MIT and Segway's robo-hackathon focuses on eldercare

Robots have become smarter and more useful over the last year alone, and Segway Robotics is turning to developers for ideas on more meaningful applications for its Loomo bot. For three days starting February 10th, the company is co-hosting the MIT Hacking Medicine Robotics hackathon in Singapore to create eldercare-based uses for Loomo. The winning teams' creations will be tested in Singapore, and successful applications will be rolled out globally. In addition to coming up with helpful applications for Loomo, the event's organizers are also hoping to get participant feedback on how to improve the robot. Segway unveiled the latest developer version of Loomo at CES this year, and announced an array of partners that includes MIT, BMW and Intel.