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Tuesday, October 7, 2008 |
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Calgary students show off robot for police, fire, military personnel |
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Written by Bill Graveland, THE CANADIAN PRESS
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Tuesday, 22 July 2008 |
Calgary student Fady Khaled, Team Leader at Calgary's DeVry, shows off Nova 5, a robot capable of navigating and making decisions. It is expected to be used by military, police and fire officials. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Bill Graveland
CALGARY - It's something that science fiction geeks and scientists alike have been dreaming of for decades - a robot that thinks like a human being. And a team of students from Calgary's DeVry Institute may have actually developed one.
Looking for all the world like the little robot that saves the world in the Disney movie Wall-E, Nova 5 was introduced at a news conference in Calgary on Tuesday.
Institute officials say Nova 5's technology allows it to navigate and make intelligent decisions on its own without any remote communications with humans.
Its creators are hopeful that like Wall-E, the robot - which is about the size of a small dog and runs on two tracks - will help save lives.
"The issue here is to go in and save people. What this robot will do is go into a building and scan the structure. It will look for something outside his algorithm," explained team leader Fady Khaled.
"A bag on the floor is normal but anything that is a dangerous situation is abnormal. If there's a violent situation or if there's thermal energy of some kind coming out of that room it will pick that up."
Nova 5 will be competing in the International Aerial Robotic Competition in Fort Benning, Ga., on July 29. The competition's mission requires a robot to fly into a specified location three kilometres away and identify a structure. It must then survey the building and obtain information needed, whether it's the cause of a deadly explosion or whether victims of an environmental disaster are safe.
Khaled has high hopes about Nova 5's chances and future applications.
"It mimics the human brain with its thinking," he said. "How it basically works is with a combination of series neural networks in the training model and a thing called edge detection - it sees the way humans see.
"This can be used in any situation where humans can't go. It could be a toxic area, where there's too much danger inside the building. A police team could send this in to scan the area before they go in."
Khaled thinks the robot is six months to a year away from being used commercially. He sees it as a useful tool for police and fire officials and even for helping the military detect landmines, one of the biggest killers of Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan.
"It's purely for surveillance and recon. It'll go in and do its mission and report what it sees and what it thinks is out of the ordinary to the people outside."
The president of the Canadian Centre for Unmanned Vehicle Systems called the robot an "impressive piece of technology."
The centre, based in Medicine Hat, Alta., develops, tests and evaluates the unmanned vehicles.
"It will work," said president Don Matthews. "I think like all technology it will get better with the next generation.
"I think it has excellent applicability to first responders and the military. I've been to several presentations over the years that have talked about this and have mapped out how to do it. This is the first time I've seen somebody do it."
Matthews acknowledges the technology is difficult for most people to understand but he says Canadians do love robots.
"They do because it has that kind of edge to it - that science fiction, futuristic, really smart edge. But I think the first step is for people to go wow."
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Last Updated ( Sunday, 07 September 2008 )
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