Automaton

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.

From Spectrum's February issue:

The small motorboat meanders through the Amazonian swamp. The water is a turbid brown, the jungle a thicket of twisted trees. A cricrió bird chirps from the treetops. The Brazilian researchers stop the boat to have a look around. Suddenly a noise breaks the calm. Buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Within seconds, an angry swarm of cabas, Amazon wasps with a powerful sting, envelops the boat and its unlucky occupants. To hear Ney Robinson Salvi dos Reis tell the story, you almost feel you're right there in the rain forest with him, fighting off the bellicose bugs.

“Jumping into the water is not a good idea,” Reis says. “There are crocodiles, snakes, piranhas, and a bloodsucking little fish called candiru that can enter your body orifices. So I covered my head and told the mateiro”—the Amazon native piloting the boat—“to get us out of there fast!”

For Reis, a robotics engineer at Petrobras, Brazil's state-controlled oil company, fleeing from wild wasps through treacherous waterways in excruciating heat and humidity is just part of the fun. He heads the robotics laboratory at Petrobras's underwater technology division in Rio de Janeiro. The company's main oil fields reside in deep waters off the Brazilian coast, so Reis's lab specializes in developing all sorts of Jules Vernian contraptions—a caterpillar-like robot to unclog underwater pipelines, a supersized hydraulic wrench that can work down to 2000 meters.

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

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.

This month's edition of Spectrum contains a wonderful article Erico put together about a subject near and dear to my heart: gliders. Gliders are a type of autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) that is driven by a variable buoyancy system instead of a traditional propeller.

This diagram (which you'll also see in the Spectrum article) shows how the glider uses a variable buoyancy system and actuated battery packs to glide through the ocean

Back in February I talked about a thermally-driven prototype that Webb Research has developed, but the big news right now is how traditional gliders are being snapped up by defense contracting companies iRobot, Teledyne, and of course, Bluefin. (disclaimer for those who didn't read the About section: I work for Bluefin, but even if I didn't I'd think glider technology in general is just, as they say, the bee's knees) The major impetus for acquiring this IP lately is a big Navy contract that's due to be awarded soon. Erico's article describes the differences between the different glider designs and some of the challenges in meeting the next generation of evaluation and procurement system requirements:

Up to this point, however, AUVs have been a cottage industry. “The challenge now is making the transition from this very hands-on build-and-test kind of manufacturing to commercial production mode,” says Tom Curtin.

And even though their original designs are alike, their makers boast of unique capabilities. iRobot claims the Seaglider has the longest range and battery lifetime, being the first glider to complete a mission of more than 3750 kilometers and lasting six months. Bluefin, which is also supplying an offshore oil and gas contractor, says the Spray glider can go about 50 percent deeper—1500 meters—than its competitors and has more durable sensors. And Teledyne says the Slocum's rudder gives it better shallow-water maneuverability and that a new system that harvests energy from temperature variations in the water could allow its gliders to stay at sea for years at a time.

Though most of my time in the working world has been spent on powerful propeller-driven AUVs, I can't help but admire the simplicity and elegance of the glider design. It has a very different history from traditional AUVs; AUV technology spun off of towed array systems for surveying -- a short-duration, high-power system -- whereas the gliders spun off of ocean monitoring float technology -- long-duration, low-power. With these very different pedigrees, it's interesting to watch them converge now as supplementary parts of the Navy's existing Unmanned Underwater Vehicle programs.