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Robots That Transform Into ... Robots
manganese4 writes "The NSF has released a summary of research into the design of robots capable of reconfiguring themselves. A number of videos are provided. The research was conducted at the Dartmouth Robotics Lab. While they are not cockroaches it is still quite a good read."
So, when can we expect our very welcomed new water-walking, bug-eating, transforming robotic overlords to arrive? Or are they buried under a volcano in the pacific northwest?
Ceci n'est pas un post.
had to be said. ..yea.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
I'm gonna have my Optimus Prime transform into Rodimus Prime!
this is the most important sig ever! In your face 446154!
wow, I'm one of the first ones to post. I'm NEVER one of the first ones to post. *cough* anyways, I can tell this has a lot of applications. like creating giant robots that turn into cars (or is it cars that turn into robots? hmm...)
I can't wait to see a real, live autobot!
Do you like her hair up or down? Blond, Brunette, or Red head? Tall or Short? Well endowed... or waif? These will be the last companion robot you ever buy!
The Admin and the Engineer
That's sick!
Haven't you ever seen "I Dated A Robot"?
Robots that turn into robots...hmm...
That's less "More than meets the eye" and more "Exactly what meets the eye"
I guess more work needs to be done.
Moo.
sounds like an old cartoon i used to watch. I can not remeber the name of it, but i remeber i use to wate it everyday after school. Any one remeber the cartoon and i think they turned into cars also.
www.angelfire.com/dc2/stockman/index.html http://www.FreeFlatScreens.com/default.aspx?refer
into a (-1, Redundant)
Soory i guess i need to start reading the post right before i post. i read 1 or 2 then by the time i posted my question was answered.
www.angelfire.com/dc2/stockman/index.html http://www.FreeFlatScreens.com/default.aspx?refer
Have the designs for these self-reconfiguring robots been cleared with the Asgard?
Larry
Robots in disguise!
Hahahahaha...videos on slashdot *snort* ...hahaha
Will code a sig generator for food
I read somewhere in my net travels that there was a really bored and skilled buy in either the UK or Australia (can't remember which) who had cranked himself out his very own transforming semi trailer ala Optimus Prime. Hasbro and Takara contacted him and told him to keep it to himself or dismantle it as he had violated their IP.
in post soviet russia, robots turn into, er,
nevermind
Proving That Shape-Shifting Robots Can Get a Move On ARLINGTON, Va.--It started with tennis balls. As a former collegiate tennis player, Daniela Rus habitually rolls two tennis balls around in her hand as she paces her office. As a robotics researcher at Dartmouth College, she wondered why the tennis balls shouldn't be able to roll themselves around. She soon determined that electromagnets didn't have enough lifting power to solve the tennis-ball problem. However, her question led to a decade-long research program into the challenges of designing robots that reconfigure themselves to perform different tasks. Most recently, Rus and Dartmouth Robotics Lab researchers developed the first control methods that guarantee such self-reconfigurable robots won't fall apart as they change shape or move across a surface. The paper by postdoctoral researcher Zach Butler, graduate student Keith Butler, Rus and visiting professor Kohji Tomita from Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology appeared in the September 2004 issue of the International Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR). "These latest papers show it is possible to develop self-reconfiguration capabilities in a way that has analytical guarantees," said Rus, who moved to MIT in January after 10 years as director of Dartmouth's Robotics Lab. "Understanding exactly how your system works and when you can trust it and when you can't is very important." In 2002, Rus received a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, a so-called "genius award," for her work, which has been supported by National Science Foundation (NSF) awards since 1996. Robots are usually designed to perform one task very well, whether it's assembling parts in a factory or vacuuming the living room. But ask those robots to perform another task or even the same task in a new environment, and you're asking for trouble. Self-reconfigurable robots, on the other hand, can reshape themselves as their task or environment changes, ideally without human intervention. A walking robot used for search-and-rescue operations would transform into a snake-like form to slither through small spaces in a collapsed building. A rolling robot exploring the surface of Mars would flow like water over a vertical drop or "flow" uphill onto a rock ledge. However, today's state-of-the-art shape-shifting robots are a long way from living up to that vision. Several research groups around the world are tackling the many significant mechanical and control challenges involved in having a robot change shape. Over the past decade, assisted by more than 50 Dartmouth undergraduate and graduate students passing through her lab, Rus has made advances on both the mechanical and control fronts. On the mechanical side, she pioneered the design of 3-D shape-shifting robots built out of "expanding cubes," such as the Crystal modules. Each Crystal module, or "atom," has sides that extend and contract and that use a 'key-in-lock' mechanism to attach to neighboring atoms. The expanding-cube concept is an example of so-called "lattice robots," which can assume a wide variety of 3-D shapes, an advantage over robots whose modules can only form long, thin chains. Shape-shifting for such lattice robots boils down to exercises in control and planning, which happen at two levels. At one level, the robot must plan how to remodel itself from shape A to shape B. At another level, the robot must also plan the series of shapes needed to accomplish more complicated tasks, such as moving over rough terrain. Early work in self-reconfiguring robots used centralized methods to control how the pieces reassembled themselves. Today, researchers in the field generally acknowledge the need for distributed methods, in which each robotic module takes at least some control of its own destiny. "Since we are talking about potentially very large systems, with thousands of individual parts, it's important to consider distributed control and planning," Rus said. "And parallel and distributed algorithms are hard to guarantee." The recent IJRR paper and a