Wisconsin Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory is dealing with the latest in interactive robots. They have so far come up with interesting uses for robots of the future. A game playing robot that can keep small children entertained was displayed at a recent open house show to display how much progress has been made in human – robot interaction.

Other robots at the show included one which served sushi to customers from a mock order table and a tele -prescence robot allowed a human to see things where he was not present but a robot was. They shared a gaze with special glasses made for the purpose.  HCI Lab’s telepresence robot consists of an iPad-like device running a video-conferencing program, attached to a motorized base with wheels. It is fondly called Skype on a Stick by its creators.

If robots can be made to act more human, humans will not have to learn new behaviors to interact with them. Think about a smart phone and how much it can do for you, but its all useless till you learn how to operate it. Many people have trouble handling the various apps and barely scratch the surface of the full potential of the phone.

Robots could make humans face a similar problem in the future. This is why most science projects at the HCI lab are working towards making robotic behavior more natural for human beings to understand and interact with.

After spending many hours of research and equal amount of money NASA has now intentionally crashed a space probe into the moon. The spacecraft in question is LADEE or the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer. The space probe was launched in September 2013 to study the atmosphere of the moon by making more than 100 orbits.

It had completed its primary mission in the month of March 2014. The LADEE was running low on fuel and left to its own devices may have crashed into a historic site on the moon such as the landing site of the Apollo missions. So the NASA engineers decided to bring it down to the moon in a controlled trajectory.

The LADEE even survived the four hour darkness generated by the total lunar eclipse of 15 April. An important feat considering that it was only ever designed to handle an hour’s darkness. It was shortly before the eclipse that NASA engineers gave the LADEE a final engine burn that determined the crash trajectory.

Finally the spacecraft crashed into the moon at a speed of nearly 5800 kilometers per hour. The craft itself disintegrated and may have even vaporized on its ways down to the surface of the moon. Now that is a science project going down in a blaze of glory!

Intelligence in robots is a relative thing, after all getting a robot to do what the human wants it to is actually just obeying orders. Researchers at the Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory (HCI Lab) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are working towards making robots interact more than static computers.

Nao, a humanoid robot made by the Parisian company, Aldebaran Robotics can play a version of 20 questions with a human at the HCI lab. A number of objects are placed in a tray and the human must ask questions to figure out which one the robot has chosen. When the human gets the right object the robot congratulates the human with the enthusiasm of a child.

Another robot at the HCI lab is serving Sushi to human beings from a mock order table. The Nao robot chooses from various options based on what the human being has ordered. Of course it was not real sushi but wooden blocks resembling sushi that the robot was serving up as per order.

Human Computer Interaction is a new field that blends together computer science, design, behavioral science and more together. It is an exciting time to be part of a new generation of robot builders. This is a set of science projects that is going to keep researchers busy for a large number of years in the future.

Touching the doors in public washrooms has often been a very unsanitary event. The thought of the number of people who did not wash their hands after using the loo and touched that door handle, almost makes you want to hold on till you can get home to do your business. However sometimes there is just no avoiding the germ ridden door handle of a public washroom.

Perhaps the Agency of Design for Altitude  Medical, a studio in Britain, finally has come up with the solution to the icky door handle. The one that they designed does not just repel germs, it actually helps people sanitize their hands as well. The handle that they call “Pull Clean” looks just like a normal door handle except for the blue section below that pumps out hand sanitizer when pushed.

It also contains a sensor that monitors how often it is used. It has been on trial in various hospitals to see if the use for such a door handle is able to cut down the number of hospital acquired infections in recovering patients. From the data collected so far in US hospitals it has been able to increase the frequency of hand sanitizing from 22% to 77% as per Discovery News. Now that is a science project worth replicating!

The planet Earth in its existence has seen repeated upheaval with life forms disappearing each time an ice age or warmer ear came and went. Fossil remains from close to 252 million years ago show that close to 90% of the species alive on earth at that time were wiped out. This is one of the five largest mass extinctions that the planet has seen and is called the end Permian extinction.

All kinds of theories have been brought forth and speculated upon to find out the reason for this extinction. Researchers at MIT now claim to have pinpointed the culprit behind this phenomenon, but you will need your microscope to see them. It seems that microbes rather than asteroids attacks, volcanoes or coal fires were responsible for this massive loss of life.

The methane producing archaea called  Methanosarcina rapidly multiplied in oceans and threw out huge quantities of methane into the atmosphere.  This changed the chemistry of the oceans and the climate above, leading to the mass extinction. The excessive amounts of carbon dioxide in the air was unsuitable for life then present on earth.

What could not adapt to survive perished. Such is the nature of the world even today. Although we try to take care of our environment, human activities may be the reason for the next mass extinction on the planet. Perhaps we need to conduct a science experiment to see just how prepared we are to save the planet.