Sleep Research

Helped with initial conceptual design of a system to assist with sleep research in a care home for the elderly.

The system will log the amount of time each individual patient spends inside a particular room emitting a certain wavelength of light. This data will later be correlated to the patient's sleep pattern (measured with a different device) to determine if sleep is affected by the light.

This work is part of PhD research by Lloyd Morgan at the University of Surrey.

Enactive Torch recieves funding

The Enactive Torch has recieved 'pump priming funds' from Sussex University's Centre for Research in Cognitive Science (COGS).

These funds will enable the construction of multiple torches and will also permit a more formal and extensive set of experiments with the device.

New Logo

New logos have been designed (using Inkscape) for the artistic adventures of the AdLab. One version can be seen in the Navigation bar on the right hand side of this page.

Watch this space for stickerpack news.

Do No Harm! (or as little as possible)

Looking at 'human-friendly' robots (i.e. the type that won't crush you against a wall by accident). Found an interesting paper which included the following image:

I can already see the tabloid headline "Robots developed to smash heads!".

The paper is called 'Approaching Asimov’s 1st Law' so someone has a sense of humour!

Uncanny Valley

Recently started reading Issac Asimov again. Knowing a bit more about robotics now it's interesting to see that some of the issues he raises in Caves of Steel (of disgust and distrust of an overly lifelike humanoid robot) can be regarded as a precursor to Masahiro Mori's Uncanny Valley. In this idea a designer must be careful not to create a robot that is unnervingly almost real (i.e. by not blinking or being cold to the touch).

I do wonder if I'll ever have to may some of the socio-robotics problems that Asimov is famous for. Of course his sacred first law of robotics (...a robot can never harm a human...) was broken when the US started making Talons.