Swimming Cockroach Robot Developed

Onnimikki writes "The Ambulatory Robotics Lab at McGill University has made a six-legged swimming cockroach robot as part of Project Aqua. The robot is a waterproof version of the RHex robot, whose inspiration is the biomimetic work by Bob Full of Gecko glue fame. Other cool stuff from the ARL page includes a waddling bipedal RHex, and the world's first galloping robot."

Fun

I could have so much fun with one of these. Scaring my mum/sister/girlfriend. I want one!

Re:Fun

Scaring my mum/sister/girlfriend.

The scary thing is, you're talking about one woman

Sticky situation

inspiration is the biomimetic work by Bob Full of Gecko glue fame.

Why is he full of Gecko glue?

Talk about getting stuck into your work...

It runs QNX

It's nice to see that it runs a proper Real Time OS.

I have actually seen one case of someone trying to build a mini sub-aqua robot running Windows XP (yes XP not CE) on a powerful micro PC card.

Seriously, ... it sounds fscked up, but it's true.

WinXP and the newbie Roboticist trap

Many people start robotic projects fearing embedded development. So, they think, why can't I just control everything from my PC.

The problem with this is, it actually adds complexity.

Typically, it means adding a MAX232 with Charge ups, or the more expensive MAX233. This, just to convert the RS232 25Volts down to TTL 5volts. Then you need another component to translate the characters into logic. What a pain! Not to mention a tether.

Better to just learn a little assembly. It's really easy for these applications. Just turning things on and off is setting/clearing a bit in an output register.

Software, is really not that hard, in fact, possibly overrated in terms of the complexity of building one of these beasts. It's the electronics, and contruction. Getting things to actually move.

Re:WinXP and the newbie Roboticist trap

True, especially when you can actually program some of the PIC's in C. e.g. the Microchip PIC 12/14/16/17 families [bytecraft.com]

Buoyancy

waterproof version of RHex, which was made neutrally buoyant

How did they do that ? Depending on the density of the water you immerse the thing it, they might approach neutral buoyancy by adjusting the amount of ballast manually, but they'll never achieve true static buoyancy without some kind of active process controlling the amount of water in a ballast tank. Otherwise the object would sink to the bottom or bob up to the surface eventually. Or do they maintain the thing's depth in the water with dynamic buyoancy using the robot's forward movement ? I don't see depth control planes on the robot, could they use its legs to achieve this ?

Re:Buoyancy

You can make an object neutrally-buoyant (or close enough to it) by carefully adding foam or other light stuff (ping-pong balls!). The tricky bit is making it not only neutral in an overall sense, but to prevent the object from tending towards a particular attitude in the water.

And unless you fill the tank with salt water or, perhaps, lime jello, the density of water is pretty much the same everywhere :-)

Re:Buoyancy

OK for shallow depths, but as the robot gets compressed at greater depths, its volume decreases and it will sink faster and faster (like a submarine that blows too much air from its tanks). There are also problems with temperature change. There's an interesting passage in Lothar-Gunther Bucheim's book "Das Boot" (better known as a TV series and film) where the Chief Engineer explains the variable buoyancy problem caused by temperature, depth and varying salt concentrations to the narrator. The U-boat has to take on or lose a surprisingly large weight of water to compensate for even a 1 degree change in water temperature.

But I digress, I doubt there's much call for a deep-sea robot cockroach.

I'll make a mint

With a little hack. I'll be able to retrieve all of Colin Montgomerie's (Monty)'s [europeantour.com] balls from the lake at the US Open starting today! [usopen.com]

Come on Justin! [pgatour.com]

Bill G's cunning pest control plan

Robot cockroaches running Windows infect the bugs with bugs. Insect population crashes, MS share price soars.

Not first

Wish I could prove with u URL of some sort but I'm 2000% positive that I've seen galloping robots in a documentary years and years ago made by some university or MIT. I remember that they were made using hydraulics and that they had quadrupeds and even a monoped running/hopping through the hallways (with the researchers running to keep up with cables and such ;-) I also remember that the movements were not preprogrammed but the system "learned" how best to cope with N legs. It developed all of the gaits found in a horse for example. Very good stuff.

Re:Not first

You may be 2000% positive, but the assertion that no galloping robots had ever been made (until now, by MIT or anyone else) is backed up by Schmiedeler and Waldron's IJRR paper entitled "The Mechanics of Quadrupedal Galloping and the Future of Legged Vehicles". In it they state "To the best of the authors' knowledge, however, no artificial legged system has ever been operated in a true gallop. Raibert's (1986) quadruped used its legs in pairs, employing trot, pace and bound gaits." The MIT work that you are referring to is that done by Marc Raibert.

Eeaaaargh!!!!

*hits cockroach with shoe*

What? Why is everyone looking at me like that?

build your own

http://www.lynxmotion.com/

original rhex is equally impressive

Yes, the swimming robot version is cool, but the original rhex robot is pretty incredible too. I work in the lab at UMich where they're working on the land-based one. A friend of mine used a learning algortihm called Amoeba (sort of a hill-climbing approach using simplexes) to speed it up dramatically. It runs fast, much faster then you would expect a stocky little robot with six legs to run. Currently, they're working on a vision system so it can track objects and follow lines, and having it sense its terrain and modify its gait accordingly. Not your daddy's robot!

Waiter!

"What's this robotic cockroach doing in my soup?"
"The...um...backstroke?"

What The World Needs Now

I want a robot which can fetch me a cold drink, not swim in it.

Already done better

In this year's Technogames (in the UK, broadcast on TV by the BCC), there was a robot that could swim underwater. It swam like a fish, with horizontal tail movements, and knew when to move up or down to stay slightly below the surface of the water. It was autonomous, not remote controlled. Much more impressive than the movie of the swimming cucaracha.

Complicated much?

Whatever happened to the wheel? You know that wonderful invention that converts rotational motion into linear motion. Hey, our offroad vehicles use it. Are our robots too good for such antiquated ingenuity? Is the answer simply too easy to give the robotics community the type of intellectual hooplah they thrive on? Or is there some technical reason why trying to make a robot walk is better than letting it roll?

Re:Complicated much?

There are at least two advantages to legged robots that I'm aware of (though the technology is not necessarily there to take advantage of them). The first is the potential to climb much larger obstacles for a robot of a given size. Robots using rocker-bogie wheel systems such as the Mars Pathfinder vehicle have amazing climbing abilities, but this is nothing compared to what a human can accomplish.

The second is a potential energy savings. Imagine a wheeled vehicle traveling over rough terrain. It's constantly climbing over obstacles which takes energy that is just lost when it falls down the other side. Meanwhile, a legged robot can keep its body above the height of most obstacles and just step over the top of them -- more of its energy goes towards its forward motion instead of the up-and-down motion of the wheeled vehicle.

Oh, another thing is the ability to tolerate loss of an actuator. If one of the wheels were to stop working on a wheeled vehicle, the rest of the wheels would have to drag that one along. Meanwhile, there's been some neat work showing the robustness of legged robots to such problems by groups such as the Biorobotics Lab [cwru.edu] at Case Western.

In the end though, it depends on your application as to which is best. I just can't see that one approach could be better than the other in all cases. Just as one example, I think legged robots have really cool potential for planetary exploration for the reasons given above, but certainly anything spending most of its time on flat ground (agricultural equipment, anything on-road, etc) would perform better with wheels.

I've been slashdotted! YEAH! I'm so proud!

Came in this morning, tried to login to squirrelmail.... Hmmmm... very slow... Get to the web server.... Hummmm... Lotsa httpd processes... Hummmmm...

tcpdump -i eth0 -n port 80...

Hmmmm... The console scrolls non-stop! Arrrgh! Am I being DOS'ed!?!?!?!?

Thanks slashdot, you made me panic for a while. Hope somebody mirrored the pages cuz' I can't handle this load without being prepared for it.

Please check again in a few days if you're really intereseted.

--
Danny, McGill CIM SysAdmin.

Re:I've been slashdotted! YEAH! I'm so proud!

I'd have prepared for this by mirroring the images and videos and redirected to them. Ain't so hard if you know in advance.

I didn't post the story, somebody else here at McGill did without telling me.

Anyways, anybody want to host 'em?

A galloping robot?

Did that trigger thoughts of the Animatrix for anyone else?

Great, More Pests

Just great. Now I have to keep a portable EMP generator next to my cans of RAID under the kitchen sink. Do you know how much power those f***n things use?

Let's hope they don't teach the little bastards to breed. What will they do, lay their eggs in my box of spare PC parts? Although I assume there'll be a nice satisfying mechanical *crunch* when you step on them.

Gives new meaning to cockroaches carrying diseases. Maybe they'll find one that transmits W95/Klez@mm. Norton Antivirus will now cost three times as much to ship, because it comes with a large hammer. Don't download files, don't open mail attachments, and put a ring of flea powder around your PC. "Dr. Solomon..." *WHAM WHAM WHAM* *crunch* "...has detected and isolated a virus."

On the other hand, it'd make for a nice way to smuggle an X10 cam into a cute girl's bedroom--assuming they ever make the transmitter units weigh less than 5 pounds. Blattidae Elegans Electronicus indeed.

Movie mirror

I've posted the smaller movie [14MB] on the .Mac servers: the cockroach robot movie [mac.com].

Quick, Henry- the Flit!!!

I do not want a motor roach;
I do not want them near my boat...
It's bad enough on Land and Beach-
Keep that insect out of reach!!!

I do not want electric roach,
Nor the real thing to approach!
Don Marquis, entombed, is spinning-
And now, you say, the roachbot's... swimming?

My house is currently invaded-
I didn't want this thing created!
Why not start with robot ants,
or with spiders, tech advance-

I do Not LIKE the cockroach breed!
I do not want them close to me!
I'm scared of those alive and well-
and these
not even Flit can Kill!

My morning tribute to Dr. Suess and his earliy career, and Mr. Marquis, whose cockroach vers libre poet would have had quite a bit to say on this one. Those were the first things to leap to the forefront of my mind- Quick, henry- the flit! and oh lordy what would archy say.

I'll have to develop...

The robotic pointy boot to step on it.

At the End of the World

Great, after the nuclear holocaust, there will be nothing on Earth but a few humans fighting off highly evolved Terminator-like robotic roaches and radioactive cockroaches.

Ahh now i can sleep at long last

Thank god someone as finaly developed a swimming cockroach robot. Our only lingering question is: what more is there to accomplish for man kind? Now tha the swimming cockroach robot hurdle has been cleared... what goal is wirthy of a race? IS it a happy day... or sad?

here it is: bittorrent file

I work on the RHex project at CMU, so I had the movie sitting around on my computer. The ARL website is pretty dogged down, so James had to pull the website and the original 60 MB video, replacing it with a smaller 14 MB version.

If you want the full version movie, go here for the torrent file.

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~gch/Aqua.mpg.torrent [cmu.edu]

This is Slahdot...

Why hasn't someone already accused Microsoft of inventing the swimming cockroach long ago?

Backwards

Damnit, we are trying to kill roaches, not make more of them!

And waterproof, next it will be squishy proof. I find these anywhere near my house, your gonna pay to have em exterminated.

Robot video page. Wooo!

You guys GOTTA go here:

A "pronking robot"
http://kesisleme.eecs.umich.edu/filedispla y.php?wh ich=f&action=movie&id=66

The rest of the vids
http://kesisleme.eecs.umich.edu/media.php

Has anyone made a joke about a RAID array yet?

Just checking.

hmmm

If you eat it will it crawl back up your throat? I dont want those problems again.