The walking robot project

A walking robot was designed, analyzed, and tested as an intelligent, mobile, and a terrain adaptive system. The robot's design was an application of existing technologies. The design of the six legs modified and combines well understood mechanisms and was optimized for performance, flexibility, and simplicity. The body design incorporated two tripods for walking stability and ease of turning. The electrical hardware design used modularity and distributed processing to drive the motors. The software design used feedback to coordinate the system and simple keystrokes to give commands. The walking machine can be easily adapted to hostile environments such as high radiation zones and alien terrain. The primary goal of the leg design was to create a leg capable of supporting a robot's body and electrical hardware while walking or performing desired tasks, namely those required for planetary exploration. The leg designers intent was to study the maximum amount of flexibility and maneuverability achievable by the simplest and lightest leg design. The main constraints for the leg design were leg kinematics, ease of assembly, degrees of freedom, number of motors, overall size, and weight

Robotic Platforms for Assistance to People with Disabilities

People with congenital and/or acquired disabilities constitute a great number of dependents today. Robotic platforms to help people with disabilities are being developed with the aim of providing both rehabilitation treatment and assistance to improve their quality of life. A high demand for robotic platforms that provide assistance during rehabilitation is expected because of the health status of the world due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic has resulted in countries facing major challenges to ensure the health and autonomy of their disabled population. Robotic platforms are necessary to ensure assistance and rehabilitation for disabled people in the current global situation. The capacity of robotic platforms in this area must be continuously improved to benefit the healthcare sector in terms of chronic disease prevention, assistance, and autonomy. For this reason, research about human–robot interaction in these robotic assistance environments must grow and advance because this topic demands sensitive and intelligent robotic platforms that are equipped with complex sensory systems, high handling functionalities, safe control strategies, and intelligent computer vision algorithms. This Special Issue has published eight papers covering recent advances in the field of robotic platforms to assist disabled people in daily or clinical environments. The papers address innovative solutions in this field, including affordable assistive robotics devices, new techniques in computer vision for intelligent and safe human–robot interaction, and advances in mobile manipulators for assistive tasks

An optogenetic headstage for optical stimulation and neural recording in life science applications

L'optogénétique est une nouvelle méthode de contrôle de l’activité neuronale dans laquelle la lumière est employée pour activer ou arrêter certains neurones. Dans le cadre de ce travail, un dispositif permettant l’acquisition de signaux neuronaux et conduisant à une stimulation optogénétique de façon multicanale et temps-réel a été conçu. Cet outil est muni de deux canaux de stimulation optogénétique et de deux canaux de lecture des signaux neuronaux. La source de lumière est une DEL qui peut consommer jusqu’à 150 milliampères. Les signaux neuronaux acquis sont transmis à un ordinateur par une radio. Les dimensions sont d’environ 20×20×15 mm3 et le poids est de moins de 7 grammes, rendant l’appareil utile pour les expériences sur les petits animaux libres. Selon nos connaissances actuelles, le résultat de ce projet constitue le premier appareil de recherche optogénétique sans-fil, compact offrant la capture de signaux cérébraux et la stimulation optique simultanée.Optogenetics is a new method for controlling the neural activity where light is used to activate or silence, with high spatial and temporal resolution, genetically light-sensitized neurons. In optogenetics, a light source such as a LED, targets light-sensitized neurons. In this work, a light-weight wireless animal optogenetic headstage has been designed that allows multi-channel simultaneous real-time optical stimulation and neural recording. This system has two optogenetic stimulation channels and two electrophysiological reading channels. The optogenetic stimulation channels benefit from high-power LEDs (sinking 150 milliamps) with flexible stimulation patterns and the recorded neural data is wirelessly sent to a computer. The dimensions of the headstage are almost 20×20×15 mm3 and it weighs less than 7 grams. This headstage is suitable for tests on small freely-moving rodents. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first reported fully wireless headstage to offer simultaneous multichannel optical stimulation along with multichannel neural recording capability

Aerospace medicine and biology: A continuing bibliography with indexes, supplement 128, May 1974

This special bibliography lists 282 reports, articles, and other documents introduced into the NASA scientific and technical information system in April 1974

Artificial Intelligence Technology

This open access book aims to give our readers a basic outline of today’s research and technology developments on artificial intelligence (AI), help them to have a general understanding of this trend, and familiarize them with the current research hotspots, as well as part of the fundamental and common theories and methodologies that are widely accepted in AI research and application. This book is written in comprehensible and plain language, featuring clearly explained theories and concepts and extensive analysis and examples. Some of the traditional findings are skipped in narration on the premise of a relatively comprehensive introduction to the evolution of artificial intelligence technology. The book provides a detailed elaboration of the basic concepts of AI, machine learning, as well as other relevant topics, including deep learning, deep learning framework, Huawei MindSpore AI development framework, Huawei Atlas computing platform, Huawei AI open platform for smart terminals, and Huawei CLOUD Enterprise Intelligence application platform. As the world’s leading provider of ICT (information and communication technology) infrastructure and smart terminals, Huawei’s products range from digital data communication, cyber security, wireless technology, data storage, cloud computing, and smart computing to artificial intelligence