A variety of stories making the headlines in London science this week, from the blind seeing to more political wrangling with the Olympics:

The Wellcome Trust is expecting to hear any day now on its bid to take over the Olympic site in Stratford after the Olympics and create a 1m sq ft campus featuring labs, conference centres, a data centre and space for two new universities.

Image from the Wellcome Trust

The proposal is estimated to create 7000 jobs and would hope to stimulate an influx of further investment to the area to further support East London as a world science and technology hub. The only problem is that the government had planned to sell off the Olympic Village, for which bids have been accepted, and build 11,000 houses elsewhere on the park, but the Wellcome Trust’s proposal is dependent on taking over the entire park, using sales fro residential units to fund development of other parts of the science park, which had not been previously considered. There are two other bids being considered for the park and a decision is expected this week.

Meanwhile over at the Royal Society Summer Exhibition, the exhibit gaining the most attention comes from Dr Stephen Hicks from Oxford University, who is working on bionic vision. One of the ideas being demoed is a device which can be worn like a pair of glasses to assist people with low vision. The computer inside the device simplifies the image in front of the person to make tasks like crossing the road safer, while simultaneously seeking out items of interest to present.

The second exhibit at the Summer Exhibition creating quite a bit of interest is the Facial Perception, work being done by researchers at Queen Mary College, London on creating socially aware companion robots and graphical characters. Professor Peter McOwan explains that humans can pick up thousands of social cues from another person’s face and is working to see if computers (and ultimately robots) can be taught to do the same thing. Professor McOwen said ‘Robots are going to increasingly form part of our daily lives – for instance robotic aids used in hospitals or much later down the road sophisticated machines that we will have working in our homes. Our research aims to develop software, based on biology, that will allow robots to interact with humans in the most natural way possible – understanding the things we take for granted like personal space or reacting to an overt emotion such as happiness.’

You can see the facial perception and the bionic vision software in action at the Royal Society until July 10th.