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4 <title>IEEE Spectrum Recent Content full text</title>
5 <link>https://spectrum.ieee.org</link>
6 <description>IEEE Spectrum Recent Content headlines</description>
7 <pubDate>Fri, 30 Oct 2020 20:25:00 GMT</pubDate>
8 <atom:link href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/rss/fulltext" type="application/rss+xml" rel="self" />
9 <item>
10 <title>Video Friday: Attack of the Hexapod Robots</title>
11 <link>https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/robotics-hardware/video-friday-attack-hexapod-robots</link>
12 <description>Your weekly selection of awesome robot videos</description>
13 <category>robotics</category>
14 <category>robotics/robotics-hardware</category>
15 <pubDate>Fri, 30 Oct 2020 20:25:00 GMT</pubDate>
16 <guid>https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/robotics-hardware/video-friday-attack-hexapod-robots</guid>
17 <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p></p>
18 <p>Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your Automaton bloggers. We’ll also be posting a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months; here’s what we have so far (<a href="mailto:automaton@ieee.org?subject=Robotics%20event%20suggestion%20for%20Video%20Friday">send us your events</a>!):</p>
19 <h5><a href="http://www.iros2020.org/">IROS 2020</a> – October 25-25, 2020 – [Online]</h5>
20 <h5><a href="https://roscon.ros.org/world/2020/">ROS World 2020</a> – November 12, 2020 – [Online]</h5>
21 <h5><a href="https://cybathlon.ethz.ch/en/">CYBATHLON 2020</a> – November 13-14, 2020 – [Online]</h5>
22 <h5><a href="https://sites.psu.edu/icsr2020/">ICSR 2020</a> – November 14-16, 2020 – Golden, Colo., USA</h5>
23 <p><a href="mailto:automaton@ieee.org?subject=Robot%20video%20suggestion%20for%20Video%20Friday">Let us know</a> if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today’s videos.</p>
24 <hr>
25 <!--nextpage-->
26 <p>Happy Halloween from HEBI Robotics!</p>
27 <p><iframe allowfullscreen frameborder="0" height="349" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/Is8C6imjgp0" width="620"></iframe></p>
28 <p><em>Thanks Hardik!</em></p>
29 <p>[ <a href="https://www.hebirobotics.com/">HEBI Robotics</a> ]</p>
30 <hr>
31 <p>Happy Halloween from Berkshire Grey!</p>
32 <p><iframe allowfullscreen frameborder="0" height="349" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/dT9j4h4rIm8" width="620"></iframe></p>
33 <p>[ <a href="https://www.berkshiregrey.com/">Berkshire Grey</a> ]</p>
34 <hr>
35 <blockquote>
36 <p><em>These are some preliminary results of our lab’s new work on using reinforcement learning to train neural networks to imitate common bipedal gait behaviors, without using any motion capture data or reference trajectories. Our method is described in an upcoming submission to ICRA 2021. Work by Jonah Siekmann and Yesh Godse.</em></p>
37 </blockquote>
38 <p></p>
39 <p><iframe allowfullscreen frameborder="0" height="349" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/Wb0tIWBrjmc" width="620"></iframe></p>
40 <p></p>
41 <p>[ <a href="https://mime.oregonstate.edu/research/drl/">OSU DRL</a> ]</p>
42 <p></p>
43 <hr>
44 <p></p>
45 <blockquote>
46 <p><em>The northern goshawk is a fast, powerful raptor that flies effortlessly through forests. This bird was the design inspiration for the next-generation drone developed by scientifics of the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems of EPFL led by Dario Floreano. They carefully studied the shape of the bird’s wings and tail and its flight behavior, and used that information to develop a drone with similar characteristics.</em></p>
47 </blockquote>
48 <p></p>
49 <p><iframe allowfullscreen frameborder="0" height="349" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/h5ELn3hGA0o" width="620"></iframe></p>
50 <p></p>
51 <blockquote>
52 <p><em>The engineers already designed a bird-inspired drone with morphing wing back in 2016. In a step forward, their new model can adjust the shape of its wing and tail thanks to its artificial feathers. Flying this new type of drone isn’t easy, due to the large number of wing and tail configurations possible. To take full advantage of the drone’s flight capabilities, Floreano’s team plans to incorporate artificial intelligence into the drone’s flight system so that it can fly semi-automatically. The team’s research has been published in Science Robotics.</em></p>
53 </blockquote>
54 <p>[ <a href="https://actu.epfl.ch/news/raptor-inspired-drone-with-morphing-wing-and-tail/">EPFL</a> ]</p>
55 <hr>
56 <p>Oopsie.</p>
57 <p><iframe allowfullscreen frameborder="0" height="349" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/x4fdUx6d4QM" width="620"></iframe></p>
58 <p>[ <a href="https://roborace.com/">Roborace</a> ]</p>
59 <hr>
60 <p></p>
61 <p>We’ve covered MIT’s Roboats in the past, but now <a href="/cars-that-think/transportation/marine/mit-unveils-a-roboat-big-enough-to-stand-on">they’re big enough to keep a couple of people afloat</a>.</p>
62 <p></p>
63 <p><iframe allowfullscreen frameborder="0" height="349" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/OYmVwvP_pD0" width="620"></iframe></p>
64 <p></p>
65 <blockquote>
66 <p><em>Self-driving boats have been able to transport small items for years, but adding human passengers has felt somewhat intangible due to the current size of the vessels. Roboat II is the “half-scale” boat in the growing body of work, and joins the previously developed quarter-scale Roboat, which is 1 meter long. The third installment, which is under construction in Amsterdam and is considered to be “full scale,” is 4 meters long and aims to carry anywhere from four to six passengers.</em></p>
67 </blockquote>
68 <p>[ <a href="https://news.mit.edu/2020/autonomous-boats-could-be-your-next-ride-1026">MIT</a> ]</p>
69 <p></p>
70 <hr>
71 <p></p>
72 <blockquote>
73 <p><em>With a training technique commonly used to teach dogs to sit and stay, Johns Hopkins University computer scientists showed a robot how to teach itself several new tricks, including stacking blocks. With the method, the robot, named Spot, was able to learn in days what typically takes a month.</em></p>
74 </blockquote>
75 <p></p>
76 <p><iframe allowfullscreen frameborder="0" height="349" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/dvxqjJBWFD4" width="620"></iframe></p>
77 <p></p>
78 <p>[ <a href="https://hub.jhu.edu/2020/10/26/positive-reinforcement-for-robots/">JHU</a> ]</p>
79 <p></p>
80 <hr>
81 <p></p>
82 <blockquote>
83 <p><em>Exyn, a pioneer in autonomous aerial robot systems for complex, GPS-denied industrial environments, today announced the first dog, Kody, to successfully fly a drone at Number 9 Coal Mine, in Lansford, PA. Selected to carry out this mission was the new autonomous aerial robot, the ExynAero.</em></p>
84 </blockquote>
85 <p></p>
86 <p><iframe allowfullscreen frameborder="0" height="349" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/BaL98fhuMmE" width="620"></iframe></p>
87 <p></p>
88 <p>Yes, this is obviously a publicity stunt, and Kody is only flying the drone in the sense that he’s pushing the launch button and then taking a nap. But that’s also the point— drone autonomy doesn’t get much fuller than this, despite the challenge of the environment.</p>
89 <p>[ <a href="https://www.exyn.com/news/kody-the-dog-selected-as-first-animal-drone-operator-after-successful-flight-in-pennsylvania">Exyn</a> ]</p>
90 <p></p>
91 <hr>
92 <p></p>
93 <blockquote>
94 <p><em>In this video object instance segmentation and shape completion are combined with classical regrasp planning to perform pick-place of novel objects. It is demonstrated with a UR5, <a href="https://robots.ieee.org/robots/robotiq/?utm_source=spectrum">Robotiq</a> 85 parallel-jaw gripper, and Structure depth sensor with three rearrangement tasks: bin packing (minimize the height of the packing), placing bottles onto coasters, and arrange blocks from tallest to shortest (according to the longest edge). The system also accounts for uncertainty in the segmentation/completion by avoiding grasping or placing on parts of the object where perceptual uncertainty is predicted to be high.</em></p>
95 </blockquote>
96 <p></p>
97 <p><iframe allowfullscreen frameborder="0" height="349" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/OBGf7L3iKsM" width="620"></iframe></p>
98 <p></p>
99 <p>[ <a href="https://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/mgualti/2021-Gualtieri-PickPlaceWithUncertainObjectInstanceSegmentationAndShapeCompletion.pdf">Paper</a> ] via [ <a href="https://www.khoury.northeastern.edu/research_areas/robotics/">Northeastern</a> ]</p>
100 <p><em>Thanks Marcus!</em></p>
101 <p></p>
102 <hr>
103 <p></p>
104 <p>U can’t touch this!</p>
105 <p></p>
106 <p><iframe allowfullscreen frameborder="0" height="349" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/KMmkcUkTC5w" width="620"></iframe></p>
107 <p></p>
108 <p>[ <a href="http://ishikawa-vision.org/">University of Tokyo</a> ]</p>
109 <p></p>
110 <hr>
111 <p></p>
112 <blockquote>
113 <p><em>We introduce a way to enable more natural interaction between humans and robots through Mixed Reality, by using a shared coordinate system. Azure Spatial Anchors, which already supports colocalizing multiple HoloLens and smartphone devices in the same space, has now been extended to support robots equipped with cameras. This allows humans and robots sharing the same space to interact naturally: humans can see the plan and intention of the robot, while the robot can interpret commands given from the person’s perspective. We hope that this can be a building block in the future of humans and robots being collaborators and coworkers. </em></p>
114 </blockquote>
115 <p></p>
116 <p><iframe allowfullscreen frameborder="0" height="349" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/bhoNnqtte_M" width="620"></iframe></p>
117 <p></p>
118 <p>[ <a href="https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/video/enabling-interaction-between-mixed-reality-and-robots-via-cloud-based-localization/">Microsoft</a> ]</p>
119 <p></p>
120 <hr>
121 <p></p>
122 <p>Some very high jumps from the skinniest quadruped ever.</p>
123 <p></p>
124 <p><iframe allowfullscreen frameborder="0" height="349" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/57LDt7paOEw" width="620"></iframe></p>
125 <p></p>
126 <p>[ <a href="https://open-dynamic-robot-initiative.github.io/">ODRI</a> ]</p>
127 <p></p>
128 <hr>
129 <p></p>
130 <blockquote>
131 <p><em>In this video we present recent efforts to make our humanoid robot LOLA ready for multi-contact locomotion, i.e. additional hand-environment support for extra stabilization during walking.</em></p>
132 </blockquote>
133 <p></p>
134 <p><iframe allowfullscreen frameborder="0" height="349" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/mpDqMFppT68" width="620"></iframe></p>
135 <p></p>
136 <p>[ <a href="https://www.mw.tum.de/en/am/research/current-projects/robotics/humanoid-robot-lola/">TUM</a> ]</p>
137 <p></p>
138 <hr>
139 <p></p>
140 <p>Classic bike moves from Dr. Guero.</p>
141 <p></p>
142 <p><iframe allowfullscreen frameborder="0" height="349" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/j6bNVqe_1xY" width="620"></iframe></p>
143 <p></p>
144 <p>[ <a href="http://ai2001.ifdef.jp/">Dr. Guero</a> ]</p>
145 <p></p>
146 <hr>
147 <p></p>
148 <p>For a robotics company, iRobot is OLD.</p>
149 <p></p>
150 <p><iframe allowfullscreen frameborder="0" height="349" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/N0o0l_DjbSg" width="620"></iframe></p>
151 <p></p>
152 <p>[ <a href="https://www.irobot.com/">iRobot</a> ]</p>
153 <p></p>
154 <hr>
155 <p></p>
156 <blockquote>
157 <p><em>The Canadian Space Agency presents Juno, a preliminary version of a rover that could one day be sent to the Moon or Mars. Juno can navigate autonomously or be operated remotely. The Lunar Exploration Analogue Deployment (LEAD) consisted in replicating scenarios of a lunar sample return mission.</em></p>
158 </blockquote>
159 <p></p>
160 <p><iframe allowfullscreen frameborder="0" height="349" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/TmxafOXh7Xs" width="620"></iframe></p>
161 <p></p>
162 <p>[ <a href="https://www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/rovers/mission-simulations/lunar-exploration-analogue-deployment.asp">CSA</a> ]</p>
163 <p></p>
164 <hr>
165 <p></p>
166 <blockquote>
167 <p><em>How exactly does the <a href="https://robots.ieee.org/robots/waymo/?utm_source=spectrum">Waymo</a> Driver handle a cat cutting across its driving path? Jonathan N., a Product Manager on our Perception team, breaks it all down for us.</em></p>
168 </blockquote>
169 <p></p>
170 <p><iframe allowfullscreen frameborder="0" height="349" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/vtwFdQjj8N4" width="620"></iframe></p>
171 <p></p>
172 <p>Now do kangaroos.</p>
173 <p>[ <a href="https://waymo.com/">Waymo</a> ]</p>
174 <p></p>
175 <hr>
176 <p></p>
177 <p><a href="https://robots.ieee.org/robots/jibo/?utm_source=spectrum">Jibo</a> is hard at work at MIT playing games with kids.</p>
178 <p></p>
179 <p><iframe allowfullscreen frameborder="0" height="349" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/VyZDZbk1ebU" width="620"></iframe></p>
180 <p></p>
181 <blockquote>
182 <p><em>Children’s creativity plummets as they enter elementary school. Social interactions with peers and playful environments have been shown to foster creativity in children. Digital pedagogical tools often lack the creativity benefits of co-located social interaction with peers. In this work, we leverage a social embodied robot as a playful peer and designed Escape!Bot, a game involving child-robot co-play, where the robot is a social agent that scaffolds for creativity during gameplay.</em></p>
183 </blockquote>
184 <p>[ <a href="https://doi.org/10.1145/3383668.3419895">Paper</a> ]</p>
185 <p></p>
186 <hr>
187 <p></p>
188 <p>It’s nice when convenience stores are convenient even for the folks who <a href="/automaton/robotics/robotics-hardware/video-friday-telexistence-model-t-robot">have to do the restocking</a>.</p>
189 <p></p>
190 <p><iframe allowfullscreen frameborder="0" height="349" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/WLDucRUwJbo" width="620"></iframe></p>
191 <p></p>
192 <p>Who’s moving the crates around, though?</p>
193 <p>[ <a href="https://tx-inc.com/en/home/">Telexistence</a> ]</p>
194 <p></p>
195 <hr>
196 <p></p>
197 <blockquote>
198 <p><em>Hi, fans ! Join the ROS World 2020, opening November 12th , and see the footage of ROBOTIS’ ROS platform robots :)</em></p>
199 </blockquote>
200 <p></p>
201 <p><iframe allowfullscreen frameborder="0" height="349" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/j0PaIwk0fbs" width="620"></iframe></p>
202 <p></p>
203 <p>[ <a href="https://roscon.ros.org/world/2020/">ROS World 2020</a> ]</p>
204 <p></p>
205 <hr>
206 <p></p>
207 <blockquote>
208 <p><em>ML/RL methods are often viewed as a magical black box, and while that’s not true, learned policies are nonetheless a valuable tool that can work in conjunction with the underlying physics of the robot. In this video, Agility CTO Jonathan Hurst - wearing his professor hat at Oregon State University - presents some recent student work on using learned policies as a control method for highly dynamic legged robots.</em></p>
209 </blockquote>
210 <p></p>
211 <p><iframe allowfullscreen frameborder="0" height="349" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/QsvVM1NKQSQ" width="620"></iframe></p>
212 <p></p>
213 <p>[ <a href="https://www.agilityrobotics.com/">Agility Robotics</a> ]</p>
214 <p></p>
215 <hr>
216 <p></p>
217 <p>Here’s an ICRA Legged Robots workshop talk from Marco Hutter at ETH Zürich, on Autonomy for ANYmal.</p>
218 <p></p>
219 <p><iframe allowfullscreen frameborder="0" height="349" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/uzfozcY7NaE" width="620"></iframe></p>
220 <p></p>
221 <blockquote>
222 <p><em>Recent advances in legged robots and their locomotion skills has led to systems that are skilled and mature enough for real-world deployment. In particular, quadrupedal robots have reached a level of mobility to navigate complex environments, which enables them to take over inspection or surveillance jobs in place like offshore industrial plants, in underground areas, or on construction sites. In this talk, I will present our research work with the quadruped ANYmal and explain some of the underlying technologies for locomotion control, environment perception, and mission autonomy. I will show how these robots can learn and plan complex maneuvers, how they can navigate through unknown environments, and how they are able to conduct surveillance, inspection, or exploration scenarios.</em></p>
223 </blockquote>
224 <p>[ <a href="https://rsl.ethz.ch/">RSL</a> ]</p>
225 <p></p>
226 <hr>
227 <p></p>]]></content:encoded>
228 <dc:creator>Evan Ackerman</dc:creator>
229 <dc:creator>Erico Guizzo</dc:creator>
230 <dc:creator>Fan Shi</dc:creator>
231 <media:thumbnail url="https://spectrum.ieee.org/image/MzcxMjAyOQ.jpeg" />
232 <media:content url="https://spectrum.ieee.org/image/MzcxMjAyOQ.jpeg" />
233 </item>
234 <item>
235 <title>This Startup Spots Stress in Real-Time to Help Prevent Depression and Other Conditions</title>
236 <link>https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-institute/ieee-member-news/this-startup-spots-stress-in-realtime-to-help-prevent-depression-and-other-conditions</link>
237 <description>Philia Labs’ wearable measures physiological indicators to help manage stress</description>
238 <category>the-institute</category>
239 <category>the-institute/ieee-member-news</category>
240 <pubDate>Fri, 30 Oct 2020 18:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
241 <guid>https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-institute/ieee-member-news/this-startup-spots-stress-in-realtime-to-help-prevent-depression-and-other-conditions</guid>
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260 <figure class="xlrg" role="img">
261 <img alt="Illustration of a smart watch with emojis coming out of it" src="/image/MzcxMTE4NQ.jpeg">
262 <figcaption class="hi-cap">
263 Illustration: iStockphoto/IEEE Spectrum
264 </figcaption>
265 </figure>
266 <p><span class="tiopener">THE INSTITUTE </span>By any measurement, 2020 has been stressful for just about everyone because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Fear about the virus and concerns about our health and that of loved ones can be overwhelming. Add that to the other tensions many of us have at work, at home, and at school.</p>
267 <p>When a person is stressed enough, the <a href="https://www.livescience.com/65446-sympathetic-nervous-system.html">fight-or-flight response</a> kicks in. The sympathetic nervous system causes a sudden release of hormones—which increases heart rate, blood pressure, and perspiration.</p>
268 <p>The first step in controlling stress is to know its symptoms, but because most people are used to some stress, they don’t realize how bad things have gotten until they reach a breaking point. Over time they could experience serious health problems such as heart disease, high blood pressure, and diabetes, as well as depression and other mental health woes, according to the U.S. <a href="https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/stress/index.shtml">National Institute of Mental Health</a>. More than <a href="https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/depression">264 million people suffer from depression</a>, the <a href="https://www.who.int/">World Health Organization</a> reports.</p>
269 <p>What if there was a way to measure in real time when a person was becoming stressed, so the condition could be managed immediately using evidence-based methods? That’s the idea behind <a href="https://philialabs.com.au/">Philia Labs</a>, a startup in Melbourne, Australia, that has developed a platform with a wearable device designed to measure physiological stress indicators.</p>
270 <p>The product is aimed at health care providers and mental health professionals, as well as people who want to monitor their own stress level.</p>
271 <p>“We are quantifying stress in the body in real time,” says Dilpreet Buxi, the startup’s cofounder and chief executive. “The hardware platform and software will enable interventions both through a health care provider and by the patient to basically enable better health outcomes and a better quality of life.”</p>
272 <p></p>
273 <h3 class="tisubhead">STRESS INDICATORS</h3>
274 <p>To confirm whether someone suffers from stress, Buxi says, doctors typically use a questionnaire such as the <a href="https://www.tac.vic.gov.au/files-to-move/media/upload/k10_english.pdf">Kessler Psychological Distress Scale</a> or the <a href="http://www2.psy.unsw.edu.au/dass/">Depression Anxiety Stress Scales</a>. Such forms help assess a person’s emotional state and quality of life based on situations that might trigger anxiety. But because they are self-evaluations, the results can be inaccurate.</p>
275 <p>Some of today’s fitness wearables claim to measure stress. They use data about heart rate, sleep, and level of activity to infer how stress is affecting the wearer. But, Buxi says, the results from such devices haven’t been clinically validated.</p>
276 <p>In contrast, he says, Philia aims to measure physiological data that has been shown to more closely align with stress response and to pursue focused clinical testing. Philia’s wearable, which is worn on the wrist for at least six months, uses optical sensors to measure heart rate and blood flow. Electrodes measure “galvanic skin response”—changes in moisture caused by sweat-gland activity that can indicate a person’s emotional state, Buxi says.</p>
277 <p>“<em>Galvanic skin response</em> refers to the electrical conductivity of the skin,” he says. “In other words, when you break out into a nervous sweat, the electrical conductivity will change.”</p>
278 <figure class="xlrg" role="img">
279 <img alt="Philia Labs graphic showing acute stress" src="/image/MzcxMTE5NQ.jpeg">
280 <figcaption class="hi-cap">
281 Image: Philia Labs
282 </figcaption>
283 <figcaption>
284 Data on acute stress over a 24-hour time period collected with Philia Labs’ platform.
285 </figcaption>
286 </figure>
287 <p>Philia will initially pilot its technology on patients undergoing depression treatment, he says, adding that a clinician will prescribe the device and a clinical monitoring program for the patient. Physiological and self-reported data are captured from the patient’s sympathetic arousal—that fight-or-flight response—and computed. Trends in sympathetic arousal activity over weeks and months are calculated to determine whether a patient requires an intervention such as a change of medication or psychosocial treatment. All the information is stored in the cloud.</p>
288 <p>For patients who previously have had depression, early intervention could help reduce the risk of a recurrence, Buxi says.</p>
289 <p>“According to our conversations with psychiatrists,” he says, “stress that results in sympathetic arousal is a leading cause of relapse and needs to be monitored in order for the psychiatrist to intervene earlier.”</p>
290 <p>He says the likelihood that a person who has recovered from depression will relapse in the first year when suffering from stress is 20 percent to 50 percent.</p>
291 <p>“The platform will enable the medical provider to make better decisions,” he says. For patients, he adds, “the goal is to basically help them adopt better techniques for stress management.”</p>
292 <p>Philia has several partners including medical institutions and research universities. It is running pilot programs with 11 health care and wellness organizations. The company has filed a provisional patent application.</p>
293 <figure class="rt med" role="img">
294 <img alt="Verisense wearable" src="/image/MzcxMTIwNA.jpeg">
295 <figcaption class="hi-cap">
296 Photo: Verisense
297 </figcaption>
298 <figcaption>
299 Philia Labs is using the Verisense IMU sensor to track patients’ symptoms of stress.
300 </figcaption>
301 </figure>
302 <p>The startup has a proof-of-concept prototype for the wearable, which is built using off-the-shelf parts and is moving to a minimum viable product that will be used after a study and several trial programs are completed next year, Buxi says. A lab study on 60 patients is currently happening and will end in April. A small trial on those with mild depression patients starts in January, and a multi-site trial in depression relapse will begin in June. He says the trial is with a corporate health provider, which can expand the company’s market portfolio to non-clinicians.</p>
303 <p>The company will be seeking regulatory approval for the platform after it undergoes clinical trials.</p>
304 <h3 class="tisubhead">INSPIRATION</h3>
305 <p>A biomedical engineer, Buxi worked from 2008 to 2012 at the <a href="https://www.holstcentre.com/">Holst</a> research center in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, where he integrated state-of-the-art technologies for wearable health care devices. After that, he relocated with his family to Australia, where he pursued a Ph.D. at <a href="https://www.monash.edu/">Monash University</a> in Melbourne. For his research-project thesis, he developed a wearable blood pressure monitoring system based on pulse transit time—for which he was granted a <a href="https://sourceip.ipaustralia.gov.au/patent/cuffless-blood-pressure-monitoring-system-au2015903504/AVEFOpozNpW9jtTZMGkt">patent</a> from the Australian government.</p>
306 <p><a href="https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/author/37601391600">Several of his research papers</a> are published in the IEEE Xplore Digital Library.</p>
307 <p>Buxi got to thinking whether he might apply his Ph.D. work to the problem of measuring stress.</p>
308 <figure class="xlrg" role="img">
309 <img alt="Left: Dilpreet Buxi; Right: Alexander Senior" src="/image/MzcxMTE4Nw.jpeg">
310 <figcaption class="hi-cap">
311 Photos: Philia Labs
312 </figcaption>
313 <figcaption>
314 Dilpreet Buxi (left) and Alexander Senior, co-founders of Philia Labs.
315 </figcaption>
316 </figure>
317 <p>He began working on the idea in 2017 as a side project, and in 2018 he formed a proprietary limited partnership with the startup’s cofounder, <a href="https://philialabs.com.au/">Alexander Senior</a>. Today the company has seven employees—a mix of engineers, scientists, and entrepreneurs. The company also has collaborators from industry and academia who have expertise in machine learning, biomedical machine learning, and physiology.</p>
318 <p>The business has largely been funded by a venture capitalist and is close to completing its seed funding round.</p>
319 <p></p>
320 <h3 class="tisubhead">LEARNING TO BE AN ENTREPRENEUR</h3>
321 <p>Buxi says his biggest challenge was transitioning from being an engineer and scientist to becoming an entrepreneur.</p>
322 <p>“You need to think in terms of what is the problem you’re solving that requires a solution that somebody is going to pay money for,” he says. “That’s completely different from doing an investigation in the lab.” As an entrepreneur, “you have to find a solution where you can repeatedly get new and old customers to pay [so that you have] new and recurring revenue.</p>
323 <p>“That took a lot of learning,” he says. “In fact, even today, I think more commercially, but I’m still pretty academic. And sometimes it shows.”</p>
324 <p>He says he got help with how to run a startup from IEEE’s <a href="https://entrepreneurship.ieee.org/founder-office-hours-mentors-investors/">Founder Office Hours program</a>, which seeks to assist early- and growth-stage technology entrepreneurs from the IEEE community. It connects entrepreneurs to mentors who can provide feedback and potentially help them grow their company.</p>
325 <p>In <a href="https://entrepreneurship.ieee.org/2020_06_12_testimonial-office-hours/">a testimonial</a> about the program, Buxi says he got assistance with validating the product, thinking about the pros and cons of various business models, and refining an intellectual-property strategy to create value.</p>
326 <p>“The program shaped our thinking a bit,” he says, “to make our approach more practical.”</p>]]></content:encoded>
327 <dc:creator>Kathy Pretz</dc:creator>
328 <media:thumbnail url="https://spectrum.ieee.org/image/MzcxMTE1MA.jpeg" />
329 <media:content url="https://spectrum.ieee.org/image/MzcxMTE1MA.jpeg" />
330 </item>
331 <item>
332 <title>When X-Rays Were All the Rage, a Trip to the Shoe Store Was Dangerously Illuminating</title>
333 <link>https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-history/heroic-failures/when-xrays-were-all-the-rage-a-trip-to-the-shoe-store-was-dangerously-illuminating</link>
334 <description>The shoe-fitting fluoroscope was unnecessary and hazardous, but kids loved it</description>
335 <category>tech-history</category>
336 <category>tech-history/heroic-failures</category>
337 <pubDate>Fri, 30 Oct 2020 15:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
338 <guid>https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-history/heroic-failures/when-xrays-were-all-the-rage-a-trip-to-the-shoe-store-was-dangerously-illuminating</guid>
339 <content:encoded><![CDATA[<figure class="xlrg" role="img">
340 <img alt="Photo of shoe fluoroscope." src="/image/MzcwNzM3OQ.jpeg">
341 <div class="ai">
342 <figcaption class="hi-cap">
343 Photo: ORAU
344 </figcaption>
345 </div>
346 </figure>
347 <p>How do those shoes fit? Too tight in the toes? Too wide in the heel? Step right up to the Foot-O-Scope to eliminate the guesswork and take a scientific approach to proper shoe fitting!</p>
348 <p>When the German engineer and physicist <a href="https://ethw.org/Wilhelm_Roentgen">Wilhelm Röntgen</a> accidentally discovered a mysterious light that would pass through most substances and leave behind a ghostly image of an object’s interior, I doubt he had shoes in mind. Indeed, he didn’t even know what the light was, so he called it “X-rays,” the “X” standing for the unknown. That name stuck for English speakers, although in many languages they’re known as Röntgen rays. 8 November marks the 125th anniversary of his discovery.</p>
349 <figure class="rt med" role="img">
350 <img alt="Photo of a shoe fluoroscope." src="/image/MzcwNzM5OQ.jpeg">
351 <div class="ai">
352 <figcaption class="hi-cap">
353 Photo: Oak Ridge Associated Universities
354 </figcaption>
355 <figcaption>
356 From the 1920s through the 1950s, thousands of shoe stores in North American and Europe touted their shoe-fitting fluoroscopes, which produced X-rays of customers’ feet.
357 </figcaption>
358 </div>
359 </figure>
360 <p>Röntgen published his findings on 28 December 1895, and within a month, “On a New Kind of Rays” had been translated into English and <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/053274b0">published in <em>Nature</em></a>. Three weeks after that, <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/3/59/227"><em>Science </em>reprinted it</a><em>. </em>Word also spread quickly in the popular press about this wondrous light that allowed you to see inside the human body. Similar to Marie and Pierre Curie, Röntgen refused to take out any patents so that humanity could benefit from this new method for querying nature. Scientists, engineers, and medical doctors dove into X-ray research headlong.</p>
361 <p>Experimenters quickly realized that X-rays could produce still images, called radiographs, as well as moving images. The object of interest was placed between an X-ray beam and a fluorescent screen. Röntgen had been experimenting with cathode rays and Crookes tubes when he first saw the glow on a screen coated with barium platinocyanide. It took a few weeks of experimenting to capture clear images on a photographic plate. His first X-ray image was of his wife’s hand, distinctly showing the bones and a ring.</p>
362 <p>Viewing a moving image was simpler: You just looked directly at the fluorescent screen. Thomas Edison, an early X-ray enthusiast, coined the term fluoroscopy for this new technique, which was developed simultaneously in February 1896 in Italy and the United States.</p>
363 <figure class="xlrg" role="img">
364 <img alt="img" src="/image/MzcwNzM5OA.jpeg">
365 <div class="ai">
366 <figcaption class="hi-cap">
367 Photo: SPL/Science Source
368 </figcaption>
369 <figcaption>
370 <p>A popular 1896 textbook featured a radiograph of a woman’s foot inside a boot.</p>
371 </figcaption>
372 </div>
373 </figure>
374 <p>Less than a year after Röntgen’s discovery, William Morton, a medical doctor, and Edwin W. Hammer, an electrical engineer, rushed to publish <em>The X-Ray; or Photography of the Invisible and Its Value in Surgery</em>, which described the necessary apparatus and techniques to produce radiographs. Among the book’s numerous illustrations was a radiograph of a woman’s foot inside a boot<em>. </em>Morton and Hammer’s textbook became popular among surgeons, doctors, and dentists eager to apply this new technology.</p>
375 <h2><strong>From early on, feet in shoes were a popular X-ray subject</strong></h2>
376 <p>A push from the military during World War I helped establish the fluoroscope for shoe fitting. In his highly regarded 1914 publication <em>A Textbook of Military Hygiene and Sanitation</em>, for instance,<em> </em>Frank Keefer included radiographs of feet in boots to highlight proper and ill-fitting footwear. But Keefer stopped short of recommending that <em>every</em> soldier’s foot be imaged to check for fit, as <a href="https://jacalynduffin.ca/">Jacalyn Duffin</a> and <a href="https://charleshayter.com/about">Charles R. R. Hayter</a> (both historians and medical doctors) detail in their article <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/236916">“Baring the Sole: The Rise and Fall of the Shoe-Fitting Fluoroscope”</a><span class="MsoHyperlink"> (<em>Isis</em>, June 2000).</span></p>
377 <p>Jacob J. Lowe, a doctor in Boston, used fluoroscopy to examine the feet of wounded soldiers without removing their boots. When the war ended, Lowe adapted the technology for shoe shops, and he filed for a <a href="https://patents.google.com/patent/US1614988A/en">U.S. patent</a> in 1919, although it wasn’t granted until 1927. He named his device the Foot-O-Scope. Across the Atlantic, inventors in England applied for a British patent in 1924, which was awarded in 1926. Meanwhile, Matthew B. Adrian, inventor of the shoe fitter shown at top, <a href="https://patents.google.com/patent/US1642915A/">filed a patent claim</a> in 1921, and it was granted in 1927.</p>
378 <p>Before long, two companies emerged as the leading producers of shoe-fitting fluoroscopes: the Pedoscope Co. in England and X-Ray Shoe Fitter Inc. in the United States. The basic design included a large wooden cabinet with an X-ray tube in its base and a slot where customers would place their shoe-clad feet. When the sales clerk flipped the switch to activate the X-ray stream, the customer could view the image on a fluorescent screen, showing the bones of the feet and the outline of the shoes. The devices usually had three eyepieces so that the clerk, customer, and a third curious onlooker (parent, spouse, sibling) could all view the image simultaneously.</p>
379 <p>The machines were heralded as providing a more “scientific” method of fitting shoes. Duffin and Hayter argue, however, that shoe-fitting fluoroscopy was first and foremost an elaborate marketing scheme to sell shoes. If so, it definitely worked. My mother fondly remembers her childhood trips to Wenton’s on Bergen Avenue in Jersey City to buy saddle shoes. Not only did she get to view her feet with the fancy technology, but she was given a shoe horn, balloon, and lollipop. Retailers banked on children begging their parents for new shoes.</p>
380 <h2><strong>Radiation risks from shoe-fitting fluoroscopes were largely ignored</strong></h2>
381 <p>Although the fluoroscope appeared to bring scientific rigor to the shoe-fitting process, there was nothing medically necessary about it. My mother grudgingly acknowledges that the fluoroscope didn’t help her bunions in the least. Worse, the unregulated radiation exposure put countless customers and clerks at risk for ailments including dermatitis, cataracts, and, with prolonged exposure, cancer.</p>
382 <p>The amount of radiation exposure depended on several things, including the person’s proximity to the machine, the amount of protective shielding, and the exposure time. A typical fitting lasted 20 seconds, and of course some customers would have several fittings before settling on just the right pair. The first machines were unregulated. In fact, the roentgen (R) didn’t become the internationally accepted unit of radiation until 1928, and the first systematic survey of the machines wasn’t undertaken until 20 years later. That 1948 study of 43 machines in Detroit showed ranges from 16 to 75 roentgens per minute. In 1946, the American Standards Association had issued a safety code for industrial use of X-rays, limiting exposure to 0.1 R per day.</p>
383 <figure class="xlrg" role="img">
384 <img alt="Certificates issued to customers highlighted the shoe-fitting fluoroscope’s scientific approach." src="/image/MzcwNzQwMA.jpeg">
385 <div class="ai">
386 <figcaption class="hi-cap">
387 Photo: Oak Ridge Associated Universities
388 </figcaption>
389 <figcaption>
390 Certificates issued to customers highlighted the shoe-fitting fluoroscope’s scientific approach.
391 </figcaption>
392 </div>
393 </figure>
394 <p>But some experts had warned about the dangers of X-rays early on. Edison was one. He was already an established inventor when Röntgen made his discovery, and for several years, Edison’s lab worked nonstop on X-ray experiments. That work came to a halt with the decline and eventual death of Clarence M. Dally.</p>
395 <p>Dally, a technician in Edison’s lab, ran numerous tests with the fluoroscope, regularly exposing himself to radiation for hours on end. By 1900 he had developed lesions on his hands. His hair began to fall out, and his face grew wrinkled. In 1902, his left arm had to be amputated, and the following year his right arm. <a href="https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1904/10/04/101240949.html?pageNumber=16">He died in 1904</a> at the age of 39 from metastatic skin cancer. <em>The New York Times</em> called him “a martyr to science.” <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/clarence-dally-the-man-who-gave-thomas-edison-x-ray-vision-123713565/">Edison famously stated</a>, “Don’t talk to me about X-rays. I am afraid of them.”</p>
396 <p>Clarence Dally may have been the first American to die of radiation sickness, but by 1908 the American Roentgen Ray Society reported 47 fatalities due to radiation. In 1915 the Roentgen Society of Great Britain issued guidelines to protect workers from overexposure to radiation. These were incorporated into recommendations made in 1921 by the British X-Ray and Radium Protection Committee, a group with a similar mission. Comparable guidelines were established in the United States in 1922.</p>
397 <p>For those concerned about radiation exposure, the shoe-fitting fluoroscope seemed a dangerous machine. Christina Jordan was the wife of Alfred Jordan, a pioneer in radiographic disease detection, and in 1925, <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/archive/article/1925-12-29/11/4.html">she wrote a letter</a> to <em>The</em> <em>Times</em> of London decrying the dangerous levels of X-ray radiation to which store clerks were being exposed. Jordan noted that while a scientist who dies of radiation sickness is celebrated as “a martyr to science,” a “‘martyr to commerce’ stands on a different footing.”</p>
398 <p>Charles H. Baber, a merchant on Regent Street who claimed to be the first shoe retailer to use X-rays, <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/archive/article/1925-12-30/6/9.html">replied with a letter</a> the next day. Having used the machine since 1921, he wrote, he saw no harm to himself or his employees. <em>The Times</em> also ran <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/archive/article/1925-12-31/6/5.html">a letter from J. Edward Seager</a> of X-Rays Limited (as the Pedoscope’s manufacturer was then called), noting that the machine had been tested and certified by the National Physical Laboratory. This fact, he wrote, “should be conclusive evidence that there is no danger whatever to either assistants or users of the pedoscope.”</p>
399 <p>And that, seemingly, was that. The shoe-fitting fluoroscope flourished in the retail landscape with virtually no oversight. By the early 1950s, an estimated 10,000 machines were operating in the United States, 3,000 in the United Kingdom, and 1,000 in Canada.</p>
400 <p>After World War II and the dropping of the atomic bombs, though, Americans began to pull back from their love of all things irradiating. The shoe-fitting fluoroscope did not escape notice. As mentioned, the American Standards Association issued guidance on the technology in 1946, and reports published in the <em>Journal of the American Medical Association </em>and the <em>New England Journal of Medicine</em> also raised the alarm. States began passing legislation that the machines could be operated only by licensed physicians, and in 1957, Pennsylvania banned them entirely. But as late as 1970, 17 states still allowed them. Eventually, a few specimens made their way into museum collections; the <a href="https://www.orau.org/ptp/collection/shoefittingfluor/shoe.htm">one at top</a> is from the <a href="https://www.orau.org/ptp/museumdirectory.htm">Health Physics Historical Instrumentation Museum Collection</a> at the Oak Ridge Associated Universities.</p>
401 <p>This video by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration nicely captures how regulators finally caught up with the machine:</p>
402 <p><iframe allowfullscreen frameborder="0" height="349" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/cfALJUSmzzk" width="620"></iframe></p>
403 <p></p>
404 <p>The shoe-fitting fluoroscope is a curious technology. It seemed scientific but it wasn’t. Its makers claimed it wasn’t dangerous, but it was. In the end, it proved utterly superfluous—a competent salesperson could fit a shoe just as easily and with less fuss. And yet I understand the allure. I’ve been scanned for insoles to help my overpronated feet. I’ve been videotaped on a treadmill to help me select running shoes. Was that science? Did it help? I can only hope. I’m pretty sure at least that it did no harm.</p>
405 <p></p>
406 <p><em>An abridged version of this article appears in the November 2020 print issue as “If the X-Ray Fits.”</em></p>
407 <p><em>Part of a </em><a href="/tag/Past+Forward"><em>continuing series</em></a> <em>looking at photographs of historical artifacts that embrace the boundless potential of technology.</em></p>
408 <h2></h2>
409 <h2>About the Author</h2>
410 <p><a href="https://www.sc.edu/study/colleges_schools/artsandsciences/history/our_people/directory/marsh_allison.php">Allison Marsh</a> is an associate professor of history at the University of South Carolina and codirector of the university’s Ann Johnson Institute for Science, Technology & Society.</p>
411 <p></p>
412 <p></p>
413 <p></p>]]></content:encoded>
414 <dc:creator>Allison Marsh</dc:creator>
415 <media:thumbnail url="https://spectrum.ieee.org/image/MzcwNzM3OQ.jpeg" />
416 <media:content url="https://spectrum.ieee.org/image/MzcwNzM3OQ.jpeg" />
417 </item>
418 <item>
419 <title>Metal Spheres Swarm Together to Create Freeform Modular Robots</title>
420 <link>https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/robotics-hardware/freebots-spheres-swarm-robots</link>
421 <description>FreeBOTs use magnets and internal motors to roll around or stick together</description>
422 <category>robotics</category>
423 <category>robotics/robotics-hardware</category>
424 <pubDate>Fri, 30 Oct 2020 02:16:00 GMT</pubDate>
425 <guid>https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/robotics-hardware/freebots-spheres-swarm-robots</guid>
426 <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Swarms of modular, self-reconfigurable robots have a lot going for them, at least in theory— they’re resilient and easy to scale, since big robots can be made on demand from lots of little robots. One of the trickiest bits about modular robots is figuring out a simple and reliable way of getting them to connect to each other, without having to rely on some kind of dedicated connectivity system.</p>
427 <p>This week at the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots (IROS), a research team at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, led by <a href="https://myweb.cuhk.edu.cn/tllam">Tin Lun Lam</a> is presenting a new kind of modular robot that solves this problem by using little robotic vehicles inside of iron spheres that can stick together wherever you need them to.</p>
428 <!--nextpage-->
429 <p><iframe allowfullscreen frameborder="0" height="349" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/23I2ms6Wti4?rel=0" width="620"></iframe></p>
430 <p>Typically, modular robots are relatively complicated and finicky things, because the connections between them have to combine power, communications, and physical support, leading to robot-to-robot interfaces that are relatively complicated. And we usually see modular robots that emphasize reconfigurability as opposed to any kind of inherent single-module capability. Swarm robots, on the other hand, do emphasize single robot capability, although the single robots are intended to be most useful as part of a large swarm.</p>
431 <figure class="xlrg" role="img">
432 <img alt="Freebot robot" src="/image/MzcxMTU3Nw.jpeg">
433 <figcaption class="hi-cap">
434 Photo: Chinese University of Hong Kong-Shenzhen
435 </figcaption>
436 <figcaption>
437 The internal mechanism that FreeBOT uses to move includes a motor and a magnet.
438 </figcaption>
439 </figure>
440 <p>FreeBOT is a sort of hybrid between these two robotic concepts. Each FreeBOT module consists of an iron sphere, inside of which is a little vehicle of sorts with two motorized wheels and a permanent magnet. The magnet keeps the vehicle stuck to the inside of the sphere, and when the wheels spin, it causes the shell to roll forward or backward. Driving the wheels independently turns the shell. If this looks familiar, it could be because the popular Sphero robots have the same basic design. A single module can do a fair amount on its own, with good mobility and some neat tricks around ferromagnetic surfaces. </p>
441 <figure class="xlrg" role="img">
442 <img alt="Freebot robots connecting and disconnecting" src="/image/MzcxMTU3OA.jpeg">
443 <figcaption class="hi-cap">
444 Photo: Chinese University of Hong Kong-Shenzhen
445 </figcaption>
446 <figcaption>
447 <p>How two FreeBOTs connect to one another and separate from each other.</p>
448 </figcaption>
449 </figure>
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