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Swimming Cockroach Robot Developed
Onnimikki writes "The Ambulatory Robotics Lab at McGill University has made a six-legged swimming cockroach robot as part of Project Aqua. The robot is a waterproof version of the RHex robot, whose inspiration is the biomimetic work by Bob Full of Gecko glue fame. Other cool stuff from the ARL page includes a waddling bipedal RHex, and the world's first galloping robot."
I could have so much fun with one of these. Scaring my mum/sister/girlfriend. I want one!
-- Karma Karma Karma Karma, Karma Chameleon - Boy George
inspiration is the biomimetic work by Bob Full of Gecko glue fame.
Why is he full of Gecko glue?
Talk about getting stuck into your work...
It's nice to see that it runs a proper Real Time OS.
I have actually seen one case of someone trying to build a mini sub-aqua robot running Windows XP (yes XP not CE) on a powerful micro PC card.
Seriously, ... it sounds fscked up, but it's true.
waterproof version of RHex, which was made neutrally buoyant
How did they do that ? Depending on the density of the water you immerse the thing it, they might approach neutral buoyancy by adjusting the amount of ballast manually, but they'll never achieve true static buoyancy without some kind of active process controlling the amount of water in a ballast tank. Otherwise the object would sink to the bottom or bob up to the surface eventually. Or do they maintain the thing's depth in the water with dynamic buyoancy using the robot's forward movement ? I don't see depth control planes on the robot, could they use its legs to achieve this ?
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Wish I could prove with u URL of some sort but I'm 2000% positive that I've seen galloping robots in a documentary years and years ago made by some university or MIT. I remember that they were made using hydraulics and that they had quadrupeds and even a monoped running/hopping through the hallways (with the researchers running to keep up with cables and such ;-)
I also remember that the movements were not preprogrammed but the system "learned" how best to cope with N legs. It developed all of the gaits found in a horse for example.
Very good stuff.
*hits cockroach with shoe*
What? Why is everyone looking at me like that?
Yes, the swimming robot version is cool, but the original rhex robot is pretty incredible too. I work in the lab at UMich where they're working on the land-based one. A friend of mine used a learning algortihm called Amoeba (sort of a hill-climbing approach using simplexes) to speed it up dramatically. It runs fast, much faster then you would expect a stocky little robot with six legs to run. Currently, they're working on a vision system so it can track objects and follow lines, and having it sense its terrain and modify its gait accordingly. Not your daddy's robot!
"What's this robotic cockroach doing in my soup?"
"The...um...backstroke?"
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
Came in this morning, tried to login to squirrelmail.... Hmmmm... very slow... Get to the web server.... Hummmm... Lotsa httpd processes... Hummmmm...
tcpdump -i eth0 -n port 80...
Hmmmm... The console scrolls non-stop! Arrrgh! Am I being DOS'ed!?!?!?!?
Thanks slashdot, you made me panic for a while. Hope somebody mirrored the pages cuz' I can't handle this load without being prepared for it.
Please check again in a few days if you're really intereseted.
--
Danny, McGill CIM SysAdmin.
Many people start robotic projects fearing embedded development. So, they think, why can't I just control everything from my PC.
The problem with this is, it actually adds complexity.
Typically, it means adding a MAX232 with Charge ups, or the more expensive MAX233. This, just to convert the RS232 25Volts down to TTL 5volts. Then you need another component to translate the characters into logic. What a pain! Not to mention a tether.
Better to just learn a little assembly. It's really easy for these applications. Just turning things on and off is setting/clearing a bit in an output register.
Software, is really not that hard, in fact, possibly overrated in terms of the complexity of building one of these beasts. It's the electronics, and contruction. Getting things to actually move.
I'd have prepared for this by mirroring the images and videos and redirected to them. Ain't so hard if you know in advance.
I didn't post the story, somebody else here at McGill did without telling me.
Anyways, anybody want to host 'em?
Just great. Now I have to keep a portable EMP generator next to my cans of RAID under the kitchen sink. Do you know how much power those f***n things use?
Let's hope they don't teach the little bastards to breed. What will they do, lay their eggs in my box of spare PC parts? Although I assume there'll be a nice satisfying mechanical *crunch* when you step on them.
Gives new meaning to cockroaches carrying diseases. Maybe they'll find one that transmits W95/Klez@mm. Norton Antivirus will now cost three times as much to ship, because it comes with a large hammer. Don't download files, don't open mail attachments, and put a ring of flea powder around your PC. "Dr. Solomon..." *WHAM WHAM WHAM* *crunch* "...has detected and isolated a virus."
On the other hand, it'd make for a nice way to smuggle an X10 cam into a cute girl's bedroom--assuming they ever make the transmitter units weigh less than 5 pounds. Blattidae Elegans Electronicus indeed.
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
I've posted the smaller movie [14MB] on the .Mac servers: the cockroach robot movie.
There are at least two advantages to legged robots that I'm aware of (though the technology is not necessarily there to take advantage of them). The first is the potential to climb much larger obstacles for a robot of a given size. Robots using rocker-bogie wheel systems such as the Mars Pathfinder vehicle have amazing climbing abilities, but this is nothing compared to what a human can accomplish.
The second is a potential energy savings. Imagine a wheeled vehicle traveling over rough terrain. It's constantly climbing over obstacles which takes energy that is just lost when it falls down the other side. Meanwhile, a legged robot can keep its body above the height of most obstacles and just step over the top of them -- more of its energy goes towards its forward motion instead of the up-and-down motion of the wheeled vehicle.
Oh, another thing is the ability to tolerate loss of an actuator. If one of the wheels were to stop working on a wheeled vehicle, the rest of the wheels would have to drag that one along. Meanwhile, there's been some neat work showing the robustness of legged robots to such problems by groups such as the Biorobotics Lab at Case Western.
In the end though, it depends on your application as to which is best. I just can't see that one approach could be better than the other in all cases. Just as one example, I think legged robots have really cool potential for planetary exploration for the reasons given above, but certainly anything spending most of its time on flat ground (agricultural equipment, anything on-road, etc) would perform better with wheels.
If you want the full version movie, go here for the torrent file.
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~gch/Aqua.mpg.torrent