The researchers used a type of powerful X-ray imaging in order to discover internal soft-tissue movements that were massively out of sync with the external body movements (the X-rays were used because large caterpillars are entirely opaque). Afterwards, they verified these findings by using transmission-light microscopy to see the internal soft-tissue movements of smaller, translucent caterpillars as they slowly inched their way along a glass microscope slide.

This combined imaging showed that the caterpillar’s gut slid forward in advance of the surrounding tissues. The novelty is that the caterpillar’s center of mass moves forward while the middle “legs” are anchored to the substrate. The internal gut movements are locally decoupled from visible translations of the body.

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This movement meant the abdomen typically advanced an entire step forward before the body wall caught up. The researchers described their findings as “a unique phenomenon of gut sliding”. For more information about their research read the paper that will be featured in the upcoming issue of Current Biology: “Visceral-Locomotory Pistoning in Crawling Caterpillars”.

Since the research team is also interested in engineering applications, they moved from considering the biological implications of their findings to potential uses in soft-bodied robots. The potential these robots have is large, due to their shape-shifting ability. These shape-shifting robots could be used in search-and-rescue operations, medical applications and space research applications. Let’s see if they’ll come up with something more advanced than Chem-bot – iRobot’s shape-shifting blob robot we described in one of our previous articles.

This new work has resulted in the arrangement of the bases of several snakes in a circular array that functions like a team using multiple parts of their bodies to manipulate an object, scan a room or handle improvised explosive devices.

This snake-robot is scalable; it can be built however large or small as a subsystem to a larger platform that could travel over rough terrain and climbs stairs. The number of tentacles or snakes determines the breadth or scope of its search capabilities. The number of links on each of those tentacles supports each snake’s length or reach into an area, as well as its ability to crawl, swim, climb or shimmy through narrow spaces all while transmitting images to the Soldier who is operating the system.

The subsystem comes equipped with sophisticated electronic sensors, among them laser detection and ranging (LADAR) to render 3-D representations of object shapes and physical properties like faces, mass and center of mass.

The developmental hardware includes a large-screen laptop, which presents a simple user interface. Each 24-centimeter (9.5-inch) tentacle is directed by a master controller system, which communicates with the motors that are embedded in each of the links found on the tentacles. The motors essentially direct individual tentacle movement and the master controller directs the entire amalgamation of snakes, or tentacles.

”The technology is leading to more than just the very tip of the snake being used in the object manipulation effect,” said Derek Scherer, a researcher who works within ARL’s Vehicle Technology Directorate. “Consider that snakes push off rocks or roots to propel their bodies. We are using this same concept in development.”

Its “touch sensitivity” allows the snake-robot to balance objects and feel where forces are being applied as it rotates devices.

”It allows it to lift and reposition objects, including improvised explosive devices, for examination, and do so in a controlled fashion that is unlikely to detonate any ordnance.” Scherer noted. “These same capabilities would improve inspections during cargo and checkpoint missions.”

Researchers predict the technology may one day solve the “opening a door” problem, which has been an obstacle to most of the robots so far. High levels of articulation in the manipulator could prove to be effective for grasping and rotating different types of door handles using knobs, handles, levers and bars.

HiBot’s inspection robot, called Expliner, is designed to roll along a typical high-voltage “bundle” in Japan (a set of four cables held in place by half-meter-wide square-shaped spacers on approximately every 30 meters). However, it is also capable to be used on single and dual cables with a diameter between 24mm and 64mm (0.94 to 2.51 inches). It has been successfully tested on live wires of up to 500 kilovolts, the maximum voltage pulsing through Japanese transmission lines. Its average time of operation was 6 hours.

On one of its sides the robot dangles a manipulator arm, which also serves as a counterweight for balance. It weights 80kg (176 pounds) and its dimensions are 1.5 x 0.6 x 1.5 meters (roughly 5 x 2 x 5 feet) when it’s in its compact posture. In order to inspect the cables, Expliner uses four sets of laser sensors (one set for each of the four cables in a bundle) which give the robot the ability to see the whole surface of each cable, to spot corrosion or scratches, and to discern tiny changes in cable diameter that could indicate damage inside the cable, such as a broken steel strand. The robot also has a high-definition, high-zoom camera that can record the details of bolts and spacers from its close range.

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A big challenge for transmission-line robots is crossing obstacles that crop up on the line. Some obstacles, such as the cable spacers that keep bundled lines in place, are relatively easy to roll right over. Others, such as suspension clamps that hold up the line, block the way. Expliner gets around such things by using its dangling counterweight to shift the robot’s center of gravity, which in turn raises the wheels on the front and back axles up and out of the way of obstacles.

If the obstacle is more difficult, such as a steep incline in a mountainous region or a tower affixed to the line with more than a single simple insulator, the robot would still have to be brought down and installed on the other side of the obstacle. That’s not a problem since HiBot’s Expliner developers are not aiming to develop it as an autonomous robot. They will still rely on the line technicians who are trained to operate the robots from distances of up to 0.7 kilometers (0.43 miles).

When Robert Irving was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis it was the catalyst for him and his childhood friend, Richard Little, to put turn their engineering skills to the task of developing an exoskeleton that was a practical standing and walking alternative to wheelchairs. Little and Irving formed a company called REX Bionics which produces the Rex in Auckland, New Zealand.

The result is Rex, an exoskeleton made of strong, yet lightweight materials that is designed to support and hold a person comfortably as they move. It weights approximately 38 kg (84 pounds).Users strap themselves in to the robotic legs with a number of Velcro and buckled straps that fit around the legs along with a belt that fits around the user’s waist. Since this exoskeleton is designed to help the paraplegics rather than enhancing power, it is controlled with a joystick that sits at the wearer’s waist level.

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Users wearing Rex can stand up, walk, move sideways, turn around, go up and down stairs, as well as walk on flat, hard surfaces including ramps and slopes. It is designed for use on solid, stable surfaces such as those inside the home or workplace. It is not designed for use on slippery, unstable, or soft surfaces, on in areas that contain debris or small objects, such as ice, snow, sand, grass, mud or gravel.

Rex is designed to climb steps that meet typical building code standards for staircases – a minimum tread of 310 mm (12.2in), a maximum riser of 180mm (7in). It can walk on a curbed slope of up to 1:8 (7.1 degrees) and a general slope of up to 1:12 (4.8 degrees). It is powered by a custom-made rechargeable battery that will typically provide two hours of active use on a full charge. To extend running time the battery can be easily swapped out for a fully charged one.

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Before purchasing the Rex, potential customers will need to complete a medical check with their own physician as well as a series of checks for range of motion with a qualified physical therapist to ensure they have no contraindications to standing and walking. To meet Rex’s balance and loading constraints, customers will also need to be between 4’8” (146cm) and 6’4” (195cm) tall, with a weight of less than 220lb (100kg) and a hip girth of less than 14.9” (380mm). REX Bionics will also provide full training and a customized fitting over the course of approximately two weeks for buyers of the device.

The company says Rex is only really suitable for manual wheelchair users who can self-transfer and operate hand controls and Rex’s developers are quick to point out that REX is not intended as a replacement for a wheelchair, but as a complement to a wheelchair.

The company is in the process of concluding all the tests required prior to putting Rex on the market in Europe and Australia. It will also be seeking FDA approval so that Rex can be put on the market in the USA. REX Bionics CEO, Jenny Morel, says the company expects to conclude internal testing of Rex shortly and will then have a preliminary release in Auckland to allow the company to track what happens when people take Rex home. Sales are expected to commence in New Zealand by the end of 2010 and elsewhere by the middle of 2011.

This year’s winner is team B-Human from Germany. B-Human is a collegiate project at the Department of Computer Science of the University of Bremen and the DFKI research area Safe and Secure Cognitive Systems. The goal of the project is to develop suitable software in order to participate in several RoboCup events. The team consisted of students in their advanced study period, and it was led by researchers from DFKI.

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After they have won the Standard Platform League competition they published their code releases as well as a comprehensive documentation in order to share their achievements with other developers. In order to make their robots even better for RoboCup 2010, they have developed precise self-localization algorithm that proved to be an important part of their successes in robot soccer competitions as well as in the technical challenge.

They have created a more sophisticated model for the center of mass movement that is based on two alternating inverted pendulums and a preview controller. This model allows eliminating the need of a double-support phase by dynamically adjusting the point in time at which the support leg alternates. Therefore, the load on the joints for bridging over larger distances can be reduced. In addition, the stabilization methods used to keep the balance of the gait were partially integrated into the model to react on external disturbances in a farsighted manner. The results are very promising since the maximal reachable velocity has almost doubled.

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During all previous tournaments, including the RoboCup German Open 2010, the detection of opponents was available only via the ultrasonic sensors. This approach is quite inaccurate and applicable for short distances. In order to surpass that problem, they used color segmentation and the subsequent detection of pink and blue regions representing the team markers. Afterwards, the degree of whiteness of the marker regions’ environment is determined by means of a scan line grid that is orthogonal to the principal axis of inertia of the team marker region. They are using this feature to aim more accurately at the largest part of the opponent goal that is not blocked by the goal keeper or other robots.

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In the previous RoboCup, some teams demonstrated that a diving goalkeeper can be very effective to block long-distance shots. However, a dive also bears the risk of damaging the robot. Hence, they have carefully created a diving motion that allows their goalie to dive without taking any serious damage.

Aside the fact they won the RoboCup 2009 Standard Platform League soccer competition, their total goal score this year was 65:3. However, they ranked 4th (behind rUNSWift, Austin Villa and CMurfs) in the technical challenge where their competition did beat them in dribbling (the robot’s abilities to pass, open and dribble were also judged).

One of the competitors was Team DARwIn. Developers of Virginia Tech’s DARwIn teamed up with University of Pennsylvania’s UPennalizers to form Team DARwIn in the Humanoid League. The DARwIn (Dynamic Anthropomorphic Robot with Intelligence) series robot is a family of humanoid robots capable of bipedal walking and performing human-like motions. DARwIn is a research platform developed at the Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory (RoMeLa) at Virginia Tech for studying robot locomotion and sensing. It was enhanced by UPennalizers from the Standard Platform League are teaming up together to form Team DARwIn in the Humanoid League.

The latest version of the robot is 560 mm (22 inches) tall, weights 3.6 kg (8 pounds), has 20 degrees-of-freedom (DOF) with each joint actuated by coreless DC motors via distributed control with controllable compliance. Using a computer vision system and IMU, DARwIn can implement human-like gaits while navigating obstacles and traverse uneven terrain while implementing complex behaviors such as playing soccer.

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DARwIn-LC is nicely designed robot which was presented at Robocup 2010. It was developed by the Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory (Romela) at Virginia Tech The robot features two joints in its head and another 18 in its body. Its algorithms and hardware need a bit of upgrade in order to make it more agile, but it is already able to track, follow and kick a ball in the right moment.

Although it looks a bit clumsy and reminds of low cost or kit robots coming from Japan, it is actually a first step on the way to developing a whole new “Open Platform Humanoid Robot”, kit which Romela plans to commercialize during the next year.

The microchip, the robot’s body and feet, was first built in the mid 1990s at Stanford University as a prototype part for a paper-thin scanner or printer. A few years later the researchers modified it as a docking system for space satellites. Now they have flipped it over so the structures that acted like moving cilia are on the bottom, turning the chip into an insect-like robot.

The UW’s robot weighs half a gram (roughly one-hundredth of an ounce), measures about 1 inch long by a third of an inch wide, and is about the thickness of a fingernail. It reminds of a centipede, with 512 feet arranged in 128 sets of four. Each foot consists of an electrical wire sandwiched between two different materials, one of which expands under heat more than the other. A current traveling through the wire heats the two materials and one side expands, making the foot curl. Rows of feet shuffle along in this way at 20 to 30 times each second.

The legs’ surface area is so large compared to their volume that they can heat up or cool down in just 20 milliseconds. Researchers were able to pile paper clips onto the robot’s back until it was carrying more than seven times its own weight. This means that the robot could become independent if it carries a battery and a circuit board, since it is currently attached to nine threadlike wires that transmit the power and instructions.

Limbs pointing in four directions allow the robot flexibility of movement in all directions. The chip was not designed to be a microrobot, so there was little effort to minimize its weight or energy consumption. The lead researcher Karl Böhringer, a University of Washington professor of electrical engineering, claims that modifications could probably take off 90 percent of the robot’s weight and eliminate a significant fraction of its power needs.

As with other devices of this type, he added, a major challenge is the power supply. A battery would only let the robot run for 10 minutes, while researchers would like it to go for days. Another problem is its speed, because the UW robot moves a bit less than a meter (3 feet) per hour and it’s far from the slowest in the microrobot pack. If these tiny mobile devices get further development, we could use them to crawl through cracks to explore, collect environmental samples or perform other tasks where small size is a benefit.

He and his collaborators have created an innovative perching mechanism where the robot flies head first into the object without being destroyed during landing. After landing it is able to attach to almost any type of surface by using its sharp prongs. It then detaches on command. The goal is to create robots that can travel in swarms over rough terrain to come to the aide of catastrophe victims.

“We are not blindly imitating nature, but using the same principles to possibly improve on it,” explained Kovac. “Simple behavioral laws such as jumping, flying and perching lead to complex control over movement without the need for high computational power.”

Jumping, gliding and perching allow greater mobility over rocky territory or destroyed urban areas. This new form of AI takes its inspiration from the insect world, but is more as an abstract reflection on their instincts and design principles than merely imitating their morphology. This simplicity allows for greater mobility since the robots are not bogged down with heavy batteries.

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The labs most recent innovation, perching a robot, saves valuable energy by allowing the robot to rest like insects or birds do. Many previous perching mechanisms include a complicated swooping maneuver to decrease momentum and land on legs, often without the ability of detaching. The mechanism avoids this problem by using two spring-loaded arms fitted with pins that dig into the surface, whether it is wood or concrete.

The snapping of the arms creates a forward momentum, allowing for a soft deceleration of the glider and avoiding mechanical damage. A remotely controlled mini-motor then detracts the pins and allows the robot to continue on its way.

“I am fascinated by the creative process,” said Kovac, “and how it is possible to use the sophistication found in nature to create something completely new.” The perching mechanism can be easily adapted to other robots. His previous robot, a quarter-gram jumping robot that can achieve heights of up to 1.4 meters (4.5 feet), could now be fitted with the new perching mechanism as well as wings, thus creating a hybrid creature that gets around much like a flying grasshopper.

Kovac imagines swarms of his robots equipped with different sensors and small cameras that could be deployed over devastated areas to transmit essential information back to rescue command centers. Who knows, we could see swarms of flying robots soaring into a blazing forest fire or other danger areas in near future. You can find more information in the research paper published in the Journal of Micro – Nano Mechatronics: “A perching mechanism for micro aerial vehicles”.

The sandfish used in the study inhabits the Sahara desert in Africa and it is approximately 10 cm (4 inches) long. It uses its long, wedge -shaped snout and countersunk lower jaw to rapidly bury into and swim within sand. The sandfish’s body has flattened sides and is covered with smooth shiny scales, its legs are short and sturdy with long and flattened fringed toes and its tail tapers to a fine point.

To conduct controlled experiments with the sandfish, Daniel Goldman, physicist at CRAB Lab of Georgia Institute of Technology, and graduate students Ryan Maladen, Yang Ding and Chen Li built a glass bead-filled container with tiny holes in the bottom through which air could be blown. The air pulses elevated the beads and caused them to settle into a loosely packed solid state. Repeated pulses of air compact the material, thus allowing the researchers to closely control the density of the material. Since they weren’t able to observe the movement of the lizard bellow the surface, they used high-speed x-ray imaging system to record animal’s movement.

“Since loosely packed media is easier to push through and closely packed is harder to push through, we thought there should be some difference in the sandfish’s locomotion,” said Goldman. “But the results surprised us because the density of the granular media did not affect how the sandfish traveled through the sand; it was always the same undulatory wavelike pattern.”

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For a given wave frequency, the swimming speed depended only on the frequency of the wave and not on the density. The researchers found that the swimming speed varied depending on the frequency of the undulations, about 2 to 4 per second. Interestingly, speed was unaffected by how compacted the sand was. The researchers determined that that was because the drag and thrust forces increase in compact sand, and thus the ratio of these forces is no different than it is in more loosely packed sand.

Working with Paul Umbanhowar of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, the team plugged their results into a computer model, which they used to show that a snake-like robot with just seven body segments could travel through a granular medium like sand.

The team built a 35 centimeters (13.8 inches) long version of the robot, made from seven aluminum segments linked by six motors, all clothed in spandex to prevent the motors from becoming jammed. Afterwards, they tested the robot by burying it in a container filled with small plastic spheres.

When the robot undulated its body at a frequency similar to the lizard, they found it could move forward at speeds of up to 0.3 body lengths per wave cycle (close to 0.4 body lengths per cycle that a submerged lizard can achieve). The researchers say the robot could eventually match the lizard for speed if more jointed segments are added to make its movements smoother.

This is another great example of biomimicry that could help the development of rescue robots used to find people in deserts or in loose debris resulting from an earthquake. With its improvement and a few modifications, this robot could be used to explore under the grainy surface of planets and natural satellites. For more information, you can read the paper they publihes in Science magazine “Undulatory Swimming in Sand: Subsurface Locomotion of the Sandfish Lizard“.

EMIEW 2 incorporates new technology not included in its predecessor EMIEW. The new technology developed was conducted as part of the “Project for the Practical Application of Next-Generation Robots,” commissioned by the independent administrative agency, New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO), Japan.

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It is 80 centimeters (32 inches) tall and it weights 14 kg (almost 31 pounds). The equipped Li-ion battery provides it with approximately 1 hour of operation when it is fully charged. As its predecessor, EMIEW 2 uses the same voice communication, and obstacle evasion technology which enables safe maneuvering between moving objects. However, the new version has the addition of autonomous moving technology which plots how to reach a destination by automatically mapping the robot’s surroundings.

EMIEW 2 is equipped with 14 microphones fitted into its helmet, because its developers worked on algorithms that are able to pick out human voices from background noise such as music or the clatter of footsteps. It uses 2 or 4-wheel transformable wheeled leg-type mechanism in order to move at a speed of 6 km (3.7 miles) an hour, and maximum acceleration of 2 m/s² (200 Gal or 2 N/kg). Its new legs  allow it to crouch on its knees and roll around on an extra set of wheels for greater stability, as well as the ability to lift its feet 3 centimeters (1.2 in) off the ground to step over small obstacles.

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“It can control its posture the way humans do when we stabilize ourselves after jumping on inline skates,” said Yuji Hosoda, chief researcher at Hitachi’s transportation systems department.

Hitachi expects EMIEW 2 to be used in facilities like offices and hospitals in the future, performing duties as surveillance where it could cover blind spots or guiding visitors around since it is able to deal with floor obstacles and noise.