In Focus
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Photo: Image: Open Robot
The Robot Soccer World Cups
Issue 8A little on the lighter side, the RoboCup Soccer Championships 2013 took place in Eindhoven in the Netherlands a cou- ple of weeks back, and I thought this was the perfect issue to discuss them – a more fun look at the rise of the machines. There were 2,500 participants from over 40 countries, watched by almost 40,000 people,...
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Photo: Image: abine.com
The Drones Are Coming
Issue 8While we’re on the subject, lets not forget the drones, who have been grabbing media and other attention recently, and grabbed mine espe- cially thrice last week – inspiring me to write this article. So, first of all, what are drones? They are, very basically, unmanned aerial vehicles or UAV’s – artificial, man-made flying objects with no humans inside...
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Photo: Image: Business Insider
The Robo-Sapiens: Atlas & Asimo
Issue 8As Gary Bradski, artificial intelligence expert, puts it, “A new species, Robo Sapiens, are emerging.” He says it with reference to the just unveiled humanoid robot Atlas – who bears a scarily striking resem- blance to The Terminator – doesn’t he? But really, it extends to both these unbelievably advanced and extremely different artificially intelligent robots – one that...
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Photo: Image: asme.org
Are They Taking Our Jobs – No Way
Issue 8In industries and factories too, robots are finding ways to help. Wait – alright, alright – I know this is a troublesome topic, robots taking away jobs from the humans – but here they are doing things we cannot, or are dangerous to do. In Dounreay, an experimental nuclear plant in Scotland, they are being used in places where...
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Photo: Image: technabob.com
Robots in Hospitals: Both Helpers & Patients
Issue 8Meanwhile, in the healthcare scene, Forth Valley Royal Hospital in Scotland recently became the one of the first hospitals to adopt the usage of robots, and that too one of the few to do it in a big way – a fleet of robots to carry out day-to-day tasks. These include clearing of clinical waste (a very important one,...
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Photo: Image: The Scientific American Magazine
Curing the Blind Kids of India
Issue 7Giving sight to the blind seemed impossible to achieve, but a certain Indian professor is making it come true. Pawan Sinha is a professor of vision and computational neuroscience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He studies the mechanisms and principals by which the brain recognizes objects and scenes. It took a small message and an inspiration for Prof....
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Photo: Image: wikimapia.org
History
Issue 4The 24th Anniversary of the Tiananmen Square incident of 1989, where students protesting for democracy gathered in the square in Beijing and faced down the Chinese military peacefully, and were killed or imprisoned later, was commemorated by thousands on Tuesday.
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Triumphant Teens
Issue 2To historical heights! A team of seven students aged 15-17 years of Lawrence School Sanawar, scaled Mount Everest and set a record of being the youngest team to conquer the world’s tallest peak. The successful expedition also made the school the world’s only boarding school to have achieved the feat. Raghav Joneja, aged 15 years and 7 months, became...
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Photo: Image: Namas Bhojani/ Financial Times
India’s Red Buses
Issue 1India has a massive $3bn intercity bus service spanning the entire nation, but it is managed by thousands of unconnected ticket agents and bus operators – making the booking of tickets extremely difficult. Such a problem was faced by Phanindra Sama, an electronic engineer at Texas Instruments, which led him and 2 friends to establish Red Bus in August...
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