Entries with tag georgia institute of technology.

A Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) researcher has designed a tool that helps managers assign and track tasks in collaborative projects. The Pipeline tool makes it easier for project leaders to delegate and redistribute leadership responsibilities on collaborative projects and also streamline the project-development process. Kurt Luther, now a postdoctoral fellow at CMU’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute created the open-source tool while a doctoral student at Georgia Institute of Technology. He presented his research at the recent ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW 2013) in San Antonio, Texas. (PhysOrg)(Carnegie Mellon University)(Pipeline)

Researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Georgia Robotics and Intelligent Systems Laboratory have programmed a swarm of very tiny robots to play Beethoven’s “Für Elise” on a virtual piano. The 5.5-centimeter-wide Khepera robots are thimble-shaped. The scientists choose one to be the swarm’s leader and provide it with the tune and information about where on the flat virtual piano each robot should be. The leader communicates this information to the other robots, which contain various sensors, an antenna, and two wheels. The robots mimic the swarming behaviors like those shown by birds or fish. The researchers have created a Robot Music Wall and are working on algorithms that would enable their robots to drive around it in a coordinated manner, playing different instruments and notes. (PhysOrg)(Georgia Robotics and Intelligent Systems Laboratory) 

Georgia Institute of Technology researchers have used complex computational models to help design swimming microrobots. The engineers say their modeling shows what factors would be important in constructing a real system. The researchers modeled a robot that was 10 microns long, had two flaps, and was made from a gel that responds to chemical reactions or changes in temperature or in magnetic or electric fields, or temperature changes. These changes would enable the body of the swimming robot to expand and contract, which would also make the hydrogel-based flaps move and help propel it. The researchers said microswimming devices could travel a few micrometers per second and be useful for targeted drug delivery within the human body, to help with small-scale assembly tasks, and in microfluidic chips for lab-on-a-chip applications. They published their work in the journal Soft Matter. (Science Daily)(Georgia Institute of Technology)(Soft Matter)

University of Groningen and Georgia Institute of Technology researchers have developed a framework that would promote the development of plastic electronics. Although plastic semiconductors could enable cheaper devices, they are subject to charge traps, in which electrons get stuck in the material and reduce the current. This has discouraged their use. The researchers studied nine polymers and discovered a common mechanism related to their energy level that enabled them to develop a theoretical framework for designing trap-free plastic electronics, which could help with the manufacture of efficient plastic LEDs and solar cells. They published their findings in Nature Materials. (Science Daily)(Georgia Institute of Technology)(Nature Materials)

The Georgia Institute of Technology's Information Security Center says a form of copy protection typically used for securing intellectual property may make it difficult for researchers to analyze and detect malware. The technique, initially found in the Flashback Trojan, adds functions that specifically bind the malware to each victim’s machine, preventing security analysis of it. The Georgia Tech researchers say that hackers employing host identity-based encryption could encrypt critical parts of malware that makes analysis and automated detection even more difficult. They presented their research at last week’s Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas. (Technology Review)(Georgia Tech Information Security Center)

Scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Center for Music Technology have developed a robot designed to help people better enjoy music. Shimi is a smartphone-enabled robot that recommends songs based on ongoing listener feedback and dances to the music’s beat. The one-foot-tall robot is a docking station powered by an Android-compatible phone. When the phone is docked, the robot accesses applications on the device that let it function. Through the phone’s camera and face-detecting software, for example, Shimi follows a user around the room and repositions its speakers to provide the user with the best sound possible. It can also take a rhythm tapped by a user and find songs on the device with a similar tempo. Once the music is playing, Shimi dances. The scientists are working on more features, such as having Shimi skip a song or change the volume based on hand movements. The researchers—with colleagues from the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya University in Israel and the MIT Media Lab—have created the Tovbot company to commercialize Shimi, which they expect to be available in late 2013. They demonstrated their robot at the recent Google I/O 2012 conference in San Francisco. (Science Daily)(Georgia Tech)

Robot designers have often built machines that used motions taken from nature, typically those used by an animal’s appendages like legs, wings, or fins. Now, though, Georgia Institute of Technology researchers are studying Mexican jumping beans, which are actually seed pods containing a moth larva. While it is developing in a period of six to eight months, the encased moth larva must quickly find cooler areas. As the larva chews into the pod, its motion causes the bean to jump and roll to find shade. The Georgia Tech researchers found that the pod’s motions aren’t random. They then created an algorithm describing the behavior and used it to move a wheeled robot in a controlled direction. They say their findings could help design devices such as low-powered robots for sensing or surveillance. Learning more about rolling motions found in nature can help researchers apply that information to wheeled robots to make them more adaptable and autonomous as they traverse various terrain. The scientists published their work in the journal Bioinspiration & Biomimetics. (PhysOrg)(Bioinspiration & Biomimetics)