Hasta La Gadget!

Scientists and researchers continue to emulate animals when designing and building robots, since animals know what they are doing. For instance, if you want a robot that can crawl over sand really fast(Just because) you should check out sea turtles. And that’s just what Georgia Tech has done here.

Researchers Dan Goldman, Nicole Mazouchova and Paul Umbanhowar designed this robot to scamper across loose sand dunes, inspired by the motion of baby sea turtles. Their hypothesis was that key to the turtle’s surprisingly speedy movement is the way they flex their wrists. To test that theory, they designed FlipperBot.

Their experiments will help them learn how fins and flippers are used as arms and legs, and potentially improve robot mobility. Watch the video or read the paper for an explanation of the tech behind the robot.

[via Geekosystem]

Baby sea turtles have an interesting way of moving across sand and into the ocean, and scientists have been studying these little creatures for quite a while. So much, in fact, that engineers are designing and building robots that replicate the movements of a baby sea turtle in order to better understand the origins of these animals.

The robot is called the FlipperBot, and it features two motor-driven flippers with flexible wrists that are similar to sea turtle wrists. The robot is designed to travel through malleable surfaces like sand, just like sea turtles, and these kids of robots could help engineers further develop robot technology that will allow robots to swim through water, as well as walk on land.

The FlipperBot is quite small, measuring in at about 7.5 inches long and weighing only two pounds. Scientists are using these kinds of newly-developed robots to better understand how turtle flippers work, as well as help researchers understand how sea turtles evolved to be able to walk on land, especially with limbs that were designed for swimming rather than walking.

Daniel Goldman, a physicist at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, says that these kinds of experiments will also work with other animals who have a long history. He says that him and his team are “working with paleontologists on studying what the first animals moving on land were like with more paleontologically realistic robots.” He notes that most animals likely encountered sand and mud, rather than concrete and hard rock, bringing up the question of how animals moved through these malleable substances.

[via Tech News Daily]

New robots shed light on origins of sea turtles is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

There were a few turtle robots that we talked about in the past, but I suppose that none of them had the kind of realism displayed like the Flipperbot. What you see in the image above is actually the Flipperbot in action, where it mimics the way recently hatched baby sea turtles, in all their cuteness, would scuttle across the sand to reach the ‘promised land’, which is the vast ocean where they would be spending most of their days in. Known as the Flipperbot, scientists behind this robot do have high hopes that insights gained from understanding the physics of sea turtle locomotion on land could eventually result in better methods to protect beaches where these endangered marine reptiles return to lay their eggs annually.

It is also hoped that such research into sea turtle movement on land would also shed more light on the movement of other animals that rely on flippers to draw themselves from ocean to land, including the mudskipper, sea lion or an ancient lobe-finned animal that is known as the Tiktaalik.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Campaign For Killer Robot International Ban, Robot Stalks Sharks In The Seven Seas,

When a human sees the plight of another, we’re capable of empathy, and it is a powerful thing. Many science fiction movies and books have asked whether humans can have empathy towards robots, especially as they advance and become more like living beings and less like machines. The answer to this is yes, according to a study conducted by scientists at the University of Duisburg.

The scientists presented 40 participants with videos of a small robot, shaped like a dinosaur, in two different kinds of situations: one in which it was presented with affection, and another in which it was violently handled. Using physiological responses, the scientists analyzed the reactions the participants had to how the dinosaur was treated, which was that humans had a strong response.

Following up on this was the use of functional MRIs to monitor the effects of watching both violence and affection towards robots and towards humans. According to the study, the participants’ brains had similar patterns when presented with violence and care towards a robot as it did when presented with the same towards a human.

One of the scientists, Rosenthal-von der Putten, discussed the eventual goal of developing companion robots that a human would form a relationship with, aiding individuals who need it with assistance and, for example, offering more independence to the elderly. Understanding how humans react emotionally to robots is essential to this goal.

He said, “A common problem is that a new technology is exciting at the beginning, but this effect wears off especially when it comes to tasks like boring and repetitive exercise in rehabilitation. The development and implementation of uniquely humanlike abilities in robots like theory of mind, emotion and empathy is considered to have the potential to solve this dilemma.”

[via Gizmodo]

Humans have empathy for robots, says study is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

The Wheelbarrow EOD robot has dutifully served the British Army since Lt. Col. Peter Mille first put one to work disarming IRA bombs in 1972. But these days, the 400 or so units currently deployed in the UK and abroad are quickly becoming legacy hardware. The British Ministry of Defence’s replacement: a state-of-the-art bomb-bot that can disable an IED four times faster than its predecessor. More »