A new video of a Boston Dynamics robot has surfaced--possibly the scariest yet. The company's name alone should give you the willies if you've watched the Terminator movies or seen the previous chilling robots BD makes. We've rounded up the videos for you. Happy Halloween.
Boston Dynamics is a small engineering and robotics firm spun off from MIT in 1992. According to its own Web site it "builds advanced robots with remarkable behavior: mobility, agility, dexterity and speed." Those parameters sound kinda military-like for a reason: BD has worked with DARPA, the Army, the Navy, and Marine Corps, as well as the more innocuous-sounding Sony. Their current starting lineup:
Petman
And before you think that sounds pretty Cyberdine Systems-sy, check out the video of Petman in action. It's a prototype bipedal robot from BD that walks with extraordinarily human-like gait--it even heel-toes, and does so with a dynamic sense of balance that means it can take a solid kick and still keep walking.
Makes the cute Asimo seem like the walking equivalent of a robotic grandpa doesn't it? Technically BD says its an "anthropomorphic robot for testing chemcial protection clothing [...] Unlike previous suit testers, which had to be supported mechanically an had a limited repertoire of motion, Petman will balance itself and move freely; walking, crawling [...] Petman will also simulate human physiology within the protective suit by [...] sweating when necessary." But if you didn't get a shiver from imagining the next gen of the sweaty thing with arms and a head, painted silver instead of black and wielding a gun then ... well, you've not got a very active imagination.
Big Dog
This is perhaps BD's most famous 'bot, designed to act something like a robotic packhorse to aid soldiers in the field of battle. Its four legs make it highly sure-footed, and it'll be smart enough to be able to maneuver semi-autonomously when it hits its final military specification levels.
Little Dog
Think Big Dog but more petite--and try to banish thoughts of tiny robots creeping into buildings via drains or under fences, all to assassinate bad guys.
RiSE
The last beastie is a six-legged smart climbing robot that has adhesive feet to let it scale even the most unforgiving and sheer building walls.
All that's left for us is to wonder what Petman and Big Dog and all the rest will evolve into over time: We're pretty sure we heard Petman muttering something about his plan to "be back."
New robots mimic fish's swimming, could be used in underwater exploration
Anne Trafton, News Office August 24, 2009
Borrowing from Mother Nature, a team of MIT researchers has built a school of swimming robo-fish that slip through the water just as gracefully as the real thing, if not quite as fast.
Mechanical engineers Kamal Youcef-Toumi and Pablo Valdivia Y Alvarado have designed the sleek robotic fish to more easily maneuver into areas where traditional underwater autonomous vehicles can't go. Fleets of the new robots could be used to inspect submerged structures such as boats and oil and gas pipes; patrol ports, lakes and rivers; and help detect environmental pollutants.
"Given the (robotic) fish's robustness, it would be ideal as a long-term sensing and exploration unit. Several of these could be deployed, and even if only a small percentage make it back there wouldn't be a terrible capital loss due to their low cost," says Valdivia Y Alvarado, a recent MIT PhD recipient in mechanical engineering.
Robotic fish are not new: In 1994, MIT ocean engineers demonstrated Robotuna, a four-foot-long robotic fish. But while Robotuna had 2,843 parts controlled by six motors, the new robotic fish, each less than a foot long, are powered by a single motor and are made of fewer than 10 individual components, including a flexible, compliant body that houses all components and protects them from the environment. The motor, placed in the fish's midsection, initiates a wave that travels along the fish's flexible body, propelling it forward.
Video: Kamal Youcef-Toumi and Pablo Valdivia Y Alvarado/MIT News Office
The robofish bodies are continuous (i.e., not divided into different segments), flexible and made from soft polymers. This makes them more maneuverable and better able to mimic the swimming motion of real fish, which propel themselves by contracting muscles on either side of their bodies, generating a wave that travels from head to tail.
"Most swimming techniques can be copied by exploiting natural vibrations of soft structures," says Valdivia Y Alvarado.
As part of his doctoral thesis, Valdivia Y Alvarado created a model to calculate the optimal material properties distributions along the robot's body to create a fish with the desired speed and swimming motion. The model, which the researchers initially proposed in the journal Dynamic Systems Measurements and Control (ASME), also takes into account the robot's mass and volume. A more detailed model is described in Valdivia Y Alvarado's thesis and will soon be published along with new applications by the group.
Other researchers, including a team at the University of Essex, have developed new generations of robotic fish using traditional assembly of rigid components to replicate the motions of fish, but the MIT team is the only one using controlled vibrations of flexible bodies to mimic biological locomotion.
"With these polymers, you can specify stiffness in different sections, rather than building a robot with discrete sections," says Youcef-Toumi. "This philosophy can be used for more than just fish" - for example, in robotic prosthetic limbs.
Mimicking fish
With motors in their bellies and power cords trailing as they swim, the robo-fish might not be mistaken for the real thing, but they do a pretty good fish impersonation.
The team's first prototypes, about five inches long, mimic the carangiform swimming technique used by bass and trout. Most of the movement takes place in the tail end of the body. Fish that use this type of motion are generally fast swimmers, with moderate maneuverability.
Later versions of the robo-fish, about eight inches long, swim like tuna, which are adapted for even higher swimming speeds and long distances. In tuna, motion is concentrated in the tail and the peduncle region (where the tail attaches to the body), and the amplitude of body motions in this region is greater than in carangiform fish.
Real fish are exquisitely adapted to moving through their watery environment, and can swim as fast as 10 times their body length per second. So far, the MIT researchers have gotten their prototypes close to one body length per second - much slower than their natural counterparts but faster than earlier generations of robotic fish.
The new robo-fish are also more durable than older models - with their seamless bodies, there is no chance of water leaking into the robots and damaging them. Several four-year-old prototypes are still functioning after countless runs through the testing tank, which is filled with tap water.
Current prototypes require 2.5 to 5 watts of power, depending on the robot's size. That electricity now comes from an external source, but in the future the researchers hope to power the robots with a small internal battery.
Later this fall, the researchers plan to expand their research to more complex locomotion and test some new prototype robotic salamanders and manta rays.
"The fish were a proof of concept application, but we are hoping to apply this idea to other forms of locomotion, so the methodology will be useful for mobile robotics research - land, air and underwater - as well," said Valdivia Y Alvarado.
The work was funded by the Singapore-MIT Alliance and Schlumberger Ltd.
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All you art collectors out there. Here is a chance to get a Giclee copy of some of Ian M Sherwin work. Ian is planning on doing a whole series of Marblehead, Massachusetts paintings. His work is amazing.
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