Gizmorama - January 6, 2016

Good Morning,

Engineers have developed a new social intelligent robot named Nadine. And talk about a personality. Take that Kardashians!

Learn about this and more interesting stories from the scientific community in today's issue.

Until Next Time,
Erin

P.S. Did you miss an issue? You can read every issue from the Gophercentral library of newsletters on our exhaustive archives page. Thousands of issues, all of your favorite publications in chronological order. You can read AND comment. Just click GopherArchives

***
*-- Plastic waste-catching dam to be tested in North Sea --*
DELFT, Netherlands - A conservation group called Ocean Cleanup is preparing to test its trash-catching dam technology in the North Sea.

The barrier will be installed in the second quarter of 2016. It will be placed a few miles off the coast of the Netherlands, not far from the foundation's headquarters in Delft. The floating dam is designed to funnel and trap plastic bags, bottles and other pieces of garbage.

"The scalable array of floating barriers will funnel plastics towards the center of the structure, enabling a central platform to efficiently extract and store the concentrated plastic until it is transported to land for recycling," the foundation says on its website.

Ocean Cleanup's technology is still in its infancy. The forthcoming deployment will be as much about testing structural integrity and functionality as it will be about collecting garbage.

"The main objective of the North Sea test is to monitor the effects of real-life sea conditions, with a focus on waves and currents," Ocean Cleanup wrote in a recent press release. "The motions of the barrier and the loads on the system will be monitored by cameras and sensors."

Engineers with Ocean Cleanup hope the results from the North Sea test will help them improve the technology for future large-scale deployments -- first off the coast of Tsushima Island, Japan, and then in Great Pacific Garbage Patch in 2020.


*-- New social robot Nadine has a personality --*
SINGAPORE - On Tuesday, engineers at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore unveiled an emotionally intelligent robot. The robot, named Nadine, has been employed as a receptionist at the university to test her skills.

Powered by a software technology similar to Apple's interactive interface Siri, Nadine talks and acts like a human. Deployed with her own personality, Nadine can use her social intelligence to express emotions and change moods in accordance with the topic and tone of conversation.

Her memory allows her to recognize people she's met before and recall what was said during previous conversations.

"This is somewhat like a real companion that is always with you and conscious of what is happening," Nadia Thalmann, a robotics professor NTU's School of Computer Engineering, explained in a press release. "So in future, these socially intelligent robots could be like C-3PO, the iconic golden droid from Star Wars, with knowledge of language and etiquette."

Thalmann says in the future social robots like Nadine could become office assistants or serve as companions and caretakers for the children and the elderly at home.

"[They could] even serve as a platform for healthcare services in future," Thalmann said.

For now, Nadine will simply talk to students and faculty at Nanyang.

Thalmann and her colleagues also introduced EDGAR, a tele-presence robot capable of replicating the movements of its human user in real time. Using a webcam, EDGAR can be controlled from anywhere in the world -- at least anywhere with Internet.

EDGAR can also interact with humans, greeting them, offering a smile and reading a programmed script.

Engineering professor Gerald Seet thinks EDGAR and robots like him could prove useful in education, business and tourism industries.

"Telepresence provides an additional dimension to mobility," said Seet. "The user may project his or her physical presence at one or more locations simultaneously, meaning that geography is no longer an obstacle."

"In future, a renowned educator giving lectures or classes to large groups of people in different locations at the same time could become commonplace," he added. "Or you could attend classes or business meetings all over the world using robot proxies, saving time and travel costs."

***
Missed an Issue? Visit the Gizmorama Archives