Hasta La Gadget!

Robots are dime a dozen out there, and while we have seen some pretty agile and fast ones out there before, how about one that apes the way us humans swim? Who knows, the Swumanoid robot (which we talked about sometime last year) could be a way for scientists and sportspeople to analyze how one is better able to swim faster than anyone else out there. When the Swumanoid was being worked on, an Olympic athlete as well as a research team worked together to ensure that it was realized. The Swumanoid stands at 3 feet in height, and was based on the model of a Japanese Olympic swimmer. It does make us wonder, however, why not base it on Michael Phelps? AFter all, it was he who won a truckload of gold medals at the Beijing 2008 Olympics, and during the last Olympics, he ended up being the most decorated Olympian to date. Perhaps the decision was made because the research team was Japanese, and it made sense to go local, using an Olympic swimmer who did some laps in the water while relying on a special 3D scanner in order to mimic the motions of the robot, in addition to how the muscles actually moved underneath the skin.

Right now, the Swumanoid is rigged for swimming in freestyle, but it might be programmed to perfect the other strokes in the future. Unfortunately, Swumanoid is not going to break any world swimming records at the moment, since it moves at a relatively sluggish 0.64 meters per second.

Another Look At The Swumanoid Robot original content from Ubergizmo.

Swumanoid, developed by the Nakashima Group at Tokyo Institute of Technology, is a humanoid robot that replicates the motion of a swimmer. In the future, this robot is expected to help researchers analyze how people can swim faster, and develop speed enhancing swimming apparel.
“In research on swimming, one problem is, it’s hard to know how much propulsive force the hands create during a stroke. There have been attempts to measure such things using actual swimmers, but it’s …