Flexibility Envelope » Videos

Modular robots on the Gadget Show

Per — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 21:01:17 +0000

The Gadget Show is a UK TV show for fun and interesting technical gadgets and in their latest episode they feature Modular Robots.

In it the reporter, Ortis Deley, travels to the US and visits both Carnegie Mellon and University of Pennsylvania.

First he visits Carnegie Mellon to see the latest progress in the research on robotic snakes, and gets closer then he might like when the robots actually climbs his leg. I find the different gates for snake robots very interesting and I posted about them a while ago, Link.

Then he goes on to visit University of Pennsylvania and their Modular Robotics Lab to see their research on Self Re-configuring Modular Robots, which is what my blog focuses on. To illustrate the really interesting possibility to self repair that Self Re-configuring Modular Robots have, he actually gets to brake the units apart by kicking them and see them reassemble them self back to the original configuration on their own.

I think that it is great to see modular robotics presented in this way, where the reporter goes to the leading researchers and gets first hand information.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuPV2_IxHMU

New Videos from Modular Robotics lab at USD

Per — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 13:24:00 +0000

Mirko Bordignon, Andreas Lyder and Ricardo Franco Mendoza García from Modular Robotics Research Lab at USD have published two new videos of the Odin system. It is a proof-of-concept experiment from this paper.

They illustrate several important things. Especially the random motion in the first one below is interesting, as it shows how the flexible joints can absorb small imperfections in motion and control.

In the second one, it is interesting to see how it can allow one actuator, a master, to control others as slaves.

The first, Random motion.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwTQ01A14MI

The Second (actually newer), where one actuator operates as master and controls others as slaves.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=wf2lSyVcQQU

This is really interesting stuff, I can only say, watch this space!

New Interesting Atron Video from MRRL at USD

Per — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 12:00:00 +0000

Ulrik Pagh Schultz, Mirko Bordignon, Kasper Støy have made another interesting video, showing some new developments.

One is that they have made the modules more robust, communication more fault tolerant, and the gripping mechanism more reliable. This is naturally very important, reliable and fault tolerant units and systems are absolutely necessary for SRCMR.

The other thing that I find significant in the video, is the addition to the software development environment that allows you to reverse any self-reconfiguration process. I think that there are many significant software concepts that are going to be discovered in SRCMR. This is because although the hardware development is very exciting and very visual, it would not be totally inappropriate to describe SRCMR as a software revolution. As a incredibly large part of SRCMR solution is going to be software.

New Videos from Desmond Inovations

Per — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 10:00:00 +0000

New Videos from Desmond Innovation

Neil Desmond from Desmond Innovation has published some great new videos showing his very interesting concept.

He starts of by showing that the unit, a cube, consists of 6 repeated sub-assemblies, one for each contact point to another unit.

Then, there is a walk-through of how the units connect in 3D and 2D and move among each other in 2D mode. That is really interesting, because how the units move among each other is such a fundamental part of SRCMR that it is essential to understand this. It would have been nice to see how the ability to expand and contract the units would allow them to move within a lattice. That way it would have been easier to see how important the ability to expand and contract is. But I guess the number of units was one limiting factor, and doing a 3D demo would be really good, but also very difficult.

I think this kind of simple, early stage, real world test are important. There simply is no substitute for getting your hands dirty, to visualize, and make it concrete in a way that only having it physically in front of you can. I think it allows you to see problems and possibilities and take the development step by step in a very good way.

The only thing I wonder is if a modified rhombic dodecahedron (MRD) would not have been a better basic shape than a cube, as it has many advantages. But that would be an easy fix and does not affect the overall concept. It would be very interesting to see a study on the importance and suitability of MRD in a system that can expand and contract. I also suspect that the basic core shape might be less significant when a system does not move by connecting faces and edges, but by connecting in a more flexible way.

It is going to be very interesting to follow the development of this concept.

Video 1, sub-assemblies, set-up and connection of three 3D units.

Video 2, setting up a number of 2D units and moving the units around:

Snake Locomotion Video

Per — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 19:00:23 +0000

This is a interesting video by Howie Choset that shows a number of different gaits of modular snake robots.

It really shows how incredibly capable and different SRCMR solutions are going to be.

The video beautifully illustrates that solutions developed with SRCMR will be able to do many things, that old school products would struggle to do, even if they were specifically designed and developed to do only one of them.

This is a snake solution, but I am certain you could do much the same thing with waves in surfaces that could transport any type payload in any terrain.

Also, the gaits shown in this video are only the ones that are possible within the continuous, non-self-reconfiguring snake-style solution. A self-reconfiguring solution could transform itself into many more gaits.

The possibilities of SRCMR will not be limited to different gaits and moving around in totally new ways. It will also provide novel solutions to many other groups of problems. Each one giving just as many new possibilities as getting what we need, where we need it in a totally new way does.

If you are interested in more videos and information you can view it here

If you are interested in learning more about the topic you can read this

It even works in thin air! This short snake turns in the air like a cat.