This video left me speechless. Some amazing geometry going on here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7j5jtVFmXI&feature=related
+50Robotic Adhesion
For a while, researchers have had tools to stick onto a surface. One of the cooler ways, however, is to use a robot that utilizes the Bernoulli’s principle.
What Bernoulli’s principle states is simple: as a liquid moves faster, its pressure decreases. When used in the robot, air technically counts as a fluid, so if air is squirted out of the sides of a circular gripper fast enough, it creates a vacuum that is strong enough to grab things without actually touching them: a non-contact vacuum. This is especially useful with fragile materials such as glass, but previously it wasn’t as functional because the vacuum could not support a robot’s weight.
However, now, a new kind of robot has been develop that can support about five times the weight of the regular Bernoulli grippers. But this doesn’t require an increase in airflow or pressure. Instead, the geometry has been carefully designed to allow only a 25 ?m gap for air to push through. This forces the air to go through the gap at the speed of Mach 3, which is three times the speed of sound. And with faster airflow comes a stronger vacuum.
Many people have exciting new prospects for this non-contact adhesive robot, including industrial inspections.
+60Geometric Robot Swarms
Researchers at Disney recently presented their robotics project at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation, about what could possibly end up being a new theme park ride.
Using square robots with 3×3 grids that can change colors, the researchers developed an algorithm for the small robots to organize themselves into geometric shapes including circles, triangles, and donuts. They ran simulations of the robots ranging with numbers from four robots to fifty robots, and the organization that the robots move in is smooth and perfect. In addition, the robots, shown in real life, are also able to recover their position after encountering obstacles. The disturbance was created by removing two or three robots and placing them elsewhere, and the robots moved as a group to make up for the difference.
Overall, it’s an amazing mini light show!
+50Touché
Touché proposes a novel Swept Frequency Capacitive Sensing technique that can not only detect a touch event, but also recognize complex configurations of the human hands and body. Such contextual information significantly enhances touch interaction in a broad range of applications, from conventional touchscreens to unique contexts and materials. For example, in our explorations we add touch and gesture sensitivity to the human body and liquids. This video has five example of setups from different application domains and conduct experimental studies that show gesture classification accuracies of 99% are achievable with the new technology.
The “sensing sofa” is my favorite application of this technology, with the user simply sitting down to turn on the TV and changing position to turn off the lights.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4tYpXVTjxA&feature=related
+20Herbots
Most people think that robots have to have some sort of functionality or ability to make it cool. However, in a splendid imitation of biological systems, people have designed, built, and programmed some interesting robot plants, that look good and act natural.
A while back, MAKE, a technology magazine, held a contest to build robotic plants. The entries were amazing, but a few of them stood out more than the rest.
In first place came a robotic imitation of a Venus Fly Trap. Acting just like the living carnivorous plant, the robot snaps shut viciously when stimulated by an object landing on its sensitive leaf surface.
Other outstanding entries included a flowering plant that bloomed and closed when given enough solar energy and not enough solar energy, respectively. It seems to be a simple system, but its similarities to real flowers is a sight to behold.
These robots are all stunning replicas of their biological counterparts, and they could be a precursor to a biological robotic world.
+10Robot Therapy
Many people have wondered whether robots will be able to help people’s health, and this has quickly become a reality: motorized wheelchairs, prosthetic limbs, and more are ideal examples of this. But never before have robots actually helped the biological aspect of human health.
Recently, a robot was developed that helped patients recovering from stroke to regain their arm movement. This is a terrible result of stroke, but with the help of Myomo, the recovery is much simpler.
Myomo is a robotic guide arm that helps paralyzed limbs move with relative ease. With pre-programmed motions, the robotic arm helps patients stretch during regular intervals, which slowly help regain the movement of the affected arm. In addition, its controlled movements make stretching safer and easier than conventional repetitive stretching methods, which occasionally lead to detrimental effects. This is the beginning of robotic therapy, which shows much promise for the successful treatments into the future.
+10Tetris-Bot
So you might be wondering: why would anyone make a robot that can play games? Aren’t games only fun if people play them? Well, believe it or not, a man named Branislov Kisacanin made a robot that plays tetris using only NXT Lego parts as an educational project for his kids.
Although the robot is still far from skilled (it can’t even pass the first level!) it’s still an amazing to behold, using image recognition and several robotic arms to play the game.
+10
