Mar 3 2011
Israel has become a focal point for robotic technologies with many novel solutions and firsts in agriculture, medicine, defense and security.
The scientists and researchers in Israel are endeavoring to master both the mind and the body of robotics and create commercialized solutions such as SpineAssist, which is a new CT Scan and X-Ray guide for spinal surgery manufactured by Mazor Robotics and developed by Professor Moshe Shoham at the Technion Israel Institute of Technology’s Robotics Lab.
Israeli engineers do not believe in building robots that are remotely controlled and operated but they build futuristic robots that are capable of thinking for themselves. According to Kaminka, to be a world leader in Robotics one must provide the brains for the existing robots. Kaminka’s lab is the largest in Israel and has multitudinous number of post doctorate fellows and students.
One more important application is the Robotic Soccer Team, which would participate in the annual Robocop Competition. A robotics company, Cogniteam has sponsored the robot soccer team. His goal is to help eight robotics experts graduate every year from Bar-Ilan University.
Other projects include converting 4x 4 SUVs into robots that would patrol the Israeli border. Kaminka’s lab is also creating a special team of PointBots, which are search and rescue robots that could draw a map of their location in the field, and chart out a path or method for rescuing a victim from a terrorist region. TIPCAT, a robot that could crawl into the human body to perform endoscopic surgery, a miniscule Virob robot, which could take a cancer drug to the tumor site directly, or could be outfitted with a camera for diagnosing purposes inside the body are some of the medical robotic applications developed in Shoham’s Lab.
Professor Alon Wolf from Technion, Israel and Professor Howie Choset of Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania, US have jointly developed the CardioArm, a small flexible medical robotic snake which would slither into the heart and make heart surgeries more effective and safe. Prof Yael Edan from the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev with funding from EU has developed a robotic surgical application known as Gestix, which fights contamination in the operating theatres.
Other robots that have been developed in Israel include Dr. Amir Shapiro’s robots that walk on walls, Bamper, a robot which is capable of balancing the elderly, Prof Zvi Shiller’s robots that improve safety of extra terrestrial off road and earth- based road vehicles, Prof Shraga Shoval’s robots that create motion in confined spaces and robots that could walk, ski or glide, the octopus robot developed by Prof. Binyamin Hochner and Prof Tamar Flash, which explores the ocean floor, the massage robot, which explores the back of a human body and massages it.
Source: Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs