Robot Living

Team members & Raven II components (Photo: UC Santa Cruz)

The Raven II surgical robot has been developed at the University of Santa Cruz and the University of Washington.  Five of these robots will be shipped to other universities like Johns Hopkins for further research.

Jacob Rosen and Blake Hannaford are leading the research.  Rosen stated:

We decided to follow an open-source model, because if all of these labs have a common research platform for doing robotic surgery, the whole field will be able to advance more quickly

The researchers aim to ship the robots to the other universities by the end of January and start collaborative experiments together and operating the robot over the internet.  The Raven II is expected to cost around $250,000, a lot less than other surgical robots like the da Vinci Surgical System.

The Raven II is based on the Raven I, a robot designed for battlefield surgery and has been funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation.

Click through for a video.

Link via (CNET)

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Tags: open source, robot, surgical

A grant from the Office of Naval Research has funded research at the University of New Orleans’ School of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering, resulting in a robotic eel.

Thanks to  Dr. Brandon Taravella and his research team, the eel is made up of 13 sections, each one containing a servo motor.  The brain is in the eel’s head and the plastic housing is made from a 3D printer.  The robotic eel will contain a variety of sensors and be used to check for mines or other suspicious activity.

This is not the first robot like this.  We have also seen Georgia Tech’s sand swimming robot as well as other snake robots, but hopefully this one will help keep our troops safe.

The screen grab photo is from an ABC video at the source.

Link via (ABC 26)

Tags: Dr. Brandon Taravella, eel, Navy, UNO

Researchers from Harvard University led by George M. Whitesides have created a 5 inch soft robot.

The robot has air pumped into it that allows it to slither or crawl.  The robot is made out of elastomeric polymers and modeled on squid, starfish and other creatures that do not have internal skeletons.

Soft robots are becoming a popular research field as evidenced by this robot and  iRobot’s Blob Robot among others.

Link via (Physorg)

Tags: Harvard University

The Telesar V robot avatar was developed by Keio University in Tokyo.  Similar to the telepresence robot  QB from Anybots, the Telesar V goes further by allowing users to actually feel objects thanks to sensor laden hands.

The amazing hands are touch sensitive as well as allowing the user to feel how hot or cold the object is.

The Telesar V is a telexistence robot where the user is required to wear a head mounted display that covers their vision.

I’m not sure how practical a Telesar V would be for a regular office setting, but it could be good for other environments like hospitals.  That is, if it doesn’t scare the patients.

Link via (Wired)

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Tags: japan, Keio University, tokyo

German firm Fraunhofer has created a robotic spider for hazardous missions using 3D printing.

Spiders are very agile, and some can even jump. They owe this capability to their hydraulically operated limbs. Researchers have now designed a mobile robot modeled on the same principle that moves spider legs. Created using a 3-D printing process, this lightweight can explore terrain that is beyond human reach.

Using an elastic drive bellows, the eight legs are pneumatically controlled.  The robot is light , quick to produce and not costly thanks to a 3D printing method. The spider robot is so cheap that Fraunhofer envisions throwing it away after being only used once.  Anyone want a cheap 3D printable robotic spider army?

The robot will be shown at the upcoming Euromold trade show in Frankfurt Germany from November 29 – December 12.

Link via (Verge)

Tags: 3D-printing, Fraunhofer, germany, robotics, spider