Seeing something and knowing what it is and how you can use it can take a human being less than a fraction of a second to compute. However when it comes to a robot, the whole process is overseen by a complex algorithm that takes in input from a camera and then categorizes what is shown.

Robot vision is not so much true vision as a program that gets an image and tells the robot what the object in the image is. Then it also lets the robot know the uses that the object that has been sighted. This is a skill that all robots that hope to work in households in the future must master. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers are working on making this easier for the robots to do.

Lawson Wong, a graduate student in electrical engineering and computer science has been working on a new algorithm that can make robot vision for future household robots better. After several attempts and improvements the researcher has come up a new algorithm that shows a lot of promise. The objects that a robot is commonly likely to encounter are sorted into specific groups to aid faster recognition of the object. The tests of the science project have been promising.

YouTube has many educational videos available and has often been used as a supplement by many homeschooling families. However the scope of video teaching has now been expanded to include artificial intelligence. Yes, robots are now using YouTube videos to learn how to perform simple tasks.

Researchers at the University of Maryland have come up with a robotic system that are allowing robots to learn the intricacies of grasping and manipulation of cooking utensils to cook using online videos. The robots are taught a certain set of movements and then they have to “think” about which motion is best suited to the task that they want to perform.

The computer scientist Yiannis Aloimonos, is hoping to enable the robots to observe and identify objects in order for them to generate new behaviour based on these observations. So a robot can learn how to make an omelet by watching the relevant YouTube video and deciding how to manipulate the ingredients available.

Now this is a science project that brings breakfast in bed presented by a robot one step closer to reality. As per Yiannnis the one key challenge was devising a way for the robots to parse individual steps appropriately, while gathering information from videos that varied in quality and consistency.

Losing weight is a task so onerous that it has its own multi-billion dollar industry based on it. However what losing weight comes down to essentially, is just one factor and that is your willpower. Now that you know that its only your will power that keeps your motivation up, isn’t it good news to know that your smart phone can actually lend you a helping hand in this ever present battle against the bulge.

The Tulane University recently conducted a study where they were able to prove that mobile phone apps that gave motivational messages, weight loss tips and daily reminders for exercising were able to boost the weight loss performance of their smart phone owners.

While it is a well known fact that to lose weight you need to reduce your calorie intake and exercise to burn present calories in the body, it is also equally well know that the motivation to do this can wane considerably as time passes. Perhaps to sustain the momentum generated by the initial weight loss using the smart phone would be a really smart idea.

While new science projects may confirm the findings later, it is but common sense to understand that as long as you are motivated to lose weight, you will also find the will power to continue on your diet and exercise regime.

Given the amount of time most of us spend sitting down in a day, the findings of a new study establishing a correlations between sitting for long periods of time and contracting diseases, could be alarming. University Health Network scientists have established that sitting is just not good for your health.

The amount of time a person sits during the day is associated with a higher risk of heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and death, regardless of regular exercise, according to their review study which was published  in the Annals of Internal Medicine. The study found that even if people were diligent about exercising, the amount of time they spent watching TV or working on the computer did indeed affect their health.

The exact amount of physical activity needed to reduce the risk of diseases such as diabetes, cancer, and heart problems was not yest established and would need further study. Dr. Alter,  Associate Professor of Medicine, University of Toronto said that avoiding sedentary time and getting regular exercise are both important for improving your health and survival.

It simply wasn’t enough to exercise for thirty minutes and be sedentary for the remaining twenty three hours and thirty minutes of the day. While what this scientific study has told us nothing new, it does underscore the importance of exercise to maintain a healthy body.

The fate of the Beagle 2 Mars Lander, a space project from the UK which has been believed missing since 2003, has finally been revealed. Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) based HiRISE camera was able to capture an image what remains of the Beagle 2 on the surface of the red planet.

Michael Croon of Trier, Germany, a former member of the European Space Agency’s Mars Express operations team at the European Space Operations Centre looked for evidence of the Beagle in the images that MRO sent back. He found enough evidence for key entry and descent components on the surface of the planet. These were located within the expected landing area of Isidis Planitia which is an impact basin close to the equator of Mars.

This new evidence goes to show that the Beagle 2 did indeed manage to go through the phases of Entry, Descent and Landing (EDL) and touched down on Mars on Christmas Day of 2003. Since due to some malfunction it did not send out the signal that usually accompanies the EDL sequence, the scientists were unable to establish the landing before this.

While this science project may not have worked out exactly the way the European scientists thought it would, at least now they know what fate it suffered thanks to the new images tat ave come forth.

New Horizons spacecraft was launched by NASA in January 2006. It has now traveled more than 3 billion miles and awaken from its hibernating state to begin its observations of the dwarf planet Pluto and its moon systems. It will soon begin a fly-by close to Pluto inside the orbits of its five known moons.

Jim Green, director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division at the agency’s Headquarters in Washington said that NASA’s first mission to distant Pluto will also be humankind’s first close up view of this cold, unexplored world in our solar system. Needless to say a great deal of preparation has gone into this science project.

Data will be transmitted back to us in the form of images captured by New Horizons’ telescopic Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI). Not only will these pictures be used to gain a better understanding of the Pluto planetary system, but they will also be used as navigational aids to help the spacecraft travel the remaining 135 million miles to Pluto.

Mark Holdridge, New Horizons encounter mission manager at Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland said that we need to refine our knowledge of where Pluto will be when New Horizons flies past it. APL manages the New Horizons mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

The exploration of dwarf planet Ceres is currently being undertaken by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft. Images that the spacecraft Dawn had sent back in December 2014 had been used for calibration purposes. Now the latest series of images received by NASA will be used as navigational aids. In the next few weeks Dawn will be able to transmit even more detailed images as it gets captured by the orbit of Ceres and begins to spiral closer to the surface of the planet.

Before Dawn reached Ceres, the best captured images of the dwarf planet had been taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope in 2003 and 2004. Marc Rayman, Dawn’s chief engineer and mission director, based at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California feels that Dawn’s images will surpass Hubble’s resolution at the next imaging opportunity in end January 2015.

Ceres lies between Mars and Jupiter. It is the largest astral body in the main asteroid belt that exits in that region of the solar system. It has an average diameter of 590 miles (950 kilometers), and is thought to contain a large amount of ice. Dawn is attempting a 16 month science project which will study Ceres and help us gain more information about this rock in the sky.

The fish of the Amazon river basin have engages multitudes of researchers since the river was discovered. One of these rather intriguing forms of river life is the electric eel. The simple worm like creature is a scaleless Amazonian fish that can deliver an electrical jolt strong enough to knock down a full-grown horse.

Most humans in the area are well aware of just how dangerous a jolt from this eel can be, and this is why the researchers at the Vanderbilt University decided to conduct a study on this creature. The nine month study has now revealed how the electric eel uses high-voltage electrical discharges to locate and incapacitate its prey.

The electroshock system that the eel processes is remarkably similar to a taser. It has been established that a six-foot electric eel can generate about 600 volts of electricity. The eels also have astonishing speed as they were observed in videos swallowing a worm or small fish in about a tenth of a second during the science project.

Kenneth Catania from the Vanderbilt University  is a biologist who distinguished between three different kinds of electrical discharges from the eels. Catania said that these included low-voltage pulses for sensing their environment; short sequences of two or three high-voltage millisecond pulses (called doublets or triplets) given off while hunting; and volleys of high-voltage, high-frequency pulses when capturing prey or defending themselves from attack.

The black ghost knifefish of the Amazon basin hunts at night in the murky rivers and moves both horizontally and vertically using a ribbon-like fin on the underside of its body. Its amazing dexterity has made it the object of many scientific studies over the last few decades. The black ghost knifefish also has  the ability to sense with a self-generated weak electric field around its entire body.

The many features this fish exhibits are highly desirable traits for underwater robots. Given that current underwater bots are not very advanced, tend to be large in size and have very little flexibility when it comes to changing directions and swimming in the water, the black ghost knifefish make ideal study subjects to plan improvements in the robots.

Malcolm MacIver from Northwestern University is using an interdisciplinary team of researchers to develop agile fish robots based on the model of the black ghost knifefish. These robotic fish would be able to study fragile coral reefs without fear of damage, repair damaged deep-sea oil rigs which are difficult for humans to work on or even investigate sunken ships to search for hidden treasure.

More than a dozen robotic fish have already been created by Malcolm’s team of researchers, and this is a science project which is showing tremendous potential for use in the real world.

For any robotics enthusiast the ability to make their own robot has to be a science project that they really look forward to. The lack of readily available resources often plays spoilsport in some cases, and this is what the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences is hoping to change.

With technologies such as 3D printing and laser cutting becoming more accessible, it is becoming easier for people to manufacture soft robots. It is with a view to aid this field that the soft robot toolkit has been developed by these researchers. The toolkit consists of open source plans, how-to videos, case studies of designs, fabrication, modeling and control of soft robots.

All of this is available online in easily downloadable formats. Conor Walsh, Assistant Professor of Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering says that the goal of the toolkit is to advance the field of soft robotics by allowing designers and researchers to build upon each other’s work.

This common resource pool that designers and manufacturers can dip into will help to reduce duplication of work. It will also stimulate new methods to be worked with, create new tools and even new kinds of soft robots. All in all this is a science project that is bound to grow by leaps and bounds in the future.