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Goosinator in Denver

By Matt Wang | Published: December 26, 2012

To the casual observer, the Goosinator is quite a funny robot. It’s almost neon orange with bright yellow glaring eyes, zips as fast as 25 mph, and emits an incredibly annoying whine. What is its purpose? To scare away the many geese that infest Denver’s parks.


In the city of Denver, there were often complaints about the behavior of geese. The designer of this robot, Randy Claussen, created this robot in order to scare geese by adding one factor of the natural environment of all animals: predators. He created this robot to emulate the behavior of a predator that might prevent the geese from settling into the urban sprawl.

But what’s so bad about geese, you might ask. Well, the primary problem is their fecal excrement. Each goose produces at least a pound a day of feces, and citizens are annoyed because of the constant maintenance and cleaning this requires. And with seven hundred permanent residential geese and tens of thousands of others that join them during migration, this problem is pretty messy.

This robot chases geese no matter where they run, maneuvering over land, water, ice, and snow, all to scare geese away. It’s 82 decibel whine essentially scares the geese away, and studies have shown that they don’t return, at least for the short term. The only detriment in terms of the robot design is that the Goosinators are remote-controlled, requiring human operators.

However, the general purpose of the Goosinators has received criticism as well. When the geese are chased away, they can relocate in a variety of different places, like national parks, where their damage could be much worse. Also, some experts on geese behavior have conjectured that this method won’t last for long. Apparently, geese will quickly learn how to avoid the Goosinators. Only time will tell.

This sort of environmental influence of robots seems to be a pioneer. Even in this one example, we see that there is a large controversy primarily because living organisms are involved. While this might be a wrong place to branch out into a larger debate about the viability of robotics in the environment, it certainly sets the stage for more ways for humans to control nature and could have larger, global impacts.

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Blind Juggler Robot

By Matt Wang | Published: December 25, 2012

A few articles ago I wrote about a robot for Disney that can juggle balls with people. Well, this robot is a bit lonely, maybe because of its lack of eyes (visual sensors), and its talent would never have been discovered had it not been built by two members of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zürich.

Raffaello D'Andrea and juggling robot

Well, I suppose you might try to argue that it’s not really blind, since robots don’t always have visible “eyes.” But this robot is uniquely “blind” because it has no visual sensors, relying solely on mechanical sensors on the paddle to detect trajectory, spin, and force.

To prevent the robot from hitting the ball too hard  in any direction, the paddle is slightly curved. Each time the ball hits the paddle, the robot uses the data it receives from the mechanical sensors to speed up or slow down the paddle’s motion and hit the ball in a stable arc. This allows the robot to juggle multiple balls around for hours in a regular manner.

So far testing has shown that the robot can handle many different kinds of balls. But I don’t think that professional jugglers need to worry yet. The robot can’t throw around bottles or even shoes (and thus anything not remotely ball-shaped), which are simple enough for regular jugglers.

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The Robotic Arm: Controlled by the Mind

By Matt Wang | Published: December 17, 2012

Paralysis has always been an especially pressing issue for those people who have it, as they lose their ability to move around and perform simple daily functions. Even when we look at state-of-the-art examples of technology and robotics used to their best, we see that there isn’t much progress in terms of using technology for the disabled. But with this new robotic arm, that just might be changing.

Robotic arm

This short video displays how the first test patient, Jan Scheuermann, used the robot arm (with an implant in her skull) to feed herself chocolate. Scheuermann has quadriplegia, a form of paralysis that prevents partial or full movement of the limbs and torso, and for a long time she has not been able to move her body by herself. For those of you who want to sort-of full story, here’s a longer coverage of her story.

The idea behind the robotic arm is quite simple. The brain emits electrical signals through impulses and neural activity, and these impulses can be rewired to an outside source, rather than being transmitted down the spinal cord and getting lost in diseased patients. In Jan, the robotic arm was connected to her brain (penetrating a sixteenth of an inch into the brain) using two quarter-inch square electrode grids, with 96 contact points to transmit electrical signals. To make these electrical signals readable to a computer system, they are transcribed into computer code that then is processed by the robotic arm. What’s more, this robotic arm takes a new perspective on a reading algorithm. While most other algorithms attempt to work through a library of different signals and identify a specific one, this new algorithm effectively models the brain, so it takes multiple impulses together (as one impulse leading to the next) and processes them like that. It’s difficult to describe in words, but essentially it imitates the brain better than traditional methods do.

Through training, Jan was able to move things around, feed herself, and altogether perform regularly daily functions using the robotic arm. She performed with 91.6% efficiency and almost 30 seconds faster for in general than at the start of her trial. The next goal of a robot-brain interface would be to be able to send sensation back to the brain, for example in the forms of texture and temperature of touched objects.

And as an interesting fact, the first that Jan thought about after entering the trial? “I’m going to feed myself chocolate before this is over.” And she did.

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HyTAQ, The Robot That Could Fly (And Roll)

By Matt Wang | Published: December 14, 2012

For most aerial vehicles, it is difficult to maintain energy efficiency when they have to work against gravity. On the other hand, most ground-restricted vehicles do not have the freedom that aerial vehicles do. At the same time, it seems difficult to combine the two.

HyTAQ hybrid quadrotor robot travels by air and land, leaves us no place to hide video

The HyTAQ (Hybrid Terrestrial and Aerial Quadrotor) is unique in that it has four rotors for stable flight, but is also surrounded by a cylindrical cage made of polycarbonate and carbon fiber. Additionally, HyTAQ uses the same actuators for flying as for moving on the ground, so no extra actuators need to be carried.

But why have something that can move in the air as well as the ground? Well to start off, as mentioned in the beginning, it’s more efficient. It can operate six times more than an aerial-only plane, while still maintaining the ability of aerial movement. By having both aerial and terrestrial mobility, a robot can change its movement depending on the situation, and traverse obstacles that terrestrial-only vehicles can’t. The cage acts as a shock absorber when the robot moves in the air and might crash into things, and also allows the robot to fly even in difficult wind situations. Of course, its terrestrial functions also allow it to move on the ground and avoid strong winds at the same time.

The cage also allows the robot to move irregardless of rotational position. The cage itself is held loosely onto the quadrotor, so no matter how much the cage spins, the rotors stay parallel to the ground, allowing for maximum stability.

All in all, HyTAQ is revolutionary because it increases efficiency and is a much less complex robot than another aerial and terrestrial hybrid machine would be. Plus, it looks really cool, bouncing along erratically while its center stays strong and balanced.

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Kenshiro: The Robot with Muscles

By Matt Wang | Published: December 11, 2012

We’ve seen a wide arrangement of biologically-inspired robots lately. But this next one might scare you a bit, since it does take a substantial leap into the robopocalyptic future. This robot, made by the University of Tokyo and coined Kenshiro, has human-like bones and muscles, one step closer to having humanoid robots that move just like us.

Kenshiro is made to mimic the body of the average Japanese 12-year-old male, with a height of 158 cm (5’2″) and a weight of 50 kg (110 lbs). His body is built to mimic almost all of the muscles found in the human body, using 160 pulley-like “muscles” to move its joints all around. These are no ordinary pulleys, though. While most usually follow the conventional point-to-point system that stretch only between specific points, larger planar (sheet-like) muscles are used that are flatter and wider. These planar muscles only require one motor to control, making the entire robot much stabler and more freedom of movement.

Also, Kenshiro’s bones are quite a spectacle. Made of aluminum, they are sturdier than their prototypes, and feature numerous improvements, such as an incredible rib cage and better knee joints (with the cruciate ligament and the kneecap). Such bones will eventually make the robot to be able to sustain injury better and with more support.

With improvements in muscle torque and joint speeds, Kenshiro can almost do everything that humans can, such as the gymnastics-like leg stretching in the video. Still, Kenshiro’s joint angular speed isn’t as fast as a humans, with only 70-100 degrees per second. Before this is solved, robots will probably not be physically superior to humans in a humanoid state, but they’re catching up quickly.

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EASE Hovercraft

By Matt Wang | Published: December 7, 2012

The existence of flight robotics is tenuous at best. Its primary problem comes from finding ways to fuel the robot efficiently while still maintaining functionality, which has caused problems in the past. But this newest creation by CyPhy Works takes an innovative and yet somehow also strange perspective on this issue.

The EASE robot hovercraft is actually pretty cool as a robot itself. It can fly through doors and windows, and uses a ducted-fan design. This basically means that it uses a fan/propeller mounted within a cylinder or duct-like area. This sort of design allows the EASE to takeoff and land vertically, as well as hover in air. In addition, the EASE hovercraft is portable too, with a diameter of only 12 inches and height of 16 inches, this robot can easily be carries in a backpack.

Unfortunately, the EASE otherwise suffers from short-term battery problems. If using the on-board batteries, it can only last for a little less than an hour. Although hot-swapping (the ability to replace the battery without having the shut down the system) alleviates this problem a little bit, it’s still not a very efficient solution, especially if you need to use it for a long time and can’t afford to carry around hundreds of batteries. EASE solves this by having a microfilament that connects to the ground control system, and thus keep the robot powered through a power grid. This microfilament is even thinner than a headphone cable! In addition, the microfilament is spooled, adjusting to just the right quantity to feed out so the line will never be stressed or strained.

What do you use this amazing movement capabilities for? You could use them for search and rescue, with their ability to maneuver through difficult terrain and human buildings. And with two on-board HD cameras, (one front looking and other down looking) with an optional thermal camera, you can take pictures constantly as you drag the robot around like a balloon. Even better, the microfilament connection allows 720p video at 30 fps to be monitored in real time, because there is an actual physical connection between the robot and control system.

Of course, some would argue that this UAV can be used to track down people in the apocalypse no matter how much we blockade our buildings. Let’s be optimistic  can’t we?

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Romotive: Personal Robot

By Matt Wang | Published: December 3, 2012

Ever since the movies of personal robots first came into existence, mankind has dreamed of having one of their own. But so far, many of these personal robots have been on both extremes of the spectrum, either plastic toys or incredibly expensive machines. With Romotive, however, a mere iPhone or iPod Touch can be used to make an incredibly cute robot.

There are only two things required to use Romotive: the app, and the robot base that has the wheels and the complex circuitry. This robot is interesting because it gives the robot a sort of “mind of its own” while still maintaining the relative simplicity and low cost of an iPhone for control. And the robot itself is called Romo.

Meanwhile, Romo can be controlled from another iDevice, another iPhone or maybe an iPad. Romo’s screen can show emotions, as it pouts, smiles, laughs, growls, and giggles for a user’s amusement. But it can also be put in free range (autonomous) and dance modes. With the Romo, an iPhone can be set free, while still giving data to the user. In the video below, it roams the streets of Las Vegas, where the eighteen developers were packed into one apartment as they created this magnificent robot and formed the company. It can give active video to the user, allowing for long distance communication when the robot moves itself.

Another appealing part of the Romo is that the creators made a robot API so that users could program it and make their programs accessible to more people as well, and “upgrade” the robot based on other peoples’ creations. It’s almost like a robot that can keep getting better without having to get newer versions.

And the final reason why it’s the best? Its many customizable faces and the ease of use for people who have no programming knowledge whatsoever. And with new perks like facial recognition and “emotions” towards its owner, the Romo will indeed be the personal robot that everyone wants.

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