Add another robot to the list of helping bots for seniors. A robot named Charlie rolled into a New Zealand retirement village on Monday to take residents' vital signs, deliver their medication reminders, and call for assistance if they fall.
Charlie's trial stint at Selwyn Retirement Village in Auckland's Point Chevalier is, in part, a response to a University of Auckland study exploring seniors' attitudes toward robots.
The study--part of a three-year "HealthBots" collaboration by the University of Auckland and Korea's Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute--collated the opinions of Selwyn Retirement Village residents, their families, and staff on what tasks health care robots could perform and what the mechanical helpers should look like.
Results showed respondents felt most comfortable with robots taking vital signs such as blood pressure, calling for help, lifting heavy objects, cleaning, and making phone calls to a doctor or nurse. They did not identify personal care, medical advice, and assessing emotions as tasks they'd like to see taken over by robots.
Posing with Charlie the robot are HealthBots team members (from left) Rebecca Stafford, Bruce MacDonald, and Elizabeth Broadbent.
(Credit: University of Auckland)As far as physical appearance, residents and staff indicated they preferred a "middle-age robot" with a clear voice, though they didn't have a preference for male or female features. The robot shouldn't be too human-like, they suggested, with some residents explicitly saying they'd rather be tended to by a robot without a face. The preferred design was silver and around 4 feet tall, so the robot was not too imposing, with wheels and a screen.
Enter Charlie, which pretty much fits that description. ... Read more
Anyone who knows my television viewing habits knows that the only program I have my DVR automatically record for me is Charlie Rose, the long-running PBS talk show (OK, there was a season of Prison Break in there somewhere, too, but let's not talk about that).
Last night's episode, featuring a long, candid conversation with Sir Howard Stringer, chairman and CEO of Sony, should be required viewing for anyone interested in consumer electronics.
During the course of the show, Stringer talks, fairly knowledgeably, about the PlayStation 3, how Sony lost the portable music player market, how Blu-ray vs. HD DVD played out differently than the Betamax vs. VHS battle, the future importance (and current impracticality) of OLED displays, and the painfully low margin on PC hardware (even expensive Vaios). He also makes a surprisingly spirited pitch for the PlayStation Network as a delivery system for all kinds of content (check out his ideas about using the PS3 and PlayStation Network as a platform capable of sharing content with the iPhone).
... Read more
(Credit:
Camerautomata)
Besides kimchi and tear-jerking dramas, Koreans are exporting creatively hacked cameras. While on vacation, Taeyoon Choi had a flash of brilliance when he saw that his shots looked no different from those taken by other tourists. With some tinkering, he fitted a point-and-shoot into Charlie, his "Magical Image Digesting Duck."
As with any good inventions, there is more to Charlie than meets the eye. Hooked up to the shooter is a vacuum cleaner, printer, and MP3 player. All the devices are linked to a central controller that handles the automated operations of the robotic waterfowl.
Charlie follows Choi around New York and, whenever someone takes a photo of it, it senses the flash and automatically snaps a picture of the person. The mechanical bird then prints out the picture (from its rear end, unfortunately) or posts it online when a wireless hot spot is available. Choi says he built Charlie to "liberate cameras from human operation."
(Source: Crave Asia)
(Credit:
Akihabara News)
We admit it: We're suckers for Peanuts. Especially around the holidays, when we get to hear the Vince Guaraldi Trio everywhere. It's one of the few childhood memories we have that doesn't involve getting beaten up by our older brothers.
That's why we were happy to see Snoopy on this iPod Nano, rather than yet another gadget adorned by the evil Hello Kitty. Japan's Run-At, which makes various products for Disney as well, has released 1,000 of the limited-edition iPods for the second year in a row with the famed beagle wearing headphones etched in the back.
Last year's special edition reportedly cost more than $300, and this one may be even more because it comes with a bevy of accessories, including a leather case. On second thought, Snoopy was kind of a jerk to Woodstock sometimes.
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