Hasta La Gadget!

Designers at MIT have created an autonomous robot with the ability to inch forth like an earthworm while it remains impervious to most bashes, drops, and rough terrain. It’s called “Meshworm”, and Sangbae Kim, the Esther and Harold E. Edgerton Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT, notes that it’s a new step towards squeezing through tight spaces and navigating rough terrain in the future. Will we see a robot earthworm plodding around Mars the next time we head out? We shall see!

This little beast uses muscles along the length of its body to move forward with contraction after contraction. The device uses two main muscle groups to move, one of them being circular muscle fibers that wrap around its body, the other being longitudinal muscle fibers that run along its length. The tubular body is made of a heat-sealed sheet of polymer mesh, the mesh made of interlacing polymer fibers.

With this body, the tube is able to stretch and contract, just like a spring. The artificial muscle that makes it all move is made of a nickel-titanium alloy fabricated into a wire. The wire was wound around the mesh tube, and a small battery and circuit board was fitted within the tube as well. The board tells the battery to generate a current that heats the wire at certain segments along the body.

As each segment is heated to a certain temperature, the wire contracts. When the wire contracts, the tube is squeezed and the robot is propelled forward – into the future! And it’s pretty darn versatile, too.

“You can throw it, and it won’t collapse. Most mechanical parts are rigid and fragile at small scale, but the parts in Meshworms are all fibrous and flexible. The muscles are soft, and the body is soft … we’re starting to show some body-morphing capability.” – Sangbae Kim

Kellar Autumn, professor of biology at Lewis and Clark College, studies the biomechanics of animal motion in designing soft robotics and also had a bit to say about the project and future projects using similar technologies. Specifically endoscopes, implants, and prosthetics are on the docket here with Autumn.

“Even though the robot’s body is much simpler than a real worm — it has only a few segments — it appears to have quite impressive performance. I predict that in the next decade we will see shape-changing artificial muscles in many products, such as mobile phones, portable computers and automobiles.” – Autumn

Researchers at MIT, Harvard University and Seoul National University are currently at work on this project as we speak. The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency supported this research as well.

[via MIT]

Earthworm robot developed at MIT for tiny science missions is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

We’ve seen a number of options for controlling real worms, but never a worm robot, until now. Enter Meshworm, the latest creation from researchers at MIT, Harvard University and Seoul National University. The bot is made from “artificial muscle” composed of a flexible mesh tube segmented by loops of nickel / titanium wire. The wire contracts and squeezes the tube when heated by a flowing current, but cut the power and it returns to its original shape, creating propulsion in a similar way to its living kin. Taking traditional moving parts out of the equation also makes it pretty hardy, as proven by extensive testing (read: hitting it with a hammer). DARPA is known for getting its fingers in all sorts of strange pies, and it also supported this project. We can’t see it being the fastest way of gathering intel, but the potential medical applications, such as next-gen endoscopes, sound plausible enough. Full impact tests in the video after the break.

Continue reading Researchers create Meshworm robot, beat it up (video)

Filed under: Robots, Science

Researchers create Meshworm robot, beat it up (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 10 Aug 2012 06:25:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Glasses-free 3D may be the next logical step in TV’s evolution, but we have yet to see a convincing device make it to market that doesn’t come along with a five-figure price tag. The sets that do come within range of tickling our home theater budgets won’t blow you away, and it’s not unreasonable to expect that trend to continue through the next few product cycles. A dramatic adjustment in our approach to glasses-free 3D may be just what the industry needs, so you’ll want to pay close attention to the MIT Media Lab’s latest brew. Tensor Displays combine layered low-cost panels with some clever software that assigns and alternates the image at a rapid pace, creating depth that actually looks fairly realistic. Gordon Wetzstein, one of the project creators, explained that the solution essentially “(takes) the complexity away from the optics and (puts) it in the computation,” and since software solutions are far more easily scaled than their hardware equivalent, the Tensor Display concept could result in less expensive, yet superior 3D products.

We caught up with the project at SIGGRAPH, where the first demonstration included four fixed images, which employed a similar concept as the LCD version, but with backlit inkjet prints instead of motion-capable panels. Each displaying a slightly different static image, the transparencies were stacked to give the appearance of depth without the typical cost. The version that shows the most potential, however, consists of three stacked LCD panels, each displaying a sightly different pattern that flashes back and forth four times per frame of video, creating a three-dimensional effect that appears smooth and natural. The result was certainly more tolerable than the glasses-free 3D we’re used to seeing, though it’s surely a long way from being a viable replacement for active-glasses sets — Wetzstein said that the solution could make its way to consumers within the next five years. Currently, the technology works best in a dark room, where it’s able to present a consistent image. Unfortunately, this meant the light levels around the booth were a bit dimmer than what our camera required, resulting in the underexposed, yet very informative hands-on video you’ll see after the break.

Continue reading MIT Media Lab’s Tensor Displays stack LCDs for low-cost glasses-free 3D (hands-on video)

Filed under: Displays, Home Entertainment

MIT Media Lab’s Tensor Displays stack LCDs for low-cost glasses-free 3D (hands-on video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 09 Aug 2012 14:16:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Building a robot that can stand and walk on two legs like a human is challenging enough — but what about a robot that swims like a human? A team from Tokyo University of Technology has created the Swumanoid, a swimming robot that’s based on the physique of a human swimmer and can swim a variety of strokes. But why should a swimming robot have to look like a person? Most fish swim much faster, more gracefully and more efficiently than humans. That’s why scientists from the University of Virginia are developing the Mantabot, a robot that looks and swims like a ray.

Continue reading Inhabitat’s Week in Green: 30-foot ‘Buckyball’, Olympic stadium Lego replica and the ‘Mantabot’

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Robots, Science

Inhabitat’s Week in Green: 30-foot ‘Buckyball’, Olympic stadium Lego replica and the ‘Mantabot’ originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 05 Aug 2012 10:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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MIT researchers have cooked up a new glasses-free 3D system that supports multiple viewers watching from different perspectives, and relies on existing cheap technologies rather than expensive holograms. The Media Lab Camera Culture Group stacked multiple LCD panels on top of each other, each running at a high refresh rate, and which show slightly different perspectives of the same image or video frame, which the human eye adds up to a 3D picture.

Existing glasses-free 3D displays have butted up against significant issues which have limited their usefulness in the home environment. Some use cameras to track the user’s eyes and adjust the angle of two slightly offset images being shown through a fresnel lens, such as Toshiba’s F750 3D laptop, but the system only works with a single set of eyes.

Alternative approaches use multiple lenses to increase the number of simultaneously supported viewers, but generally require those people be in specific positions in relation to the screen in order for the effect to work. Holograms, meanwhile, are considerably more expensive than most current high-end displays.

What MIT has done is use straightforward, inexpensive LCD panels paired with clever processing. The system is similar to that used by the Nintendo 3DS, but uses three panels which collectively filter the light so that it changes depending on the angle of viewing. One technical requirement for smooth video is the refresh rate, which needs to be 360Hz – most high-end panels run at 240Hz at present, though going 50-percent faster shouldn’t present manufacturers with too great a challenge.

The prototype can create a glasses-free 3D viewing angle of 20-degrees, but a special two-panel version with a special lens sheet in-between that has been boosted to 50-degrees. Heavy-duty graphics processing is required to manage the data feed, but the latest high-end video cards are capable of that. More details in the video below.

Cheap Glasses-free 3D research tips LCD sandwich is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.