Robot Living

This robot by Nissan is designed to highlight their new crash avoidance system for cars.

Working with the Research Center for Advanced Science from the University of Tokyo, Nissan has developed the Robot Car BR23C.

This robot is based on bees and how in a swarm, they still avoid managing to crash into each other.  Hopefully this technology will make it’s way into their cars by 2015.

Link via (Pink Tentacle)
More pics after the jump.
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No, this is not complete science fiction or a story by Jules Verne.  The Odyssey AUV (Autonomous Underwater Vehicle) can actually  hover in place.

Folks from MIT’s Autonomous Underwater Vehicles Lab have created the Odyssey IV, another AUV in the latest of a long line of AUVs.  The Odyssey IV can go down to a depth of 6,000 feet and hover anywhere in between. It has been tested of off Woods Hole in Massachusetts.

The ability to hover in one spot is great for taking photos or if outfitted with an arm, great for turning valves.  The MIT Sea Grant Program director Chryssostomos Chryssostomidis compares Odyssey IV to a helicopter,

Like a giant helicopter, this can pick up cargo underwater.

Most AUVs or submarines have to constantly move either forwards or backwards and cannot hover in place.  They hope to make the Odyssey IV able to transmit data back to us humans on boat or land for up to a full year, without the need for surfacing.

Check out the Odyssey IV in ROV mode here.

Link via (Dr. Dobb’s)

A three man team of computer scientists at Stanford University have created helicopter that can fly themselves.  The helicopters learn maneuvers by watching other helicopters.

A remote control pilot flies another helicopter while orientation, direction, velocity and acceleration are measured.  A ground based computer crunches the data and talks to the Stanford helicopter via radio 20 times per second.  On a larger helicopter, all of the equipment would be on board.

The Stanford helicopter is able to repeat the maneuvers completely on its own and in some cases, improving upon what the remote control pilot did.

The helicopters sports accelerometers, gyroscopes and magnetometers to help get the job done.

Possible applications for the helicopters are things like helping firefighters map out hot spots in wild fires in real time or searching for land mines in war zones.

See the helicopter in action here.

Link to a better video here, with comments by Stanford team.

See another Stanford helicopter project here.

Update:  See the new Stanford Helicopter website with more videos here and the helicopter mapping research website here.

Link via (Engadget)

Tags: Stanford

The TV show Stargate has inspired European researchers from 10 universities in the Symbrion program  to create swarm robots.

Allen  Whitfield from the University of the West of England, Bristol states:

Some robots might form a chain allowing rescue workers to communicate with survivors while others assemble themselves into a ‘medicine bot’ to give first aid.

The robots can form chains and would be used to help search for victims in collapsed buildings or other emergency situations.  The robots will not be ready for action for another 10 to 15 years. Watch all the action in a  video  here.

See our previous post on swarm robotics here.

Link via (ITN)

The European Space Agency (ESA) has begun testing two mars robots named Bruno and Bradley.

The robots feature extreme manuverability and can rotate one wheel at a time if needed.  They can also move sideways like a crab.

The robots will also carry large payloads, be able to make decisions on their own and drill down up to six feet to take samples to analyze.

in 2005 the project was estimated to cost 650 million Euros, but now folks are saying it could cost double that.  The robots are expected to land on Mars in 2015 if they get enough funding.

Link via (BBC)