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Meet DARPA's New Militarized Earthworm
derekmead writes "Meshworm is a toughened, robotic earthworm that can crawl virtually silently at a speed of about 5 millimeters per second. DARPA wants to send it into battle. Believe it or not, the Pentagon's been working on building a robotic earthworm for a while. They tried putting one together with gears. They tried with air-powered and pneumatic pumps, but the results were bulky and untenable. Then, researchers at Harvard, MIT and Seoul National University in Korea put their heads together and designed an 'artificial muscle.' It's essentially a polymer mesh that's wrapped with nickel and titanium wire designed to stretch and contract with heat. When an electric current is applied, the mesh mimics the circular muscle system of an earthworm to scoot forward."
Will they make good bait?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Myomer, similar to modern electroactive polymers, is a fibrous material consisting of microscopically thin tubes filled with a substance (acti-strandular fiber) that contracts when voltage is applied and serves as artificial muscle in applications ranging from BattleMechs to artificial limbs.
Earthworm BattleMechs... and I thought Toads were small.
I assume of course the development of a supper suit to aid our earth worm warriors.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
ETA to guy on Internet letting it crawl in somewhere and putting up video in 3...2...1...
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
HA HA! I beat you this time...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
All that time spent playing Worms! and Earthworm Jim can now be put down on your resume as combat training experience.
...and where it came from.
the sleeper is still asleep
The spice must flow!
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
our anal probe worm robots.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Jim.
You'll need a pretty energy dense power source to make this work. Batteries ruin all the fun.
Now supersize this creature, release it into the wild, then write a movie script called Tremors... oh wait
5 millimeters per second = 59 feet per hour = 1 LOC bookshelf
Because a sex toy based on this technology could be so good it would end the human race.
Used nitinol a few years back for an undergraduate design project (articulated robotic tentacle); the stuff works, but the power draw (wire contraction is by resistive heating) was pretty significant. Our industry "client" from the Canadian Space Agency just about fell out of his chair when we told him what the total draw would be for a built-out prototype; it was many orders of magnitude higher than he expected.
This "earthworm" device uses Nitinol shape-memory alloy as an actuator. That's been tried many times before, going back to the 1980s.
As an actuator, Nitinol can produce significant power in small package, but it's a very inefficient device. The metal will change crystal structure when heated, and return to the original shape when cooled. Heating is usually accomplished by running electricity through the Nitinol wire. Most of the energy goes into waste heat; only a small fraction comes out of the actuator as useful work.
So a battery-powered earthworm isn't likely. As a cabled device, it has potential. A great application would be short run cable-laying for fibre optics. A machine that could get a fibre optic cable underground from street to house without digging up sidewalks and lawns would be very useful.
...welcome our robotic earthworm overloads.
We're seriously the last generation that will enjoy being at the top of the food chain on our own planet before the robots take over.
"Take a look. They call it a Screamer. It was developed for us by an alliance on Earth to neutralize the war on the ground here."
This new "artificial muscle" sounds a lot like the Myomer muscles from the BattleTech franchise except that I believed they worked on magnetics instead of heat and they weren't supposed to be invented until 2350.
Nevermore.
I for one welcome our new earthworm, uh erm, underlords.
What do you mean they cut the power? How can they cut the power, man? They're animals!
The unanswered question, though, is - to do what, exactly?
#DeleteChrome
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screamers_(1995_film)
Soil burrowing robotic weapons... and it didn't end well for the humans
TFA: "Says Kellar Autumn of Lewis and Clark University, 'I predict that in the next decade we will see shape-changing artificial muscles in many products, such as mobile phones, portable computers and automobiles.'"
When the next iphone prototype gets left in a bar it simply slithers back to HQ, using its camera to identify anyone that sees it for later questioning by the authorities.
militarized earthworm... must be to churn through all the militarized crap and make something green.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
The basis for Mechs are artificial muscles, http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Myomer
" ... the mesh mimics the circular muscle system of an earthworm to scoot forward."
On my planet, 'scoot' doesn't mean 5 mm/sec. Does it mean that on their planet?
Wormsign!
Have gnu, will travel.
...has been reading James Blish's 'The Day after Judgement' and has decided to create the Hess Land torpedo ....
Not the Bore Worms!!
While I understand the earthworm in question tends to be reserved and somewhat stilted in public places, to call it "robotic" is a bit unfair.
Earthworm Jim 2012.
Seems pretty useless as a cabled device.
Perhaps the whole thing can be wrapped in flexible photovoltaics and have a capacitor? It could "sleep" at night, resting but retaining mission-critical data, and wake up/crawl around during the day. Perhaps it could get enough solar power to send the occasional photo over a wireless connection, though unless solar radiation dramatically increases I doubt it could stream video... even 100% efficiency on photovoltaics, the earth gets 0.14 W/cm^2 full spectrum, and the "worm" form factor is naturally pretty small... maybe only a couple cm^2.
~300 mW is not a whole lot of power, but I bet it's enough to charge up then surge a snapshot here and there.
IIRC the Space Marine armor from Warhammer 40k is powered by artificial muscles that are driven by heat. In that case we're only a few millenniums away from fighting Orks in space!
The US Navy developed the nitinol memory metal and made the patent open to public use. We have know since the 1970s that certain types of muscle like devices could be made from the alloy. So now the pentagon notices its own 40 year old property. The stuff is so common it is used as the support wires in womens' bras these days.
with destinations like Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, and so on they have no time to lose: RELEASE THEM NOW.
All those down mods, oh my! Apparently some moderators should catch up on their Americana... (1:06)
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
He had but one simple request... to have robotic earthworms with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads!
This is completely useless unless DARPA can tolerate a pair of power cables dragged behind their militarized earthworm, or alternatively it's probably easier to just invent some revolutionary increase in energy storage density.
Until such time, most of the so called innovations here belong in the realms of science fiction.
"When an electric current is applied, the mesh mimics the circular muscle system of an earthworm to scoot forward."
Would make a fairly decent sex toy.
The cartels will love this. They can use it to dig underground drug-smuggling tunnels across the US-Mexico border, and the normal acoustic detection techniques won't reveal its presence.
I, for one, welcome our new robot worm underlords!