Positive Technology Journal

Via Future-Making Serious Games 

 
Friday, February 23 2007

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Via Medgadget 

A company called Blink Twice is developing a speech-generating device that promises to improve the way differently-abled children communicate with their world:

Via KurzweilAI.net 

Researchers at Medtronic are developing an implantable device designed to electrically stimulate areas of the brain to control diseases such as Parkinson's disease, epilepsy and depression.

From EEtimes

Re-blogged from KurzweilAI.net 

Grand challenges proposed by the U.K. Computing Research Committee include a project to unify cognitive science, artificial intelligence, and robotics.

One sign of success would be a robot capable of functioning at the level of a 2- to 5-year-old child. Another milestone could be a robot capable of autonomously helping a disabled person around a house without explicit preprogramming about its environment.

Other challenge is intended to create more dependable computers and associated software systems, which oversee the bulk of the world's financial transactions, regulate life-saving instruments, and manage the delivery of products.

 

Via textually.org

Socially assistive robotics for post-stroke rehabilitation

By Maja J Mataric', Jon Eriksson, David J Feil-Seifer and Carolee J Winstein, Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation

Background: Although there is a great deal of success in rehabilitative robotics applied to patient recovery post-stoke, most of the rehabilitation research to date has dealt with providing physical assistance. However, new studies support the theory that not all therapy need be hands-on. We describe a new area, called socially assistive robotics, that focuses on non-contact patient/user assistance. We demonstrate the approach with an implemented and tested post-stroke recovery robot and discuss its potential for effectiveness. Results: We describe a pilot study involving an autonomous assistive mobile robot that aids stoke patient rehabilitation by providing monitoring, encouragement, and reminders. The robot navigates autonomously, monitors the patient's arm activity, and helps the patient remember to follow a rehabilitation program. We also show preliminary results from a follow-up study that studied the role of robot physical embodiment in a rehabilitation context. Conclusions: Future experimental design and factors that will be considered in order to develop effective socially assistive post-stroke rehabilitation robot are outlined and discussed.

Seeing size and feeling weight: the size-weight illusion in natural and virtual reality.

Hum Factors. 2007 Feb;49(1):136-44

Authors: Heineken E, Schulte FP

OBJECTIVE: We experimentally tested the degree that the size-weight illusion depends on perceptual conditions allowing the observer to assume that both the visual and the kinesthetic stimuli of a weight seen and lifted emanate from the same object. We expected that the degree of the illusion depended on the "realism" provided by different kinds of virtual reality (VR) used when the weights are seen in virtual reality and at the same time lifted in natural reality. BACKGROUND: Welch and Warren (1980) reported that an intermodal influence can be expected only if perceptual information of different modalities is compellingly related to only one object. METHOD: Objects of different sizes and weights were presented to 50 participants in natural reality or in four virtual realities: two immersive head-mounted display VRs (with or without head tracking) and two nonimmersive desktop VRs (with or without screening from input of the natural environment using a visor). The objects' heaviness was scaled using the magnitude estimation method. RESULTS: Data show that the degree of the illusion is largest in immersive and lowest in nonimmersive virtual realities. CONCLUSION: The higher the degree of the illusion is, the more compelling the situation is perceived and the more the observed data are in correspondence with the data predicted for the illusion in natural reality. This shows that the kind of mediating technology used strongly influences the presence experienced. APPLICATION: The size-weight illusion's sensitivity to conditions that affect the sense of presence makes it a promising objective presence measure.