Daily Mail
26th August 2008

A man who has been paralysed for the past 20 years is able to walk again thanks to a revolutionary electronic exoskeleton.

Radi Kaiof, 41, now walks down the street with a dim mechanical hum as the system moves his legs and propels him forwards.

Radi Kaiof walks using an electronic exoskeleton. It is due to go on sale in 2010

'I never dreamed I would walk again. After I was wounded, I forgot what it's like,' said Kaiof, who was injured while serving in the Israeli military in 1988.

'Only when standing up can I feel how tall I really am and speak to people eye to eye, not from below.'

The device will allow many wheel-chair bound people to stand

The device, called ReWalk, is the brainchild of engineer Amit Goffer, founder of Argo Medical Technologies, a small Israeli high-tech company.

Something of a mix between the exoskeleton of a crustacean and the suit worn by Robocop, ReWalk helps paraplegics - people paralysed below the waist - to stand, walk and climb stairs.

Goffer himself was paralysed in an accident in 1997 but he cannot use his own invention because he does not have full function of his arms.

The system, which requires crutches to help with balance, consists of motorized leg supports, body sensors and a back pack containing a computerized control box and rechargeable batteries.

The user picks a setting with a remote control wrist band - stand, sit, walk, descend or climb - and then leans forward, activating the body sensors and setting the robotic legs in motion.

'It raises people out of their wheelchair and lets them stand up straight,' Goffer said.

'It's not just about health, it's also about dignity.'

Kate Parkin, director of physical and occupational therapy at NYU Medical Centre, said it has the potential to improve a user's health in two ways.

'Physically, the body works differently when upright. You can challenge different muscles and allow full expansion of the lungs,' Parkin said.

'Psychologically, it lets people live at the upright level and make eye contact.'

The ReWalk is now in clinical trials in Tel Aviv's Sheba Medical Centre. It is due to go on sale to the public in 2010 and will cost around £10,000.

Scientists will meet today to debate the latest techniques for creating artificial life - and in the process, hope to solve one of the key riddles of evolution. Roger Highfield investigates

Telegraph.co.uk
5 August 2008

Web pages have 'come alive and started breeding'

Artificial life being created

Robot that can build itself to be unveiled

Is evolution about to enter a new phase? Today, 300 biologists, computer scientists, physicists, mathematicians, philosophers and social scientists from around the world are gathering in Winchester. Their aim is to address one of the greatest challenges in modern science: how to create a genuine artificial life form.

The idea that life owes its existence to some "vital essence" or "animating spark" has long been discredited in scientific circles. Instead, it is believed that the first living thing emerged after a chemical reaction crossed the watershed that divides inanimate objects from the kind of self-replicating "organic" reactions that run our cells.

Photo: Intelligent design: self-aware computers such as Pixar’s Wall-E are surprisingly tricky to put together

Researchers into artificial life, or "ALife", take two basic approaches. In "wet" ALife, scientists either tinker with microbes and other forms of simple life, or try to cook up cocktails of chemicals on water (hence "wet") that have the capacity to extract energy and raw materials from the environment, to grow and reproduce, and ultimately to evolve. Meanwhile, "in silico" ALifers use silicon chips to try to kindle the spark of life in the heart of a computer.
( >>Continued )

'I do, Robot.' Technical advances lead to very close relationships with robots.

Sharon Gaudin (Computerworld)
PC World

An artificial intelligence researcher predicts that robotics will make such dramatic advances in the coming years that humans will be marrying robots by the year 2050.

Robots will become so human-like -- having intelligent conversations, displaying emotions and responding to human emotions -- that they'll be very much like a new race of people, said David Levy, a British artificial intelligence researcher whose book, "Love and Sex with Robots," will be released on November 6 [last year].

Gone, he says, will be the jerky movements and artificial-sounding voices generally associated with robots. These will be highly human-like machines that people fall in love with, becoming aides, friends and even spouses.

It may sound like science fiction, but Levy, who turned his book into an academic Ph.D. dissertation at Maastricht University in The Netherlands this fall, said it's something we've been moving toward for decades now.

"Robots started out in factories making cars. There was no personal interaction," said Levy, who also is an International Chess Master who has been developing computer chess games for years. "Then people built mail cart robots, and then robotic dogs. Now robots are being made to care for the elderly. In the last 20 years, we've been moving toward robots that have more relationships with humans, and it will keep growing toward a more emotional relationship, a more loving one and a sexual one."

Yes, Levy was quick to say that humans will have sexual relationships with robots, perhaps within five years -- sooner than most might think. ( >>Read on )

Machine's computer will help surgeons get a perfect fit for new joint

Denis Campbell, Health Correspondent
The Observer
Sunday June 15, 2008

British doctors have helped to create a surgical robot that will revolutionise treatment for the 160,000 people a year who are given a new knee or hip.

The Sculptor robot enables surgeons to install replacement joints in exactly the right place and removes the risk of them not fitting properly. Ill-fitting joints can cause patients pain and force them to undergo corrective operations. Sensors in the positioning arm of the Sculptor tell the computer where the surgeon is cutting away bone.

The machine stops surgeons from making a mistake while they are removing the old, worn bone in an arthritic knee by disabling their mechanised cutting tool if they stray outside the area shown in a model of the knee in its computer. It is the first orthopaedic surgical tool to use this 'actively constraining' technology, which has been developed after 15 years of research by a team of engineers, computer scientists and doctors at Imperial College London. The team was led by Professor Justin Cobb and Professor Brian Davies.

( >>Read on )