The investigators found the lizards swung their tails to correct for errors made at launch. For instance, slippery surfaces made their feet skid, but the reptiles corrected for such anomalies with appropriate tail movements in mid-air.
To help confirm their findings, the scientists produced a lizard-size wheeled robot named “Tailbot” that had an aluminum tail and could leap like a ski jumper from a ramp. During each jump, the robot’s front wheels, which left the ramp first, started falling while the rear ones were still on the ramp, causing the machine to tilt downward. To avoid a nosedive into the landing pad, Tailbot corrected the angle of its body before landing by using tail movements controlled by feedback from an onboard gyroscope.
The mighty works of Zenta, the Norwegian hexapod mastermind covered previously in these humble pages, have been discovered by none other than one of the the shining bastions of all things awesome, Popular Science. You all can now say you knew Zenta when.
It’s nice to see that the morphing robot has come such a long way since July.
MorpHex is the brainchild of Norwegian engineer Kare Halvorsen, aka Zenta, who chronicles his robot-building experience on his blog. It started as a cut-up globe from Toys ‘R’ Us, and now it has 25 servos and a Basicmicro ARC-32 board, which is not yet programmed to roll. But Halvorsen said that’s his next step. Watch it fold up its arms into a sphere and then gently unfold them to walk.
The Harvest Automation robots are knee-high, wheeled machines. Each robot has a gripper for grasping pots, a deck for carrying pots, and an array of sensors to keep track of where it is and what’s around it. Teams of robots zip around nursery fields, single-mindedly spacing and grouping plants. Think Wall-E without the doe eyes and cuddly personality, or the little forest-tending ‘bots in the 1972 sci-fi classic Silent Running.
The contraption he’s built allows anyone to create crazy cocktails depending on what you type:
The man, the mystery, the legend explains:
So, if you’re interested, let me explain this contraption and the mechanism that makes it work. At the top of the machine there is a slot into which a bottle with alcohol, water, or even milk can be screwed. The essence of the art here lies in the ability of the syrups or liqueurs to tint the neutral color of the liquid.
…
Pressing the buttons on the keyboard injects the corresponding ingredients into the display, which tints different segments of the display and thus produces letters. You can try to imagine that each letter can have a taste (L-Lime, A-Apple), a color (R-Red, G-Green), or a name (K-Kahlua, J-Jagermeister).
Hurray for Happy Steampunk Robot Magnets! They are adorable and fun, loaded with delight for all the steampunk lovin’, magnet-noodlin’, fridge-door hangin’ folks in your kitchen!
They were thought up and done by the fine folks at Neatorama, who absolutely *promised* they would take the electrodes off my chihuahua and get my power tools back from the scrapyard the very *minute* I told EVERYONE I KNOW about them! Whee!!
There are many cute robots to chose from, they do jolly dances as you make your morning tea! Love them and their nutty boltiness!
Please write to them and say that you just love their steampunk robots, and that you would like to buy them by the gross, otherwise their hands might slip and HAHAHAHAHA OOPS CRISPY @LILFOO! Hahaha! those wacky, wacky Neatorama guys. Wacky.
Oh god please help they have my dog and my mig welder
But can anything that incorporates delicious delicious electronics and the power of the Lab Coat of Authority *really* be stupid?
Actually, yes. Yes it can. In a good way though.
Maywa Denki the Japanese robotics consortium that defies description (which is how we like it) instituted the Bacarobo competition in 2008.
The rules are simple: The robot has to have absolutely no practical function, it has to be mechanical, and it has to make people laugh. Sounds like Robot Comedy Gold to me.
Bacarobo Europe is happening in October in Budapest. If you are headed in that direction around that time, you should definitely seriously consider attending. For Science!
It’s the dramatic on-pull of the sensory vest that gets me every time.
Thanks Science Seminars for the link, also for the comment “It is creepy and sounds like a toilet.”
*It should not automatically be construed that The Rotor’s mysterious, regrettable disappearance had anything to do with the aforementioned exclamation. Although if it were construed, automatically or not, it could be neither confirmed or denied. All we know is that he’s gone and WE KNOW NOTHING, OKAY?
I came across Zenta’s Robotic Creations blog while looking up information on my own biped, and my jealousy meter is off the charts.
Just watch this video – Words, I have none.
Working with similar robots, I can only hope that one day I can make them move that smooth and agile.
Zenta’s latest project is a morphing robot. That’s right, a MORPHING ROBOT.
I tossed this brilliant Norwegian a few questions, and he was nice enough to get back to me!
What’s your background and how did you get into robotics?
My background is engineering. I’ve always been fascinated by all kind of robots since I was about 6 or 7 years. (I’m now 38 year) .I began building robots very early, using mostly meccano. At some point I found meccano a bit limiting and started making custom parts. But I didn’t get more serious into hobby robots before 2006 when I started on my rather famous Phoenix hexapod.
You mention in your blog that Archer is your first biped, why did you decide to construct a biped rather than continue your work with hexapod (and similar) projects? What are the different problems you run into when designing a biped versus designing a robot with more than two legs?
The main reason for why I wanted to construct a biped is that I had some ideas of how to control it using Inverse Kinematics (IK) based on the current code used for controlling hexapods. The main difference is balancing/stability. Also gear-slope/backlash in the gear of the servos is a challenge on bipeds. Keeping the weight as low as possible is also more important on bipeds. When it comes to stability I tried solving that on Archer by simply moving electronics and battery from side to side.
Your new hexapod, MorpHex, looks absolutely amazing. How did you come up with its unique design, and what difficulties you encountered and how they were overcome?
Thanks, glad you liked it! I got the idea for building MorpHex for over a year ago. Mainy I got the idea watching my two eldest kids playing with Bakugan and I thought it would be cool to make a hexapod that could transform into a sphere and back to a hex again. I’m still working on MorpHex, you can see what I’ve accomplished so far on my blog. The main challenge with MorpHex was to make the variable sized body, the body needed to expand for making more space between the leg sections. There has been several difficulties during the making of MorpHex. At some point I considered to end the project, so I had to do some changes to the leg design for making the robot less heavy and also for removing some conflict between the sphere sections.
A lot of your robots seem incredibly lifelike and fluid in their movement, how did you manage to accomplish this?
The smooth movement are simply accomplished by accurate control, correct math and correct timing. Jeroen Janssen’s work on the Phoenix hexapod Basic Atom Pro code make this rather easy to accomplish. Instead of using a PS2 controller, I’m using a custom made remote controller. The remote controller play a big role for accurate control.
Of all your previous projects, which one did you enjoy working on the most?
Oh, thats very hard to say. I enjoyed them all. I think I’ve to say Phoenix was the project I enjoyed most.
What future projects are you looking forward to working on?
A full humanoid biped, a new hexapod and or a new quad…
Lastly, if someone is interested in robotics, but has relatively little hands-on experience, where would you recommend they start?
Lego mindstorm or VEX Robotic System is a very good plattfom. I’ve to say I’ve not worked with either of them. But I plan to introduce Lego Mindstorm for my kids one day. Also, a hex or biped Brat kit from Lynxmotion is a good start.
Too lazy to learn how to play an instrument? Then let the good ol’ folks at the University of Tokyo and Sony Computer Science Labs do it for you!
The project’s name is PossessedHand and it allows control over someone’s hand via electrical muscle stimuli!
As well as helping would-be musicians, PossessedHand could be used to rehabilitate people who have suffered a stroke or other injury that impairs muscle control. Therapists already use electrical muscle stimulation to help these people, but existing non-invasive devices can only achieve crude movements such as contracting the entire arm.
Check out this article by Phillip Torrone chronicling the development of wearable electronic tech - Ranging from music and video players/recording devices, to a huge variety of USB devices, and much much more!
I’ve always wanted to utilize my wrist real estate to my shoes for electronics of some kind. Many of the “wearables” I’m going to share are from my project archives, some are now “real,” and others are products that are out now. I think we’re finally entering an era where wearable electronics can look good and work well.
Mentioned in an earlier post dissecting Hero Jr., Jeri Ellsworth spotted in the depths of this article, this time with her Nintendo Purse!
Our pal Patrick Flanagan at Jazari Music has a nice piece up about Jazari Music over at Hack A Day about his music and how his robot band is evolving, and by “evolving” I mean “kicking ass and being awesome”:
As Patrick describes it, Jazari “fuses African rhythms,
algorithmic composition, computer music, and electro-mechanics into
beat-driven steamfunk.” The controls are quite unique as well. Originally, the controller was simply a Wiimote. This was limited, since one needs three fingers to hold on to it, so a new “springbok” device was born allowing all five fingers to be used to play music. The vocal part of the music is created using an Android program called “voloco”.
Autonomous chorus line of precision Busby Berkeley-style tap dancing robots that don’t appear to have much personality on an individual basis, but boy can they flock.
The excessively intelligent and infuriatingly productive Jeri Ellsworth goes over her new-to-her Heathkit Hero Jr., lovingly extracted from here in the depths of the Robunker (We have five more. Get ‘em while they’re cutely obsolete!).
