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."

Not first

[quintesse]

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:Buoyancy

[Coelacanth]

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 :-)

build your own

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.lynxmotion.com/

WinXP and the newbie Roboticist trap

[snatchitup]

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:Not first

[pipingguy]

This thing [plustech.fi] almost loooks like it could gallop (walking tree harvester from Finland - apparently it can sidestep like a crab, too).

Website [plustech.fi]

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

[dannycim]

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?

Re:WinXP and the newbie Roboticist trap

[apdt]

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]

Movie mirror

[Onnimikki]

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

Re:Not first

[Onnimikki]

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.

here it is: bittorrent file

[nevroe]

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]