Bristol Robotics Laboratory led the bid to host the event in the UK
FIRA Robot World Cup
More than 200 robots are heading to Bristol for the first FIRA Robo World Cup to be held in the UK.
Twenty-seven teams will take part in football, basketball and weightlifting events in the At-Bristol science centre over six days, starting on Monday.
Advanced robots and their creators are travelling from Mexico, Canada, India and China for the competition.
The UK has a team from the Bristol Robotics Laboratory and another from the University of Plymouth taking part.
The city won the chance to host the event due to the work of the Bristol Robotics Laboratory (BRL), a joint research project between the University of Bristol and UWE Bristol.
If you’re worried about the coming robot apocalypse, then worry some more because soft, squishy robots just got camouflage. Scientists at Harvard University working under a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) contract have developed a way of turning soft robots into “chameleons” capable of blending in with their backgrounds and even hiding from infrared sensors. That’s pretty impressive (or scary) for robots that can be made for less than US$100 apiece.
Led by Dr's. George Whitesides and Stephen Morin at Harvard University’s
Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology and the Wyss Institute for
Biologically Inspired Engineering, the Harvard team took nature as their
inspiration, modelling the robots on invertebrates that expand and
contract their bodies in order to move or change their appearance. Such soft robots have been gaining a lot of attention lately, but the Harvard soft-bots took another page from nature’s notebook.
In the Harvard soft-bots, this isn’t quite so sophisticated. The
robots are constructed using a 3D printer to create the molds used in
their manufacture. These molds have networks of micro channels impressed
in them. One set of channels carry the air that makes the robot squirm
about in a frighteningly lifelike manner and the other carries coloured
fluid. When the robot walks over a surface, the appropriate pre-selected
fluid is pumped in to match the surface and break up the pattern of the
robot, making it less visible. The whole process takes less than 30
seconds and the silicone molds make the cost of each soft-bot only about
US$100.
But the soft-bots’ camouflage isn’t confined to colour. The fluid can
be heated or cooled to match whatever surface the robot is walking on,
making it all but invisible to infrared detectors. In addition, the
robot can aid search and rescue missions by making itself more visible
rather than less by filling itself with brightly coloured, fluorescent or
even bioluminescent fluids.
We born, we live our lives and at the end - we die. That's the truth.
However, the quality of our lives often correlates with our health.
Generally, the healthier we are the more we can achieve - thus the
happier we can be. That's why health has always been an issue to deal with. Nowadays
medicine has gone a very long way compared to the time of Hippocrates of
Kos. Now humans are able to do very complicated surgeries, invent cures
for various illnesses and so on. The question arises - can medicine go
further and in what ways? The answer on the first part of the
question is "definitely". However the answers to the second part can
differ. There are many notable fields which could change the course of
medical history for example - stem cells. Still, I'm sure that the field
of robotics and robotics-related fields such as medical bionics and
biomechatronics will play a big role in medicine in near future. Actually,
many exciting things are happening in these fields right now. So, in
this section of my site I will try to shed some light on questions about
medical robots and robotics related fields in medicine now and in the
future.
Medical robots that can do surgeries sounds marvelous, right? All
existing surgery robots on this day are actually cleverly made
manipulators controlled by competent doctors. There are some issues with
the level of Artificial Intelligence needed to do surgeries
independently but that can be achieved some day.
Nowadays, there
are two fields where surgical robots are being developed and tested. One
is telerobotics which enables a doctor to do a surgery at a distance.
The other field is minimally invasive surgery - surgery done without
making large cuts.
The first humanoid robot in space was sent to the space station with the
intention of eventually taking over tasks too dangerous or mundane for
astronauts, and the first such task identified for it was monitoring air
velocity. Astronauts onboard the space station generally have to
measure the air flow in front of vents inside the station to ensure that
none of the ventilation ductwork gets clogged or blocked. The task
involves holding a gauge in front of vents in five different locations
on the station and taking several measurements of the air flow every 90
days or so.
