Archive for the 'Research' Category

It may not be a Dr. Octopus exoskeleton, but this bot does have 3 tentacle like arms. The U.S. Army Research Laboratory has taken a snake robot and combined three of them together with a body. They call their creation a Robotic Tentacle Manipulator.

This monstrosity can crawl, swim and go through narrrow spaces. In other words, you can’t run or hide from it. This bot uses the same movement techniques of a snake, specifically how they push off of rocks to propel themselves.

[Gizmodo]

Researchers at Bielelfeld University in Germany have created the Flobi. This Flobi won’t cut your hair, but it does have a personailty disorder of sorts thanks to modular masks.

This robotic head can quickly be changed from male to female and vice versa. The researchers hope avoid the uncanny valley with the design. Flobi has a range of emotions and his/her cheeks even blush thanks to LEDs.

[cit-ec]

A study underway, brought to us by psychologists, economists, and roboticists at a range of institutions, including Northeastern, MIT, and Cornell, acknowledges that there are silent cues that give away if a person is trustworthy or not. Except, we do not know what the exact cues are. The point of the study is to find out what they are.

The scientists are going to be learning the identities of these clues by isolating certain nonverbal gestures. For example, if they wanted to see if indirect eye contact mattered, they would put the Nexi in a room with the human test subject. The robot would say something without looking into the human’s eyes. Then the test subject would say whether or not they believe the robot is lieing.

In my opinion, these tests are a little too based on a human’s judgment. Many trials will have to be done in order to get a true evaluation.

[io9]

Robots are getting all kinds of new locomotion methods. The latest of these is a good way to rescue humans in a disaster. A team at the Georgia Institute of Technology has developed a robot that can “swim” through sand, like a lizard.

Sand’s has solid and fluid dynamics, making it a tough terrain to “swim” in. This Lizard-bot does a fine job though. Remember the video below while you are at the beach.
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Robots like the one above could start crawling along thousands of miles of power lines in North America very soon. The robots would check for cable defects and problems like overgrown trees, eliminating the need for some human inspection, according to researchers at the Electric Power Research Institute. These bots would save humans a ton of time and money.

The prototype is designed to be 140 pounds and 6 feet long, and moves on rollers at an average speed of about 3 mph. It will even be able to navigate around pylons by using special cables. It will be covered by solar panels which it can use as a backup power system. It will be mainly powered by electricity flowing from the wire it crawls on.

If it can cover the expected 160 miles of cable per year, it would cost utilities less than $500,000. That’s much cheaper than the same work being performed by inspection crews in helicopters.

[CNet]

Robots who look like they are starring in Children of Chucky tend to give us nightmares. Meet M3-Kindy and Noby, a pair of bots recently shown at the JST Erato Asada Project symposium in Japan. Both are designed to study human development by pretending to be babies. Somehow I don’t think potential parents will be fooled. And if they are, they will never be seen again.

Noby, shown above, is an abbreviation for “nine-month old baby,” with the size, shape, weight, and behavior to match. The M3-Kindy (in the video below) is meant to be a five-year-old. Kindy can walk and even display some emotion. He has stereoscopic vision and speech recognition as well.
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You might remember Bandit from last year. At the time, Bandit was being used to help humans exercise, but now he has found a new mission. Helping kids with Autism. His synthetic looks help in this regard. Even family members can have difficulty connecting to kids with autism, but machines can often do the trick.

Designed by researchers at the University of Southern California, the bot’s vague resemblance to a human make it very approachable for these kids. He has cameras in his eyes, he can blow bubbles and he only barely emotes.

[Popsci]

Have you ever seen a quadrotor helicopter could fly with such precision? No, of course you haven’t. This autonomous RC aircraft was programmed by the folks at the GRASP Lab at the University of Pennsylvania. Looks like all of their hard work has paid off nicely.

Each of the bot’s moves is transmitted from an outboard computer to the helicopter using 2.4GHz XBee wireless networking. Watch it easily fly through the window with no problems at all. The builders say that the quadrotor knows the location and orientation of the window from the motion capture system. We just say, “cool!”.

[Dvice]

Researchers presented the MuCar-3 at the European Land Robot Trial this week in Germany. To the observer, it looks like a normal SUV, but the prototype “autonomous robot car” is outfitted with sensors and scanners, multifocal camera systems and of course powerful computers. They hope that one day it will help to avoid military fatalities from bombings and ambushes.

The MuCar-3 can independently follow a lead car in a military convoy situation, and even stop or back up when the lead car does so. Thus it could keep troops out of harm’s way whenever possible, by reacting in tandem to the lead vehicle and letting troops worry about other things. Let the MuCar-3 move supplies and do other important but mundane tasks that are stressful.

[LA Times]

Japanese researchers have built an artificial butterfly that mimics the unusual flight patterns of the swallowtail butterfly. Their tiny robotic version is called an “ornithopter”. The swallowtail is unusual compared to other butterflies because of its very large wings, which dwarf the tiny body. So they flap their wings far less often than other kinds of butterflies and lack the more precise control of smaller wings. So it doesn’t respond to aerodynamic forces in the same way that other butterflies do.

They built the ornithopter to show that the swallowtails could really achieve forward flight by just flapping their wings, without reliance on aerodynamic feedback. It’s a lifelike replica of the butterfly, right down to the tiny membranes and veins on the wings. The breakthrough could lead to flapping wings being used in future aircraft.

[io9]