I’m pleased to bring GoRobotics an exclusive interview with Angelica Lim of Kyoto University. When I first started writing here at GoRobotics, one of my goals that I stated was to bring more compelling academic research to the general public and enthusiasts because behind lots of jargon and hidden in some grad student’s lab somewhere is a robot waiting for it’s chance in the spotlight.

Let’s get right into things with Angelica.

How did you end up a roboticist? Was it a childhood dream?

I had no idea I wanted to be a roboticist when I was a kid. It started when I was on exchange in France, doing a year of Computer Science classes at the University of Nice. One of our projects was to pick amongst research topics proposed by faculty members, and “Build a Data Server for an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV)” was one of them. I ended up choosing that on a whim, and our team did a pretty good job coding it up in C++ under her specs. I got called back the next year to help integrate it with a real “live” AUV for a competition in England, and I was hooked. I liked it so much that I put together the robotics team back home in Canada. That was my second robotics competition – hopefully not my last!

How did you end up in Japan working on robots?
The main reason I wanted to come to Japan was simply because the hardware is much more advanced and easy to acquire. Full-size humanoid research platforms have been out in Japan for almost a decade. Only now are companies like Willow Garage starting to gain traction in North America.

On a more personal level, I also felt like my research options would be limited in North America. In the US, robotics research is heavily funded by the military, and therefore it seemed to me, at least that my research would have to conform to very serious and grave goals in order to gain funding. In Japan, robotics applications sound less like “Big Dog” and more like “RIBA Nurse Robot” and “Fan Dancing Robots” . I prefer the Japanese outlook on a future with robots. Does that make sense?

More after the jump …

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I found something fantastic today that I know our readers will appreciate:

Via: Online Schools

Update: The contest is now closed. I’ll be gathering the entires and sending them to our judges over the next week or two. Stay tuned for a post announcing the winners. If you won I will also contact you via email. Thanks and good luck!

The past few months have been a lot of fun, with us giving away nearly $750 dollars of awesome robot prizes. But, we’re not done yet! April is the official 10 year anniversary of GoRobotics.net and we’ve saved the best prizes for last! This month we’ll be giving away over $1,000 dollars of prizes from our sponsors Pololu, Zagros Robotics, Solarbotics , Vex Robotics, Apress, and No Starch Press. Our sponsors have been incredibly generous and we hope to be able to offer more contests in the future.

The final robot giveaway is going to be a little tougher to enter than previous contests. This is only fair because we’ve got some awesome prizes and we have confidence that you, our faithful readers, will rise to the challenge. To enter this month’s contest, post a link in the comments to a project that you’ve built. It can be a link to your own website, a forum, or something similar, but we suggest adding your project to RobotBox and posting a link to that (shameless promotion, natch!). One entry per person, so pick your best project.

Here’s how the prizes will be awarded:

1. First prize goes to our favorite project. Favorite will be voted on by a panel of folks TBA.

2. Second prize goes to the second place favorite.

3. Third prize goes to a randomly selected project – this means there’s no excuse for you not to submit your project no matter how “good” you think it is!

The contest ends April 30th, at 12AM EST. Comments are moderated to prevent spam. Your comment won’t show up till the moderator has approved it.

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Thanks to some great research at Waseda University, doctors of the Showa University of Dentistry now have robots to use as teaching aids. Meet Hanako.

The humanoid robots are designed to resemble a human female and are programmed to illicit responses similar to what a dental patient might, such as wincing in pain if the dentist is not careful about the procedure at hand.

The robots has a variety of emulations to give the dentist as realistic a simulation as possible. ‘She’ can blink, roll her eyes, move her jaw and her tongue too. A nice touch is that the robot also exhibits tiredness during a long procedure by slackening the artificial muscles of her jaw muscles, and yes – she even drools. You can catch a video here.

Waseda University is known for their work on KOBIAN, an emotional humanoid robot, which is delight to check out because it provides some context for the body of work coming out of Waseda. Check out Pink Tenatcle’s post about KOBIAN.

To look back in time a little, the concept of using robots in dentistry training isn’t a new idea, it’s one that’s been developed over a few years now. At the International Robot Exhibition in Tokyo in 2007, Kokoro Company Ltd (interestingly enough, a Sanrio Group company – they don’t just make Hello Kitty merchandise, they make robots too) unveiled the Simroid dental patient, which has been noted for its appearance falling deep into the uncanny valley much like its sister project the Actroid: robot receptionist. They share an abundance of features.

Like her Actroid sister, Simroid is equipped with a system of air-powered muscles and soft silicone skin. However, she has something the Actroid does not — sensitive teeth. Thanks to a mouth loaded with sensors, she knows when her dentist-in-training makes a mistake. And to express her pain, she grimaces, moves her hands and eyes, and says, “That hurts.” - via Pink Tentacle back in 2006.

Another unique is that she exhibits a gag reflex if instruments are too far back in her mouth. You watch a video of Simroid here.

I like this progression of robotics for dientistry that I am seeing because it means that robots are making a place for themselves in educational contexts. That’s great! PhysOrg sums up thesituation quite nicely:

Few people would want to be guinea pigs for aspiring dentists but Japan has found an always-willing patient — a robot. – via PhysOrg

In other news, I still have an interview and Hexbug Nano review coming – hopefully early in the week next week. In the meantime, if you see some amazing robot news, be the first to share it with us and help spread the robot appreciation.