Smart Economy

Icy technique improves robotic kidney transplants

 

DETROIT – A collaboration of surgeons at Henry Ford Hospital and Medanta Hospital in India successfully transplanted kidneys into 50 recipients using an innovative robot-assisted procedure in which the organ is cooled with sterile ice during the operation. 

The research project – published online ahead of print in European Urology, the journal of the European Association of Urology – advances minimally invasive robotic surgery as a safe alternative to traditional open surgery.

"Minimally invasive surgery reduces post-operative pain and minimizes complications in comparison to conventional surgery," says Mani Menon, M.D., chair of Henry Ford's Vattikuti Urology Institute and co-author of the study.

"The benefits of minimally invasive surgery in removing donor kidneys has been well established in earlier studies, but the use of robot-assisted surgery in transplanting those kidneys is comparatively a frontier," Dr. Menon adds.

The Henry Ford researchers and their counterparts in Gurgaon, India, reasoned that since minimally invasive robotic surgery has proven to be a great benefit to healthy kidney donors, it might also be a boon to the ill and weakened transplant recipients who are at greater risk of complications. But they noted British research from 1971 that showed that kidney function was partially impaired in recipients if blood flow was interrupted for longer than 30 minutes during transplant.

So they decided to chill both the donor kidney and the transplant site with sterile ice slush in hopes of increasing the amount of time in which they could safely learn and perfect the robot-assisted surgery.

"To our knowledge, ours is the first study to use renal cooling during robotic kidney transplant," Dr. Menon says. "It had already proved useful during minimally invasive prostate surgeries."

After three years of planning and simulated surgeries at Henry Ford, 50 consecutive transplant patients who had volunteered for the minimally invasive procedure underwent robotic kidney transplant at Medanta Hospital between January and October 2013.

In all, Medanta Hospital has performed 54 operations and International Kidney and Renal Diseases at Ahmedabad, India, has done 56 operations, for a total of 110 transplants in one year. The surgeons in charge of the two programs are Dr. Rajesh Ahlawat and Dr. Pranjal Modi.

In each case, surgeons filled the kidney cavity with ice slush through a specially designed port in the patient's abdomen before transplanting the donor kidney, which was also chilled with ice slurry held in place by gauze wrapping. 

Blood vessels were attached to the transplanted kidney using suturing techniques refined in other types of minimally invasive procedures. Immediately after transplant, all of the grafted kidneys functioned normally and patient levels of creatinine – used to measure kidney function – were well within normal range.

None of the patients developed blood or urine leaks, infections or other complications from their surgical wounds. None required dialysis after surgery. 

When given follow-up exams six months after surgery, nearly all of the first 25 patients who underwent the procedure developed no complications, although two required exploratory surgery and one died of acute congestive heart failure.

Dr. Menon attributed the success of the study in part to "the seamless collaboration" between surgeons experienced in conventional "open surgery" kidney transplants and surgeons skilled in using robotic techniques.

By the time they began the study, the teams from Henry Ford and Medanta hospitals had performed more than 10,000 robotic procedures and 2,500 conventional kidney transplants.

"The individual surgeons involved had built an atmosphere of trust and mutual respect over 30 years of collaborative work," Dr. Menon says. "While this benefit can't be precisely measured, it clearly contributed to the success of this endeavor."

The researchers noted that further studies will be needed before robotic kidney transplant is widely accepted as a "reasonable" alternative to conventional transplantation.

###

Funding: Vattikuti Foundation

For a copy of the study, please email [email protected]++++++

Robots teach English in South Korean public schools

 

S.Korea schools get robot English teachers

 
SEOUL (AFP) – Almost 30 robots have started teaching English to youngsters in a South Korean city, education officials said Tuesday, in a pilot project designed to nurture the nascent robot industry.

Engkey, a white, egg-shaped robot developed by the Korea Institute of Science of Technology (KIST), began taking classes Monday at 21 elementary schools in the southeastern city of Daegu.

The 29 robots, about one metre (3.3 feet) high with a TV display panel for a face, wheeled around the classroom while speaking to the students, reading books to them and dancing to music by moving their head and arms.

 

The robots, which display an avatar face of a Caucasian woman, are controlled remotely by teachers of English in the Philippines -- who can see and hear the children via a remote control system.

Cameras detect the Filipino teachers' facial expressions and instantly reflect them on the avatar's face, said Sagong Seong-Dae, a senior scientist at KIST.

"Well-educated, experienced Filipino teachers are far cheaper than their counterparts elsewhere, including South Korea," he told AFP.

Apart from reading books, the robots use pre-programmed software to sing songs and play alphabet games with the children.

"The kids seemed to love it since the robots look, well, cute and interesting. But some adults also expressed interest, saying they may feel less nervous talking to robots than a real person," said Kim Mi-Young, an official at Daegu city education office.

 

Kim said some may be sent to remote rural areas of South Korea shunned by foreign English teachers.

She said the robots are still being tested. But officials might consider hiring them full time if scientists upgrade them and make them easier to handle and more affordable.

"Having robots in the classroom makes the students more active in participating, especially shy ones afraid of speaking out to human teachers," Kim said.

She stressed the experiment was not about replacing human teachers with robots. "We are helping upgrade a key, strategic industry and all the while giving children more interest in what they learn."

The four-month pilot programme was sponsored by the government, which invested 1.58 billion won (1.37 million dollars).

Scientists have held pilot programmes in schools since 2009 to develop robots to teach English, maths, science and other subjects at different levels with a desired price tag of five to eight million won.

Sagong stressed that the robots, which currently cost 10 million won each, largely back up human teachers but would eventually have a bigger role.

The machines can be an efficient tool to hone language skills for many people who feel nervous about conversing with flesh-and-blood foreigners, he said.

"Plus, they won't complain about health insurance, sick leave and severance package, or leave in three months for a better-paying job in Japan... all you need is a repair and upgrade every once in a while."

Walter DerzKO

Japan's robot suit to bring hope to the disabled

Japan's Cyberdyne may share its name with the company responsible for nuclear destruction and the killer robots of the "Terminator" movie series, but the similarities end there.

And if the idea of a robot suit helping those with disabilities walk sounds like the stuff of science fiction, think again: the real-life Cyberdyne is in the business of revolutionising lives.

The firm produces an exoskeleton robot device called the Hybrid Assistive Limb, or HAL, which in another sci-fi related coincidence shares its name with the devious computer in Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey".

It gives power to its wearer by anticipating and supporting the user's body movements using sensors monitoring electric signals sent from the brain to the muscles. Current options are for a single leg device or both legs.

HAL has many potential applications, from assisting caregivers lift people to helping construction workers or even firefighters.

In one case, three weeks of training with HAL enabled a man who had suffered brain injuries to stand on his own feet after nine years in a wheelchair, said Cyberdyne CEO Yoshiyuki Sankai, professor at the University of Tsukuba.

The group is now gearing up for mass-production and started leasing the battery-powered suit to welfare facilities last year.

"Developing robots without utilising them in society would just be an extension of a hobby," Sankai, 52, said. "What I develop should be part of society and benefit people."

A Japanese adventurer with disabilities is planning to leave his wheelchair behind and walk up a medieval French World Heritage site next year with the lower-limb HAL.

Seiji Uchida, 48, who lost the ability to walk in a car accident 27 years ago, said earlier this year he has long dreamed of visiting the picturesque abbey of Mont Saint-Michel, set on a rocky islet in Normandy.

Uchida said his visit to the island where a steep and narrow trail leads to an abbey and former fortress was to "prove that it is possible for people with disabilities to visit the world's historic sites without relying on facilities like elevators".

Some 50 hospitals and homes for the elderly in Japan are using a lower-limb version of HAL to assist disabled people. Rental fees for both legs are 140,000-150,000 yen a month (1,600-1,800 dollars).

Cyberdyne plans to start leasing a full-body version for caregivers next year, which assists both arms and legs and allows users to carry a load of up to 70 kilogrammes (154 pounds) with one arm.

It aims to begin sales to consumers from 2015.

More than 60 people have signed up as regular visitors to Cyberdyne Studio, a walking-training version of the usual fitness clubs that opened in September in Tsukuba City northeast of Tokyo, using the lower-limb model.

Sankai's practicality-first approach is unique in a country where many researchers focus on high concept robotics with eye-catching, headline-grabbing humanoids and other machines that have little useful application in reality.

The professor is critical of research that has no use outside the laboratory.

"Many in the research and development field are motivated by their own interest. They produce a thing and then think, 'What could this be used for?'"

"Research isn't for just writing papers," he said.

Sankai has retained his enthusiasm since his days as a self-styled child scientist who practised melting aluminum in the backyard and built walkie-talkies from scratch.

He said he had wanted to develop robots since he was a child and remembers "odd experiments" he did such as giving a frog's leg an electric stimulus using a home-made radio-wave transmitter.

Sankai is now in talks with foreign companies such as France's Bouygue construction group.

"We are exploring cooperation outside the medical and welfare field, for ways to help heavy physical work," he said.

Bayer MaterialScience in the German conglomerate Bayer announced in October it would help Cyberdyne replace metal parts with high-quality plastics to pave the way for easier and cheaper production of the complex shaped suit.

HAL will also be tried out in hospitals in Denmark and Sweden.

Sankai plans to invite foreign students on training programmes at Tsukuba, educate them on using HAL and send them home with joint research contracts.

HAL could also be used by rescue workers, said Sankai.

"People from the fire and disaster management agency came to me and told me about rescuers who lost their lives while on duty," making him think an appropriate machine could save lives.

"I want to think about what our technology can contribute," Sankai said

 Walter Derzko

Intelligent robots that evolve and grow in real time by mimicing biological evolution; unnatural selection

The next issue of New Scientist will feature an article about smart robots that evolve and grow in real time or unnatural selection..more disruptive technology on the way. We will see how much of this can be turned into commercial value, instead of just being an acedmic curiosity

According to New Scientist:

 

 

"Living creatures took millions of years to evolve from amphibians to four-legged mammals - with larger, more complex brains to match. Now an evolving robot has performed a similar trick in hours, thanks to a software "brain" that automatically grows in size and complexity as its physical body develops.

Existing robots cannot usually cope with physical changes - the addition of a sensor or new type of limb, say - without a complete redesign of their control software, which can be time-consuming and expensive.

So artificial intelligence engineer Christopher MacLeod and his colleagues at the Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, UK, created a robot that adapts to such changes by mimicking biological evolution. "If we want to make really complex humanoid robots with ever more sensors and more complex behaviours, it is critical that they are able to grow in complexity over time - just like biological creatures did," he says."

© 2005-2009

Walter Derzko -"Changing the world, one idea at a time"©

Expert, Consultant and Keynote Speaker on Emerging Smart Technologies, Innovation, Strategic Foresight, Business Development, Lateral Creative Thinking and author of an upcoming book on the Smart Economy "

The Smart Technology Blog: The Smart Economy -- Read, enjoy, explore, speculate, comment !!

To arrange for an in house presentation or briefing on smart technology see here

To explore the opportunities and threats of any new smart technology in your industry - Contact Me or explore how we can work together

• ".....Strategy without action is a day-dream; action without strategy is a nightmare"-old Japanese proverb
• ".......Ours is the age that is proud of machines that think and suspicious of men who try to." -- H. Mumford Jones
• ".......Without changing our patterns of thought, we will not be able to solve the problems we created with our current pattern of thought."  --A. Einstein
• ".......Change is difficult, but complacency and stagnation are surefire showstoppers..." --Walter Derzko

• ".......Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."  -- Margaret Mead

• ".......Small minds discuss people; Average minds discuss events; Great minds discuss ideas; --Anon

P. S. if this is your first visit to my blog, please go to our Welcome page

IBM endorses smart technology and a smarter planet

A while back when I was at the Idea Lab at the Design Exchange, I remember sitting over a coffee and exploring a thought exercise with some clients.

The question under debate was: What are  the generic elements or activities that would accelerate any new technology platform, (such as smart technologies) and overcome the initial market interia. Simply put, Is there a generic technology evolution matrix?

We came up with over 25 items. (see related Post-Do you know how to spot opportunities?)

One was having cartoonists make fun of your technology ( No, smart technologies aren't on Dilbert's radar screen yet, but any day now I hope)  Another key event would be to have some influential CEO highlight the benefits of your technology in a milestone keynote speech (act as a complimentor-in business strategy terms. )

Well for smart technologies, that breakthrough event may have happened this month on November 6^th, when IBM’s CEO, Sam Palmisano, outlined a new agenda for building a smarter planet - during a speech at the Council on Foreign Relation. (hat tip to Adam Christensen at IBM HQ)

 

 

From IBM's blog:

"In the speech, he outlines a number of the challenges faced today by people, governments, businesses and organizations. A lack of clean water for a fifth of the world’s population. Energy systems that waste more energy than they produce. Traffic in our cities that clogs roads and chokes economic growth. 

Clearly there are no simple solutions for these problems.

Technology can play a big role in helping find answers to these problems. While the Internet currently connects more than a billion people, in just a few years, it will connect more than a trillion objects. Everything from cell phones, cars, roads, buildings, and even objects in nature itself, will have embedded technology and be connected to one another, enabling tremendous advances in how we understand how the world works and make smarter decisions to make it work better. 

But technology is just part of the solution. Without the people, policies and culture to inspire and execute the change, nothing ultimately gets done."

From Sam’s speech:

[...]   These collective realizations have reminded us that we are all now connected—economically, technically and socially. But we're also learning that being connected is not sufficient. Yes, the world continues to get "flatter." And yes, it continues to get smaller and more interconnected. But something is happening that holds even greater potential. In a word, our planet is becoming smarter.

This isn't just a metaphor.I mean infusing intelligence into the way the world literally works—the systems and processes that enable physical goods to be developed, manufactured, bought and sold… services to be delivered… everything from people and money to oil, water and electrons to move… and billions of people to work and live.

 What's making this possible?

• First, our world is becoming instrumented: The transistor, invented 60 years ago, is the basic building block of the digital age. Now, consider a world in which there are a billion transistors per human, each one costing one ten-millionth of a cent. We'll have that by 2010. There will likely be 4 billion mobile phone subscribers by the end of this year… and 30 billion Radio Frequency Identification tags produced globally within two years. Sensors are being embedded across entire ecosystems—supply-chains, healthcare networks, cities… even natural systems like rivers.
• Second, our world is becoming interconnected: Very soon there will be 2 billion people on the Internet. But in an instrumented world, systems and objects can now "speak" to one another, too. Think about the prospect of a trillion connected and intelligent things—cars, appliances, cameras, roadways, pipelines… even pharmaceuticals and livestock. The amount of information produced by the interaction of all those things will be unprecedented.
• Third, all things are becoming intelligent: New computing models can handle the proliferation of end-user devices, sensors and actuators and connect them with back-end systems. Combined with advanced analytics, those supercomputers can turn mountains of data into intelligence that can be translated into action, making our systems, processes and infrastructures more efficient, more productive and responsive—in a word, smarter.

What this means is that the digital and physical infrastructures of the world are converging. Computational power is being put into things we wouldn't recognize as computers. Indeed, almost anything—any person, any object, any process or any service, for any organization, large or small—can become digitally aware and networked.

With so much technology and networking abundantly available at such low cost, what wouldn't you enhance? What service wouldn't you provide a customer, citizen, student or patient? What wouldn't you connect? What information wouldn't you mine for insight?

The answer is, you or your competitor—another company, or another city or nation—will do all of that. You will do it because you can—the technology is available and affordable.

But there is another reason we will make our companies, institutions and industries smarter. Because we must. Not just at moments of widespread shock, but integrated into our day-to-day operations. These mundane processes of business, government and life—which are ultimately the source of those "surprising" crises—are not smart enough to be sustainable.

[...]

Leaders will need to hone their collaboration skills, because we will need leadership that pulls across systems. We will need to bring together stakeholders and experts from across business, government and academia, and all of them will need to move outside their traditional comfort zones.

I’m struck by the questions this raises. What investments need to be made by both public and private institutions? What policy issues need to be debated and resolved? What role can individual citizens and employees play in helping bring about meaningful change?

I’m also struck by the potential opportunities inherent in finding solutions to these problems. 

see full text of Sam Palmisano's speech

Walter Derzko

 

From IBM's blog:

"In the speech, he outlines a number of the challenges faced today by people, governments, businesses and organizations. A lack of clean water for a fifth of the world’s population. Energy systems that waste more energy than they produce. Traffic in our cities that clogs roads and chokes economic growth. 

Clearly there are no simple solutions for these problems.

Technology can play a big role in helping find answers to these problems. While the Internet currently connects more than a billion people, in just a few years, it will connect more than a trillion objects. Everything from cell phones, cars, roads, buildings, and even objects in nature itself, will have embedded technology and be connected to one another, enabling tremendous advances in how we understand how the world works and make smarter decisions to make it work better. 

But technology is just part of the solution. Without the people, policies and culture to inspire and execute the change, nothing ultimately gets done."

From Sam’s speech:

[...]   These collective realizations have reminded us that we are all now connected—economically, technically and socially. But we're also learning that being connected is not sufficient. Yes, the world continues to get "flatter." And yes, it continues to get smaller and more interconnected. But something is happening that holds even greater potential. In a word, our planet is becoming smarter.

This isn't just a metaphor.I mean infusing intelligence into the way the world literally works—the systems and processes that enable physical goods to be developed, manufactured, bought and sold… services to be delivered… everything from people and money to oil, water and electrons to move… and billions of people to work and live.

 What's making this possible?

• First, our world is becoming instrumented: The transistor, invented 60 years ago, is the basic building block of the digital age. Now, consider a world in which there are a billion transistors per human, each one costing one ten-millionth of a cent. We'll have that by 2010. There will likely be 4 billion mobile phone subscribers by the end of this year… and 30 billion Radio Frequency Identification tags produced globally within two years. Sensors are being embedded across entire ecosystems—supply-chains, healthcare networks, cities… even natural systems like rivers.
• Second, our world is becoming interconnected: Very soon there will be 2 billion people on the Internet. But in an instrumented world, systems and objects can now "speak" to one another, too. Think about the prospect of a trillion connected and intelligent things—cars, appliances, cameras, roadways, pipelines… even pharmaceuticals and livestock. The amount of information produced by the interaction of all those things will be unprecedented.
• Third, all things are becoming intelligent: New computing models can handle the proliferation of end-user devices, sensors and actuators and connect them with back-end systems. Combined with advanced analytics, those supercomputers can turn mountains of data into intelligence that can be translated into action, making our systems, processes and infrastructures more efficient, more productive and responsive—in a word, smarter.

What this means is that the digital and physical infrastructures of the world are converging. Computational power is being put into things we wouldn't recognize as computers. Indeed, almost anything—any person, any object, any process or any service, for any organization, large or small—can become digitally aware and networked.

With so much technology and networking abundantly available at such low cost, what wouldn't you enhance? What service wouldn't you provide a customer, citizen, student or patient? What wouldn't you connect? What information wouldn't you mine for insight?

The answer is, you or your competitor—another company, or another city or nation—will do all of that. You will do it because you can—the technology is available and affordable.

But there is another reason we will make our companies, institutions and industries smarter. Because we must. Not just at moments of widespread shock, but integrated into our day-to-day operations. These mundane processes of business, government and life—which are ultimately the source of those "surprising" crises—are not smart enough to be sustainable.

[...]

Leaders will need to hone their collaboration skills, because we will need leadership that pulls across systems. We will need to bring together stakeholders and experts from across business, government and academia, and all of them will need to move outside their traditional comfort zones.

I’m struck by the questions this raises. What investments need to be made by both public and private institutions? What policy issues need to be debated and resolved? What role can individual citizens and employees play in helping bring about meaningful change?

I’m also struck by the potential opportunities inherent in finding solutions to these problems. 

see full text of Sam Palmisano's speech

Walter Derzko

Intel looks to the smart future: Part 2 Smart Robots & advancing machine intelligence

The Intel Developer Forum this week in San Franscisco, featured Intel Chief Technology Officer Justin Rattner, who showcased various technologies in computing, robotics, and communication that he cited as evidence that Ray Kurzweil's concept of "singularity," is pending.  Singularity is the point in time when machine intelligence surpasses human intelligence.

Here, Siddartha Srinivasan of Intel Research Pittsburgh shows off a prototype mobile robot called Herb, that is able to create a 3D model of its world, moving through it without bumping into objects and grasping objects such as mugs on the way.

ETA: 2008 now, similar robots already commercially available in Japan

Smart Thinking Robot controlled by brain functions from 30,000 rat neurons

Robot with 300,000 rat neurons and brain functions

A multidisciplinary team at the University of Reading has developed a robot which is controlled by a biological brain formed from cultured rat brain neurones.  This cutting edge research is the first step to examine how memories manifest themselves in the brain, and how a brain stores specific pieces of data.  The key aim is that eventually this will lead to a better understanding of development and of diseases and disorders which affect the brain such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, stoke and brain injury.

The robot's biological brain is made up of cultured neurones which are placed onto a multi electrode array (MEA).  The MEA is a dish with approximately 60 electrodes which pick up the electrical signals generated by the cells.  This is then used to drive the movement of the robot.  Every time the robot nears an object, signals are directed to stimulate the brain by means of the electrodes.  In response, the brain's output is used to drive the wheels of the robot, left and right, so that it moves around in an attempt to avoid hitting objects.  The robot has no additional control from a human or a computer, its sole means of control is from its own brain.

The researchers are now working towards getting the robot to learn by applying different signals as it moves into predefined positions.  It is hoped that as the learning progresses, it will be possible to witness how memories manifest themselves in the brain when the robot revisits familiar territory." 

According to New Scientist:

"..... the disembodied neurons are communicating, sending electrical signals to one
another just as they do in a living creature. We know this because the network of neurons is connected at the base of the pot to 80 electrodes, and the voltages sparked by the neurons are displayed on a computer screen.

It's these spontaneous electrical patterns that researchers at the University of Reading in the UK want to harness to control a robot. If they can do so reliably, by stimulating the neurons with signals from sensors on the robot and using the neurons' response to get the robots to respond, they hope to gain insights into how brains function. Such insights might help in the treatment of conditions like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease and epilepsy.

"We're trying to understand what is going on inside this brain material that could have direct implications for human health," says Kevin Warwick, Reading's head of cybernetics, who is running the project with Hammond and Ben Whalley, both neuroscientists."

"The rat neuron "brain" is able to issue instructions to its robot "body" thanks to its bank of electrodes.

The field of in-vitro recording and stimulation kicked off in 1972 when scientists cultured heart cells on laboratory glassware embedded with electrodes that could record the cells' electrical signals. In 1979, researchers in the US tweaked the technology to stimulate signals as well as record them from nerve cells, or neurons - leading ultimately to the multi-electrode arrays in use today. "MEAs are definitely our enabling technology," says Steve Potter at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta.

The devices mean researchers can work with a very simplified version of a brain in the lab, Potter says. "You can manipulate neurons much more easily than you can in an animal - cutting connections to see what effect that has on the signalling."

Full article in New Scientist Tech and cool video

© 2005-2008 Walter Derzko -"Changing the world, one idea at a time"© ™

Expert, Consultant, Keynote Speaker and Lecturer on Emerging Smart Technologies, Innovation, Entrepreneurship, Strategic Foresight, Business Development, Lateral Creative Thinking and author of an upcoming book on the Smart Economy

The Smart Technology Blog: The Smart Economy -- Read, enjoy, explore, speculate, comment !!

To arrange for an in house presentation or briefing on smart technology see here

To explore the opportunities and threats of any new smart technology in your industry - Contact Me or explore how we can work together

P. S. if this is your first visit to my blog, please go to our Welcome page 

Smart Sustainability Showcase for Toronto and Canada

From: Walter Derzko

Sent: Friday, July 11, 2008 12:19 AM

To: undisclosed list

Subject: re Smart Sustainability ShowCase for Toronto and Canada.

Importance: High

Dear Colleagues

I’d like to plant an idea with you – after speaking with a number of designers and vendors, I’m exploring the idea for a sustainability showcase that would feature theme based exhibits with smart technologies from Canadian and international sources-the best from Ontario, nationally and from around the world.

The launch would be 2010, The timing for this seems right.  The target audience would be Canadian business, consumers and school children

I’m writing a book on smart technologies and this would be a logical extension of the concept.

Two years ago I talked to Samantha Sannella and Poala Polletto at the Design Exchange (DX) in Toronto and with several people at the Ont Science Center.  Both groups expressed interest but said that we would need to find sponsors for the project

My business model for this would be three pronged -vendor based revenue, corporate based sponsor revenue and municipality based sponsorship ie city of Toronto or Mississauga and possibly the province of Ontario who may wish to promote sustainable manufacturing.

This concept would be a Canadian, in fact a North American first.

I have a list of 150 potential vendors, and designers from around the world who are working on smart technologies that we can start to approach.

The exhibits would be theme based, --the sustainable kitchen, the sustainable office, the sustainable retail shelf, the sustainable workspace, the sustainable community, the sustainable city etc and would be updated with new technologies every 3-5 years and have a 1-5 year forward focus. (what's commercially available now or in the very near future.

For other exhibits, there can be a regional or national focus ie smart sustainable technology from the UK, Finland, Germany (Fraunhofer Inst), China, Ukraine, Russia, or Singapore, Hong Kong etc

Corporate sponsors might include: Walmart, Rona, Home Deport, Canadian Tire, Loblaws, Sears, Imperial Oil, the banks (RBC, TD, RBC BMO) etc.

The Sustainability Showcase could be housed in a physical location, or it could tour from location to location around the city or province or be mobile ( on a bus the way the Japanese and Korean do- a display bus turned into a demo center that tours from school to school or to fairs and exhibitions.

OCAD students and staff and Beal senior fellows could play a hand in designing exhibit spaces and sourcing new vendors and sustainable technologies.

Several other revenue opportunities could spin off from this as well

Here’s just a few examples of what can be showcased

1) Environmentally sensible packaging such as Mercury-Absorbant NanoSponge packaging for broken compact fluorescent lamps (CFL's) http://smarteconomy.typepad.com/smart_economy/2008/06/mercury-absorba.html

2) Concrete Wood (from the example I mentioned June 2 at OCAD, when Bob Logan was bemoaning the lack of durability of pressboard shelving from Ikea.  See Concrete Wood from lodgepole pine trees destroyed by pine beetles (kills two birds with one stone) http://smarteconomy.typepad.com/smart_economy/2007/11/concrete-wood.html

3) End of Traditional Heating and Air conditioning Thin-film version of Active Building Envelope (ABE) systems could make conventional air conditioning and heating equipment obsolete http://smarteconomy.typepad.com/smart_economy/2006/07/thinfilm_versio.html

4) OLEDs New High efficiency flat light source OLEDs > Almost any surface in a home, whether flat or curved, could become a light source: walls, curtains, ceilings, cabinets, shelves or tables.  Http://smarteconomy.typepad.com/smart_economy/2006/04/new_high_effici.html

Lots more like these

For anyone who is interested in exploring the idea of a Smart Sustainability Showcase for Toronto, we are having a meeting on Tuesday July 22 at 11 am at the Ontario College of Art & Design (OCAD), Beal Institute for Strategic Creativity, room 600, 6th floor , 100 McCaul St, Toronto just south of the Ont Art Gallery.

Please RSVP, so we know how many people are coming

I have had some positive feedback from several organizations, & I’d like to push the concept forward

I'm sending this nationally and internationally in  case you are aware of any designers, vendors, manufacturers or research centers who have interesting cutting edge smart sustainable technology to showcase.

Contact me by email

----Walter  Derzko; Senior Fellow Beal Institute for Strategic Creativity, OCAD 

© 2005-2008 Walter Derzko -"Changing the world, one idea at a time"©

Expert, Consultant, Keynote Speaker and Lecturer on Emerging Smart Technologies, Innovation, Entrepreneurship, Strategic Foresight, Business Development, Lateral Creative Thinking and author of an upcoming book on the Smart Economy

The Smart Technology Blog: The Smart Economy -- Read, enjoy, explore, speculate, comment !!

To arrange for an in house presentation or briefing on smart technology see here

To explore the opportunities and threats of any new smart technology in your industry - Contact Me or explore how we can work together

Robots 3 Humans 0 in air hockey

According to EE Times July 8, 2008 a smart  robot developed by General Electric Fanuc (GEF) and programmed by Nuvation Research Corp. (San Jose, Calif.) can beat most human air hockey players..

A video system that tracks the puck's position sends coordinates to a special PC board every 10 milliseconds.  So far, the robot has defeated every human opponent running in 32-bit mode, averaging three times as many goals as human players.  The algorithm's success resulted from revising its strategy whenever a goal was scored against it.  Some revisions were refinements of strategies, but others were outright fixes to bugs in tactics.

"Good players would 'sucker' the robot into overextending, then slip a goal in behind the arm while it was recalculating.  We fixed that by automatically retracting at the end of each move,"

Oh no? Just a thought ? Will Canadians loose their ice hockey supremacy next?

Video and full story

 

© 2005-2008 Walter Derzko -"Changing the world, one idea at a time"©

Expert, Consultant, Keynote Speaker and Lecturer on Emerging Smart Technologies, Innovation, Entrepreneurship, Strategic Foresight, Business Development, Lateral Creative Thinking and author of an upcoming book on the Smart Economy

The Smart Technology Blog: The Smart Economy -- Read, enjoy, explore, speculate, comment !!

To arrange for an in house presentation or briefing on smart technology see here

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Do we think that machines (robots) can think?

“Can machines think?”- This pivotal question was raised by Alan Turing in 1950 however, philosophers have debated this issue since the early 17th century.

When our PC freezes up and goes on strike, after rebooting, we tend to curse it as if it was a human.

The question of why and under what circumstances we attribute human-like properties to machines and how such processes manifest on a cortical level was investigated in a project led by Dr. Sören Krach and Prof.  Tilo Kircher from the RWTH Aachen University (Clinic for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy) in cooperation with the Department of "Social Robotics" (Bielefeld University) and the Neuroimage Nord (Hamburg). 

The findings are published July 9 in the online, open-access journal PloS ONE.

According to the story: Can Machines Think?  Interaction and Perspective Taking with Robots Investigated via fMRI:

"Almost daily, new accomplishments in the field of human robotics are presented in the media.  Constructions of increasingly elaborate and versatile humanoid robots are reported and thus human-robot interactions accumulate in daily life.  However, the question of how humans perceive these "machines" and attribute capabilities and "mental qualities" to them remains largely [unresearched and] undiscovered.

In the fMRI study, reported in PloS ONE, Krach and colleagues investigated how the increase of human-likeness of interaction partners modulates the participants' brain activity.  In this study, participants were playing an easy computer game (the prisoners' dilemma game) against four different game partners: a regular computer notebook, a functionally designed Lego-robot, the anthropomorphic robot BARTHOC Jr.  and a human.  All game partners played an absolutely similar sequence, which was not, however, revealed to the participants.

The results clearly demonstrated that neural activity in the medial prefrontal cortex as well as in the right temporo-parietal junction linearly increased with the degree of "human-likeness" of interaction partners, i.e. the more the respective game partners exhibited human-like features, the more the participants engaged cortical regions associated with mental state attribution/mentalizing.

Further, in a debriefing questionnaire, participants stated having increasingly enjoyed the interactions most when their respective interaction partners displayed the most human features and accordingly evaluated their opponents as being more intelligent.

This study is the first ever to investigate the neuronal basics of direct human-robot interaction on a higher cognitive level such as mentalizing.  Thus, the researchers expect the results of the study to impact long-lasting psychological and philosophical debates regarding human-machine interactions and especially the question of what causes humans to be perceived as human.

Citation: Krach S, Hegel F, Wrede B, Sagerer G, Binkofski F, et al.  (2008) Can Machines Think?  Interaction and Perspective Taking with Robots Investigated via fMRI.  PloS ONE 3(7): e2597.  Doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0002597 (http://www.plosone.org/doi/pone.0002597)

Source: Public Library of Science