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Pole-Vaulting Quadrocopters

By Matt Wang | Published: April 29, 2013

How do robots without hands, flying in mid air, catch an inverted pendulum (a thin pole) with such precision, and throw it back and forth? With that blunt opening statement, this is Pole-Vaulting Quadrocopters!

So what is this thing? Well, it’s a Masters thesis made by Dario Brescianini, a student at ETH Zurich’s Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control. This phenomenal student created an algorithm for this quadrocopter, with a mere circular plate, to be able to toss an inverted pendulum back and forth.

I won’t go into too much depth about the specific processes involved in design. Basically, first Dario made a 2D mathematical model of the pendulum motion and determined the ideal trajectory, with components of position, speed, and angles. Next, he determined how well the mathematical theoretical model fit with realistic motion, mainly involving physical tests and throwing the pendulum by hand. Finally, they created the designs for materials to compensate for any error, such as creating a plate for catching the pendulum and equipping the pendulum with a shock absorber (a small balloon filled with flour).

But without all the design aspects, isn’t the precision and mathematical modeling of the pole-vaulting cool enough?

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Festo Robot Dragonfly

By Matt Wang | Published: April 18, 2013

It’s amazing how great minds can think alike. At the end of last year, TechJect created this robot dragonfly, and now, we have another super cool one to join it in the skies!

Inspired by nature: the complex wing-flapping principle of the dragonfly ...

Compared to the TechJect Dragonfly, it’s clear that the BionicOpter is a little bit more like an actual dragonfly. It has two pairs of carbon fiber and foil wings, and a head and a tail. However, with a wingspan of 70 cm and a body length of 48 cm, BionicOpter isn’t just your average robot insect.

The robot itself is controlled by nine servos (mechanisms that use feedback to correct and control performance), a two-cell lithium ion battery, and an ARM microcontroller. Its head and tail are moved by passing electrical current through nitinol (an alloy of nickel and titanium) muscles. But the coolest part about BionicOpter has to be the wings.

The primary ability of BionicOpter as a robot is its ability to fly stably. Like a real dragonfly, this robot can move both forwards and backwards as well as hover. The computer controls the frequency of individual wings at around 15-20 Hz (wing beats per second), rotational twisting at 90 degrees, and amplitude (up and down motion) at 50 degrees. These controls allow the wings to work perfectly when it receives commands. Using wing data and body position, BionicOpter also solves for vibrations that could occur in both indoor and outdoor flight, making BionicOpter the flying boss. And yet such a complex robot can be easily operated by a smartphone app. The robot automatically makes flying adjustments.

All this makes flying the BionicOpter through the air a breeze.

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Mantis, Giant Hexapod

By Matt Wang | Published: April 16, 2013
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Seems like giant robot vehicles are all the fad lately! With robots like Stompy and Kuratas, when are we going to be able to drive these things on the streets?

SH 98_#2 BIG

Two tons in weight. Nine feet tall. Six Legs. Fifty Horsepower. This monstrously awesome robot is probably the closest we’ll get (separately from the other giant robot vehicles, of course) to a humongous insect that terrorizes the world.

The chief designer Matt Denton apparently designed Mantis because it’s really cool to drive a hexapod robot. Who wouldn’t think so? Admittedly, Mantis moves a little slower than conventional vehicles. But considering the potential for misuse, maybe it’s a good thing that evil geniuses can’t ride Mantis around terrorizing the world. As a plus, speed can be improved, whereas the robot already has functions such as stabilization and object interaction, which conventional robot vehicles sometimes lack.

So hopefully we’ll see more of Mantis in the future. And hopefully that time won’t be when someone’s using it to take over the world.

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bookBot: The End of Manual Book Searching

By Matt Wang | Published: April 12, 2013

I often think back on times where I have gone to my local library, and spent insane amounts of time searching for books to no end. It has become a tedious task that I could presume has had a negative impact on my literary choices. So, as with most modern problems, what is the solution? Automate it.

The building pictured above is the James B. Hunt Library at North Carolina State University. Formally dedicated just recently on April 3, this library features an interesting new feature that book-browsers will appreciate for years to come. The James B. Hunt Library has a method of automating the search for books: robots. The bookBot is a robotic book delivery and storage system which allows users to quickly and efficiently search for the books they are looking for. Students on campus can request books from almost anywhere, and the robotic crane arm will pick it up and deliver it to the front desk. This first eliminates the time necessary to search for a physical book at the library and second gives the convenience of virtual browsing, where people can browse for books online and then directly obtain them thereafter. The books themselves are stored in 18,000 large bins, with barcodes so that the robot knows which books are in each bin. When a request is received, the robot picks up the bin containing the books and delivers it to personnel, to obtain the specified books. The robot delivers and returns all books, so no books are left out of the system. What’s more, because the books are stored in bins in such high density, it is estimated that the James B. Hunt Library stores the number of books with one-ninth the space of other conventional library systems. Now, some people might want to argue that having books delivered loses the appeal of browsing the shelves and finding related useful materials. But this problem was anticipated when the bookBot and its virtual browsing system were developed. Virtual browsing not only allows the requesting of single books, it also has an extensive recommendation system which gives quality related books to the user, covering all bases. Classics may miss the antiquity of browsing the shelves, but for students rushing through research reports and such, this sort of system increases efficiency and reduces costs, making this robot a great read.

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COMAN, COmpliant huMANoid

By Matt Wang | Published: April 5, 2013

Most humanoid robots in the past have had a fatal flaw. With stiff joints that could potentially whack someone who they work alongside or lose balance and fall to the ground, most humanoid robots aren’t necessary fit to work with other people. But COMAN was created with the sole purpose of fixing this problem.

Meet COMAN, short for COmpliant huMANoid. Created by the Italian Institute of Technology, COMAN is the size of a four-year-old child, 94.5 cm tall and weighing 31.2 kg. It is made of a titanium alloy, stainless steel, an aluminum alloy, and is covered with an acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) Plastic exoskeleton. This robot features 25 degrees of freedom (number of independent parameters that dictate behavior), and uses a combination of compliant and stiff joints to avoid the problems that most other robots encounter.

iit coman robot

14 of these degrees of freedom rely on series elastic actuators, which operate the joints to make the robot able to withstand forces. If you want an in depth abstract about how these patented actuators work, you can check it out here.

So why do series elastic actuators make a difference? Well, they are elastic, meaning that they absorb the impact energy (ground reaction forces) of each footstep. The same process can apply to other joint areas on the robot’s body, and combined with their strategic placement similar to those in the human body, COMAN can withstand gentle impacts from most sources.

COMAN is only the precursor to a world where people work alongside robots. When the humanoid robots become more able to function like human beings, they also become safer to work with. And thus, we walk towards a world of peaceful harmony… or do we?

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Cyro, Robot Jellyfish

By Matt Wang | Published: March 31, 2013

Remember our little RoboJelly, from so long ago? Well let’s take a look at its bigger cousin, Cyro.

Cyro is a robotic jellyfish created by Virginia Tech College of Engineering, modeled after the Lion’s Mane Jellyfish. Sporting a 5’7″ diameter bell (on average) and weighing 170 pounds, Cyro is the closest to a human-sized jellyfish we’re going to get.

So why jellyfish? Jellyfish have the amazing ability to move around with very low metabolism rates. This makes it a really good model for autonomous robots like this one. Of course, being the big brother of RoboJelly, what have they improved? First of all they’ve made it larger (obviously). But more importantly, they’ve improved the robot’s skeleton, eight arms powered and controlled by its central electronics. Unlike RoboJelly, Cyro now has a better robotic system. With its larger size, it can carry a larger payload: in this case, Cyro’s electronic guts, which are carried by its squishy silicone skin.

In this video, Cyro is tested in Virginia Tech’s “diving well,” a 14-foot deep swimming pool, moving from 8 feet down to the surface using only its pulsating movements. However, Cyro can only currently move in the up-down direction.

Scientists have stated various possible uses for Cyro, most notably for deep sea exploration. But also, when comparing side by side with RoboJelly, something more interesting to biologists might be the relationship between jellyfish propulsion and surface area or size. Cyro is still in its early stages of development, however, so only time will tell what its destiny is.

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Toa Mata Robot Band

By Matt Wang | Published: March 24, 2013

Some would say that we should get back down to the basics when it comes to robot design. If you talk to many people, the basics in robotics would probably go down to something a little smaller in scale than hulking masses of metal… maybe Legos.

To be honest, there isn’t very much to say about this cool robot band. The robots themselves are as simple as can be, with little bodies made of Legos and a single mobile joint for hitting downwards on a surface. But for some reason, this robot is really cool anyway, just in the way that they can cooperate to make cool music.

These robots use Arduino, a popular open-source physical computing platform based on a simple i/o board, and drive using Clavia NOrdbeat, a MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) for the iPad. Essentially, the program allows the user to program simple commands in code and send them to the robots. The robots then whack mini-electronic instruments which play musical feedback to altogether create a rad beat and cool music.

So simplicity literally is music to my ears.

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