaporates with a cooling effect more than twice as effective as those of the sweatiest beasts in the animal kingdom.

Details of the grippers performance are published in a paper in Science Robotics today.

But why sweat? Arent there easier ways to cool robots? Well, that depends.

Most robots are made from metal, which is an excellent conductor and therefore good at dispersing heat by itself. But soft robots, which are designed for delicate tasks like medical procedures and packing fruit, are made from rubber, a good insulator. If and when soft robots become commonplace, theyll need their own ways to stay cool.

There are other advantages to sweating, too. By building sweat glands into a machine, you can cool it below the temperature of its surroundings, something you cant achieve with environmental cooling like fans. It also means that the robot can operate independently, keeping itself cool in places where external coolants are unavailable.

The grippers creators, scientists from Cornell University and the Istituto Italiano di Technologia, say this could be essential for designing robots that operate untethered.

We believe [this] is a basic building block of a general purpose, adaptive, and enduring robot, said Robert Shepherd, associate professor of Cornells Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and co-author of the research, during a briefing.

Shepherd also noted that sweat glands could have a dual purpose in future. As well as releasing water for cooling, they could suck up liquid from the machines surroundings for analysis, similar to how space rovers collect soil samples on distant planets.

But as some nervous readers will know, there are downsides to sweaty hands as well.

One is that you need to top up your liquid supply. Humans do that by drinking, but sweaty robots would need a different method. Another is that sweat isnt helpful underwater, though in those scenarios the environment itself would aid cooling. But the biggest problem by far is that sweating causes performance issues of its own: reducing friction by lubricating the grippers fingers. Slippery hands arent necessarily safe ones.

The scientists have tried to compensate for this by modeling the range of temperatures in which the gripper performs best, and directing the robot to sweat sparingly to keep in that zone. Hopefully that means that the penalty we pay is not as debilitating, said Wallins.

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Robots learn to sweat to stop overheating - The Verge

Grand View Research, Inc. Market Research And Consulting.

According to report published by Grand View Research, the growing demand for packaged food, need for automation, increasing food safety regulations, and high labor costs are expected to drive the food robotics market.

The globalfood robotics marketis anticipated to reach USD 3.35 billion by 2025, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc. The growing demand for packaged food, need for automation, increasing food safety regulations, and high labor costs are expected to drive the food robotics market.

The industry has witnessed increasing investments in R&D activities, since the past few years, for the development of technologically-advanced robotics and automated systems. The increasing labor costs are driving the packaged food producers toward the adoption of automation systems. The application segments of the market include palletizing, packaging, repackaging, picking, and processing.

The packaging segment is presumed to hold the highest growth rate over the forecast years. The market is witnessing increasing use of packaging automation solutions in food industries. The advantages bestowed by the technology include higher efficiency in food production and processing, increased production efficiency, and consistent quality of products.

The key market participants IN the food robotics market are ABB Group,Kawasaki Heavy Industries Ltd.,Fanuc Corporation,Yaskawa Electric Corporation, and others. The vendors in the robotics and automation market are likely to witness increased demand for robotics solutions over the forecast years, owing to the increasing technological advancements.

Request a Sample Copy of the Global Food Robotics MarketResearch Report@ https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/food-robotics-market/request/rs1

Further key findings from the study suggest:

Have Any Query? Ask Our Experts@ https://www.grandviewresearch.com/inquiry/4857/ibb

Grand View Research has segmented the global food robotics market based on types of robots, payload, applications, and regions:

Types of Robots outlook (Revenue, USD Million; 2014 2025)

Payload outlook (Revenue, USD Million; 2014 2025)

Application outlook (Revenue, USD Million; 2014 2025)

Regional Outlook (Revenue, USD Million; 2014 2025)

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Hydroponics Market: https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/hydroponics-market

Artificial Intelligence Market: https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/artificial-intelligence-ai-market

About Grand View Research

Grand View Research provides syndicated as well as customized research reports and consulting services on 46 industries across 25 major countries worldwide. This U.S.-based market research and consulting company is registered in California and headquartered in San Francisco. Comprising over 425 analysts and consultants, the company adds 1200+ market research reports to its extensive database each year. Supported by an interactive market intelligence platform, the team at Grand View Research guides Fortune 500 companies and prominent academic institutes in comprehending the global and regional business environment and carefully identifying future opportunities.

Media ContactCompany Name: Grand View Research, Inc.Contact Person: Sherry James, Corporate Sales Specialist U.S.A.Email: Send EmailPhone: 1-415-349-0058, Toll Free: 1-888-202-9519Address: 201, Spear Street, 1100 City: San FranciscoState: CaliforniaCountry: United StatesWebsite: https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/food-robotics-market

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Food Robotics Market Size Is Predicted To Reach $3.35 Billion By 2025 | Key Industry Players, Demand, Emerging Technologies: Grand View Research, Inc....

Robotics are an important innovation in the cleaning industry, providing autonomous floor cleaning and tackling other highly repetitive jobs to free up custodians for more thought-provoking tasks.

Robotics are also playing a role in infection control, as evidenced by a new device being used to help stop the spread of the new coronavirus that began in China, Forbes reports. The device, known as Vici, allows health care providers to interact with coronavirus patients through a screen instead of in person. A telehealth device on wheels, Vici can be transported from hospital rooms to airports and allows doctors and nurses to talk to patients and perform basic diagnostic functions, like taking temperatures. This device was recently used in a Washington state hospital to treat the first U.S. patient confirmed to have coronavirus.

Other robots are being used in China to deliver food and medical supplies to coronavirus patients, preventing delivery people from catching the virus.

To learn more about the role of robots in todays society, mainly the cleaning industry, sign up for a webinar on February 12, The Cleaning Robots Are Here, Now What?

To learn more about coronavirus, check out a special Media Alert released to the global cleaning by the Global BioRisk Advisory Council (GBAC), a Division of ISSA. In addition, ISSA and GBAC have created a Tips Sheet on best practices for using personal protective equipment during a crisis. There is now an ISSAresource page for the coronavirus that will be updated with new information as it becomes available.

And dont forget about todays webinar Prepare, Respond, Recover: A Special Webinar on the 2019 Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV). The webinar will featurea Q&A session with GBAC Executive Director Patricia Olinger and other members of the GBAC team, as they discuss prevention and contamination control measures for the current situation, and other biohazards. Even if you cant attend the live event, you can register anytime and you will be sent a link to the recording.

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Robots Instrumental in Stopping the Spread of Coronavirus - CMM

Medical robotics has revolutionized how doctors diagnose and treat their patients. These tiny techno-wonders can retrieve tissue samples for biopsy, assist during surgery, spot disease and unclog arteries.Currently being developed in China: a micro-robot that can enter the brain to deliver drugs or other medical treatments.

The field of nanorobotics is hardly new. In 2018, scientists from Arizona State University (ASU) and the National Center for Nanoscience and Technology (NCNST) published a study in Nature Biotechnologydemonstrating how nanobots treat tumor growth by starving it of its blood supply. In the demonstration, robots smaller than a human hair cut off the blood supply to breast cancer, melanoma, ovarian and lung cancer tumors in mice. After two weeks of treatment, researchers reported the tumor tissue was shrinking.

Perhaps one of the most promising applications for nanorobotics lies in drug delivery. Currently, scientists in Shenzhen, China are developing a magnetically-controlled micro-robot that could enter the recipients brain via blood vessels, and send signals directly to the brains neurons for the purpose of delivering drugs or other treatment systems.

Xu Tiantian, a lead scientist for the project at the Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences says these brain worms will prove indispensable in the field of medicine. Tiantian told MSN News that delivering drugs to a targeted area, for example a tumor, limits the effect of the drug to the treated area, reducing side effects such as chemo sickness. Once the task is complete, the robot worm could exit the body.

Currently, brain implants can only be inserted via a surgical procedure and have a limited capability to integrate with the neurons, which means they can only perform a few simple tasks. However, robot worms are controlled by electromagnetic signals, so a patient could lie in a non-invasive, MRI-style machine that generates the magnetic field needed to control the robots.

Moreover, Tiantian says the new robots could work as an implant for brain-computer interface that would make it possible to communicate directly with a computer without needing a keyboard or even a screen. She explains that a transmitter would convert external signals into an electric pulse and connect with brain cells to stimulate activities that are not possible using current technology.

A series of videos released by the team show that the tiny intelligent robots nicknamed iRobots can hop over hurdles, swim through a tube or squeeze through a gap half their body width. Measuring only 1mm by 3mm, the iRobots are comprised of a head made from a neodymium-iron-boron magnet and a tail constructed from a special composite material.

In their study, published by Advanced Functional Materials in January, the team discusses how changing the magnetic fields allows them to twist the robots body to achieve a wide range of movements such as crawling, swinging and rolling. The worms body is made from a transparent, temperature-responsive hydrogel that allows it to change color in different environments.

The future of nanorobotics in the world of medicine certainly seems promising, with the potential for shorter hospital stays, less invasive procedures, reduced wait times and identifying illnesses before they become terminal. What remains to be seen is not how the technology will be applied, but when.

South China Morning PostFuturismFuturism (2)Nature Biotechnology

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A Robot Worm for Your Brain? Medical Robotics That Can Save Your Life - Parentology

Back in August, we flagged a filing for you that we found interesting, one for a now 2.5-year-old, 40-person Redwood City, Calif.,-based startup called Bear Robotics thats been developing robots to deliver food to restaurant customers. The filing listed a $35.8 million target; Bear Robotics founder and CEO John Ha now tells us the final close, being announced today, was $32 million in Series A funding.

The round was led by SoftBank Group, whose other recent robotics bets include the currently beleaguered food truck company Zume and, as we reported yesterday, Berkshire Grey, a seven-year-old, Lexington, Mass.-based company that makes pick, pack and sorting robots for fulfillment centers and that just raised a whopping $263 million in Series B funding led by SoftBank.

Because we know youre interested in much more than Bear Robotics funding picture, we asked Ha a former Intel research scientist turned technical lead at Google who in recent years opened and closed his own restaurant to share more about the company and its robot servers.

TC: You were an engineer at Google. Why then start your own restaurant?

JH: Its not like I had a dream of having a restaurant; it was more of an investment. It sounded fun, but it didnt turn out to be fun. What I was really shocked by was how much hard work is involved and how low [employees] income is. I felt [as I was forced to close it] that this was going to be my lifes work to transform the restaurant industry with the skills I have. I wanted to remove the hard work and the repetitive tasks so that humans can focus on the truly human side, the hospitality. At restaurants, youre selling food and service, but most of your time is spent dealing with hiring people and people not showing up, and I suspect our product will change [the equation].

TC: How did you come up with the first idea or iteration of the robot youve created, that youre calling Penny?

JH: First, me and my restaurant staff constantly discussed, If we have this robot, what would it look like and what capacity and features would it need? I knew it couldnt be too big; robots have to be able to move well in narrow spaces. We also focused on the right capacity. And we didnt want to make a robotic restaurant. I wanted to build a robot that no one really cares about; its just in the background, sort of like R2-D2 to Luke Skywalker. Its a sidekick a bland robot with a weak personality to get things done for your master.

TC Lets talk parts. How are these things built?

JH: Its self-driving tech thats been adopted for indoor space, so it can safely navigate from Point A to Point B. A server puts the food on Penny, and it finds a way to get to the table. It has a two-wheel differential drive, plus casters. Its pretty safe. A lot of similar-looking robots have blind spots, but ours doesnt. It can detect baby hands on the floor even something as thin as a wallet thats fallen from someones table.

Were not using robot arms because its very difficult to make it 100% safe when you have arms in a crowded space. The material its going to be plastic is safe and easy to clean and able to work with the sanitizers and detergents used in restaurants. Weve also had to make sure the wheels wont accumulate food waste, because that would cause issues with the health department.

TC: So this isnt out in the world yet.

JH: We havent entered the mass-manufacturing phase yet.

TC: Where will these be built, and how will you charge for them?

JH: Theyll be made somewhere in Asia maybe China or some other country. And we havent figured out pricing yet but restaurants will be leasing these, not buying them, and there will be a monthly subscription fee that they are paying for a white-glove service, so they dont have to worry about maintenance or support.

TC: How customizable are these Penny robots going to be? Are there different tiers of service?

JH: Penny can be configured into several modes. The default is [for it to hold] three trays, so it can carry food to a table or a server can use it for busing help.

TC: Will it address the customers?

JH: Penny can speak and play sound, but its not conversational yet. It can say, Please take your food, or play music while its moving. Thats where customers may want to personalize the robot for their own purposes.

TC: Ultimately, the idea is for this to be sold where just restaurants?

JH: Wherever food is served, so its being tested right now in some restaurants, casinos, some homes. [Im sure well add] nursing homes, too.

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Bear Robotics, a company making robot waiters, just raised a $32 million round led by SoftBank - TechCrunch

HUNTINGTON, W.Va. Rainy Saturday mornings and malfunctioning elevators did not stop Roosevelt Elementary students from making school history in the Marshall University Vex IQ Qualifier.

The students participated in their first tournament with the newly formed robotics team, Robocats, last weekend. They are the only Vex robotics elementary team in Mason County.

Roosevelts team consists of 14 fourth through sixth graders and is led by Sarah Starcher, special education teacher and now, robotics coach.

This is Starchers first time leading a robotics team. She said she had heard about the program from a friend and was immediately interested.

I have a friend that has people who do this in Kanawha County, Starcher said. We need something like that in Mason County, so I kind of dove into it headfirst. I was, like, this is something Im going to try and so far, its been really great. The kids love it, I love it.

For some students, the team is putting everything they like together into competitive form.

I like science and I like robots, said Ryan Matheny, sixth grader. The robot pieces look a lot like Legos, and I like Legos.

Participants had the opportunity to build their own robot, as well as learn how to code the programming needed for it to run. The Vex competition allows them to put that knowledge to practice.

Students come to compete and there are five different awards-design, excellence, teamwork challenge and driving skills, Starcher said.

They drive in an alliance, Starcher added. So were paired with other schools, and they are scoring as many points as they can in one minute. They also have a chance to drive, just two driver team and score as many points as they can, thats their driving skills. The students have also coded the robot to drive autonomously by itself and they get one minute to see how many points their robot can score by itself just from their coded program.

Despite a rocky lunch where a few students found themselves stuck in an elevator, sixth grader Reghan Cossin did not let it put a damper on her excitement for the day.

I really like engineering and I really like science, so whenever they said they were going to have a robotics team, I was like, Absolutely. I need the paper, I need to fill it out, I turned it in the first day, Cossin said.

Cossin shared her excitement and how it is more than just building a robot

Theres a lot of bumps in the road on the way to a goal. Like the counselor in our school has always said that, Cossin said. But really weve changed our design like seven times. There was a lot of technical difficulties, but we got it and were doing pretty good.

While Roosevelt is an elementary team, the challenge paired them up with various students from fourth through eighth grade.

Everybody has been super nice; the kids have made new friends. Another team brought them bracelets. Starcher said. Theyve been talking strategy, like what their robot can do and what it cant and how they can work together to score the most points.

Both of Roosevelts teams qualified for finals in the competitions and left taking home second and third place overall rankings.

Funding for the program has come from various grants Starcher has applied for, fundraising, and community sponsors.

Starcher is hoping to continue the program next year, as well as expand it.

Kids werent really sure what this was this year, Starcher explained. Theyre seeing it at school, and theyre interested in it.

I did get a grant through the Rick and Tanya Handley Charitable Fund. They have provided me with some smaller robots. Its not Vex, but its Sphero robots and its called a Dash Robot. Those are geared more for younger kids, Starcher explained. So, Im going to work collaboratively with teachers at school in first and second grade. Were going to have them start doing some different activities. So theyll just start the basic foundations of coding and programming.

The team is working on their next fundraiser, but are always appreciative of donations.

Each competition has a fee, but where I have two teams, both teams are charged for competition. Theres a couple that are free that we are going to, Starcher said. Ive filled out some grants and were planning on more fundraisers too just to keep funding in our account that way we have the money there. Sometimes we find out we need more parts than what we have and we have to order them.

To contribute to the Robocats, contact Roosevelt Elementary school.

Pictured are members of the Robocats team and staff, including, back row, from left, Dixie Oliver, Gabriella King, Madison Farley, Reghan Cossin, Abigail Oliver, Sarah Starcher, Ryan Matheny; front row, from left, Shelly Durst, Levi Legg, Rilie Wamsley, Layland Maynor, Mason Barnette, Hadleigh Cossin, Claire Thompson.

Pictured are scenes from the Marshall University Vex IQ Qualifier, where Roosevelt Elementary students made school history by competing as team Robocats. Roosevelts team consists of 14 fourth through sixth graders and is led by Sarah Starcher, special education teacher and now, robotics coach. Both of Roosevelts teams qualified for finals in the competitions and left taking home second and third place overall rankings.

Pictured are scenes from the Marshall University Vex IQ Qualifier, where Roosevelt Elementary students made school history by competing as team Robocats. Roosevelts team consists of 14 fourth through sixth graders and is led by Sarah Starcher, special education teacher and now, robotics coach. Both of Roosevelts teams qualified for finals in the competitions and left taking home second and third place overall rankings.

Pictured are scenes from the Marshall University Vex IQ Qualifier, where Roosevelt Elementary students made school history by competing as team Robocats. Roosevelts team consists of 14 fourth through sixth graders and is led by Sarah Starcher, special education teacher and now, robotics coach. Both of Roosevelts teams qualified for finals in the competitions and left taking home second and third place overall rankings.

Pictured are scenes from the Marshall University Vex IQ Qualifier, where Roosevelt Elementary students made school history by competing as team Robocats. Roosevelts team consists of 14 fourth through sixth graders and is led by Sarah Starcher, special education teacher and now, robotics coach. Both of Roosevelts teams qualified for finals in the competitions and left taking home second and third place overall rankings.

Pictured are scenes from the Marshall University Vex IQ Qualifier, where Roosevelt Elementary students made school history by competing as team Robocats. Roosevelts team consists of 14 fourth through sixth graders and is led by Sarah Starcher, special education teacher and now, robotics coach. Both of Roosevelts teams qualified for finals in the competitions and left taking home second and third place overall rankings.

Roosevelt Robocats take on Vex Robotic Challenge

Brittany Hively is a freelance writer for Ohio Valley Publishing and graduate of Marshall University, with a bachelors degree in public relations and journalism. She is currently working towards her MBA, also at Marshall. Reach her at hayes100@marshall.edu.

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The robotics revolution - Daily Sentinel

Posted: Jan 25, 2020 / 06:39 PM EST / Updated: Jan 25, 2020 / 06:39 PM EST

LIVERPOOL, N.Y. (WSYR-TV) Robotics have been an important part of the Liverpool Central School Districts curriculum for years, and this year, they organized a robotics competition for their middle schoolers!

Anika Keysor is only in 8th grade at Soule Road Middle School, but robotics are helping her get a head start on her future career as an aspiring computer engineer.

Shes only been pursuing robotics since the beginning of the school year.

Its amazing. Its fantastic to be a part of something so new and help it develop, Keysor said.

Since 1998, Liverpool Central School District has been hosting robotics competitions for its high school students.

The first VEX IQ middle school focused competition was held at the Soule Road Middle School, and 18 teams spread across New York State attended.

It gives kids the ability to problem solve using STEM skills, science, technology, engineering and math to be able to problem solve through a game design challenge and try and figure out how theyre going to compete to win the overall competition, said Matt Starke, Technology and Engineering Educator at Liverpool Central School District.

But how does the competition work?

Every team today is going to have 8 matches. Those 8 matches, theyre going to try to score as many points as they possibly can, Starke explained.

From there, scores were averaged together and ranked 1 to 18. Teams then chose an alliance team to partner with as they head into another round of competing. This challenge was similar to a March Madness style, as teams were eliminated one by one.

Not only were there 2 competition fields at the front of the room, there were practice fields for teams to fix any mechanical errors in between competitions.

However, its not just about high scores and championships. The biggest takeaway are the skills students acquire as they head into their future careers.

Maybe I went into engineering and thats awesome, but maybe I just learned how to work together, how to communicate with adults and how to communicate with other studentsall those natural skills that you need to learn, they take away from this as well, said Starke.

Saturday morning, students like Anika realized just how important teamwork is.

Were all balancing each other out and were making it better, so its not as much competition as were all teamwork, said Keysor.

Teams were either trying to win the competition or score well enough to qualify for state championships.

Heres a list of Saturdays winners:

iDesign Solutions, a Central New York based company, sponsored and attended the competition. It gave students a look at the new products and hands-on STEM experiences.

Win or lose, students put all of their skills to the test!

For more local news, follow Adrienne Smith onTwitter @AdrienneSmithTV

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Raising the bar in Robotics: Liverpool Central School District hosts first competition for middle school students - WSYR

Last Saturday, the gym at Prospect Heights Middle School pulsed with music as hundreds of students in lab jackets, Harry Potter-themed wizard costumes and a variety of unusual hats pitted their robots against those of other teams.

Sponsored by a nonprofit called FIRST Chesapeake, the event was completely different from an old-fashioned science fair. The rules of the robotics tournament allowed participants to continue working on their entries between rounds and confer with their coaches. The result was an energy level equal to that of an exciting basketball game. Perched on the bleachers, a sizable audience of family members watched the kids strut their STEM stuff.

According to Jessica Sarver, coordinator of the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) program for Orange County Public Schools, there were 50 teams, mostly from Virginia but with one team from Maryland and another from Pennsylvania, competing in the day-long, qualifying tournament. She explained that the goal was to qualify for the state tournament in Februaryand, by the end of the day, the Orange County High School (OCHS) robotics team made it to the semifinal round and thus earned an appearance in the state event.

With judges hovering and announcers enthusiastically narrating the face-offs between teams, shiny, energetic robots moved cubes from one place to another. The race required the machines to duck under a bar as they zipped back and forth across their competition area. The students operating them by remote control were the drivers, but all the team members took part in programming and building the contraptions. Throughout the day, team members consulted with each other and their coaches as they tweaked their entries.

Qualifying for the state tournament may have been the goal, but having fun and cheerfully learning from their missteps were happy byproducts of the occasion for all of the approximately 500 students involved.

Members of the OCHS Hornets robotics team wore blue and orange antennae attached to their safety goggles, and the wondrously named Mustachio Peanuts of Prospect Heights Middle School sported neon-yellow shirts emblazoned with their school mascot, the yellow jacket. Meanwhile, the Neon Drones of Locust Grove Middle School milled about in their bright orange shirts and caps.

For OCHS seniors Daniel Lauber and Joanie Zummo, the beauty of robotics lies in the collaborative nature of the design and building processand even in the competition itself.

Everyone is going to help you, said Lauber of all the students and teachers who share his enthusiasm for building hard-working, efficient robots.

If not for his involvement in team robotics, he said, I would probably still be playing computer games at home.

A three-year member of the OCHS robotics team, Zummo said she enjoys watching the performance of robots made by other teams as much as those she has helped create.

Being on the team has advanced my knowledge of engineering and programming, she said, and piqued her interest in a career in digital forensics.

Both Zummo and Lauber commended teacher Laurie Jamerson, who leads the OCHS robotics team.

She gives us free rein for our ideas, but shell also let us fail, Zummo said, noting that she and her teammates inevitably learn from their mistakes.

Shes super-encouraging, Lauber added. Shes pushing you to constantly get better.

Leighann Scott Boland, executive director and director of development for FIRST Chesapeake, said the nonprofit uses the robotic competitions as a means of promoting STEM education across Virginia, Maryland and Washington and teaching life skills such as creativity, teamwork, leadership and communication.

She pointed out that participants include children who are homeschooled and some who are on community-based teams, as well as those representing their schools.

Faces in the crowd included Orange County Superintendent of Schools Dr. Cecil Snead. Wearing a tie emblazoned with multiple images of Albert Einsteins face, Snead expressed his satisfaction with the event, which he said provided a safe place for students to think creatively and critically.

Snead, who taught math early in his career, said he considers Einstein a STEM hero and a key innovator of our time.

Looking around the room full of happy, revved-up young coders and robot-builders, he added, Were going to have the next generation of innovators coming from this crowd.

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Robots bring students together in Orange for a day of competition, collaboration - The Daily Progress

Gathered inside a small shed in the midst of a peaceful meadow, my colleagues and I are about to flip the switch to start a seemingly mundane procedure: using a motor to shake a wooden board. But underneath this board, we have a swarm of roughly 10,000 honeybees, clinging to each other in a single magnificent pulsing cone.

As we share one last look of excited concern, the swarm, literally a chunk of living material, starts to move right and left, jiggling like jelly.

Who in their right minds would shake a honeybee swarm? My colleagues and I are studying swarms to deepen our understanding of these essential pollinators, and also to see how we can leverage that understanding in the world of robotics materials.

Many bees create one swarm

The swarms in our study occur as part of the reproductive cycle of European honeybee colonies. When the number of bees exceeds available resources, usually in the spring or summer, a colony divides into two groups. One group, and a queen, fly away in search of a new permanent location while the rest of the bees remain behind.

During that effort, the relocating bees temporarily form a highly adaptable swarm that can hang from tree branches, roofs, fences or cars. While suspended, they have no nest to protect them from the elements. Huddling together allows them to minimize heat loss to the colder outside environment. They also need to adapt in real time to temperature variations, rain and wind all of which could shatter the fragile protection they share as one unit.

The swarm is orders of magnitude larger than the size of an individual bee. A bee could potentially coordinate its activity with neighboring bees right next to it, but it certainly couldnt coordinate directly with any bees at the far edge of the swarm.

So how do they manage to maintain mechanical stability in the face of something like strong wind a test that requires near simultaneous coordination throughout the entire swarm?

My colleagues Jacob Peters, Mary Salcedo, L. Mahadevan and I devised a series of experiments to address that question which brings us back to intentionally shaking the swarm.

Individual actions, whole swarm response

When we shook the swarm along its horizontal axis, the bees adjusted the shape of their swarm and within minutes became a wider, more stable cone. However, when the motion was vertical, the shape remained constant until a critical force was reached that caused the swarm to break apart.

Why did the bees respond to horizontal shaking, but not to vertical shaking? Its all about how the bonds bees create by holding hands get stretched.

It turns out vertical shaking doesnt disrupt these pair bonds as much as horizontal shaking does. Using a computational model, we showed that bonds between bees located closer to where the swarm attaches to the board stretch more than bonds between bees at the far tip of the swarm. Bees could sense these different amounts of stretching, and use them as a directional signal to move upwards and make the swarm spread.

In other words, bees move from locations where bonds stretch less, to locations where they stretch more. This behavioral response improves the collective stability of the swarm as a whole at the expense of increasing the average burden experienced by the individual bee. The result is a kind of mechanical altruism, as the one bee endures strain for the benefit of the swarms greater good.

Engineering lessons, taught by bees

As a broadly trained physicist studying animal behavior, I am fascinated by this kind of evolved solution in nature. Its amazing that honeybees can create multi-functional materials made of their many individual bodies that can shape shift without a global conductor telling them all what to do. No one is in charge, but together they keep the swarm intact.

What if engineers could take those solutions and lessons from nature and apply them to buildings? Instead of a bundle of buzzing bees, could you imagine a bundle of buzzing robots that cling on each other to create adaptive structures in real time? I can envision shelters that deploy rapidly in the face of natural disasters like hurricanes, or construction materials that can sense an earthquakes vibrations and respond in the same way that these swarms react to a branch in wind.

Essentially, these bees create an autonomous material that embedded within itself has multiple abilities. The swarm can sense information from the nearby environment, based on how much the pair bonds are stretching. It can compute, in the sense that it figures out which regions have more bond stretching. And it can actuate, meaning move in the direction toward more stretching.

These properties are some of the longstanding aspirations in the fields of multi-functional materials and robotics materials. The idea is to combine affordable robots that each have a minimal amount of mechanical components and sensors, like the M-blocks. Together they can sense their local environment, interact with neighboring robots and make their own decisions on where to move next. As Hiro, the young roboticist in the Disney movie Big Hero 6 says, The applications to this tech are limitless.

For the moment, this is still science fiction. But the more researchers know about the honeybees natural solutions, the closer we get to making that dream come true.

[ Get the best of The Conversation, every weekend. Sign up for our weekly newsletter. ]

Orit Peleg, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, University of Colorado Boulder

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Image: Reuters

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Bees Can Teach Engineers a Thing or Two about Robotics - The National Interest Online

Too often the world of robotics seems to be a solution in search of a problem. Assistive robotics, on the other hand, are among one of the primary real-world tasks existing technology can seemingly address almost immediately.

The concept for the technology has been around for some time now and has caught on particularly well in places like Japan, where human help simply cant keep up with the needs of an aging population. At TC Sessions: Robotics+AI at U.C. Berkeley on March 3, well be speaking with a pair of founders developing offerings for precisely these needs.

Vivian Chu is the cofounder and CEO of Diligent Robotics. The company has developed the Moxi robot to help assist with chores and other non-patient tasks, in order to allow caregivers more time to interact with patients. Prior to Diligent, Chu worked at both Google[X] and Honda Research Institute.

Mike Dooley is the cofounder and CEO of Labrador Systems. The Los Angeles-based company recently closed a $2 million seed round to develop assistive robots for the home. Dooley has worked at a number of robotics companies including, most recently a stint as the VP of Product and Business Development at iRobot.

Early Bird tickets are now on sale for $275, but you better hurry, prices go up in less than a month by $100. Students can book a super discounted ticket for just $50 right here.

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Diligents Vivian Chu and Labradors Mike Dooley will discuss assistive robotics at TC Sessions: Robotics+AI - TechCrunch

Five VEX IQ Robotics teams from Boles Middle School, collectively known as The Hive, competed in a tournament on Jan. 11 at Cain Middle School in Rockwall.

Out of those five teams, two qualified to continue onto the VEX IQ Region 2 Middle School state championship, which will be on Feb. 29 at the Ann Richards STEAM Academy in Dallas.

One of the teams going onto the state championship next month, Team 23172C, partnered with a team from Ann Richards Middle School at the Jan. 11 competition, and together they earned the title of Teamwork Challenge Champions. The members of Team 23172C of The Hive are Jonathan Cruthird, Caroline Lewis, Jensen Simmons and Garrett Young-Frey.

The other team to continue to state is Team 23172A, who partnered with a team from Royse City Middle School and got second place in the Teamwork Challenge. Team 23172As members are Jacob Bickerstaff, Loralai Clark, Bianca Diera and Ethan Selden.

Both teams, 23172C and 23172A, also placed in the events skills challenge, with 23172A coming in second place and 23172C making it to fifth place.

As for Boles other VEX IQ teams, Team 23172B joined forces with a team from Pine Tree Junior high School to finish eighth place in the teamwork challenge and was ranked 16th in the skills challenge, while Team 23172E worked with another team from Cain Middle School to end the teamwork challenge in 10th place.

Team 23172B consists of Bryce Calkins, Ryan Malphurs and David Springer, and Team 23172E is made up of Ryder Morrison, Grayson Salisbury and Phoenix Siebenhausen.

This Saturday, all of the Boles Middle School VEX IQ Robotics teams are participating in and hosting their tournament at the Boles campus.

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Boles' 'The Hive' buzzing in robotics competition - Herald-Banner