Tag Archives: Joanne O’Riordan

The Irish Council for Civil Liberties writes:

The Gay and Lesbian Equality Network (GLEN); the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL); and Marriage Equality, have today launched Yes Equality, a joint campaign to encourage people to register to vote this November, ahead of next year’s referendum on civil marriage equality. The campaign will be run in collaboration with local equality organisations across the country as well as the Union of Students in Ireland (USI), Students’ Unions and Trade Unions.

The campaign was launched today in Cork City by campaigner Joanne O’Riordan, featured in the documentary film ‘No Limbs No Limits’, and Eoin Murphy, goalkeeper for All-Ireland Hurling Champions, Kilkenny.

Register to Vote Campaign Launched for Civil Marriage Equality Referendum (ICCL)

joanne

SWOT!

Yay!

Joanne hopes to study criminology.

UCC hopes for Joanne O’Riordan: I want to get points for course on criminology (Eoin English, Irish Examiner)

Pic: Oxfam Ireland

joanne

Joanne O’Riordan’s robot.

The University Times writes:

“The robot, nicknamed “Robbie”, was built for Cork teenager Joanne O’Riordan, who is one of only nine people worldwide living with tetra-amelia, a condition in which the sufferer is born without arms or legs. In April 2012 O’Riordan addressed the UN at the ITU’s “Girls in Technology” conference and offered the challenge for someone to build her a robot.”

“Taking up this challenge is Assistant Professor Kevin Kelly, of Trinity’s School of Engineering, along with a team of young engineers.”

…

“The prototype is a humanoid robot, with features like a head, torso, legs, and arms, and when fully extended stands at 140cm. In order to communicate with people the head has a face on an LED screen, which can display emotions and blink. Instead of hands the machine has flexible grippers, which are balloons filled with coffee granules. Under normal circumstances the coffee particles behave like a liquid, but when the air is removed they jam into place and become rigid. By pressing the balloon against an object and creating a vacuum the robot can use this method to pick objects up, as it will conform to the object’s natural shape when soft and then harden around it.”

Trinity Engineers to Showcase Prototype Robot to United Nations (University Times)

Pic: Will Goodbody

robot

Cheaply-purchased robots rebooted to dance in time to Jingle Bells?

Witchcraft!

Maybe not.

The machines are apparently “enhanced with intelligence” inserted by ‘boffins’ [led by Dr Emanuel Popovici and Dr Michele Magno (yes) of University College of Cork’s Electronic Engineering department.

Dr Popovoci and Dr Magno were inspired by the challenge laid down by Joanne O’Riordan at the UN to the scientific community to build better robots.

Tom McCarthy of UCC sez:

Due to the wide variety of disabilities, special customised interfaces are needed for each person based on their individual situation. The complexity of building such systems can vary according to the level of disability, and can become very expensive as a result. These factors can limit drastically the access to toys.

The team is working on developing [affordable] toys that will respond to a range of biosignals, like the movement of eyes or the slight tap of fingers, in collaboration with colleagues from France, Switzerland and Romania.

 

The ‘Intelligent Interfaces for Interacting with Toys’ (i3-Toys) project is composed of students from Electronics, Applied Psychology, Education, Computer Science and Medicine at UCC and include Fiona Edwards-Murphy, Alex Jaeger, Tadhg Lambe, Andrea Zagoneanu (Occupational Therapy) and Merissa Bradley.

Filmed by Stephen Bean