Ingestible origami robot

In experiments involving a simulation of the human esophagus and stomach, researchers at MIT, the University of Sheffield, and the Tokyo Institute of Technology have demonstrated a tiny origami robot that can unfold itself from a swallowed capsule and, steered by external magnetic fields, crawl across the stomach wall to remove a swallowed button battery or patch a wound.

The work builds on a long sequence of papers on origami robots from the research group of Daniela Rus, the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Professor in MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Rus, who also directs MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). feels that for applications inside the body, there is need for a small, controllable, untethered robot system. It’s really difficult to control and place a robot inside the body if the robot is attached to a tether.

The robot can propel itself using what’s called a “stick-slip” motion, in which its appendages stick to a surface through friction when it executes a move, but slip free again when its body flexes to change its weight distribution.

Also like its predecessor — and like several other origami robots from the Rus group — the new robot consists of two layers of structural material sandwiching a material that shrinks when heated. A pattern of slits in the outer layers determines how the robot will fold when the middle layer contracts.

Material difference

The robot’s envisioned use also dictated a host of structural modifications. Stick-slip only works when, one, the robot is small enough and, two, the robot is stiff enough. With the original Mylar design, it was much stiffer than the new design, which is based on a biocompatible material.

To compensate for the biocompatible material’s relative malleability, the researchers had to come up with a design that required fewer slits. At the same time, the robot’s folds increase its stiffness along certain axes.

But because the stomach is filled with fluids, the robot doesn’t rely entirely on stick-slip motion. 20 percent of forward motion is by propelling water — thrust — and 80 percent is by stick-slip motion. It also had to be possible to compress the robot enough that it could fit inside a capsule for swallowing; similarly, when the capsule dissolved, the forces acting on the robot had to be strong enough to cause it to fully unfold.

In the center of one of the forward accordion folds is a permanent magnet that responds to changing magnetic fields outside the body, which control the robot’s motion. The forces applied to the robot are principally rotational. A quick rotation will make it spin in place, but a slower rotation will cause it to pivot around one of its fixed feet. In the researchers’ experiments, the robot uses the same magnet to pick up the button battery.

“This concept is both highly creative and highly practical, and it addresses a clinical need in an elegant way,” says Bradley Nelson, a professor of robotics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich. “It is one of the most convincing applications of origami robots that I have seen.”

Source: Ingestible Origami Robot

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The Brains n Brawns behind a world record ! !

All week long, I have quite covered only about our participants who were getting their robots ready for the weekend’s event. But, what I had failed to cover was the round the clock work by a brigade of planners who are quite as enthused as the participants themselves are of the upcoming weekend. These faces who I am quite familiar with have actually been quite absent in my vicinity all week long. Why? Because they’ve been running from pillar to post getting the arrangements for the venue and the permissions for the venue ready. In every event that is ever hosted, the most visible part is the staging area where all the hullabaloo occurs. What is often missed is the effort put by the planners and executors who often remain on the sidelines. It is upon the foundation of their efforts rests the success of the entire event.

As I enter our “meeting room”; the room with arguably the hardest door, I realize I landed right in the middle of an intense discussion between a group of the aforementioned familiar faces. The meeting has been in progress for over an hour now and it shows no signs of dispersing within the next hour. I glance upon the sheet of paper that has been held by Mani, our key planner, and notice quite a long list of issues on the agenda for today’s meeting. The group seems to have discussed everything from mike sets to refreshments to camera men and there are not many  details left to iron out before the meeting ends. Such is the proficiency and street smartness of the team behind the planning of the event. While all seems fine, I ask Shaikh how confident he is, his answer evokes a very mixed response from me. Says Shaikh ”We are well prepared for every aspect of the event except for what surprise nature can throw at us.” I share his concern as well, for even a rain on the previous night could still impact the outcome of the event with bad lighting or puddles on the staging area. Well, there’s nothing much left to do from our side except to keep our fingers crossed and play the waiting game with nature itself.

Fingers Crossed ! !

Happy Roboting ! !

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Pneumatically powered motor enables robots that can take a beating

  

In recent years robots have gone soft – literally – bringing with them a number of advantages. They are safer for humans to work with, can grasp different types of objects and now, may soon be better equipped to handle rough terrain. Scientists have developed a squishy motor that powers a soft rover across rocky paths and through water. They say such a vehicle could find applications in search and rescue missions and even deep space exploration.

Xiangyu Gong, a graduate student at Rutgers University,  and his team led a study and crafted a soft rover out of silicone rubber, a material nearly one million times softer than aluminum. The four-wheeled vehicle is able to roll across rock beds and through water, handle falls of more than eight times its own height and is entirely free of metal so is suitable for harsh areas with electromagnetic fields.

The team believes that the introduction of a wheel and axle assembly in soft robotics should enable vast improvement in the manipulation and mobility of devices and they would very much like to continue developing soft motors for future applications, and develop the science to understand the requirements that improve their performance.

But the real breakthrough lies in the engine room, more specifically, a soft rotary actuator inside the wheel and axle assembly. These were created using 3D-printed molds and soft lithography and were inspired by peristalsis, the contraction and relaxation of circular muscles like those in the esophagus that drive food down into your stomach.

By inflating and deflating air-filled pockets within the wheel, the researchers were able replicate the actions of the esophagus to drive an attached rotor, which then had the effect of converting peristaltic motion into torque to drive the vehicle forward. They notes that, alternatively, the rotary actuators could be modified to operate a winch-like apparatus for an entirely different set of applications.

The team imagines its soft motors finding applications in amphibious vehicles to explore lake beds, dangerous search and rescue missions and in deep space where shock-absorbing landers are needed to plonk down on other planets to explore the environment.

The research was published in the journal Advanced Materials.

Source: Gizmag 

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Geek Speak: Sai Sujan and Sanjay

 

“My name is Sai Sujan. I am studying in Modern Senior Secondary School . . .” says the Kid with rejoice as the camera rolls. He is here to record a clip as a part of promotions for the world record event. He gets it right after 4 takes and he is quite upbeat about it in the final take. After the photoshoot and the video recording, I pull him aside and have a brief chat with him. Turns out he is the youngest kid I’ve ever encountered here at Kidobotikz. He is only in class 5 but has already learned more about robotics than a first year college student. He has completed his foundation level courses in robotics and is now in his Beginner level. He has taken a break from attending the classes due to  his monthly cycle tests is now awaiting the completion of his exams to carry on with the course, I ask him what his friends feel about him doing a course in robotics and he has a wide grin on his face. He feels that the course is very interesting and after joining here, he now feels his ambition is to become a Robotics engineer. Only in class five, this kid already wants to build his favourite kind of robots- Humanoid robots.

Our second star for the evening would be Sanjay, who I meet in one of the classrooms as he is busy fiddling with a soldering iron. He is also gearing up for the event and incidentally has two ATV robots ready for the weekend’s event and isn’t sure which one to field. Talk about spoilt for choice!  Sanjay, who is a 9th grader at DAV Mogappiar, is one to reckon with in the area of robotics. Fresh from a successful completion of his “Graduate”-level exams at Kidobotikz, he actually has learnt everything there is build a robot from scratch. Even as we talk, he exudes confidence about his knowledge in the area of robotics. His mannerism suggest that he has made building robots his favourite pastime. Talking of his exams, he says he attended all questions in circuit debugging and mechanical engineering and laments the fact that he could not attend the questions on “Chassis Design”.  Our star is very bright indeed, for he says Kidobotikz has already made engineering his career ambition. He intends to do his higher education in Robotics at a reputed IIT and has already started making enquiries at FIITJEE for enrolling in their classes next year.

With such young minds swelling in the ranks, Sunday’s event would sure be power packed.

Happy Roboting ! !

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Google launches Project Bloks, a new open hardware platform for teaching kids to code

Google today announced Project Bloks, a new open hardware platform that allows developers, designers and educators to build physical programming experiences that can help kids (5+) learn to code.

While Google worked together with design firm IDEO to build a reference kit, the idea here is to provide a platform that others can use to build their own devices. Google’s team provides the basics of the platform, but google currently doesn’t plan to build its own retail version. 

To bring this project to life, Goldstein and Wilbert, who work for Google’s Creative Lab, worked together with the Google Research and Education teams, IDEO, and Paulo Blikstein, the Director of the Transformative Learning Technologies Lab at Stanford University. 

 While there has been a lot of interest in tangible programming among educators, research has been slow. It’s hard to experiment with tangible programming because it takes a lot of engineering work and hence money to build one of these platforms from scratch.

So what does the platform actually look like? There are basically three parts that make up the Bloks system. At the heart of it all is the so-called “Brain Board,” a small Raspberry Pi Zero-based board that functions as the central processing unit and provides power to the rest of the system (and which also includes a speaker).  

The Brain Board then talks to the so-called “Pucks” and “Base Board,” that together make up the physical programming language of Project Bloks.

Pucks, which include no active electronic components, can be as simple as a piece of paper with conductive ink, provide the basic programming commands — think instructions like “turn on or off,” “move left,” “turn 180 degrees,” etc. According to the development team, Pucks can be both static or interactive.

Designers will surely find their own ways to present these commands in physical form, but in Google’s reference design, they mostly look like dials, switches and buttons.

Base Board then read the instructions from the Pucks and pass them on to the main Brain Board. They are basically the conduit to move instructions from the different parts of the program to the brain. Base Board feature haptic motors and an LED so users can get real-time feedback. The Base Board can also be used to play audio on the Brain Boards.

What’s maybe most important, though, because it allows for a lot of flexibility, is that the Base Boards also allow for branching, so code doesn’t just have to be linear but could actually become reasonably complex. Using all of this, kids could use Bloks to control a Lego WeDo 2.0 robot, for example, or the well-known Mirobot drawing bot. 

Now that Project Bloks is out in the open, it’ll be interesting to see how educators and the industry that supports them will react. For now, Google is looking for educators, researchers, developers and parents who would like to participate in its research studies later this year. The team also today published a position paper that explains the project’s goal in a bit more detail, too.

Source: Techcrunch

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11th hour rush: Registration, Robots and Reassembly.

With the deadline for the registrations closing today, it was rather rush hour at Kidobotikz. The evening saw kids and parents make a beeline to the help desk to get their robots registered for Sunday’s world record event. The fact that it was a rainy evening and a weekday seemed to have no impact on parents who were just as enthused as their kids to be a part of the event. Now that the registrations are over, it is just a few nervous nights until the dawn of Sunday for both the organizers and the participants. All classrooms are festering with activity as kids with their  faculty lending a helping hand to get the robots disassembled and reassembled are practicing for Sunday’s event.  

Students at Kidobotikz are known for their unusual sense of belonging and love for their association with the area of robotics. My evening with one such fella just reiterated the fact. Meet Koushik, our star of the evening. I meet him in the usual set-up. He is getting his robot ready for the event much like what most of the students have been doing this week. Unlike most students that I interact with, Koushik wasn’t quite upbeat. He bore a rather weary look on his face. I ask him why and within no time, he’s cribbing. He says this is the third time he’s disassembled the bot in the evening because of some faulty wiring and is now piecing it back together. I ask him why and he says he erred in adding one of the screws and it caused some trouble with the robot. The more ask I about him, the more interesting he gets. Turns out our star is a bit of a rebel back home. Koushik who is a 10th grader has his board exams coming up this year and is in the midst of kerfuffle back home. His parents are not quite happy with him spending his time on robotics with his class 10 exams this year. They have asked him to take a year’s break from Kidobotikz to focus on his subjects. Much to his parents’ chagrin Koushik has stood his ground and is taking part in the event to be a part of history and to take back good memories. He is halfway through his “Intermediate” course and is now taking a break to resume his course next year and catch up with his buddies who are already cruising their way through the “Advanced” level.

“I aspire to do Mechanical engineering and become a scientist at ISRO” says Koushik as I bid him buhbye while he sinks back into his bot to get it ready in time before the end of the day.   

Happy Roboting !        

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Record frenzy at Kidobotikz

It’s the week of the most awaited event at Kidobotikz and the place is a beehive of activity. With less than 5 days to go for the world record event, the evenings have usually witnessed a mass influx of student coming here with their robots to get them ready and record-worthy. It’s 10 past 6 and I enter the training room only to find that the room is deserted with all the usual buzz absent. Turns out rain played spoilsport and took a toll on this evening’s attendance. Yet all this doesn’t seem to have deterred one particular kid. I strike up a conversation with him to find out his name and what he’s up to. He introduces himself as Koushik and says he’s from Jawahar Vidyalaya. He’s here to get his robot ready for the world record event. A class 8th grader is all he is and yet he has already covered a lot of ground in the area of robotics. He has completed his “Advanced”-level at Kidobotikz.    

Still tightening the screws on his ATV robot, he tells me that he has participated in a lot of national level robotic events and even won a couple of Robo races. I ask him what his desire lies and he says he wants to pursue Mechanical Engineering much to my surprise.  

Back in the lobby I meet two younger gentlemen who are awaiting to be picked by their parents after completing the assembly of their robot. Both of them are in class 7 and are here to take part in the World Record event too. Meet Shravan and Pranav Balaguru. Juniors to Koushik here at Kidobotikz, the two of them have assembled a wired ATV robot for the event. These are just 3 of the many hundreds of robotics aficionados that  throng the campus of kidobotikz for the world record event. Stay tuned for more such exciting stories.

Happy Roboting!

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