Category: Science & Technology News

A company founded at the University of Waterloo’s flagship incubator has performed the first autonomous robotic intramuscular injection, paving the way to improved patient care in an industry faced with labour shortages.

Cobionix, an autonomous robotics company located in Kitchener-Waterloo, performed the injection-without needles-using their Cobi platform.

“Cobi is a versatile robotics platform that can be rapidly deployed to complete tasks with 100 per cent autonomy,” said Tim Lasswell, co-founder and CEO of Cobionix. “We outfitted Cobi to use a needle-free injection technology and to demonstrate that patients could receive intramuscular injections, such as vaccines, without needles and no involvement from a healthcare professional.”

Nima Zamani, co-founder and CTO of Cobionix, said there are many benefits to the new technology.

“Autonomous solutions such as Cobi could protect healthcare workers, reduce healthcare costs, and improve patient outcomes,” Zamani said. “The autonomous nature of Cobi also dramatically reduces the infrastructure requirements of vaccine clinics which could help reach populations in remote areas with limited access to medical care.”

Window washers are the next in line to see their jobs replaced by robots.

ByAndrew Liszewski

Even if they’re not afraid of heights, it still takes someone with nerves of steel to work as a window washer, dangling a hundred floors above the ground with a squeegee in hand. A company called Skyline Robotics wants to make window washing much safer because instead of humans, the lift that’s lowered down the side of a building is staffed with robots instead.

According to Skyline Robotics, the window cleaning industry, including those towering structures dotting the skylines of major metropolises, is a lucrative business with over $40 billion in revenue every year. The problem is that 74% of trained window washers are over 40 years old, and there’s not enough young blood to replace them. It’s easy to see why that’s the case. As anyone who’s ever seen the local news reporting on a daring window washer rescue already knows. It’s a risky gig, even if it comes with amazing views. One possible solution? Enter the robots.

A REVOLUTIONARY new ‘robot’ nurse designed to look and act like a human being, and capable of solving complex problems, is one of the star guests at a conference on Alternative Intelligence in California.

By CIARAN MCGRATH

And one of the scientists behind the pioneering technology said the “nursing assistant” machine, named Grace, designed to provide help and companionship to elderly people – will even be able to discuss the weather with them. Grace will make just her second public appearance at the 14th Conference on Artificial General Intelligence, alongside Dr Ben Goertzel, the founder of AI research company SingularityNET.

She is described by the company as the “little sister” of Sophia, a “social humanoid robot” developed by Hong Kong-based Hanson Robotics and activated in 2016.

Janet Adams, Chief Operating Officer at SingularityNET, told Express.co.uk: “Grace’s hardware is based on the same Hanson Robotics platform as Sophia.

“However, their AI software is quite different.”