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.
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)
We previously posted about this project in 2007 in a post called Eye-bot, and boy has a lot happened since then.
Swarmanoid is a research collaboration between various European agencies like the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems (LIS) and is funded by the European Commission.
The latest Swarmanoid video just won an award from the AAAI 2011 Video Competition. Check after the break for the video.
The Swarmanoid project continues to expand on the work of the Swarm-bots project. The Eye-bot, the Foot-bot and the Hand-bot all work together to comprise the elements of the Swarmanoid project.
The Foot-bot is the basic wheeled foot soldier in this operation. They can dock with each other and dock with as well as carry the Hand-bot.
The Eye-bot is a quadrotor capable of sticking to the ceiling and is the eyes of the project.
The Hand-bot can dock with the Foot-bot, use it’s two grippers to climb and also has a rope laucher that can attach to the ceiling.
All three different robots can communicate with each other and work in harmony to retrieve a book from a book shelf. Quite amazing work here.
Much like a Jesus lizard or water strider, this 12 legged robot can walk on water. The researchers gave the robot copper legs that have a structure capable of trapping tiny air pockets. This helps the robot stay afloat on the water.
Ten legs support the robot while the other two are connected to small motors that help the robot move. Robots like this could be used to monitor environmental pollution.
See our previous post Jesus Robots, featuring a water strider type of robot from Carnegie Melon.
Funding for this research was provided by the Harbin Institute of Technology and the Natural Science Foundation of China.
Click through for a video.
Link via (Cosmic Log)
Photo: MIT / Melanie Gonick
Traffic accidents are one of the leading causes of death in the United States. Researchers at MIT are working on a system to make cars smarter and avoid crashes.
The researchers are developing an algorithm modeled on human driving behavior that would warn the driving of an accident and possibly take over control of the car.
The trick here is to avoid false positives. If a driver receives too many warnings , they may just ignore the warnings, thinking the system did not work properly.
The other problem, is that anything developed now will only effect cars in the future, so they must take into account cars that do not have this smart system built in.
This new algorithm was tested in the lab on two overlapping circular tracks with a 97% success rate. One autonomous car and one driver controlled care were used in the testing.
Here’s to one day having our cars drive themselves!
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