Georgia Tech receives $900,000 grant from Office of Naval Research to develop ‘MacGyver’ robot
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Robots come in many flavors. There’s the subservient kind, the virtual representative, the odd one with an artistic bent, and even robo-cattle. But, typically, they all hit the same roadblock: they can only do what they are programmed to do. Of course, there are those that posses some AI smarts, too, but Georgia Tech wants to take this to the next level, and build a ‘bot that can interact with its environment on the fly. The project hopes to give machines deployed in disaster situations the ability to find objects in their environment for use as tools, such as placing a chair to reach something high, or building bridges from debris. The idea builds on previous work where robots learned to moved objects out of their way, and developing an algorithm that allows them to identify items, and asses its usefulness as a tool. This would be backed up by some programming, to give the droids a basic understanding of rigid body mechanics, and how to construct motion plans. The Office of Navy Research‘s interest comes from potential future applications, working side-by-side with military personnel out on missions, which along with iRobot 110, forms the early foundations for the cyber army of our childhood imaginations.
Georgia Tech receives $900,000 grant from Office of Naval Research to develop ‘MacGyver’ robot originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 12 Oct 2012 10:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
One thing about bringing home IKEA furniture is this – you will need to do your bit to assemble the particular piece of furniture, and for folks who are not too great when it comes to the assembly instructions, there is help. It will most probably be far more expensive than paying a small fee to the IKEA man to assemble your furniture assuming this furniture assembling robot takes off, but it sure as heck is a novelty worth exploring. A group of researchers have managed to find a way to program robots so that they are able to convert a set of instructions into commands – followed by executing them, of course.
Finding water on another planet might be hailed by some to be one of the biggest discoveries of mankind, but they are forgetting that it takes far more than just the presence of water to support theories that there is life outside of earth. Well, a spinoff from the Carnegie Mellon University, Astrobotic Technology, has finished building their full-size prototype of a solar-powered robot that was specially designed with just one mission in life – to look for water and ice at the moon’s poles. Known as Polaris, it will carry a drill in order to bore a hole that is one meter deep into the lunar surface, where it will then get to work even in the low-light conditions of the poles.
Being a stroke patient these days, you have a far better quality of life and higher chance of returning to a normal lifestyle with the kind of medical technologies and advances at our disposal. Well, robots come into the picture, too, with the Robotherapist 3D being a robot which is touted to aids stroke patients’ recovery. This is the first robot of its kind that is touted to enable patients to begin exercises while supine, making sure that the recovery process is expedited. Somehow, living in the world of instant noodles, this does not come across as too much of a surprise to us.
We have seen our fair share of robots in the past, whether they serve alongside soldiers on the battlefield or perform deep sea operations, these are machines that help make our lives a whole lot easier. When it comes to underwater robots however, there is one thing that needs to be taken into consideration – powering them, and making sure they are able to surface in time before they run out of juice. Well, it seems that deep sea stations could eventually be modified to function as a recharge point for underwater robots.
