A Scientific Research Vault
Inspired from living organisms, researchers try to create robots that can simulate living creatures mechanically or chemically. This field of science is named as Biorobotics. A team of researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Campaign has made a miniature walking bio-bots that derive its power from living muscle cells. And their movement can be regulated externally using electrical pulses.
After the termites inspired crew of tiny autonomous bots, insect-inspired Micro-Robots and Gimball, biomimicry has a new entrant called the Tabbot. It is a tiny bot inspired from Morocco based spiders famous for doing cartwheels effortlessly. Interestingly, these spiders are capable of doing cartwheels up and down the sand dunes. Ingo Rechenberg, a professor at the Technical University of Berlin has been credited for this discovery. In order to preserve and utilize the resourcefulness of this unique mode of locomotion, the researcher has already fabricated a small bot that works…
Robots are quickly making entry into almost all aspects of human work from household to industries, these machines are just everywhere making work easier and faster too. They have also entered in dairy farms, which were so far managed by humans.
HONDA unveiled its first ASIMO robot in the year 2000. ASIMO or Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility was designed to help people who lack mobility and has come a long way since then. The latest prototype of ASIMO, HONDA humanoid robot was displayed at the International Auto Show in New York and was seen walking, running quickly and even climbing stairs with ease. Additionally, it can dance, kicks the ball, even jump and can handle uneven surfaces too.
Re-orientation of scenes and multi-target tracking are the fundamental problems for majority of vision applications. Occlusions and slight change in scene alignment make tracking by detection approaches a lot more challenging. Thinking on the same lines, MIT researchers have come up with a new algorithm that would assist the vision applications in combating the re-orientation problems. The algorithm is chiefly written for bots and machines that are employed for navigational purposes. Manhattan Frames The mechanism is based on recognizing the main orientations in the given scene. These alignments act as…
Drawing inspiration from tiny insects, researchers at the University of Maryland, are developing the world’s tiniest mobile robot, suitably named as micro robots. These tiny robots are designed to take the long distance leap just as bugs do, with the aim of moving quickly or jump over any obstacle with ease in extremely rough terrain. Sarah Bergbreiter leading the research and other teammates from UM, envision the micro robots helping rescue teams in searching victims by quickly crawling through the rubble, at the disaster site, where humans and other traditional…
We visualize wind turbine as tall tower with a huge fan mounted on it and fixed at some distant place. But we might have never imagined a wind turbine that floats in the air. Does it sound like a sci-fi movie subject? Surprisingly, it’s a reality being developed by MIT startup Altaeros Energies and will be seen floating in the sky above the city of Fairbanks and the power so generated will be used to power remote military sites and families residing off the grid that usually depend on expensive…
How would it feel working under a ‘robo boss’, constantly pecking on top of the head, reminding the amount of work that is still left. Many would feel frustrated and might leave but there would be some, who might like to finish the task without questioning. In an interesting experiment, performed by the Human-Computer Interaction Lab at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada, revealed the responses that were received by working under a robotic supervisor. Task that was assigned to humans was extremely monotonous which of course became boring…
With its first launch, HyQ, the brainchild of Italian Institute of Technology had already conquered how to manipulate the terrains. Now the quadruped robot has resurrected but with more tricks than before. Claudio Semini, the lead researcher claimed that the ‘second coming’ of HyQ is sodden with wide variety of motion skills that would help the bot in facing the dynamically changing terrain. Initially, the bot was designed in terms of reactive behavior, the mode that helped it from recovering from huddles but this time, the focus is kept on making…
According to a recent study, the manner in which bats flap their wings could actually be the source of inspiration for the upcoming designs of flying robots. The researchers investigated the way the fruit bats made use of their wings for manipulating the air around them. By developing the correct understanding of the functioning of these processes in nature, the engineers could practically come up with the design of small flying robo machines called the micro air vehicles. According to Danesh Tafti, from Virginia Tech, bats comprise of varied shapes…
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) keep coming up with new era robots that can be sent to space for exploration. There are certain limitations in each design such as time taking research, clumsy motions and prone to damage. Therefore, NASA is trying to design a bot that can transform the traditional way robots perform work assigned to them here on our planet or in the space. They are aiming to build a Super Ball Bot, which looks more like a motor fitted in between a mesh of rods…
We all have seen beautifully maintained gardens with flowers, plants, colored pots, lamps statues and so on. But I am sure no one might have seen a garden with robots moving around and also taking care of it. The adorable looking robots with lights on the top and too many limbs are known as Toro Bots, created by the Japanese, are basically garden lamps that are capable of moving around in your garden of their own. And they are surely going to turn heads and attention towards your garden.
NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC) in association with the University of Texas and Texas A&M and with funding from the state of Texas itself have built a humanoid to which they call, Valkyrie, officially designated as “R5”. The bot is 6.2 feet tall, weighs around 125 kgs with 44 degree of freedom and is powered by battery. The machine is not built for any space mission or otherwise but for the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC), that’ll hold its first round of competition in the second half of this month.
We already know the importance of solar energy in this era when our regular fuel sources are being depleted. Need of the hour is to construct bigger solar plants to meet with the ever rising demand. However, it is not easy to maintain such immense Solar Plants. Dust particles, bird droppings or sand grains, bar the sunlight and result in lowering the overall output of the plants by 30% in just one month (as per some research). However, until now there was no cost effective and potent solution for the…
The dual-arm, adaptable industrial robot by Seiko Epson, Japanese electronic company, reminds me of Sid, the sloth. Unlike the existing industrial bots, this prototype by Seiko Epson can visualize, take decisions, adapt as per the environment, can adjust the force while grabbing objects and above all, its portable. This dual-arm bot is capable of moving independently while performing simple tasks on assembly lines. As per the press release, Epson’s autonomous dual-arm robot is able to accurately recognize the position and orientation of objects in three-dimensional space, much like the human…