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Cockroach-Like Robot to Help Explain Animal Movement
neutron_p writes "A cockroach-like robot named RHex is the starting point for a major project to understand animals' most distinguishing trait: how they move without falling over.
Researchers from several universities will focus on RHex, a short, six-legged robot that scampers like a cockroach, as a working model of the principles they're seeking to uncover. By tweaking the robot and using it as a physical model, they hope to tease apart the complex neural and muscular networks in insects."
They don't fall over because they aren't drunk.
before one of the humanoid robots tries to squish it?
--- Asking inconvenient questions for over 30 years...
They don't fall over because they (usually) aren't missing a leg where one is needed for proper balance.
ROMANES EUNT DOMUS
on the perception side...
/ rhex/
While the ability of the bot to go over hard terrain is amazing, the point is that your relinquish direct control.
The basic problem in perception is dealing with the drastic motions.
The computer vision methods needed are quite complicated, requiring complimenting sensors like inertial measurement devices. Also extremely wide-angle cameras are excellent because things stay in view, but difficult because the pin-hole model fails.
Go here for some work that is now a bit dated, from a 180degree camera strapped to rhex:
http://www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/projects/buzzard
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This could have immediate application for the disabled. Imagine a personal moving device like the segway that walks around with technology derived from insects. It'd be pretty cool I'd say.
Maybe a mars rover that doesn't faller over or get stuck
There are lots of possible uses of data from this research.
... for real cockroaches. When Armageddon comes, the cockroaches will have robot versions of themselves for slaves.
We realy should be doing better than this. We should at least have Aibo-type robots running (or at least trotting) over real terrain by now. It's embarassing.
The trouble with this insect stuff is that you can do crap work and get published. If you do work on robots that really balance, you look stupid if your control system doesn't work. Everyone can see you failed. With insect robots, failure is less obvious. Some people think this is a feature.
How long does it live if you lop off its head?
I want to see robots that *survive* like a cockroach.
Well, until they turn evil anyway.
major project to understand animals' most distinguishing trait: how they move without falling over.
And I always thought it was the fact that they demonstrated life. Boy have I been misled!
Does anyone know how this differs from the insect-like robots (like Hannibal and Attilla) developed by Rod Brooks' group in the MIT AI Lab? It's been a while since I took his class, but I remember that they found that remarkably simple distributed control systems could be used to generate adaptive legged locomation patterns without requiring complex centralized control.
I move alone.
It doesn't matter which ape activates the Monolith
I want a camera system that digitizes real life into a 3d world inside the computer.
www.geocities.com/James_Sager_PA
God spoke to me
RHex Page
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You can get a load of his work from the documentary Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
... but no one listens. This technology is old, incredibly old in the scheme of computer science and electrical engineering. Rodney Brooks, MIT, Rodney Brooks! Okay, I'm okay. It was on the cover of Popular Science, for crying out loud.
Playing pornographics games during the day is evil! Play at night!
Because they have six legs? Am I missing something here?
I discovered this by reading the story about RHex here.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
There's way too much work on insect-level locomotion. Brooks was doing this stuff twenty years ago, and took it about as far as it's going to go.
I don't think that's true. There was an article in Discover a month or two ago (can't find it online, sorry, but I believe it parallels the linked article) where a researcher was trying to tease more information out of a cockroach's walk, discovering that it doesn't actually use a three-feet-down-all-the-time approach but wobbles side to side, remaining dynamically stable as it walks. This is not what you might intuit by simply watching insects walk.
As for "too much" being done, I must disagree. Walking robots aren't as good as they can be or it'd be perfected by now. Wheels are faster, but only over ideal terrain; complicated terrain that would confound the best wheels can often be navigated by legged animals. NASA's interplanetary rovers all use wheels, and all of them eventually encounter situations where they're useless, so if they could deploy a robot lander that could walk effectively (and efficiently), it'd be of tremendous value to them.
This is really old news. RHex has been around for at least a few years now.
Bob Full is one of the lead scientists on the RHex project. His biomimetic approach is amazing. See the following link for one of his lectures.
Robert Full: "Bipedal bugs, galloping ghosts and gripping geckos: BioInspiration for Rapid Running Robots"
http://www.princeton.edu/WebMedia/lectures/
J Wolfgang Goerlich
"
Is it because if they use cockroaches not many people will yell at them for animal cruelty, because cockroaches are "evil"?
"
Why do you think that the show FearFactor can get away with doing the Cockroach bit on national TV?
My opinion only, if scientists have studied that we can balance ourselves with only 2 feet and while walking, with one foot up and one foot on the ground, why can't they apply that information to insects?
Friends help you move...
REAL Friends help you move dead bodies... ^_^
...without falling over. After all, it's bipedal locomotion without any complex computer intelligence.
The DARPA Grand Challenge.
Didja notice in the "slowmo_great_bound_small.avi" movie how Rhex was running away from that dude? It's 'cause it just kicked him in the nads. Hard.
the thought of a small army of those running amuk is frightening. Still, it seems a strange way for science to go: use robots to explain nature. Seems backwards, but cool if it works.
CB$@#
free ipod and free gmail!
Will it flip on its back when runs out of batteries?
Well heck they certainly explain some movement.
When my wife sees one of those little buggers she runs away - she hates them.
"Cats like plain crisps"
Read about competitive work here.
I've seen Robot Wars and the walkers never stand a chance...
A cockroach-like robot named RHex is the starting point for a major project to understand animals' most distinguishing trait: how they move without falling over.
I'm truly amazed, that with all the modern science we have today, that we don't know the answer to this question. I'm not trying to troll, I truly am amazed. We can fly to the moon and back, but something that seems this simple is really incredibly complicated. Wow.
Nobody's going to be sending anybody to other planets (outside of few stunts like the moon landings of the 1970s).
Yes, that's pretty much his point. It costs a huge amount to send a human onto another planet, so we can and do use robots. And I hardly think anyone predicting global environmental catastrophies in forty years should be making potshots at others for making broad predictions based on a little data and a lot of guesswork.
Now surely the geniuses behind this would have had to understand the workings of a cockroach to build a reasonable model of one that gives them a reasonable simulation. In this case, they already understand the roach mechanics well and studying the roboroach won't tell them an awful lot.
If one starts from the premise that they know very little about the roach (and will hence learn a lot), then likely their robo simulation is not very good and they will learn bullshit (eg. "we found that the roach works by moving its muscle here", but the roach does not have a muscle there).
I'm getting all tied up writing this but surely other folks see this as a circular argument.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Whatever happened to BEAM robotics? Anyone involved with that? I first heard about it on a Science Channel robotics series and it seemed interesting. I have been to the main page by the inventor Mark Tilden but I have seen nothing new in the past couple years. Does anyone know if this area of research has died off?
http://isnoop.net/gmailomatic.php your welcome
always mosh clockwise
no shit...
:)
i think exposing short links for transparency works better in short posts. Considering the domain is exposed anyway...
on my blog, the hundreds of links are all brightly colored words for yah
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Cockroach-Like Robot to Help Explain Animal Movement ...Not to be turned loose around the new Fly Eating Robot
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We might finally learn where all these politicans come from, by studying cockroaches and other vermin.
--
make install -not war
Animals' most distinguishing trait is that they don't fall over? You gotta admit that's a little funny. "Hi, I'm Greg, an animal, and my most distinguishing trait is that I don't fall over".
Anyway, I just got a kick out of that. I'm sure once I read on, the point will be well made.
I know for certain that not all japanese bipeds use static stability. Bipeds from Honda and Sony (and most of them IMHO) use something called zero moment point (ZMP). The japanese biped robot WL-10RD used this as early as in 1984. Here's a reference I just found: ZERO-MOMENT POINT THIRTY FIVE YEARS OF ITS LIFE by Vukobratovic and Borovac. Should be good since Vukobratovic introduced the concept in the 70s. PS. I did my PhD thesis on control and balance of legged locomotion.
I couldn't find the article but I read that as well as cat brains they have piped wires into a cockroach brain and have suceeded in a RC cockroach, that can carry a small camera, great for earthquake rescue, or running it through cheerleader changing rooms...
That bio/mech device that was implanted into neo in the matrix, imagine something similar, but a bio animal which really is a bug. in both senses.
or even reptilious: cute Gecko in lew of real cockraoch article
Have fun
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I guess my terminology was poorly chosen, my being acquainted with the field but not an expert within it. In any case, I had more in mind robots wherein the center of pressure is not always within the support polygon (and for some robots, almost never is). The MIT Leg Lab has several examples, and in any case, this is in stark contrast to the equilibrium methods used in any of the Honda or Sony robots I've seen so far.
Cochroach vs MechaCochroach!
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
i've been looking for a robot-me for ages :)
meanwhile, the japanese national science foundation works to develop a giant robotic shoe...
That's my girlfriends lab, I posted that yesterday!
Why did I get a +2 comment rating, and have someone else get a full frickin' article post? Argh. (here's me being disgruntled)
By the way, they have already been slashdotted in the past http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/1 2/0156220&tid=126&tid=14, and you didn't mention that it's built at McGill. You could also have included the McGill ARL website link http://www.cim.mcgill.ca/~arlweb/Welcome.html. They love getting slashdotted ;) [not quite true]. Poor Danny (the sysadmin).
Read my comment from yesterday! http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=122038&cid=102 66261
It costs a huge amount to send a human onto another planet, so we can and do use robots.
Many people miss the point in the humans vs. robots in space debate. The underlining point is that there is no sense in spending tons of money to put anything on other planets. We have other more urgent priorities here. Interplanetary exploration is, deserves to be, and will remain science fiction for another 200-300 years. The initial space explorations of the 1960s were a historical fluke that is unlikely to be repeated or expanded for a LONG time to come.
I hardly think anyone predicting global environmental catastrophies in forty years should be making potshots at others for making broad predictions based on a little data and a lot of guesswork.
The environmental catastrophies of the 2050-2100 era are not based on little data and lots of guesswork. They are based on real science, proven and repeatable. The spin that this is all guesswork and junk-science is generated by people who much to lose if the steps necessary to minimize the effects are begun now. It won't change the fact that these events will happen.