Robots of Nature

To a robot designer like Sangbae Kim, the animal kingdom is full of inspiration.

"I always look at animals and ask why they are the way they are," says Kim, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at MIT. "As an engineer, looking at them and speculating is fascinating."

While a graduate student at Stanford,


Kim drew inspiration from the gecko to build a climbing robot, and he is now designing a running robot that mimics the movements of a cheetah. Such agile, fast-moving robots could perform military surveillance and search-and-rescue missions deemed too dangerous for humans to undertake.

His Biomimetic Robotics Lab is one of several at MIT pursuing biologically inspired engineering. A team of mechanical engineers has built robotic fish, and materials scientists have designed moisture-collecting materials that mimic a beetle's shell.

Evolution has produced finely tuned adaptations over millions of years, so it only makes sense to turn to nature for design ideas. However, while Kim seeks inspiration in nature, he's not trying to produce exact robotic copies of a particular animal. Such copying would be difficult to achieve and not necessarily the most effective design strategy.

"There are millions of things that animals have to adapt for, and it is almost impossible to compare evolution to our engineering/mathematical optimization process," says Kim. "And you have to be careful about copying other features that may not be related to the particular function you want to achieve. Therefore, extracting scientific principle is extremely important for designers like me."

Stickybot

When Kim and his colleagues at Stanford set out to build a climbing robot, at first they figured they needed to make the robot's feet sticky. However, they soon realized that very sticky feet can't detach very easily.

Their approach shifted dramatically with the 2006 discovery, by Lewis and Clark College biologist Kellar Autumn, that geckos use a phenomenon called directional adhesion to stick to walls.

"The gecko gave us a completely new perspective. Stickiness does not necessarily come from chemical composition; it can come from mechanical properties and geometry," says Kim. "The geometry enables strange phenomena such as directional adhesion, which sticks in only one direction."

The pads of a gecko's feet are covered with a forest of tiny hairs called setae, some of which are one-twentieth the width of a human hair. The setae, in turn, branch into hundreds of tiny smaller hairs called spatulae, which are about one-thousandth the width of a human hair. These hairs cling to surfaces using tiny molecular interactions known as van der Waals forces. Collectively, the forces are strong enough to support the gecko's weight as it scrambles up a vertical surface.

To demonstrate, Kim rummages around in a desk drawer in his office and pulls out a small rectangle of the gecko-inspired adhesive material, which resembles a tiny patch of blue Astroturf. A compact disc gently held against the horizontal surface attaches securely in one direction and then easily detaches in the opposite direction.

The adhesive is covered with hairs made of rubber silicone, which are thicker than those on a gecko's paw (about four times thicker than a human hair). Because thicker hairs require smoother surfaces for adhesion, Stickybot can only climb extremely smooth surfaces like glass.

Kim and his colleagues, led by Stanford professor Mark Cutkosky, first demonstrated Stickybot in 2006, and Time magazine named it one of that year's best inventions. The paper describing the robot also won the 2008 Best Paper Award for the IEEE Transactions on Robotics.

Potential applications for the stickybot technology include exterior repair of underwater oil pipelines and window washing. Kim also plans to start designing climbing equipment for humans using the directional adhesion technology.

Need for speed

Kim, who arrived at MIT as an assistant professor in June, is now turning his attention to a speedier robot, inspired by the cheetah. Four graduate students have just begun working on the cheetah project, and within the next two years Kim hopes to have a prototype that can run 35 miles per hour.

Though his design incorporates principles from a variety of running animals, including horses and dogs, Kim zeroed in on the cheetah because of its special adaptations for speed. One feature he plans to mimic is the flexibility of the cheetah's backbone, which gives extra speed or force to its running motion.

To demonstrate how extra joints can add force and speed, Kim leans back in his chair and mimics throwing a baseball, in slow motion — first the shoulder, then the elbow, then the wrist bend. The force imparted by each of those joints adds up, allowing a pitcher to throw a faster pitch. In the same way, the joints of the cheetah's leg — hip, knee and ankle — are aided by the extra speed generated by its bending backbone, which is much more flexible than that of other running mammals.

Kim and his students plan to start building and testing prototypes within the next 18 months, after using a computer model to calculate the optimal limb length and weight, gait and torque of the hip and knee joints.

He expects that the biggest challenge will be getting enough power out of the motor to furnish the desired speed. To that end, he plans to build the robot out of lightweight carbon fiber-foam composite, so less power is needed to propel it.

Another difficult problem is coordinating the control of three joints in four legs. Those 12 joints each have to move in concert with the others, and they need to be able to react smoothly to disturbances in the gait, such as tripping over a rock, and regain balance.

Kim believes his robots could be a significant improvement over current wheeled robots used for scouting and search and rescue, which are efficient but slow. "It's going to be very exciting to see how fast we can go and how rough a terrain we can navigate."


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New Worlds Might Scale Robot Armada

An armada of robots may one day fly above the mountain tops of Saturn's moon Titan, cross its vast dunes and sail in its liquid lakes.

Wolfgang Fink, visiting associate in physics at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena says we are on the brink of a great paradigm shift in planetary exploration, and the next round of robotic explorers will be nothing like what we see today.

"The way we explore tomorrow will be unlike any cup of tea we've ever tasted," said Fink, who was recently appointed as the Edward and Maria Keonjian Distinguished Professor in Microelectronics at the University of Arizona, Tucson. "We are departing from traditional approaches of a single robotic spacecraft with no redundancy that is Earth-commanded to one that allows for having multiple, expendable low-cost robots that can command themselves or other robots at various locations at the same time."


Fink and his team members at Caltech, the U.S. Geological Survey and the University of Arizona are developing autonomous software and have built a robotic test bed that can mimic a field geologist or astronaut, capable of working independently and as part of a larger team. This software will allow a robot to think on its own, identify problems and possible hazards, determine areas of interest and prioritize targets for a close-up look.

The way things work now, engineers command a rover or spacecraft to carry out certain tasks and then wait for them to be executed. They have little or no flexibility in changing their game plan as events unfold; for example, to image a landslide or cryovolcanic eruption as it happens, or investigate a methane outgassing event.

"In the future, multiple robots will be in the driver's seat," Fink said. These robots would share information in almost real time. This type of exploration may one day be used on a mission to Titan, Mars and other planetary bodies. Current proposals for Titan would use an orbiter, an air balloon and rovers or lake landers.

In this mission scenario, an orbiter would circle Titan with a global view of the moon, with an air balloon or airship floating overhead to provide a birds-eye view of mountain ranges, lakes and canyons. On the ground, a rover or lake lander would explore the moon's nooks and crannies. The orbiter would "speak" directly to the air balloon and command it to fly over a certain region for a closer look. This aerial balloon would be in contact with several small rovers on the ground and command them to move to areas identified from overhead.

"This type of exploration is referred to as tier-scalable reconnaissance," said Fink. "It's sort of like commanding a small army of robots operating in space, in the air and on the ground simultaneously."

A rover might report that it's seeing smooth rocks in the local vicinity, while the airship or orbiter could confirm that indeed the rover is in a dry riverbed - unlike current missions, which focus only on a global view from far above but can't provide information on a local scale to tell the rover that indeed it is sitting in the middle of dry riverbed.

A current example of this type of exploration can best be seen at Mars with the communications relay between the rovers and orbiting spacecraft like the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. However, that information is just relayed and not shared amongst the spacecraft or used to directly control them.

"We are basically heading toward making robots that command other robots," said Fink, who is director of Caltech's Visual and Autonomous Exploration Systems Research Laboratory, where this work has taken place.

"One day an entire fleet of robots will be autonomously commanded at once. This armada of robots will be our eyes, ears, arms and legs in space, in the air, and on the ground, capable of responding to their environment without us, to explore and embrace the unknown," he added.

Papers describing this new exploration are published in the journal "Computer Methods and Programs in Biomedicine" and in the Proceedings of the SPIE.

For more information on this work, visit http://autonomy.caltech.edu . More information on JPL missions is at http:/www.jpl.nasa.gov/ .

JPL is managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology.

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Cyborg Legs by Honda

The first one is Robo-Legs

Honda’s first foray into robotizing old peoples’ haunches looked pretty tame, but this new one, on which geriatrics are supposed to mount like some sort of meat trophy, feels like a glimpse into a horrible, dystopian future where up is down, right is wrong and grandmas and grandpas amble through Sears on mechanized rectal steeds instead of walkers. The machine, which I’m 90% sure is just the missing half of this Battle Droid from Attack of the Clones, is more a passive support device than it is a set of active robot limbs, though it does have a small electric motor.





Details are a bit sparse for the time being, but Honda claims that the legs transparently reduce the strains of walking, standing and crouching, and should be “as easy to use as a bicycle.” The AP reporter who got to test the robo-legs had this to say about them:

The second one is Walking Assist Device

Honda has developed a gadget that they say could make walking easier for the elderly and others with weak leg muscles. The aptly named Walking Assist Device is a 6 lb. motorized belt with hip sensors that gauge how much help the wearer will need. The motor then gives the wearer an appropriate boost, lengthening his or her stride enough to make walking easier on the legs.



The device’s lithium-ion battery only last two hours on a charge, so don’t expect Grandma to run a full marathon, but some time moseying around the retirement village while looking all cyberpunk will surely make her coolest geriatric in Del Boca Vista.

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Heart Lander a Heart Robot

One of the most promising application areas for robotics and more specifically miniature and nano robotics is in medicine. Whether the tiny robots are specifically designed to deliver medications or directly attack viruses, their usefulness in prolonging our lives and eliminating the pain and suffering of disease is indisputable. I am always happy to read about recent advances in medical robotics that bring us one step closer to such devices. This post is about HeartLander, a miniature medical robot under development at CMU's Robotics Institute; the robot is designed for performing minimally invasive cardiac therapy.

So how does the robot work?

Basically, a surgeon creates a small incision on the patient's chest. Using a pair of forceps, the surgeon places the robot directly on the beating heart. Using a joystick, he can then guide the robot delivering medicine directly to affected areas, helping to attach pacemaker electrodes or even assisting with specialized techniques for curing arrhythmia. The worm-like robot moves using an ingenious mechanism driven by miniature ultrasonic piezoelectric motors.

Although the robot is still a proof of concept, the CMU research team has been able to demonstrate its use on a pig's beating heart (see the video at the end of this post.) The team still has to work out a number of issues such as the development of wireless remote control mechanism in order to eliminate the reliance on a tether whose stiffness causes problems with locomotion. The same tether is used to supply energy to HeartLander although a future production version would most likely utilize an on-board battery. This is an excellent and very promising research project and I am looking forward to the next generation of HeartLander.

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The Man-machine

In 2008, exoskeleton technology was demonstrated by a few groups and technology companies as one advancement that will soon be used to enhance our lives. These exoskeletons are very powerful machines but must be controlled by weak human beings without hurting them. Finding the right balance or synergy between man and machine is no easy task. The man-machine synergy effector is a proposed theoretical system for regulating the power flow from man to machine and vice versa in order for the two-body system to complete tasks impossible tp be performed by only one of the two members.


Japanese researchers recently published the man-machine synergy effector at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA.) The same group also set out to demonstrate a realization of the concept via the construction of the Power Pedal exoskeleton. The exoskeleton can potentially increase a person's power by a factor between 7 and 40 while being safe and intuitive to use.

Although the concept of man-machine synergy makes a lot of sense, the actual implementation of Power Pedal leaves much to be desired. As you can see from the video below, it is very difficult to control the machine. It truly fails to demonstrate how this exoskeleton is intuitive to use as the operator seems to make an enormous amount of effort to control it; other than the fact that the machine does not crash the operator, there is hardly any man-machine synergy demonstrated. I guess this is the pre-Alpha prototype and the next version will be vastly improved.

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Rescue Robot

Rescue robots are one application for which there has been much excitement during the last decade. These robots are designed to be small and versatile carrying a comprehensive sensor payload in order to detect victims under heavy debris in disaster areas. Everyone who has watched the news after a major earthquake or hurricane with many buildings destroyed can easily understand the need for such robots as rescuers are frantically searching for survivors under heavy debris.

Researchers from the Tokyo Institute of Technology have recently proposed a new type of rescue robot that is capable of not only detecting victims in need of help but also clearing and lifting heavy debris to reach them.

The prototype robot named Bari-bari-II has a unique design that allows it to navigate over and lift debris. Its front is designed to have a step structure which can grip on debris, lift it and move under it. Once under, the robot uses oil hydraulic power to lift up to 600Kgrs. Like traditional rescue robots, a sensor payload consisting of a camera and microphone help rescuers to find victims in the rumble. The robot weighs 25Kgrs and it measures 48x28x14cm in size. Rescuers can use more than one robots at the same time to lift even heavier debris.

The video below gives an overview of Bari-bari-II rescue robot showing it in action in a simulated disaster situation.

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Robotic Fish Used in Pollution Research

According to the Daily Mail, scientists from the University of Essex in Colchester are currently working on a project that would send robotic fishes into the depths of the River Thames. Their mission? To collect data and create a 3D water pollution map. In the United States, a similar project is being conducted by the University of Washington in Seattle to monitor oil spills. Just like it, this EU-funded project costing around $4 million entails the production of robotic fishes that can act autonomously within schools.


The researchers have reportedly been able to develop "swarm intelligence techniques" that allow them to perform as a group without any human input. There will be five fishes within a school, communicating with each other via WiFi, all with built-in GPS systems. As expected, due to its purpose, each fish is fitted with sensors that can detect pollutants. In fact, different sensors can be planted on each fish to target a particular substance. Whenever one of the robots finds something in the water, it sends a signal to all the members of its school so all of them could take detailed readings of the area. A prototype of the robot could be created within the next 18 months, and the design will follow the robotic fish that's already in display over at London Aquarium.

"This might look like something straight out of science fiction [but] there are very practical reasons for choosing this form," says Rory Doyle from the BMT Engineering Group that's overseeing the project. "In using robotic fish we are building on a design created by hundreds of millions of years' worth of evolution which is incredibly energy efficient." One of the designer's aims is for the robots to be able to last 24 hours underwater before needing recharge, but I'm hopeful they'll find a way to harness water and kinetic energy to power the fishes in the future.

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Humanoid Robot to Explore The moon in 2020

Japan announced the other day that they are creating a roadmap for sending humanoid robots to the Moon a a first step towards human-robot space exploration. The current roadmap as announced by Japan's Strategic Headquarters for Space Development includes sending the first humanoids to explore the Earth's natural satellite by 2020. This is only 11 years from now which makes Japan's project a very bold one. Humanoid robots can hardly navigate man-made environments with lots of structure on Earth, it is hard to believe that in the next decade robotics technology will advance so far that such robot astronauts will be possible.


I am not saying that bipedal robots will never be constructed and possibly become a major component of space missions. What I am saying is that I don't think this is going to happen by 2020. NASA has had a space robotics program for ever and the most advanced and reliable robots that they have been able to send to other planets, namely Mars, have all been wheeled rovers.

The next generation planetary explorers that NASA is preparing are also of the same kind albeit much larger and more mobile than the current and past generations. The ATHLETE rover for example is under heavy development as a future platform for exploring the Lunar surface and it's design makes much more sense than a bipedal machine. Also, don't forget about Google's Lunar X Prize which is an effort to encourage private industry to construct and send a small exploration rover to the Moon as cheaply and as quickly as possible.

At the end of the day, a rover has higher mobility, can carry a larger payload (instruments, batteries, solar panels) and can reliably navigate terrain of all kinds. To expect a bipedal robot to have such capabilities in a decade requires much ambition and lots of engineering breakthroughs.

I have a feeling that Japan is aiming for publicity more than practicality in space robotics. They have now scrapped plans for their manned space program and they have yet to start the construction of their Lunar lander. They believe it will take another 2 years before they figure out all the details regarding the announced robotics mission to the Moon. Maybe they are trying to get the media to talk about their robotics project and ignore that at the same time they announced plans for the construction and deployment of military satellites. Finally, Japan is also planning to create robotics technologies to help cleanup some of the debris floating in orbit around the Earth. This space garbage poses a huge hazard to satellites, the International Space Station, and any other man-made object that is sent into space.

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