Published 4.14.23 Everyone likes company — and IHMC is no exception.   More than 350 people came through our doors for 2023’s Robotics Open House. The family-friendly event allowed IHMC researchers to share some of what they do with students and families.  We had a great time showcasing our work in robotics, virtual reality experiences, human performance research projects, data visualization, and more. If you couldn’t be there, here’s a little of what you missed.  For students to get an IHMC experience, we have two upcoming opportunities: Science Saturday on April 22 for students in grades 3-6, and summer Robotics Camp June 5-8 in Pensacola. Sign up today. 

Published 4.10.23 IHMC received nearly $4 million in grant funding as a subaward to SRI International’s “PROTEUS: Prototype Testing environment for User Situation awareness.”   PROTEUS is a rapidly reconfigurable human-machine interface (HMI) testing environment for early and cost-effective testing of human machine prototypes, specifically those designed to improve operator situation awareness and support agile adaptation to off-nominal situations.  The PROTEUS Team is a project the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and is a collaboration between SRI International (prime, headquartered in Menlo Park, CA), IHMC, and SkillMil, Inc., (Menlo Park, CA). IHMC’s effort is led by Senior Research Scientist Dr. Anil Raj.  PROTEUS will develop and provide a set of plug-and-play, low-cost hardware configurations to support ecologically realistic environments across operational domains (e.g., air, maritime, space).  The PROTEUS team will create a testbed design for conducting human research participant experiments, and execute protocols designed to deliver statistically significant operator situation awareness and performance assessment results in less than one week per iteration (“Evaluation Events”). Raj is responsible for conducting the Evaluation Events at IHMC.   As it stands, creating a testbed for a new scenario that could sustain more than 30 in-person and 90 virtual participants typically takes weeks or months. With… Read More

Published 3.31.23 It’s time to get your peek behind the curtain.   On April 6, Florida IHMC is inviting the public to meet Nadia, Valkyrie, Eva, Mini Cheetah, Wasp and the humans behind them in celebration of National Robotics Week.  From 3 to 7 p.m. on April 6, 2023, researchers at the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition will welcome the public and students for tours, walk-throughs and inspiration on the Pensacola campus on South Alcaniz Street. The last tour begins at 7 p.m.  The family-friendly event encourages scientific discovery through hands-on activities, challenges, and demonstrations while providing the opportunity to learn about IHMC’s work from in-house researchers and educators.  Visitors will be able to see IHMC researchers and their work in drones, robotics, virtual reality experiences, human performance research projects, data visualization, and more.    The MESS Hall, Pensacola’s hands-on science, technology, engineering, and math museum, also will be on hand with traveling exhibits.   It will be IHMC’s first open house on campus since 2019.   “To show our support for the community who has supported us so much in the past, we want to highlight all the technology that has been developed and grown right here in Pensacola,” said Dr. Robert… Read More

Published 3.28.23 Recently, the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition hosted a gathering of international experts in spatial disorientation, the leading cause of deadly mishaps in military and commercial aviation.   Over three days in late March, 87 members of the Spatial Orientation Modeling Expert (SOME) Workgroup shared the latest techniques to model spatial disorientation mishaps and to showcase the latest developments designed to mitigate the risk. The hope is to craft recommendations for future research on the model and designs of next-generation aerospace vehicles to improve pilot situation awareness and counter spatial disorientation.   The Principal Investigator from IHMC for the workshop was Senior Research Scientist Dr. Jeff Phillips, an aviation human factors expert who has worked extensively in this area. The panels included astronauts Ken Cameron and Bill Shepard, who spoke at length about the spatial disorientation they experienced in space.    The group has met twice before, once in 1994 and again in 2019. The first meeting led to the publication of the book “Spatial Disorientation in Aviation,” one of the most comprehensive references on the topic. This year’s meeting will result in the publication of a second volume.   Senior Events Specialist Michelle Bowers said the… Read More

Published 3.21.23 STEM-Talk episode 150 featuring termite biologist Dr. Barbra Thorne is now available on IHMC’s website as well as popular podcast apps. In her interview, Barbara talks about the invasive conehead species, a Central and South American termite that has invaded South Florida. Barbara is a research professor and professor emerita in the Department of Entomology at the University of Maryland. Since 2012 she has served as the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services science advisor on the state’s Conehead Termite Program. She also chairs the National Scientific Advisory Committee for the Conehead Termite Program. Barbara’s research focuses on the biology of termites, which are highly social insects that form complex colony structures. She earned her Ph.D. in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology in 1983 from Harvard University where she studied with the late Dr. E. O. Wilson, a renowned biologist and naturalist. In this episode, Barbara discusses: — How she had no interest in bugs until college when she went to a summer Bug Camp where she read E.O. Wilson’s book, “The Insect Societies.” — The 15 years she spent in E.O. Wilson’s lab at Harvard. — How she began working in the field of applied termite biology…. Read More

Published 3.20.23 Summer Robotics Camp is one of IHMC’s signature community outreach efforts — and it’s almost here. Registration opens this week for the summer 2023 sessions. Visit https://www.ihmc.us/life/robotics-camp/ to register.  “Our students always enjoy getting to know likeminded students and spending four days learning to program Lego robots and seeing them respond to their commands,” said Dr. Ursula Schwuttke, director of educational outreach for IHMC’s Pensacola and Ocala campuses.  Robotics camp takes place in June 2023 and offers students the chance to learn the basics of robotics, coding, and problem-solving. Camp is in two sessions: June 5-8 for rising eighth graders; and June 12-15 for rising ninth and 10th graders in Pensacola.   Ocala camp dates are June 26-29 for rising eighth graders, and July 10-13 for rising ninth- and 10th-graders.  “Fun science gives kids the ability to discover their interest and ability in science, and to develop self-confidence,” says Schwuttke. “Opportunity is vitally important for kids. Without the opportunity to discover their interest, they can’t know that it’s something they should pursue.”  While assembling and programming the robots is of course the fun part, Schwuttke says a highlight of camp is the chance to meet and mingle with researchers… Read More

Published 3.3.23 A partnership between Space Florida and the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition has been quietly growing. Most recently, Space Florida contributed $2 million in support of that collaboration.   When construction of IHMC’s newest research building is completed in the summer of 2024, Space Florida will have office space in the new facility — additional evidence of how closely the two entities intend to work together.  “Among the topics our human performance team is exploring is how humans respond both physically and cognitively to stress and how we perform in extreme environments,” said IHMC Founder and CEO Dr. Ken Ford. “Space is among the most extreme environments in which humans perform. Seen through that lens, a collaborative partnership between IHMC and Space Florida clearly benefits both entities.”  Space Florida was created to support the growth and development of a sustainable and world-leading aerospace industry throughout the state. It promotes aerospace and space-related business development, business financing, spaceport operations, research and development, workforce development, and innovative education programs statewide.  The space and aerospace-related sector fuels some $19 billion of the state’s economy. More than 17,144 aerospace-related companies call Florida home, according to the  aerospace finance and development authority. … Read More

Published 2.24.23 Dr. Karen Wooley wants to find the next iteration of sustainable, biodegradable plastics. She’s looking to the insect world for part of the answer.   Wooley, who holds the W. T. Doherty-Welch Chair in Chemistry and is a University Distinguished Professor at Texas A&M University, spoke as part of the Smart Lecture series at IHMC. If you couldn’t be with us in person, watch her lecture here.  Her lecture shared the latest efforts to support the commercial translation of carbohydrate-derived degradable plastics to harvesting of building blocks from insect feedstocks.   As scaled-up production of biomass-based biodegradable polymers grows, focus has turned to harvesting the naturally-derived building blocks from black soldier flies, to avoid competition with resources that are important to food, fuel, and construction. The goal is not just improving sustainability, but digestibility should the product end up in an animal or human.   The inspiration for the work has links to the world of orthopedic medicine, where the mismatches in tensile strength, functionality and longevity between bone and materials like metal or polymer-based screws, rods or inserts, led to the focus on finding bioplastics that could substitute.   Watch our video recap here to learn more.  

Published 2.21.23 Dr. Jeff Volek has been investigating how humans adapt to ketogenic and carbohydrate-restricted diets for 30 years.    On his return to STEM-Talk — available on our website and wherever you enjoy podcasts— Jeff talks about a growing accumulation of studies supporting a ketogenic diet to improve metabolic health, as well as research confirming the relative safety of dietary fat.  Jeff is a professor in the Department of Human Sciences at Ohio State University. He is known for his research on the clinical application of ketogenic diets in the management of insulin resistance and type-2 diabetes. His first STEM-Talk appearance was in 2017.  Americans have long been led to believe that saturated fats lead to obesity and heart disease. This flawed assumption remains at the root of much public health policy, despite there has been a steady accumulation of studies over the last 20 years supporting carbohydrate restriction as well as the relative safety of dietary fat advances.   Jeff addressed this in a paper in Science titled “Dietary Fat: From Foe to Friend?”, and also, a paper in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology titled “Saturated Fats and Health: A Reassessment and Proposal for Food Based Recommendations.” … Read More

Published 2.17.23 People are living longer, but those longer years are often marred by multiple chronic diseases — and the exploding cost of managing those conditions — in the final and least productive years of life.   In the first IHMC Evening Lecture of 2023, Dr. Alexander Fleming talked about efforts to understand how we can extend our productive, healthy years — a concept he calls healthy longevity. If you couldn’t be with us in person, you can still learn from Dr. Fleming with our video recap. Watch it here.  Fleming is a former head of clinical review at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for products for diabetes and other metabolic and endocrine disorders. His notable drug approvals at FDA included the first statin and metformin. He represented the FDA at the World Health Organization and other international initiatives.   He founded Kinexum, a company with expertise in developing drugs, biotech products, including gene and cell therapies, medical devices, and digital health technologies.   In 2020, he founded the not-for-profit Kitalys Institute to facilitate testing, regulation, and commercialization of healthspan products. Kitalys produces the annual Metabesity conference, which began in 2017 and brings together global experts, policymakers, and advocates… Read More

Published 2.3.23 The Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition broke ground today on a new $30 million project in downtown Pensacola, setting up the next chapter in the research facility’s journey of innovation and collaboration.  The IHMC Healthspan, Resilience and Performance complex will be a leading-edge lab and office building that will create a research hub, based in Northwest Florida, for advancing human healthspan, resilience, and performance with the potential to lead the field. The facility is an investment in the intellectual capital of Northwest Florida, creating a hub of excellence in healthspan, resilience, and performance research that will draw leading scientific minds to the region.  “This facility, and the people housed in it, really will be one-of-a-kind, and it will be a reputational jewel for our community and region,” IHMC’s founder and CEO Dr. Ken Ford said.  IHMC is funding the cost of the building. Partnering with the Institute are two state agencies, Triumph Gulf Coast, a nonprofit corporation created to manage the funds from the settlement of the BP Deepwater Horizon 2010 oil spill disaster; and Space Florida, the agency charged with supporting and growing the state’s aviation and aerospace industries. Triumph is funding a substantial portion… Read More

Published 1.31.23 Ed Weiler wanted to be among NASA’s first scientist astronaut. He made it through several rounds of selection, but in the end, he wasn’t chosen.   “Then I gave up and was happy to be an astronomer,” Weiler says.   Fortunately, he had another path that brought him to NASA. Indeed, he went on to a 33-year career at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, including 20 years as chief scientist for the Hubble Space Telescope, the forerunner of the James Webb.  In STEM-Talk Episode 147, available now on IHMC’s website and wherever you listen to podcasts, Dr. Ed Weiler talks about his career, one in which he wore many hats. His roles included Associate Administrator of the Science Mission Directorate; Center Director of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Associate Administrator for NASA’s Space Science Enterprise, chief of the Ultraviolet/Visible and Gravitational Astrophysics Division and director of the Astronomical Search for Origins Program.  The conversation in this episode includes:  — NASA’s accomplishments in the past year, including the Perseverance mission, the success of the James Webb telescope, and the launch of Artemis-1.  — Ed’s experience as the Chief Scientist for the Hubble Space Telescope during its early development.  — Ed’s… Read More

Published 1.23.23 The IHMC’s robotics team recently was lauded at one of the premier conferences in their field.  The team of Duncan Calvert, Bhavyansh Mishra, Stephen McCrory, Sylvain Bertrand, Robert Griffin, and Jerry Pratt won the Best Paper award at the International Conference on Humanoid Robots 2022 conference in November in Okinawa, Japan.  The conference is sponsored by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ (IEEE) Robotics and Automation Society. The paper is titled “A Fast, Autonomous, Bipedal Walking Behavior Over Rapid Regions.” It is linked here. The publication highlights a newly constructed behavior control system for achieving fast, autonomous, bipedal walking, without pauses or deliberation. The control system uses a recently published rapid planar regions perception algorithm, a height map-based body path planner, an A* footstep planner, and a momentum-based walking controller to improve the humanoid’s performance over uneven terrain.  Walking over flat terrain is something humanoids are adept at across the industry. The behavior control system IHMC’s team developed dramatically improves the robot’s ability to smoothly traverse rough terrain (broken concrete and cinder blocks).  “Humanoid robots have a very difficult time traversing anything other than perfectly flat ground. They also have a hard time doing anything by themselves,”… Read More

Published 1.12.23 The joy is in discovery.  That’s what Nicole Esposito sees at Science Saturdays, IHMC’s weekend science enrichment series. She is an IHMC Research Associate who works in the robotics lab at Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition in Pensacola. The team she is part of has an international reputation for excellence and innovation.  But Science Saturdays connects her to a larger purpose.   “It’s always a joy to watch how quickly these kids learn,” she said. “It’s always fun to talk about a topic you enjoy, but doing so with these groups of kids, who are so eager and ready to learn, is a special experience.”  Last fall, Esposito taught a session on 3D printing at Science Saturdays, giving students a safe and fun educational space in which to explore scientific topics and interests.   “Exploring the ways they understand these topics is just as enlightening for me as it is for them, and it’s always fascinating to see how well they reason through certain puzzles and challenges and come to inventive and intelligent solutions,” Esposito said.  Science Saturdays is a series of 90-minute educational enrichment sessions. Topics in 2023 will include robotics, roller coasters, animal adaptations, human performance, and more. … Read More

Published 1.6.23 IHMC Associate Director and Senior Research Scientist Dr. James Allen has earned another accolade in his long and distinguished career in natural language understanding and research. Allen in December 2022 was named a fellow by the Association for Computational Linguistics. He was one of eight leaders in the field to be so recognized by ACL, a leading professional organization in the study of computational language processing — a field Allen has helped pioneer. The nominating committee recognized Allen, who is also a professor emeritus at the University of Rochester where he has been on the faculty since 1978, “for significant contributions to natural language dialogue research, planning and plan recognition.” Allen’s research concerns defining computational models of intelligent collaborative and conversational agents that can interact effectively with humans in a wide range of problem-solving and analysis tasks. His research is unique in that it combines what often are treated as separate fields in artificial intelligence. Those fields include knowledge representation and reasoning, language understanding, planning, intention recognition, and learning. Allen’s system is a high-performance generic collaborative agent that can be rapidly adapted to new problem-solving domains. Computational linguistics is the science at the root of speech recognition systems,… Read More

Published 1.5.23 IHMC’s 2023 Evening Lecture series is kicking off this month with speakers highlighting healthy longevity and progress in exoskeleton research. Both IHMC campuses — Pensacola and Ocala — are opening the free public lecture series with January lectures by Dr. Alexander Fleming and Dr. Gwen Bryan. How can you increase healthy longevity beyond common senses measures such as good nutrition and physical activity? That’s the subject that Fleming will explore on Jan. 25 in Pensacola. Fleming’s talk, “Targeting Healthy Longevity—Why, How, and When Will We Have the Means of Living Longer and Healthier,” is the first of the 2023 season of Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition’s public lecture series. Fleming, a former head of clinical review at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for products for diabetes and other metabolic and endocrine disorders, is scheduled to speak at IHMC’s downtown Pensacola campus. The doors open at 5:30 p.m.; the talk begins at 6 p.m. Guests can hear Fleming share more about what the latest science says about slowing the aging process and what you can do now to increase healthspan. His talk also covers drugs that are under development to slow the aging process and increase… Read More

Published 1.4.23 We walk every day, so we think it’s an easy thing to do. But when we try to recreate it with an exoskeleton in the lab, the truth reveals how complex and challenging it is. That’s the puzzle that Dr. Gwen Bryan is working to solve as part of the exoskeleton team at the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition. Episode 147 of “STEM-Talk” features a conversation with Bryan, an IHMC Research Scientist who investigates wearable robotic devices aimed at augmenting human performance in clinical, occupational, and military applications.  The episode is available now wherever you listen to podcasts. With the exoskeleton team at IHMC, Bryan is particularly focused on maximizing the benefits of powered exoskeletons. At IHMC, Gwen leads the exoskeleton team, which is developing a novel augmentative device that continues IHMC’s research on mobility devices for people with spinal cord injury. The team also is researching a powered exoskeleton to aid government employees who work at nuclear site remediation.    The team’s effort, which utilize a human-centered research approach, is uniquely situated to expand exoskeleton research and technology because of the expertise and collaboration among IHMC’s robotics and human-performance research groups.  Listen to the conversation here.

Published 12.16.22 What a revolution might it be if the healthcare system was built around our actual health, as opposed to the way it currently centers on treating an injury or disease once it occurs?  That’s one of the ideas that Dr. Dan Pardi explores in the latest episode of STEM-Talk (Episode 146). In his conversation with IHMC Founder Dr. Ken Ford and IHMC Senior Research Scientist Dr. Marcas Bamman, Pardi talks about the flaws in a health system that is really built around treatment, rather than health and wellness support — and what it might take to switch that focus.  Pardi is the CEO of humanOS.me – a digital health training application. He is well known for his research into sleep and has collaborated with the U.S. military as well as organizations including Adobe, Salesforce, Workday, Pandora, Intuitive Surgical, and more.   His own podcast, humanOS Radio, is the official podcast of the Sleep Research Society, the Canadian Sleep Society, and a content partner of the Buck Institute on Aging. Dan collaborated with more than 100 science professors around the globe to create his digital humanOS application. Pardi has a Ph.D. in cognitive neuroscience from Leiden University in the Netherlands,… Read More

Published 12.7.22 IHMC has a long legacy of excellence in exoskeleton research. The potential benefits of exoskeletons include increased strength and endurance, reduced joint loading, resistance exercise, rehabilitation after injury, and enabling mobility for those with disease or disability. Two exoskeleton projects at IHMC — Quix and Eva — are undergoing upgrades thanks to a robotics team that is itself been expanded in the last two years. Read more about this and other IHMC projects in the newest edition of the newsletter. Quix is the fourth exoskeleton prototype developed by the IHMC exoskeleton team. It’s getting a new lease on life as the team has been upgrading the device and its software. Quix was designed to increase the mobility and independence of people with lower-body paralysis. The team is now investigating potential applications for rehabilitation therapy. Team members have now developed another wearable robot, Eva, to help extend healthspan and the quality of life for workers who must use heavy personal protective equipment during physically demanding and hazardous work. The revamp of Quix and the development of Eva are among the first major projects for the growing robotics team, and Research Scientist Dr. Robert Griffin said it has been exciting… Read More

Published 12.2.22 It’s time for another Ask Me Anything episode where STEM-Talk cohost Dawn Kernagis asks Ken questions submitted by listeners. In this episode, available wherever you listen to podcasts, Ken and Dawn weigh in on: —  Whether AI is becoming sentient. — How women in midlife might protect their bodies from the negative effects of a slowing metabolism. — A Stanford study that compared a low-carbohydrate diet with a Mediterranean diet. — Whether fasting helps optimize cognitive performance. — The future of hypersonic technology. — And a lot more. If you have a question after listening to today’s episode or any episode of STEM-Talk, email your question to STEM-Talk Producer Randy Hammer at rhammer@ihmc.org. STEM-Talk is the podcast of IHMC, a not-for-profit research institute of the Florida University System. Researchers at IHMC pioneer science and technologies aimed at leveraging and extending human capabilities. For more information, visit ihmc.us.