Hasta La Gadget!

Looking at these reconfiguring robo-cubes, created by research scientists at MIT in the face of ongoing naysaying, it strikes me that the human race can’t be far off a huge achievement: building a physical version of Tetris that self assembles. From angular chaos, to robot-enabled order. That and giving future Dalek armies the ability to bound up stairs.

The M-Blocks, shown off in the above video, are reconfigurable, modular robots with no external moving parts. The cubes’ ability to move results from harnessing the momentum of an internal flywheel (which can hit speeds of 20,000 revolutions p/m) — allowing them to climb over one another, make jumps, spin and roll around. And do all that without the need for wheels or legs.

Magnets on the corners of the blocks are used for course correction and stability, so that one small leap results in an M-Block snapping tidily into place atop its fellow, rather than going rogue and skittering uselessly off the table — although they can apparently do that, too. Chamfered edges on the cubes enhance the strength of the magnetism as the cubes rotate over each other to take up their new positions.

Reconfigurable modular robots with no external moving parts have evidently been something of a Holy Grail in the modular-robotics community. “It’s one of these things that the community has been trying to do for a long time,” says Daniela Rus, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science and director of CSAIL, speaking to MIT news. “We just needed a creative insight and somebody who was passionate enough to keep coming at it — despite being discouraged.

“Our objective is to design self-assembling and self-reconfiguring robot systems. These are modular robots with the ability of changing their geometry according to task and this is exciting because a robot designed for a single task has a fixed architecture. And that robot will perform a single task well but it will perform poorly on a different task in a different environment,” she adds in the video.

Very long term, the goal of much modular robotics research is to be able to miniaturise modules to such an extent that swarms of self-assembling microbots (or even nanobots) can be created — capable of reconfiguring themselves into different forms, shapes and sizes, and changing their function accordingly. Albeit, that’s far-off sci-fi stuff.

In the shorter term, the researchers behind M-Blocks reckon there are still potential use-cases for their more substantially sized, reconfiguring robo-cubes. They note that large numbers of the blocks could be used to temporarily repair bridges or buildings during emergencies, for instance, or raise and reconfigure scaffolding, or assemble different types of furniture or heavy equipment. Different cubes could also carry different functions — such as a camera, lights or a battery pack — to augment overall function.

The researchers are currently building an army of 100 cubes, each with the ability to move in any direction, and designing algorithms to guide them — with the aim of having the cubes transform their state from being randomly scattered across the floor, to identifying each other, coming together and then autonomously transforming into various forms (chair, ladder, etc.) on demand.

Nearly everyone who’s purchased one the 10 million-plus Roombas sold around the world has inevitably asked the same question: whatever happened to Rosie? For all its charms, iRobot’s hockey puck-like floor cleaner will never compare to the Jetsons’ sass-talking maid. We’re living in an age of robots and we don’t even know it. They’re everywhere we look, but it’s hard to recognize them after countless science fiction books and movies have hammered home the image of electronic mirrors of ourselves. In order to embrace a robotic future, however, many have scrapped the traditional notion of the android.

“Building robot versions of people is very expensive,” explains iRobot co-founder and CEO Colin Angle. “The thing that iRobot had to do to become a legitimate business [was] take a great step away from the traditional notion of what a robot should be. Why should it be to vacuum that I need to build an upright person and give them a vacuum? Why not build the vacuum that can guide itself around, that can go under couches? You can make it radically less expensive.”

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The Dextrus hand is the working prototype resulting from Joel Gibbard’s Open Hand Project, an open source hardware initiative that aims to lower the cost of robotic prosthetics dramatically. Dextrus is a fully-functional robotic hand, with features and capabilities similar to leading advanced prosthetics, but at a small fraction of the cost.

A working Dextrus is available through Gibbard’s just-launched Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign for £700 for the full prosthetic version of the device, which is around $1,100 U.S. Compare that to $11,000 for the market-leading model back in 2010, for example. Gibbard is able to cut costs in a number of ways, from using less expensive materials in the construction to 3D printing component parts, as well as using existing artificial limb attachment hardware and mounts.

Gibbard, who’s based in Bristol, UK, says that after developing the original Dextrus while studying in school for a Bachelor’s of Engineering in Robotics from the University of Plymouth, and receiving numerous accolades for its design, he realized that making a material impact in the world would require more than just research. The Indiegogo campaign, which is seeking £39,000 in funding, is designed to finance work on the Open Hand Project for an entire year to help translate Gibbard’s academic research into reality.

To test and build the Dextrus, Gibbard has been working with amputee and Chef Liam Corbett, who says he’s already able to do much more with the prototype Dextrus than with the hook prosthesis he used previously.

“Liam’s the perfect candidate for the hand so I’ll be working with him throughout,” Gibbard says of the partnership between the two and their opportunistic meeting. “He’s been searching for a device like this for the last couple of years and got in touch with me through Facebook.” The Dextrus hasn’t yet been tested with other users, Gibbard says, but he’s had discussions with a prosthetist at Bristol’s Southmead hospital, who’s helping him find other good candidates.

To make the dream of an affordable, advanced prosthetic a widely-available reality, Gibbard says that he’d likely require a contract with Britain’s National Health service or similar, and that would probably entail raising at least another £10,000 or so in funding at least, which he says he’d look for from sources other than crowdfunding. The dream is both ambitious and worthy, so here’s hoping the Indiegogo campaign gives this entrepreneur a chance to get to that next stage.

If you thought the unboxing of the DROID Ultra was amazing, you’ll need to sit down to watch the unboxing of the Atlas robot provided by DARPA to MIT. This robot is a humanoid piece of machinery made to work on developing next-generation solutions to dangerous situations where a human-sized being is needed, but it’d […]

Unless you actually work in robotics, you probably don’t get to see too many mechanical masterpieces in person. If you live in London, however, you’ve got at least one chance: the Italian Institute of Technology is slated to showcase its Hydrolic Quadruped robot (HyQ) in public for the first time. Starting August 1st, the four-legged assemblage of metal will be on display at London’s Natural History Museum as part of the Living Machines Conference. It’s the original model that’s going to be part of the event, though, so visitors won’t be able to watch the latest model’s new trick: stepping over obstacles like a boss. The new HyQ’s step reflex algorithm was developed to help it navigate rugged terrain by reacting to physical barriers. Because the unit’s legs feel out obstacles, the robot can now avoid stumbling in low-visibility areas — potentially preventing saving millions of dollars in limb repair. Although you can’t see the upgraded HyQ out in public, you can watch it conquer 11-centimeter planks in the video after the break.

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Source: IEEE, HyQ