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I’d like to share some research that surprised me – caregivers claim that the Activities of Daily Living (ADLs) are less important when it comes to keeping an elderly person “happy, healthy, and comfortable”. This comes from Good Robot’s online survey of 500 caregivers (both family and professionals). When we asked “what keeps an elderly …
Read MoreOctober 16, 2012 Category: Uncategorized 6 Comments 
Caregivers possess a rare and special kind of courage. Leo Tolstoy, one the greatest writers of all time, captures its essence perfectly in his novel Anna Karenina…
Levin, the main character, receives a letter from the city and is confronted with …
September 26, 2012 Tags: Anna Karenina, care, caregiver, caregivers, caring, courage, Tolstoy
Category: Uncategorized 5 Comments
A new reality TV show called Backyard Inventors features Good Robot’s Alan Majer as he competes with other show participants for a chance to head to the “Eureka Ranch” (a quasi boot camp for inventors).
In Episode 4 (airing May 30th, 2012 at 9pm E/P on the W Network) Alan meets innovation expert Doug Hall …
Read MoreA few weeks ago I had the opportunity to take a friend’s telerobot for a spin. She’s one of the founders of 9thSense.com, a telerobotics startup launched this past August (several of the founders went through SingularityU this summer too). Alaina also worked on Matternet (a drone-operated rural distribution network …
Read MoreNovember 2, 2011 Tags: 3D, 9thsense, drone, fidelity, grrlbot, kinect, matternet, Robot, robotics, senses, Singularity, singularityu, skype, telerobot, telerobotics, Telo, videconferencing, vision
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If you’re curious about how the human brain works, you would’ve really enjoyed the Art and Science of Brain Imaging: a “field trip” put on by Subtle Technologies which brought a group of artistic minded folks to meet with neuroscientists at the …
October 12, 2011 Category: Uncategorized 1 Comment
Sorry for the radio silence on this blog over the past several months. I’ve been working hard to create and launch a new product/service that supports caregivers with elderly parents. …Soon to appear at aah.ca (Aging At Home).
This new service combines my technical interest in sensors/control with a problem that all of us will …
Read MoreJuly 5, 2011 Category: Uncategorized 1 Comment
At SXSWi in Austin, I was asked “what is GoodRobot.com?” and “what do you do?” The short answer is we make things that move. If you want anything that can move, think, sense, or interact, I will custom build it for you. Contact me at alan@goodrobot.com
Examples of things that GoodRobot has built …
Read MoreMarch 17, 2011 Category: General, Hero, Robot, Uncategorized No Comments
UPDATE: here’s the slides we presented
This year I’m proud to join a group of folks that will be talking about robots at South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi).
On Monday March 14th at 12:30, Steve Guengerich and I will be delivering a session called Robot Art Lessons. We’ll be discussing how many …
Read MoreMarch 7, 2011 Category: Uncategorized No Comments
Last week I met with Martin Courcelles (see: www.accesscontent.ca/blog ) at CNIB to get feedback on the sonar navigation prototype I’ve been working on. In an earlier meeting, Martin had also shown me his computerized braille display, and explained that these displays still remain quite pricey (sometimes several thousand dollars) …
Read MoreOctober 28, 2010 Tags: actuator, assistive, assistivedevice, bimetal, blind, braille, brailledisplay, braillereader, display, expensive, interface, openhardware, reader, tactile, userinterface, vision
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Last Friday I saw the movie Transcendent Man, a documentary about Ray Kurzweil, a futurist and vocal advocate of the Singularity (the view that technology will evolve to match and then rapidly surpass the capabilities/intelligence of humans, making the future beyond that point very difficult to predict).
It’s an engaging film. Even if …
Read MoreOctober 20, 2010 Category: Uncategorized 1 Comment