Robotics Blog » Research

CMU Biorobotics Lab Shows Off Its “Unified Snake” Robot Sidewiding, Climbing Up A Pole, and Rolling.

Dan — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 01:56:10 +0000

CMU Biorobotics Unified Snake Climbing

Carnegie Mellon University’s Biorobotics Lab shows off their new modular snake robot, Unified Snake. Watch as it climbs up a pole, performs rolls, and sidewinds.

CMU

CMU Biorobotics Unified Snake Rolling

This work considers two issues: snake robot locomotion and modular robot design. We achieve snake robot locomotion by designing gaits, which are cyclic internal motions that allow the mechanism to interact with the environment to propel itself forward. Our gaits enable snake robots to maneuver through a variety three-dimensional terrains and include swimming and climbing. The robots, themselves, are a modular chain of single degree of freedom units each powered by a low-cost, yet modified, hobby servo that we call the Super Servo. We have updated the internal electronics in the servo as well as created new mechanism designs so as to optimize efficiency and robustness.

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~biorobotics/index.html

MIT’s Firefly Robots Create Floating 3D Display From Colored Micro Helicopters

Dan — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 06:52:19 +0000

MIT's Firefly Floating Helicopter

What an awesome display of swarm robotics. These self-organizing micro-bots organize themselves and emit the correct colors to form a free-floating image in the sky.
With a few hundred thousand of these you can create a fully immersive visual environment. Imagine watching a 3D 1080P movie with a few million of these surrounding you!

3D Images From Firefly Free Floating Helicopter Display

The Flyfire canvas can transform itself from one shape to another or morph a two-dimensional photographic image into an articulated shape. The pixels are physically engaged in transitioning images from one state to another, which allows the Flyfire canvas to demonstrate a spatially animated viewing experience. Flyfire serves as an initial step to explore and imagine the possibilities of this free-form display: a swarm of pixels in a space.

Insect Spy Cyborg Robots are Controlled Remotely, Nuclear Powered

Dan — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 11:43:38 +0000

These cyborg insects can be remotely controlled via a radio transmitter attached to the bug’s back. The insect is powered by Nickel-63, a radioactive isotope which is able to supply power for a small amount of electronics for up about 100 years. Too bad that bug won’t live that long!

Cyborg Insect Spy Robot

These… insects…or are they robots?… cyborgs, can fly around and could possibly transmit whatever sensor information it obtains back to the remote controller.

Maybe this technology could be applied to other typed of insect robots, like this water strider.

The primary objective of the Insect Cyborg Sentinels Project is to develop cybernetic insects for the purposes of living surveillance and reconnaissance micro-air vehicles, MAVs. By eliminating the energy needed for flight and focusing energy efforts on controller and sensor packages, a cybernetic MAV, or CMAV, can be harnessed for the purpose of long endurance stealth missions.

Robotic Hand Allows Man to Grasp Objects and “Feel” – Video

Dan — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 01:49:41 +0000

Interesting. This robotic hand connects to nerve endings via electronic sensors. This allows the robotic hand and human to actually have some ability to feel what it is grasping. The hook in the beginning looks a little primitive. The new and improved hand appears to work much better. Mapping the nerves down to specific fingers looks like it needs more work, though. Still a great improvement over the original hook! Perhaps in the future a better brain implant will able better to relay the correct instructions from the brain to a fully functional robotic hand. This one has already been in the works for ten years! Maybe in another ten it will be perfect?

A team of scientists from Italy and Sweden has developed what is believed to be the first artificial hand that has feeling. It has been attached to the arm of a 22-year-old man who lost his own hand through cancer. Researchers say it works by connecting human nerve endings with tiny electronic sensors.

Robot Tracks and Catches Thrown Object – TOTO

Dan — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 21:30:55 +0000

TOTO, “Tracking of Thrown Objects” is a robot which tracks and catches objects thrown at it. Developed by Dennis Barteit, the robot uses cameras to lock on to the incoming projectile and catch it.

The goal? To speed up robotic automation by throwing and catching needed parts and objects. This “transportation by throwing” is a two part problem in that it requires both aimed throwing and active catching.

Watch the videos below.

Let’s hope they don’t start throwing kitchen knives.

Programmable Matter Could Create Shape Shifting Robots

Dan — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 00:16:46 +0000

Programmable matter could be used to create shape-shifting robots capable of changing their shape and adapting to their environment.

DARPA’s programmable matter research could potentially open the doors to a new kind of robotics. Shape-shifters could change their form to fit into tight openings, or work together to create stable structures in a swarm-type mode.

Programmable matter can change shapes on the fly.

Currently, programmable matter is in its infancy. Some programmable matter consists of actuators that allow for almost any shape to be made. Success has even been found using synthetic biology and engineered cells capable of changing their color and shape.

According to DARPA,

The goal of Programmable Matter Program is to demonstrate a new functional form of matter, based on mesoscale particles, which can reversibly assemble into complex 3D objects upon external command. These 3D objects will exhibit all the functionality of their conventional counterparts.

-DARPA
[signal]

How To Walk On Water – Super-Hydrophobia Leads The Way

Dan — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 20:39:53 +0000

Scientists, amazed by animals like the Water Strider (shown below), which can walk on water, now have the key to this small insect’s success. The animals have super-hydrophobic legs. Hydrophobic, meaning, “water-fearing”, basically means there is a strong repulsion between the water and the hydrophobic surface.

Water Strider Floats on the Water

While normally, the water strider might sink into the water and drown, super-hydrophobic legs allow them to support over 15 times their body weight on the water! Their legs consist of wax spread over super-fine hairs, making water droplets flee for their lives.

Seen below is an example of a water droplet on a super-hydrophobic surface.

Seen here is a drop of water on a hydrophobic surface. Image: Xiao Cheng Zeng

The problem was how to recreate the super-hydrophobic materials we see in nature. After thousands of experiments, a group of scientists think they’ve solved the problem. They goal now, is to make use of this recent discovery in our modern world. The belief is that super-hydrophobic surfaces could be applied in fabrics, and other surfaces to make them self-cleaning.

Or, perhaps, a day where torrents of tiny robots with super-hydrophobic legs paddle to take over the world.

Are Electronics-Free Robots the Future?

Dan — Wed, 27 May 2009 16:21:29 +0000

When I think of robots, I think of tangled wires and brushed metal. So, could these new gel bots be the future of robotics?

They’re limited to “inchworming,” so they’re not very mobile, or otherwise comparable to what we know electromechanical robots can do. The main advantage of the chemical robots is that they do not need an electrical source of power. The robots gain energy through chemical reactions with their environment.

This technology is still very new, so don’t count out an army of advanced chemical polymer gel bots busting down your door some time in the future.

This Gel bot inchworms

Researchers at the Shuji Hashimoto Laboratory in Tokyo, Japan have taken the first steps towards creating an electronics-free robot. They have developed a chemical gel capable of autonomous movements without any electrical inputs. Their robot combines polymers that change their size based on the chemical environment. The surrounding gel and the tension built into it amplify this reaction, rendering the robot capable of walking by clenching then expanding its bridge-like form.

[via]
[Chemical Robotics Group]

Thought Controlled Wheelchair Offers New Possibilities for the Paralyzed

Dan — Wed, 20 May 2009 23:51:01 +0000

A robotic wheelchair which can be controlled by the brain is being developed by a team at the University of Zaragoza in Spain. A person’s head is hooked up to electrodes and then presented with a visualization of their movement options. Computer software then looks at brain activity while a person concentrates on the movement they would like the wheelchair to take. The computer works to correlate the brain activity to the presented option and the wheel chair responds.

[via]

Robot Plays Marco Polo, Senses and Intercepts its Target

Dan — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 07:06:31 +0000

A robot built by University of New Mexico and Duke professors displays its talent at intercepting a target through the game known as ‘Marco Polo’.

In the game, one person is ‘it’ and the other players become the targets to tag. When the person who is it, says “Marco”, the other players must respond with “Polo”.

This type of game is well suited for the robot’s mission. The robot must be designed to track the other players based off of their previous locations and determine a way to intercept and tag them.

And it isn’t just about playing a game. The robot has military applications: It could track missiles movements, or predict enemy troop locations. It could also provide a way of mapping a minefield. By tracking the locations of mines it could tell operators the safest possible path to get through it.