‘robots’
Vanderbilt, Ohio State to develop social robots to encourage activity among older adults
Jun. 18, 2020—Researchers from Vanderbilt University and The Ohio State University are teaming up to develop next-generation robotic technology that can help older adults living with forms of dementia through a grant from the National Institute on Aging at the National Institutes of Health. The five-year grant, totaling $3.13 million, will support research and development of robotic...
Engineers develop technologies to make autism treatment more effective, accessible
Apr. 17, 2018—April is National Autism Awareness Month A recent CDC announcement reports that one in 88 children have an Autism Spectrum Disorder, up from one in 110 released in 2009. ASD refers to a range of conditions characterized by challenges with social skills, repetitive behaviors, speech and nonverbal communication, as well as by unique strengths and...
Penn Engineering’s Kumar says FAA grounding won’t halt growing drone interest
Oct. 14, 2015—Aerial robot superstar Vijay Kumar gets that there are good reasons for the Federal Aviation Administration to look askance at drone use. There are 15,000 of them sold each month in the U.S. alone, with no standard safety regulations or training for users. Even a drone weighing about a pound can hurt someone if it...
Valdastri and team want to put tiny robots into science classrooms
Jul. 27, 2015— Pietro Valdastri’s STORM lab is a cacophony of whirring motors and adolescent chatter, packed with Adventure Science Center summer campers and Vanderbilt University researchers. In a corner is a pair of high school math and science teachers learning how to make discoveries by the engineers understandable to the kids. “In engineering, you come up...
Valdastri takes NSF CAREER Award for capsule robots with educational component
Jan. 28, 2015—Vanderbilt University researcher Pietro Valdastri won a $400,000 National Science Foundation CAREER Award with his proposal, not only to design and build capsule robots capable of finding internal disease, but also to make sure his discoveries are used in education at all levels. Valdastri, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering, primarily focuses his research on...
New device will allow brain surgery through cheek, helping people with epilepsy
Oct. 1, 2014—For those most severely affected, treating epilepsy can mean drilling into the skull – invasive, dangerous and with a long recovery period. But a team based at Vanderbilt University School of Engineering wondered: What if it were possible to address epileptic seizures and other brain disorders in a less invasive way? It would mean inventing...
After Fukushima, Vanderbilt researchers study radiation’s effects on robots
Aug. 27, 2014— After the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant disaster, investigators used robots to determine the extent of the damage and begin cleaning up. The question is how well robots can stand up to that sort of radiation and whether the humans using them can count on the data gathered. Three teams of Vanderbilt University researchers...
NSF grant to help engineers accelerate development of medical capsule robots
Dec. 6, 2012—Four Vanderbilt School of Engineering faculty members have been awarded a $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation to create new tools, including a web-based modeling and simulation infrastructure, intended to help speed up the development of miniature medical capsule robots. The four-year project – Cyber-Physical Systems: Integrated Modeling, Analysis and Synthesis of Miniature...