Automaton

An article in today's WaPo discusses some odd dragonflies seen in New York City recently, which some of the witnesses say look "large for dragonflies" and suspiciously mechanical. Speculation is that they're robotic bugs spying for the US government -- of course, there's other speculation that they're just plain dragonflies, too. Don't be misled by the photo in the article (reproduced here); that's a picture from a lab at Harvard.

But after all the apparent warnings for the tinfoil hat brigade, the article does a nice of highlighting some of the ongoing research into robotic insects. Here's an interesting bit:

In one approach, researchers funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) are inserting computer chips into moth pupae -- the intermediate stage between a caterpillar and a flying adult -- and hatching them into healthy "cyborg moths."

The Hybrid Insect Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems project aims to create literal shutterbugs -- camera-toting insects whose nerves have grown into their internal silicon chip so that wranglers can control their activities. DARPA researchers are also raising cyborg beetles with power for various instruments to be generated by their muscles.

"You might recall that Gandalf the friendly wizard in the recent classic 'Lord of the Rings' used a moth to call in air support," DARPA program manager Amit Lal said at a symposium in August. Today, he said, "this science fiction vision is within the realm of reality."

In response to yesterday's article about Raytheon's acquisition of Sarcos, a friend sent me this video:

That, my friends, is pretty crazy.

Spectrum ran a feature on exoskeletons two years ago with some interesting details on the Sarcos system's force sensors, power unit, and hydraulic actuators, below:

For its part, the Salt Lake City–based Sarcos team, led by roboticist and inventor Stephen C. Jacobsen, has been working on what may be one of the strongest exoskeletons ever built. Earlier this year, at the demonstration the group did in Fort Belvoir, an engineer wearing the Sarcos robotic system was able to carry 84 kg [185 lb]—about the weight of an average size washing machine—without feeling the payload at all. Jacobsen, Sarcos's CEO and a mechanical engineering professor at the University of Utah, says that the new exoskeleton supports the payload's entire weight even if the wearer stands on one leg.

Like Bleex 2 [the UC Berkeley exo], the latest Sarcos system is a second-generation model that improves substantially over its predecessor. Jacobsen says that while wearing the exoskeleton, you can walk and run, and if you stumble, the system is fast enough to readjust its powered limbs to keep the payload's weight off your body.

The exoskeleton relies on a network of force sensors that are in touch with the wearer's body at certain points, such as underneath the feet. These special sensors, developed by Sarcos, feed data to a control computer that in turn commands the robotic limbs to move in harmony with the wearer's arms and legs without ever obstructing them. Jacobsen calls this method "get out of the way" control, and he says using the robotic suit requires no training. "You can step into the exoskeleton, and you can immediately run it," he says.

According to Jacobsen, what makes an exoskeleton an extremely hard problem is that conventional, off-the-shelf components won't work. Sarcos had to design and fabricate each piece and, in parallel, integrate all of them into its system. The exoskeleton's power unit was one of these many pieces the company had to engineer painstakingly. It's a special internal-combustion engine that can use a variety of fuels and deliver enough hydraulic power to the actuators to meet the great strength and speed the robotic limbs require.

But even more challenging, Jacobsen says, was developing yet another component: the servo valves that control the flow of the hydraulic fluid into the actuators. The valves had to be small, extremely reliable, resistant to high pressures, and highly efficient to preserve precious power, not to mention that some of their parts had to be machined to micrometer tolerances. To make things even harder, so many complex physical processes occur in the valves, Jacobsen insists that simulation software couldn't help in the design. His group, therefore, had to go through several iterations of prototypes to get the valve it needed.

Sarcos is now preparing for demonstrations scheduled over the next few months. Team members are especially busy with the exoskeleton's upper-extremity system, which will add strength to the wearer's arms. A person wearing the full-body system will be able not only to carry a payload on a backpack but also lift heavy items, a capability that is particularly useful for logistics operations such as loading and unloading cargo vehicles and moving things in a warehouse.

PS: When my colleague Harry Goldstein and I spoke with Sarcos for that article, the company had just began developing their exoskeleton's upper-extremity part. Now, as the video shows, it seems they've made significant progress. One thing, however, hasn't changed. Note in the video: the exo has a tether attached to it, probably feeding power or control signals to the suit. Sure, it's a prototype. It will be interesting to see how exoskeleton researchers will cut the umbilical cords of their creations.

Christmas has come and gone, and the New Year is almost upon us. Time for a look at the past year’s new robots and to pick some winners!

Candidates include, among many others, WowWee's Dragonfly, Roboquad and Elvis robots, the iRobot Create, the Sony Rolly only available in Japan, Ijspeert's salamander robot locomoting in and out of water, Dean Kamen's prosthetic robotic arm, the SARCOS exoskeleton doubling as a remote controlled android, Honda's Asimo with its latest skill of serving tea as well as countless humanoid toys like the i-SOBOT.

The Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry has already gone ahead and named their robot of the year 2007: A handling system by FANUC Ltd with M-430iA robot arms and visual tracking (check out a video clip). Their runner-ups include a host of industrial and service robots.

I've decided to give naming a "Top 3 of 2007" a shot and held a long debate - mostly with myself as I will admit - to pick my personal favorites. My kinds of robots are not those on the factory floors, but those you and I can see and interact with out on the streets, in offices or in our homes. And after some consideration, all the new humanoids didn't make my list - they may have the greatest potential, but I think they are still very far from being useful beyond amusement and are simply way too expensive. Here are the 3 that did make my list of favorite robots in 2007:

3. BeatBot's Keepon
The toy robot Keepon developed by the BeatBots project, Keepon dances to music (make sure to check out the video). Similar to last year's hilarious Tickle Me Elmo robot, Keepon is based on a simple idea, a simple design, but is fantastically well done. Somebody please tell me why they won't sell it!

2. Ugobe's Pleo
Another toy – but hey, that’s where consumer robotics stands in 2007. But the Pleo is an exceptionally cool toy: The baby dino uses an impressive sensor suite in combination with an AI that allows it to develop distinct personalities according to user interactions. Pleo performs a large range of actions, including trembling in fear, wagging its tail and dancing with happiness, playing dead and sneezing - and you can train it! With the long awaited Pleo, the people at Ugobe have reached a new level of user interaction and - as some people claim - intelligence for a robot toy.

1. The DARPA Urban Challenge Robots
For me the title for robot of the year 2007 goes to the winners of the Urban Challenge. Winners, because three robots performed exceptionally well: Carnegie Mellon University's Tartan Racing robot Boss, Stanford racing team's Junior and Virginia Tech's Victor Tango. Although their times in the race differed, all three robots far exceeded expectations. And thinking back to the first Grand Challenge in 2004, it is truly unbelievable how far robot technology has advanced in this field.

Miss a robot in the list? Disagree with my judgment? Or ready to compile your own top 3, 4, 5, ... 10? Feel free to post your comments!

Photos: Barry Trimmer/Tufts University

A soft-bodied caterpillarlike robot prototype developed by researchers at Tufts University will be part of an exhibition at New York's Museum of Modern Art.

The MoMA exhibition, called Design and the Elastic Mind (24 February to 12 May 2008), will showcase examples of "disruptive innovation" -- objects, projects, and concepts from designers, scientists, and engineers from all over the world.

The Tufts team, led by biology professor Barry Trimmer and biomedical engineering professor David Kaplan, drew inspiration from the Manduca sexta caterpillar to build the squishable "softbot" prototype, about 30.5 cm long and made of silicon elastomer.

The researchers, based at Tufts' Medford/Somerville, Mass. campus, say the biomimetic robot could be used in emergency search and rescue operations, medical diagnosis and treatment, and manufacturing and aerospace applications.

IEEE Spectrum's Sarah Adee reports:

Dean Kamen's “Luke arm”—a prosthesis named for the remarkably lifelike prosthetic worn by Luke Skywalker in Star Wars—came to the end of its two-year funding last month. Its fate now rests in the hands of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which funded the project. If DARPA gives the project the green light—and some greenbacks—the state-of-the-art bionic arm will go into clinical trials. If all goes well, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration gives its approval, returning veterans could be wearing the new artificial limb by next year.

The Luke arm grew out of DARPA’s Revolutionizing Prosthetics program, which was created in 2005 to fund the development of two arms. The first initiative, the four-year, US $30.4 million Revolutionizing Prosthetics contract, to be completed in 2009, led by Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., seeks a fully functioning, neurally controlled prosthetic arm using technology that is still experimental. The latter, awarded to Deka Research and Development Corp., Kamen’s New Hampshire–based medical products company (perhaps best known for the Segway), is a two-year $18.1 million 2007 effort to give amputees an advanced prosthesis that could be available immediately “for people who want to literally strap it on and go.” Kamen’s team designed the Deka arm to be controlled with noninvasive measures, using an interface a bit like a joystick.

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Photo: Dirk van der Merwe

Remember those strange dragonflies seen in New York City that some witnesses said looked suspiciously ... robotic? Well, we still don't know what those were.

But if you're into flying microrobots, you can't miss this month's Spectrum cover article, Fly, Robot Fly, written by one of the leading experts in the field, Robert Wood at the Harvard Microrobotics Lab:

There is no more rewarding moment for roboticists than when they first see their creations begin to twitch with a glimmer of life. For me, that moment of paternal pride came a year ago this month, when my artificial fly first flexed its wings and flew.

It began when I took a stick-thin winged robot, not much larger than a fingertip, and anchored it between two taut wires, rather like a miniature space shuttle tethered to a launchpad. Next I switched on the external power supply. Within milliseconds the carbon-fiber wings, 15 millimeters long, began to whip forward and back 120 times per second, flapping and twisting just like an actual insect's wings. The fly shot straight upward on the track laid out by the wires. As far as I know, this was the first flight of an insect-size robot.

Read Wood's full account of his work and see additional photos of this great little flying robot at Spectrum's web site.

Photos: Dan Saelinger and Randi Silberman for IEEE Spectrum

After our Big Dog scoop last week, we now learn that footage of a deeply flawed predecessor model, Big Dog Beta, has recently surfaced. Disturbing. :)

The video is by the same troupe (they call themselves Pantless Knights) that made the YouTube hit "Mac or PC Rap Music Video."

Stanford's Stickybot, a wall-climbing robot that uses gecko-inspired directional adhesives on its feet. Photo: Stanford University

Spectrum correspondent Prachi Patel-Predd reports that engineers at the 2008 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2008), in Pasadena, Calif., are presenting "the latest takes on how to tackle a new frontier: vertical surfaces."

Read Patel-Predd's report or check out all the presentations at today's Climbing Robots track of the conference.

The fourth meeting on Adaptive Motion of Animals and Machines (AMAM) took place at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, last week. Automaton contributor John Bender, a postdoc in biology at Case, has the highlights:

AMAM 2008 was a one-week, single-track conference, including four keynotes, over 70 posters, and a "robot zoo" populated by a menagerie of mobile machines. The coffee break buzz indicated that most of the 150 attendees found the meeting to be a superb confluence of the cutting edge in bio-inspired robotics.

Locomotion specialists from both biology and engineering were well represented, and the meeting continually broke down barriers between disciplines to focus on the shining promise of the field: highly functional robots built using biologically derived principles, which in turn serve as embodied models to address otherwise impractical questions in biology. An additional innovation at this conference was the invitation of several biomedical engineers working on ways to recover function in paralyzed human patients using intuitive brain-machine interfaces.

As for the venue, Cleveland may not be the most exotic of destinations but it has an all-American cultural history steeped in the industrial tradition, and during the conference the attendees gathered at Case's sprawling campus were able to experience the city's quite pleasant late-spring weather. And if you're wondering, as many do, the name of the university dates to the 1967 merger of the Case Institute of Technology and the Western Reserve University, with "western reserve" referring to the formerly pristine and resource-rich Great Lakes region of the early 19th century.

Though I didn't see a single uninteresting presentation, I'll highlight just a few that I found especially exciting, in chronological order.

Hunter Peckham, an engineer at Case and executive director of the Cleveland Functional Electrical Stimulation Center, gave a keynote address on some of his recent studies and clinical trials in functional electrical stimulation. This work involves implanting electrodes to deliver electric pulses to the muscles of paralyzed people. Control of a limb is a difficult problem because there are more degrees of freedom (joints and muscles) than there are constraints (desired limb positions). Peckham first simulated the mechanics of the musculoskeletal system to decide which muscles were strictly necessary for a desired range of arm motions, then examined the neural architecture to determine which points should be stimulated to differentially activate those muscles in a useful way. Two patients have received these radio-controlled implants, which are activated by coupling stimulation to recorded activity in muscles which are still under voluntary control. For example, the patient may still be able to twitch his or her cheek, so electrical activity in the cheek muscles would be detected and would be used to trigger stimulation of a particular subset of arm muscles. Two or three co-contracting muscle groups are sufficient for a patient to feed him- or herself, representing a major improvement in quality of life.

Photo: Developed at the Cleveland FES Center, an external controller sends commands to an implanted device that jolts Jennifer French's muscles into action in the correct sequence, allowing her to stand up out of her wheelchair. Read more: Neural Engineering's Image Problem (IEEE Spectrum, April 2004) Photo by Ed Macdonald

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Photo: Kanzaki-Takahashi Laboratory

The second full day of talks was sponsored by Mobiligence, a research consortium consisting of engineers and biologists at several Japanese universities. Their backing brought a significant international flavor to the conference. One thought-provoking talk was given by plenary speaker Ryohei Kanzaki, of the University of Tokyo. His research team is investigating the mechanisms by which silkworm moths walk toward the source of an airborne odor. He has built a large anatomical and physiological database of uniquely identifiable neurons in the moth's brain which contribute to its ability to track an odor plume. Using optical recording techniques, Kanzaki can associate activity in these neurons with the presence of an odor. He has built a hybrid robot in order to investigate the algorithm the moth uses to localize the odor source. In this setup, the moth walks in place on top of a trackball, and the output signal of the trackball is used to control the vehicle on which the moth and trackball are sitting. Small fans waft the odor from the floor up to the moth's antennae. This moth-driven robot is capable of localizing an odor source in a manner qualitatively similar to a real moth. Experimentally altering the feedback loop by changing the sign or gain of the coupling between the moth's walking and the robot's movement (and subsequent contact with the odor plume) affects the moth/robot's ability to find the odor source.

Researchers at the Technical University Delft will present the smallest flying flapping robot carrying a camera today. With a wing span of just 10 centimeters and weighing in at a mere 3.07 grams, the remote controlled dragonfly is half the size of Borneo's Tetracanthagyna plagiata dragon flies.

The video below shows the DelFly Micro's first test flight indoors. The smaller picture in the bottom right corner shows video data transmitted from the robot in-flight to a ground station. Using image recognition software developed by the DelFly team, objects can then be recognized automatically. This may allow the robot be operated from - or by - a computer.

Guido de Croon, developer of the vision-based control system of the DelFly, already has applications in mind. When a university building burnt-out recently he thought of his team's MAVs: "Since there was some risk of collapse, people could not enter it, and we proposed to attempt to fly into it with the DelFly or a quad-rotor." With the new DelFly Micro still in development, a quad-rotor was deployed to survey the site, but was found too large to enter the building. "Unfortunately, we did not succeed in getting in," De Croon explains, "However, we did gain some experience in what problems one can encounter in such a situation."

Thanks Guido!