This last weekend, I attended Battlecry 13 at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). With 48 teams in attendance, Battlecry is one of the larger and more competitive off season events here on the east coast. I took a whiteboard and a dry erase marker, and set off on a mission to talk to as many teams as I could […]
This tiny little bug weighs in at an impressive 16 grams. The lightweight, simple construction is achieved through “Smart Composite Microstructures” (SCM). The SCM process follows a few simple steps that essentially create a sandwich with rigid composites on the outside with flexible polymer inside. By controlling the location of the flexible polymer, the resulting structure can […]
Robotic hand technology in the last decade has largely focused on making the machines simpler and lighter. This setup, while neither lightweight nor simple, displays an extraordinary precision and speed. These fingers are able to dribble a ball 10 times per second, using multiple high speed cameras to track the motion of the ball. The hand is amazingly […]
Repetitive tasks can get dull and boring, but they can also be unhealthy because of the repeated stress they put on your body. Your muscles easily fatigue when grasping tools for extended periods of time. NASA and General Motors collaborated to take technology from the NASA Space Robots and bring it to back to earth […]
Jello that moves This research by led by chemist George M. Whitesides has accomplished much in the field of soft polymer robotics. This robot shown is am all-polymer robot that can undulate, crawl, and navigate obstacles. The control wires leading off the back are the only things that provide input to the structured jello that is then able […]
This is one of the most versatile robot I’ve ever seen. It has 6 legs, and interchangeable leg pads to do everything from driving around to climbing nets to picking up objects using its legs. The robot can even drop down to only a few inches off the floor and “crawl” forward to get under obstacles. Currently, the […]
Biological systems, from multicellular organisms to social insects (“superorganisms”), get tremendous mileage from the cooperation of vast numbers of cheap, unreliable, and limited individuals. This lab builds modular robots, robot swarms, sensor networks, programmable materials to achieve the same end goal of creating swarms of cooperative cheap robots. This video shows the single component of […]
