Robot Living

Thanks to the people at GRASP Lab , part of the University of Pennsylvania, we have quadrotors that can do things like make figure eights.  Amazing how the swarm of quadrotors can change formation patterns mid flight. 
Alex Kushleyev, Daniel Mellinger and professor Vijay Kumar have developed the quadrotors.

Check out Daniel Mellinger’s page for more information on his quadrotor developments.  Nice work guys. I wonder how they are sending commands to the quadrotors and how long then can stay in the air.

Tags: GRASP Lab, quadrotor, swarm, University of Pennsylvania

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

A hexapod robot from Osaka University named Asterix can do many things.  The six legged robot can climb over objects, squeeze under them and even cartwheel thanks to Professor Arai and his team at Osaka University.

Asterix has 6 legs, spaced 60 degrees apart.  The robot is the same on the top or the bottom, so that if it were to be flipped over, it could continue like nothing had happened.  The legs are also agile enough that they can pick be used to up objects or climb up a wall with a wire grid on it.

ASTERISK has the following 6 kinds of sensors.

1. Pressure sensors on the tips of all of the limbs, which can detect whether they are being pushed or pulled.
2. Infrared sensors on the tips of 3 of the limbs.
3. A gyro sensor and an acceleration sensor on the body.
4. Wireless cameras on the tips of 3 limbs and 3 CCD cameras on the body.

Click through for a video from DigInfo TV.

Link via (DigInfo TV)

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Tags: hexapod, japan, Osaka University

A while back, researchers at the University of Berkeley created a small robot called DASH (Dynamic Autonomous Sprawled Hexapod).
Now they have given DASH wings and run it through a series of interesting tests.

These tests breath new life into an old scientific debate.

The debate is weather wings evolved to let animals glide down from trees or to help animals maneuver up trees or up inclines.

Link via (Wired)

Tags: dash, university of berkeley

Yasunori  Yamada from the University of Tokyo has developed a robot to study the musculoskeletal systems of animals called PIGORASS.  This robot can walk, jump and even gallop.  Galloping is a state where all four feet are not touching the ground at the same time.

Using ABS Resin and carbon fiber reinforced plastic, Yasunori  Yamada combines this with 10 pneumatic muscles and 10 spring muscles to create PIGORASS.  The robot is not pre programmed for specific movements, but rather knows what to do based on feedback from it’s own neural network.  Each muscle has a neural oscillator that makes up the network.

Check out all the technical details in this PDF called Emergent Locomotion Patterns from A Quadruped.

Click through for a video of PIGORASS in action.

Plastic Pals  via (Tech Crunch)

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Tags: japan, University of Tokyo