Robotic Omni-Finger Infinitely More Dexterous Than Human Ones
While the prototype in this vid just has one Omni-Finger, the final concept will include three of them… This will enable robots to arbitrarily alter the orientation of objects that they’ve grasped without having to set the object down, manipulate it, and re-grasp it, making grasping tasks as a whole easier andmuch more efficient. The only problem remaining is to figure out how to keep the fingers in contact with an irregular object as the fingers move it around, but the researchers are working on some creative ideas involving surrounding the fingers with deformable sacks filled with some sort of viscous fluid.
(via Robot Finger Does What Your Finger Can’t - IEEE Spectrum)
Army’s Giant Robot Spy Blimp to Test over New Jersey in Two Weeks
The Air Force’s highly computerized (and potenitally missile-armed) Blue Devil 2 airship recently ran into integration problems, forcing the flying branch to cancel a planned test run in Afghanistan. (Although the service had never been too hot on airships in the first place.)
The Navy meanwhile grounded its much smaller MZ-3A research blimp for a lack of work until the Army paid to take it over. The LEMV seemed to be losing air, too, as Northrop and the Army repeatedly delayed its first flight and planned combat deployment originally slated for the end of 2011.
As recently as last month Northrop and the Army declined to comment on the airship’s new flight schedule. Northrop VP Brad Metzger’s boast from last summer that the $500-million LEMV prototype would “redefine persistent surveillance” seemed hollow.
But at a special forces industry conference here in Tampa, Northrop’s Brown surprised Danger Room with a hard date range: LEMV will lift off between June 6 and 10, he says. After a brief trial around Lakehurst, the 300-foot-long airship will motor south to Florida to be mated up with a custom-designed gondola containing the blimp’s cameras and radios. If the gondola fits as planned and all the gear functions, the pilotless LEMV will cross the Atlantic in “early winter,” bound for “a theater” for a front-line demonstration, Brown says. We’re sure the “theater” in question is Afghanistan.
If war commanders like what they see in their new giant spy blimp, the Army could order up more copies, Brown says.
Never mind airworthiness and sensor integration: The biggest danger, according to Brown, is the weather. Airships are “subject to buffeting by winds and by thunderstorms.” Operators have to plan carefully to keep their airships away from storms. Despite airships’ checkered past, Northrop is optimistic the LEMV will survive the elements and its combat debut. T
he company is already looking beyond the initial Afghanistan trial. The LEMV can do more than hover and spy. It’s also a potentially useful cargo carrier. The current model can carry 20 tons of supplies. A scaled-up version could carry hundreds of tons — and at a fraction of the cost of fixed-wing airplanes. Noting Pakistan’s continuing blockade of roads into Afghanistan, Brown proposes that the LEMV could help the Army remove its weapons and gear from from the landlocked country as U.S. troops withdraw. “It presents an attractive alternative.”
(via Army Readies Its Mammoth Spy Blimp for First Flight | Danger Room | Wired.com)
Robonaut Designed to Work Safely With Humans, Exercise Limited Autonomy
…the robot uses an impedance controller, which can adjust the stiffness of the arms. This means the arms have limited torque and won’t cause damage to objects—or the crew.
“We went through very rigorous safety evaluations before we can send this robot to the space station,” Diftler told us. “So that you would feel very comfortable shaking hands with it.” In fact, we did shake hands with the robot—and we still have our fingers to type this story!
Diftler also told us about some of Robonaut’s jobs at the ISS. He said the robot is, among other things, assisting the crew with air flow measurements. Before they had the robot, the astronauts had to monitor air flow themselves. Now Robonaut just grabs an air flow meter and performs the measurements, not only collecting data more frequently than before but also freeing the crew from a boring task.
The idea is that Robonaut will increasingly take on other jobs, helping the crew with experiments and maintenance. For that, the Robonaut team designed the robot with varying levels of autonomy, Diftler said.
In autonomous mode, the robot can perform tasks that require little or no supervision. For tasks that require a crew member to monitor or assist the robot, a “supervised autonomy” mode is used. Finally, there are more complex situations when remote operation is the best option, and in those cases an operator (aboard the ISS or on Earth) can use teleoperation gear to fully control the robot.
(via Video: How Robonaut’s Compliant Arms Work - IEEE Spectrum)
Spanish Government Deploys Robotic Fish to Monitor Maritime Pollution
Currently the port relies on divers to monitor water quality, which is a lengthy process costing €100,000 per year. The divers take water samples from hundreds of points in the port, then send them off for analysis, with the results taking weeks to return. By contrast, the SHOAL robots would continuously monitor the water, letting the port respond immediately to the causes of pollution, such as a leaking boat or industrial spillage, and work to mitigate its effects.
The SHOAL fish are one and a half metres long, comparable to the size and shape of a tuna, but their neon-yellow plastic shell means they are unlikely to be mistaken for the real thing. A range of onboard chemical sensors detect lead, copper and other pollutants, along with measuring water salinity.
They are driven by a dual-hinged tail capable of making tight turns that would be impossible with a propeller-driven robot. They are also less noisy, reducing the impact on marine life.
The robots are battery powered and capable of running for 8 hours between charges. At the moment the researchers have to recover them by boat, but their plan is that the fish will return to a charging station by themselves.
Working in a group, the fish can cover a 1 kilometre-square region of water, down to a depth of 30 metres. They communicate with each other and a nearby base-station using very low-frequency sound waves, which can penetrate the water more easily than radio waves. However, this means the fish have a low data transmission rate and can only send short, predefined messages. “It’s a good solution, but it requires thinking carefully about what data to transmit and how to use that data,” says Kristi Morgansen, a roboticist at the University of Washington, who was not involved in the research.
(via Robotic fish shoal sniffs out pollution in harbours - environment - 22 May 2012 - New Scientist)
Micro-bubble Robots, Steered By Lasers, for Nanoscale Construction Projects
Aaron Ohta’s lab at the University of Hawaii at Manoa has come up with a novel new way of creating non-mechanical microbots quite literally out of thin air, using robots made of bubbles with engines made of lasers.
To get the bubble robots to move around in this saline solution, a 400 mW 980nm (that’s infrared) laser is shone through the bubble onto the heat-absorbing surface of the working area. The fluid that the bubbles are in tries to move from the hot area where the laser is pointing towards the colder side of the bubble, and this fluid flow pushes the bubble towards the hot area. Moving the laser to different sides of the bubble gives you complete 360 degree steering, and since the velocity of the bubble is proportional to the intensity of the laser, you can go as slow as you want or as fast as about 4 mm/s.
This level of control allows for very fine manipulation of small objects, and the picture below shows how a bubble robot has pushed glass beads around to form the letters “UH” (for University of Hawaii, of course)
Besides being able to create as many robots as you want of differing sizes out of absolutely nothing (robot construction just involves a fine-tipped syringe full of air), the laser-controlled bubbles have another big advantage over more common microbots in that it’s possible to control many different bubbles independently using separate lasers or light patterns from a digital projector.
With magnetically steered microbots, they all like to go wherever the magnetic field points them as one big herd, but the bubbles don’t have that problem, since each just needs its own independent spot of light to follow around.
The researchers are currently investigating how to use teams of tiny bubbles to cooperatively transport and assemble microbeads into complex shapes, and they hope to eventually develop a system that can provide real-time autonomous control based on visual feedback.
Eventually, it may be possible to conjure swarms of microscopic bubble robots out of nothing, set them to work building microstructures with an array of thermal lasers, and then when they’re finished, give each one a little pop to wipe it completely out of existence without any mess or fuss.
(via Microbots Made of Bubbles Have Engines Made of Lasers - IEEE Spectrum)
Self-Reconfiguring Robot Adapts By Making Its Own Tools:
not everyone has the funds or know-how to build a robot that can do anything. Instead, the robotics whiz teams at ETH Zurich are giving robots the ability to build any new tool for itself, whenever the need might arise.
It comes with a hot glue gun, which the robot uses like a low-tech 3-D printer. Other robots have used hot glue guns before, primarily to climb up walls [but] the tool can be used to do much more than form an adhesive — you could make any shape you want and simply let it cool, hardening into an milky-looking object of your design.
That’s what this new robot does. It uses hot glue to form a base and sides of a cup one layer at a time, much like a 3-D printer would sinter materials one layer at a time. The robot also builds a handle and attaches it to the cup so it can tote the water vessel between two separate containers. It takes about an hour.
All the tasks were performed autonomously, reports IEEE Spectrum, which spotted the bot at the ICRA conference over the weekend. But the cup design was pre-programmed. Ideally, future versions of this robot would be able to figure out exactly what type of tool is needed for a given task, and be able to design and build said tool. It certainly works more slowly than a 3-D printer, but it’s much simpler, too.
(via Equipped With a Hot Glue Gun, New Robot Builds Its Own Custom Tools | Popular Science)
Chinese Robot Designed to Climb Folds in Clothes
Clothbot was developed by scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese University of Hong Kong. As seen in the video, the machine crawls up folds in clothing, slowing making its way up trouser legs or even the back of a shirt. It uses a pair of gripper wheels to create and cling to a fold in the cloth. Weighing some 140 grams, it has a tail that helps it maneuver. Its destination and ultimate purpose, however, remain mysterious.
(via Why does Clothbot want to climb up your pants? | Cutting Edge - CNET News)
“Second-Amendment Remedies” to Domestic Drone Spying? Charles Krauthammer Says Yes
People on the left have long criticized the federal government for using UAVs to target people accused of being terrorists overseas, something Krauthammer supports. But even many people not clearly on the left have voiced a qualm or two about using UAVs within U.S. borders to police traffic, catch runaway crooks, enforce curfew laws against teenagers, photograph people littering, and correct people’s posture.
Krauthammer went on to provide the money quote: “I would predict—I’m not encouraging, but I would predict—that the first guy who uses a Second Amendment weapon to bring a drone down that’s hovering over his house is going to be a folk hero in this country.”
The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states that “a well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” Of course, when conservatives refer to this amendment, they’re not talking about state militias. Krauthammer doesn’t expect that hapless UAV to be blasted into scrap by the Texas Air National Guard’s fighter jets but by some guy with a shotgun.
Solar-Powered Robotic Sailboat Set To Break Navigational Record, Research Porpoises
Austrian scientists are looking to break the record for the longest journey made by a fully autonomous sailboat, all while collecting data on a Baltic Sea porpoise.
Scientists from the Austrian Society of Innovative Computer Sciences hope their craft, named the ASV Roboat, will cover 150 nautical miles (172 miles) and work for 100 hours without human intervention once it is put into the water July 9. The current record is 78.9 nautical miles (91 miles), set in March by a robot sailboat made by the French engineering institute ENSTA Brest.
Robotic sailboats need human handlers only to enter final destination coordinates. The boats decide routes, perform sailing maneuvers and respond to changing winds on their own. They also generally make all the power they need, through solar panels. They need relatively little energy to move the sail and rudder while the wind provides the propulsion.
(via Robot Sailboat Out to Break World Record : Discovery News)
New Robotic Gripping Techniques Designed for Zero-G Space Mining:
Back in 2007, the European Space Agency launched the spacecraft Rosetta, a mission to a comet that will arrive in 2014. Rosetta includes a lander that will use a harpoon to stick itself to the surface of the comet, which (while pretty cool) isn’t necessarily an ideal solution, since harpoons aren’t removable.
Ideally, you want some system that can reliably anchor a robot to an uneven surface while simultaneously providing enough downforce in microgravity to allow for sample collection, and this is where the microspines come in.
JPL’s microspine anchors are capable of quickly attaching and detaching from a variety of surface types using an actuator with just one degree of freedom. The anchor provides enough force (on surfaces ranging from vertical to inverted) for a percussion drill operating though the anchor to take core samples, and it’s robust enough to survive over a hundred anchoring sequences with a structure that’s designed to be space-durable.
(via JPL Designing Spiny-Fingered Grippers for Robotic Drilling on Asteroids - IEEE Spectrum)
