Single-motor bots crawl, swim and climb with a wiggle and a wave

Over the years, we've seen a number of robots inspired by the animals kingdom – from jumpers and crawlers to swimmers and fliers. Inspired by the movement of snakes, an Israeli research team has now developed a bot that's said to be the first in the world to produce pure wave motion using a single motor.

The Single Actuator Wave-like Robot (SAW) has been created by Dr. David Zarrouk, of the university's Mechanical Engineering Department, and a team of students at the Bioinspired and Medical Robotics lab. "The design was originally intended to be used for crawling inside the intestines as a self-propelled endoscope (for filming the intestines and biopsies)," Zarrouk told us. "I had been working on this subject for many years and a couple of years ago I came up with this design which produces continuously advancing wave."

Central to its novel movement is a spiral-shaped rod that's fed though linked 3D-printed slats running down the body. As the single motor rotates the helix spine, continuous wave motion of the body results and the links push forward or backward when they come into contact with the ground.

This dynamic motion is reported to allow the SAW to move over different surfaces (such as sand, grass or gravel) and climb over obstacles or through tunnels. The continuous wave motion body is attached to a wheeled head, which is used for steering, not to aid locomotion. There's even a waterproof version that can swim at 6 cm per second.

It's a quick mover, too, with a top speed of 57 cm per second. "We formulated the speed as a function of the speed wave, wave-length, thickness of the wave and its amplitude, revealed Zarrouk. "We realized from our model that it possible for the robot to crawl even faster than its own wave speed and we managed to prove this experimentally (our robot with the "dentals" moved 13 percent faster than the speed of the advancing wave). 

The wave motion mechanism can be produced in different sizes, scaling it up for search and rescue missions or shrinking down for medical applications.

"In the future, we intend to shrink it further to less than 1 cm in diameter (which is possible thanks to the simple design and single motor)," Zarrouk said. "We also intend to make possible larger version in which we attach two robots through an actuated U joint in order to replace the wheels. "

He also points to the wave bot being something of a tough cookie, easy to manufacture and reliable. "It is easy to manufacture because it has an extremely simple design," he explained. "It has a light weight and no need for complex controllers to make the wave motion. The power density is very high as all the work is being [undertaken] by a single motor with no "sleeping" motors. It almost doesn't break even though it is made of 3D-printed plastic. We made lots of runs on rough surfaces and the robot always succeeded in crawling over them in a single shot and no maintenance in between."

A paper on the SAW project has been published in the journal Bioinspiration & Biomimetics. You can see various SAW flavors in action in the video below.

Source: Gizmag, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

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Geek Speak: Sendhan

“Distance means so little when passion means so much”. Words like these stand the test of time. What’s all the more impressive is the fact these aren’t false. Several instances that we come across in our daily lives reiterate these facts. It’s the weekend and students are back here at Kidobotikz as usual. Everybody is here already gearing up for the next of Kidobotikz’s festivities- KRG. Students discuss projects and ideas with their trainers in anticipation for narrowing down on ideas that they can make a working model out of so that they get to display the same at Kidobotikz’s coveted event. I enter a room full of enthused young guys who are all here working on some tech fuelled concept of their own. The fact that it is a saturday and they are learning some serious science seems to be lost upon them. Most other children would rebel against the idea of science on a saturday. But for these gentlemen, it is a part of their fun and frolic. I stumble upon a young gentleman, Sendhan, who is hard at work figuring out how to solve the issue plaguing the bot he has assembled. Following are the excerpts from this interesting conversation:

Hi Sendhan! Temme a bit about yourself:

Hi! I am Senthan of Class 9, RMK Senior Secondary School, Thiruverkadu.

Thiruverkadu? Isn’t that far?

Yes. It is quite far. Infact, it takes me close to an hour to come all the way from there. But, I don’t feel it so bad cos whatever time I spend on the bus, I still get to have fun building robots.

What level are you in? And how is your course progressing?

I am in the Advanced level. The course is going good. Infact, I am here to work on a project that could be displayed the upcoming KRG. I wanted to do something interesting and this I believe is the right platform for me to express that. I am developing a Self-balancing robot.

Project, you say. Can you explain what you are working on?

As I said already, I am working on a Self-balancing robot. It is a robot which has only two wheels. This makes it inherently unstable. I have developed codes that when executed will make the bot stand upright on its own without falling over.

How have you accomplished this?

Basically, I have used an 3-axis accelerometer which is capable of sensing movement in all 3 direction.  This means that the arduino microprocessor can keep track of the stability of the robot in all 3 directions and control the wheel rotation accordingly so that the robot remains upright.

This interesting. Are you aware of any potential applications for this kind of technology?

I am aware of many applications for such a system. Infact, most humanoid robots of the future could be stationed on self balancing wheels that are capable of standing upright and moving around with ease. Even the White ranger on Power Rangers SPD has a unibike which would use a similar principle. (laughs).

Moving on, what is your favourite course among the 4- Electronics, Mechanics, Algorithm and Programming?

I just love programming. I have always liked it over the other subjects. As a matter of fact, I can code on Arduino and I have learnt C as well. So programming ot is. But since the other subjetcs are important to build a bot, I try to keep in touch with them too.

What do you plan to do for your higher studies? Do you think the robotics that you learnt here is a part of your plan?
Robotics is the only plan. After class 10, I plan to take up computer science in 11 n 12. Since, computer science involves programming, I think I will be at comfort learning the courses. After that I am aiming to take up Mechatronics for my Bachelors. I wanna work towards making better robots.

Wow! That is quite interesting. I wish you all the best. Thank you for your time.

Thank you.   

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Massage-giving robot rubs people the right way

As our population continues to get older, physiotherapists are going to be needed more than ever. It was with this in mind that Emma – or Expert Manipulative Massage Automation – was created. The one-armed robot is designed to help physiotherapists handle an increasing workload, by conducting massage therapy on their human patients.

Emma is the product of Singaporean startup AiTreat, and was developed by Nanyang Technological University graduate Albert Zhang. It's currently undergoing clinical trials at the Kin Teck Tong medical institution, and has already been used on 50 patients to successfully treat conditions including tennis elbow, lower back pain, and stiff neck and shoulders.

Therapists start by physically guiding Emma through the type of massage that needs to be done.

From there, the robot can continue the motion on its own, using a combination of a 3D stereoscopic camera system and a 3D-printed pressure-sensitive "massage tip." That tip is able to assess patients' responses, such as changes in the stiffness of the muscle or tendon that's being worked on. This data is uploaded to the cloud, so that therapists can monitor patients' progress over time, and alter the treatment as needed.

Additionally, if Emma's massage tip detects responses associated with pain, it will ease up on the pressure.

Once the current trials are over, plans call for a second-generation robot to be built, which will be more compact and mobile than the current model. There's no word on when a final commercial version may be available.

"This will be one of the first robots out in the market specifically for use by sports therapists and Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) physicians," says Zhang. "Our aim is not to replace the therapists who are skilled in sports massage and acupoint therapy, but to improve productivity by enabling one therapist to treat multiple patients with the help of our robots."

Source: Gizmag, Nanyang Technological University

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Geek Speak: Suryaprakash

In this pressure cooker-esque world of education and competition, it is a never ending battle between fun and scholastics for children. The ever increasing burden of the curriculum always tends to knock the timeslot of play out of children’s routines. Sometimes even hobby and passions get caught in the crossfire of rigorous learning. These get flung out as well. The more kids move through high school, the more play-time loses its turf to tuitions, coachings and other study-related activities. With this being the case, even edutainment loses its turf to mainstream education. Let’s discuss one such curious case.

Meet Suryaprakash, a ninth grader from DAV School, Adambakkam. His tale is one that is getting increasingly regular in today’s high intensity education system. Suryaprakash, who recently graduated from Kidobotikz, is an old student. Surprisingly it has taken him 3 years to complete his robotics course from commencement to finish. I ask him why and he immediately cuts a sorry figure. He says his schedule is jam packed with schooling and classes that he hardly got any leisurely weekends in the last 3 years to take up robotics and finish it in a stretch. He completed his courseware somewhere towards the end of 2014, but couldn’t spend enough time on his passion thanks to his rigorous schooling. Suryaprakash, who feels his school could do a little bit more to encourage science fairs and contests on the premises, has not displayed any robotic experiments at school. Nor do his friends and teachers know that he is learning robotics at such a young age. On the other hand, he has been quite active in all of Kidobotikz conducted robotic events. He says he has participated in robotic events all the way back to Kidobotikz Robo Games 2014 where he participated in the December edition. In all these events, he has fielded a variety of projects ranging from “feed the fish” in the dec-2014 edition to a “Home Automation” concept in April 2015. He was also a part of the Kidobotikz team which visited NIT Calicut to take part in the events there. It all started when he accidentally discovered about Kidobotikz courses when he was in the vicinity to buy a Solar panel for his own project.

After completing his Graduation recently, he is now taking up Raspberry Pi classes at Kidobotikz where he is learning programming, his favourite area of interest. However, luck isn’t always on his side. The weekend classes that he takes here are now clashing with his IIT-JEE coaching classes which also fall on the weekend. So, he had to request the Kidobotikz management to allow him to take compensatory classes. His trainers, sympathetic to his cause and appreciative of his interest to learn, now take separate classes for him on Saturday evenings after he visits Kidobotikz on his way back from IIT-JEE classes. One cannot help but feel awe for this 15 year old who shuttles his way across the city to balance academics and passions. He dreams of doing a Bachelors degree in Mechatronics at one of the IITs.

Happy Roboting ! !       

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Lockheed Martin's Spider bot skims blimps to plug holes

Lockheed Martin's Hybrid Airship is one beast of a heavy hauler. Naturally, maintaining a vehicle almost as long as a football field takes a lot of man hours, but the company has a new little helper on deck. Its Spider robot combs the surface of the aircraft on the lookout for tiny holes before patching them up, thereby automating one of the staff's more tedious tasks.

At present, locating tiny pinholes in a gigantic airship takes crews of workers on the inside and out, armed with a bright light to identify the parts of the surface in need of attention. But Lockheed Martin's Spider (Self-Propelled Instrument for Damage Evaluation and Repair) does much the same thing, entirely on its own.

The robot is actually split into two halves, which lock in magnetically on either side of the airship's outer skin. The half on the outside applies a light to the surface, which shines through to the interior in the event of a hole, where the inner half is waiting with its light sensors to pick up the breach.

When Spider has detected a hole, the robot lines up its patching mechanism and automatically repairs it. It then sends a before and after image of the repair job to a central processing unit. The company plans to use squads of Spider robots, where this central hub would manage their activity as they scoot across the airship. If one fails, it can reconfigure search patterns to make sure no hole is left unplugged. 

You can see Spider do its thing in the video below.

Source: YouTube

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The alternative box to the "Idiot Box" ! !

Parents always tend to enjoy the seemingly endless energy displayed by their Kids. They cannot stop brooding over the charming mischief that kids indulge in when they are not at school or when they are not playing outside. However, there’s a fine line between charming mischief and downright notoriety. Kids always aren’t quite mindful of the discomfort they cause when they are indoors and cannot help but bring down the roof with their pranks and play. Hence, parents have always resorted to means where they get their kids engaged or distracted in some activity that keeps them off breaking crockery or pulling each other’s hair. However, parents tend to not adopt the healthiest of distractions for children. Their go-to solution is usually the ever dependent Television and the humble smartphone with its mighty assortment of games and apps. 

But this is in itself is a very unhealthy habit. With the explosion in content availability across mainstream media, the content that is displayed on these “Media” boxes- or let’s just use the old term “Idiot Box”- is not exactly moderated or appropriated for children. The cartoons of the modern age are far more different from those of the 80s and 90s which were aimed at imparting interesting trivia and healthy knowledge to children. Today’s cartoons with their gory animations and graphicised violence isn’t exactly a smooth influence on the senses. Studies show that Kids who spend inordinate amount of time accessing such content via smartphones or watching them on the TV tend to display aggressive tendencies and are more prone to engaging in unhealthy interactions such as fistfights and aggressive pranks. 

Does this mean parents are meant to keep them off media sources completely and just get them engaged in scholastic activity? Not exactly. One’s mind would immediately race to the saying “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”. Studies have revealed that kids have the urge to indulge themselves in such activities owing to excessive energies they have as a part of their growth and metabolism and they proactively find activities where they can expend their energies and time in.

However, this necessarily does not mean that kids be let in spending time on such unproductive activity. Parents as such should always encourage children to take up activity that would help in both their physical building as well as their mental upbringing. What better way to get this done than via indulging in activity that helps them both learn interesting concepts as well as provide them with the gratification of having engaged in constructive activities?

We at Kidobotikz strive to put the unspent energies of Kids to better use. This we believe is helpful for the child in his upbringing as he spends his fun time in activities that are not only constructive but are also creative and informative. Our Kidobotikz kits have always enjoyed the flair for being interactive and informative at the same time. Time and again, this fact has been reaffirmed to us by happy parents who tell us that their ward now has a new distraction that they are happy to see him distracted with.

“The cure for boredom is curiosity; there is no cure for curiosity”

Happy Roboting ! !

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Solar powered Suli brings light to backpacks, bikes and bottles

A simple, versatile light powered by the sun, the Chilean-born Suli brings light to everyone from outdoor lovers to those living off the electrical grid. It meets that diversity of needs by screwing onto a bottle to create a simple lamp, mounting to a bicycle to serve as a safety light, hanging from a backpack, suctioning to a window and more.

There are plenty of compact, solar-powered lights, lamps and lanterns out there at this point, the LuminAID inflatable lantern and the Waka Waka Light among them. A company has to do more than just slap a solar panel on a compact light to make an impression, like power its light with gravity or salt water.

Suli Labs sticks with good, old-fashioned solar, but it packages it inside an ecosystem that's much more versatile than others. Out of the box, the light disc offers up to 25 lumens and up to 60 hours of runtime through five modes. Power to the light is supplied by three AAA batteries recharged via the solar panel on the back. Suli Labs estimates 6 to 12 hours for charging under the sun.

The Suli gets a bit more interesting when you find out it has a threaded bottle mount that screws onto a common plastic bottle to create a lantern. Still, that just puts it on par with other solar bottle lanterns, like the Lightie and Sollight Lightcap.

Where the Suli really develops a personality all its own is in the accompanying lineup of 3D-printed accessories. The basic ring secures to the outside of the light, allowing you to strap it to a backpack, hang it up and otherwise get creative with how you position it. Suli Labs also offers a bike mount to fit the light to your handlebars, a suction mount to stick it to a window, and a transparent stake to light up the garden, yard or other soft ground.

Suli Labs held a successful Indiegogo campaign a year ago. Part of Suli Lab's business plan is to work with the open source community to develop additional accessories and uses for its light, so it also offers a free DIY 3D printing file.

The video shows the Suli being put to its multiple uses.

Source: Gizmag, Suli Lab

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