Category Physics

Meet Blue, the Low-cost, human-friendly Robot designed for AI

Blue the robot’s arms – about the size of a human bodybuilder’s — were designed to take advantage of recent advances in artificial intelligence to master intricate, human-centered tasks, like folding towels.
Credit: Philip Downey

Blue’s creators hope the new robot will accelerate the development of robotics for the home. Researchers have created a new low-cost, human friendly robot named Blue, designed to use recent advances in artificial intelligence and deep reinforcement learning to master intricate human tasks, all while remaining affordable and safe enough that every AI researcher could have one. The team hopes Blue will accelerate the development of robotics for the home.

Robots may have a knack for super-human strength and precision, but they still struggle with some basic h...

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Cold Plasma can Kill 99.9% of Airborne Viruses

Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor Herek Clack (left) and members of his team set up a lab-scale non-thermal plasma device that has previously been proven to achieve greater than 99% inactivation of an airborne viral surrogate, MS2 phage, a virus that infects E.coli bacteria at the Barton Farms family pig farm in Homer, MI. Image credit: Robert Coelius/Michigan Engineering
Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor Herek Clack (left) and members of his team set up a lab-scale non-thermal plasma device that has previously been proven to achieve greater than 99% inactivation of an airborne viral surrogate, MS2 phage, a virus that infects E.coli bacteria at the Barton Farms family pig farm in Homer, MI. Image credit: Robert Coelius/Michigan Engineering

Dangerous airborne viruses are rendered harmless on-the-fly when exposed to energetic, charged fragments of air molecules, University of Michigan researchers have shown. They hope to one day harness this capability to replace a century-old device: the surgical mask.

The U-M engineers have measured the virus-killing speed and effectiveness of nonthermal plasmas – the ionized, or charged, particles that...

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Engineers develop Novel Techniques to Trick Object Detection Systems

Many of today’s vehicles use object detection systems to help avoid collisions. SwRI engineers developed unique patterns that can trick these systems into seeing something else, seeing the objects in another location or not seeing the objects at all. In this photo, the object detection system sees a person rather than a vehicle. This research will allow engineers to thoroughly test object detection systems and improve the security of the deep-learning algorithms they use.
Credit: Southwest Research Institute

Project to test and improve deep-learning algorithms for enhanced security. New adversarial techniques developed by engineers at Southwest Research Institute can make objects “invisible” to image detection systems that use deep-learning algorithms...

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Improving 3D-printed Prosthetics and integrating Electronic Sensors

The mold of local teen Josie Fraticelli’s hand that was scanned during the development of a personalized prosthetic.
Credit: Photo by Logan Wallace. Virginia Tech

Scientists have made inroads in integrating electronic sensors with personalized 3D-printed prosthetics. With the growth of 3D printing, it’s entirely possible to 3D print your own prosthetic from models found in open-source databases. But those models lack personalized electronic user interfaces like those found in costly, state-of-the-art prosthetics.

Now, a Virginia Tech professor and his interdisciplinary team of undergraduate student researchers have made inroads in integrating electronic sensors with personalized 3D-printed prosthetics – a development that could one day lead to more affordable electric-powered prost...

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