Hasta La Gadget!

Some shipwrecks are too costly or dangerous for humans to explore, but many underwater robots are too disruptive and unwieldy to serve as substitutes. The Tallinn Institute of Technology’s new U-CAT mapping robot solves that dilemma by imitating one of the ocean’s more graceful creatures: the sea turtle. The small machine uses flippers to get around instead of propellers, preventing it from kicking up silt (which would obscure its camera) and letting it turn on a dime. It’s also autonomous, which helps it venture deep into a wreck without worrying about cables. It’s sure to have a big impact on underwater archaeology, and you can see it in person if you swing by the London Science Museum between November 28th and December 1st. However, It will eventually map shipwrecks in the Baltic and Mediterranean Seas as part of the EU’s ARROWS Project, providing more detail than any diver could manage.

[Image credit: Tallin University of Technology, Flickr]

Filed under: Robots, Science

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Via: Gizmag

Source: Tallinn University of Technology, ARROWS Project

Schildi was a pet turtle living in Germany, presumably leading a happy life, gnawing on greens and taking forever to get anywhere as turtles do, but when he was abandoned, he lost a leg somehow. Luckily for Schildi, he was rescued, and vets were able to amputate his mangled limb. They replaced it with mankind’s solution for all things: LEGO.

Yes, this turtle now has a LEGO wheel in place of its front right leg. Because let’s face it, a shopping cart wheel just would have been annoying on everyone’s ears. The doctor used a special surgical glue to stick the base block underneath Schildi and then superglue to connect the corners of the block:

“After that we could add blocks to achieve the correct height,” he said. And now the single wheel has proven to be successful, Schildi has been taken back to the animal shelter. “We will see him again once in a while for check-ups,” Azmanis said. “If he gets a ‘flat tyre’ it will be a simple matter to replace the wheel. They move around quite a lot so I’d expect to see him for a new wheel about once a year.”

They should have put a LEGO castle on his back while they were at it. That would be awesome.

[The Local via Gizmodo via Geekologie]

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]

Sure you could have a robot assist you around the home, or even one that’ll make factories friendlier, but we’ll opt for a robot sea turtle any day of the week. The Swiss folks over at ETH Zurich are working on making that a reality with the Naro-Tartaruga, a turtle-inspired machine that would swim efficiently while carrying cargo in its shell. It’s currently a cylindrical aluminum vessel with a couple of flippers, but concept designs include that totally bad-ass bot in the image above. The turtle-bot has a top speed of over 7 knots, so it’ll handily beat any real sea turtle in a race, and the big torso has enough space for battery and sensors that are necessary for autonomous function. The fins on the turtle have a fully three-dimensional mechanism — there are three actuators per fin, and each actuate the fin axle independently. The end goal is for the development of underwater autonomous vehicles, which will hopefully bring us one step closer to SeaQuest DSV. In the meantime, we’d like one just so we can freak the hell out of our cats.

Filed under: Robots, Alt

Heroes in a half shell: autonomous robot sea turtles in development originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 05 Oct 2012 00:37:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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