Has An Iranian Scientist Named Ali Razeghi Invented A 'Time Machine'?

An Iranian inventor recently claimed he created a "time machine," according to reports. But the Internet is skeptical, and with good reason.

The Telegraph caused a stir Wednesday with a story about a young Tehran-based scientist, Ali Razeghi, and an invention he calls "The Aryayek Time Traveling Machine." 

Reportedly something of a mad scientist, Razeghi claimed the device, which "easily fits into the size of a personal computer case," can predict with 98-percent accuracy the future five to eight years of an individual's life.

The Telegraph cited an earlier story, in Farsi, by Iranian news agency Fars. 

However, The Washington Post reports that Fars quietly deleted the story, even as it began to go viral among Western media outlets. (Fars' link is now dead.) 

The Atlantic Wire points out that the story never even made it to the Science section on the site's English-language side.

A separate interview with Razeghi was published in Farsi by Iranian news site Entekhab. 

The story says Razeghi is a supervisor at Iran's Center for Strategic Inventions and Inventors and claims that his baffling invention won't be available for another few years, at least. 

"We're waiting for conditions to improve in Iran," Razeghi told the outlet, according to a translation by The Huffington Post.

Razeghi was coy during the interview, refusing to give out many details because he was worried his idea would be stolen and reproduced by China. 

He did say, however, that his device incorporates both hardware and software components, and that it cost roughly 500,000 Iranian tomans (about $400). 

When asked whether he was worried the machine might cause problems, he said he envisions it used selectively, to tell a couple the future sex of their child, for example.

Neither Iran nor Razeghi have publicly responded to the report.

Radio Free Europe writes that "most Iran watchers will be treating his announcement with a certain amount of skepticism," in light of a recent flap that involved a Photoshopped picture of Iran's Qaher-313 stealth fighter jet.

Scientists around the world have made previous claims (some dubious, some less so) about their own "time machine" inventions. 

In 2009, a man named Steve Gibbs, of Clearwater, Neb., said he had invented a "hyperdimensional resonator," which he claimed could be used for "out-of-body time travel," according to the Examiner.

More recently, in 2011, physicists from Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., announced they had developed a "time cloak" that they say can hide events for trillionths of a second.

huffingtonpost.com

RoboBees Will Soon Sting You- Scientists Developing Flying-bee Size Robots to Pollinate Flowers

(Photo : scientificamerica )

There is a huge fall in the honeybee population due to mysterious affliction called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD, which began to wipe out honeybee hives. 

These bees control most commercial pollination in the U.S., and their loss creates low production of crops due to low rate of pollination. In 2009, teams of Harvard and Northeastern University scientists considered seriously to create a robotic bee colony. 

Now these teams worked on a swarm of tiny RoboBees- flying-bee size robots- that could pollinate flowers and do the job of real bees if needed.

According to Inhaitat, "In 2009 the three of us began to seriously consider what it would take to create a robotic bee colony," the team leaders told Scientific America.

"We wondered if mechanical bees could replicate not just an individual's behavior but the unique behavior that emerges out of interactions among thousands of bees. 

We have now created the first RoboBees-flying bee-size robots-and are working on methods to make thousands of them cooperate like a real hive," they added.

Objectives of RoboBees Project

RoboBees size presents a huge variety of physical and computational trials. The bees, to power and control flight, must employ specially designed artificial muscles to overcome their inefficient motors and bearings.

In addition, the tiny bees must have freedom. 

In other words, they must freely think and act, using miniature sensors.

The biomimicking scheme, also known as the Micro Air Vehicles Project, aims to "push advances in miniature robotics and the design of compact high-energy power sources; spur innovations in ultra-low-power computing and electronic 'smart' sensors; and refine coordination algorithms to manage multiple, independent machines".

Like real bees, RoboBees will work best when employed as swarms of thousands of individuals, coordinating their actions without relying on a single leader. 

The hive must be spirited enough so that the group can complete its objectives even if many bees fail.

Moreover, scientists can use RoboBees for search and rescue, hazardous environment exploration such as a nuclear disaster sites, high-resolution weather and climate mapping and traffic monitoring.

(Source- Scientific America)

designntrend.com

Freed From Its Cage, the Gentler Robot

Rethink Robotics

The Baxter robot from Rethink Robotics.

By ANNE EISENBERG

FACTORY robots are usually caged off from humans on the assembly line lest the machines’ powerful steel arms deliver an accidental, bone-crunching right hook.

But now, gentler industrial robots, designed to work and play well with others, are coming out from behind their protective fences to work shoulder-to-shoulder with people. 

It’s an advance made possible by sophisticated algorithms and improvements in sensing technologies like computer vision.

The key to these new robots is the ability to respond more flexibly, anticipating and adjusting to what humans want. 

That is in contrast to earlier generations of robots that often required extensive programming to change the smallest details of their routine, saidHenrik Christensen, director of the robotics program at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

“Researchers in labs worldwide are building robots that can predict what you’ll do next and be ready to give you the best possible assistance,” he said.

One of those researchers is Julie A. Shah, an assistant professor in the department of aeronautics and astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Shah once taught robots to do tasks the old way: by hitting a button that essentially told them “good,” “bad” or “neutral” as they did each part of a job. Now she has added a technique called cross-training, in which robots and humans exchange roles, learning a thing or two from each other in the process.

In a recent study, Dr. Shah and a student had human-robot teams perform a chore borrowed from the assembly line: the humans placed screws and the robots did the drilling. Then the teammates exchanged jobs and the robots observed the humans drill.

“The robot gathers information on how the person does the drilling,” adding that information to its algorithms, Dr. Shah said. “The robot isn’t learning one optimal way to drill. Instead it is learning a teammate’s preferences, and how to cooperate.”

When the cross-trained teams resumed their original roles, both robots and people did their jobs more efficiently, the study found. 

The time that the humans were idle while waiting for the robot to finish a task dropped 41 percent and the time that humans and robots worked simultaneously increased 71 percent, when compared with teams working with robots trained the old way.

“This is a fascinating application of cross-training,” said Andrea Thomaz, an assistant professor of interactive computing at Georgia Tech. 

“By learning the human’s role, the robot can better anticipate actions and be a better partner, even if in the end it will only do one role.”

The humans on the teams also improved their teamwork skills, said Illah R. Nourbakhsh, professor of robotics at Carnegie Mellon University and author of the book “Robot Futures,” published this month by M.I.T. Press. 

Prof. Julie Shah of M.I.T. and two graduate students, Ron Wilcox and Matthew Gombolay, ran a cross-training experiment.

“In the future, this idea of cross-training will turn out to be really important as robots start to work shoulder-to-shoulder with us,” he said. 

“We are not very good at adopting the point of view of a robot. 

This study showed that we can learn, though, with the right signals.”

Dr. Christensen of Georgia Tech said: “Robots of the future won’t just be in manufacturing. 

Almost any area could have a robot that would help make our life easier,” whether “lifting patients in hospital beds or helping at home.

“But they have to be safe, and they have to have the kind of anticipation that Julie Shah is working on, because they have to be able to automatically figure out what we need help with,” he said.

Gentle, helpful robots aren’t just being created in labs; they are also arriving in the marketplace. 

Since January, Rethink Robotics of Boston has been sending customers its two-armed robot called Baxter, which can work uncaged, moving among people. 

“We are shipping robots every day and have a backlog of orders of about three months,” saidRodney Brooks, Rethink’s founder, chairman and chief technology officer.

Baxter, which costs $22,000, can lift objects from a conveyor belt. “You don’t have to tell it the exact velocity,” Dr. Brooks said. “It sees objects and grabs them, matching its speed to the speed of the object.”

Baxter is used in manufacturing plants and shops of varying sizes. One example is theRodon Group, a plastic injection molding company in Hatfield, Pa., where Baxter packs boxes on the factory floor.

Baxter’s cameras inspect what is to be lifted, recognizing an object from many angles. In the coming year, Baxter will be able to grab objects not only from above, but also from the side, putting them into a milling machine, for example, and pressing the “go” button. It will also be able to connect with other machines, to synchronize tasks.

“Baxter is a great starting point for this new generation of robots,” said Dr. Christensen of Georgia Tech, who has no connection to Rethink Robotics’ work, “making the technology accessible to companies that before would have had to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

“He’s opening up a new market,” Dr. Christensen said of Baxter’s work.

Baxter is not the only unfenced robot on the assembly line. A Danish company, Universal Robots, for example, sells a one-armed robot for $33,000 that can also be used without a cage.

IMPRESSIVE as the new robots are, they will soon have even more advanced skills, said Stefan Schaal, a professor of computer science, neuroscience and biomedical engineering at the University of Southern California and a director of the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Germany. In the future, robots will be able to go onto the Internet and exchange information, leading to vast gains in what they can accomplish.

“It will take time before we get there,” he Schaal said, “but it will happen.”

nytimes.com