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Robotics Science

Cockroach-Like Robot to Help Explain Animal Movement 124

Posted by CowboyNeal from the on-all-sixes dept.
neutron_p writes "A cockroach-like robot named RHex is the starting point for a major project to understand animals' most distinguishing trait: how they move without falling over. Researchers from several universities will focus on RHex, a short, six-legged robot that scampers like a cockroach, as a working model of the principles they're seeking to uncover. By tweaking the robot and using it as a physical model, they hope to tease apart the complex neural and muscular networks in insects."
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Cockroach-Like Robot to Help Explain Animal Movement More

Cockroach-Like Robot to Help Explain Animal Movement

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  • Easy... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    They don't fall over because they aren't drunk.

  • How long (Score:5, Funny)

    by Dorsai65 ( 804760 ) <[dkmerriman] [at] [gmail.com]> on Thursday September 16, 2004 @06:37PM (#10272618) Homepage Journal
    before one of the humanoid robots tries to squish it?

  • duh... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by niteice ( 793961 ) <icefragment@gmail.com> on Thursday September 16, 2004 @06:38PM (#10272625) Journal
    They don't fall over because they (usually) aren't missing a leg where one is needed for proper balance.

  • I work on this... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by feelyoda ( 622366 ) on Thursday September 16, 2004 @06:41PM (#10272645) Homepage
    on the perception side...

    While the ability of the bot to go over hard terrain is amazing, the point is that your relinquish direct control.

    The basic problem in perception is dealing with the drastic motions.

    The computer vision methods needed are quite complicated, requiring complimenting sensors like inertial measurement devices. Also extremely wide-angle cameras are excellent because things stay in view, but difficult because the pin-hole model fails.

    Go here for some work that is now a bit dated, from a 180degree camera strapped to rhex:
    http://www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/projects/buzzard/ rhex/

    • Re:I work on this... (Score:5, Informative)

      by feelyoda ( 622366 ) on Thursday September 16, 2004 @06:54PM (#10272754) Homepage
      also, you can get more info here:
      http://www.rhex.net/

      look for the great video of the tumble from a pile of boulders, which doesn't seem to be a problem.

      I wish I could see ASIMO take a fall like that...and watch the subsequent execution of the grad student who let it happen.

    • Re:I work on this... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by plebius ( 109223 )
      Could it be possible that a computational approach isn't necessarily the way to go?

      See, for example, the work of Mark Tilden

      http://www.exhibitresearch.com/tilden/

      • Re:I work on this... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by feelyoda ( 622366 ) on Thursday September 16, 2004 @07:05PM (#10272820) Homepage
        "Could it be possible that a computational approach isn't necessarily the way to go?"

        As Brooks showed, you can get very complicated behavior from reactive or even semi-stateful robots. BUT, I would question the scalability to something more application specific and useful.

        For instance, imagine such a bot making a sandwich, and then cleaning your toilette...

        Also, as some point, you're going to want to give the bot an order, like go from A to B to C then back. Rhex would be unable to do that currently without a very engineered environment, which goes against the entire point of such a bot which moves skillfully in all environments.

        Adding a robust perception loop around the sense-response robot is the way to go, as far as I'm concerned.

        • Re:I work on this... (Score:5, Interesting)

          by jwgoerlich ( 661687 ) on Thursday September 16, 2004 @07:13PM (#10272860) Homepage Journal

          "Adding a robust perception loop around the sense-response robot is the way to go, as far as I'm concerned."

          Agreed. In fact, that was one avenue the BEAM folks and Mark Tilden began exploring. Their take was to develop a solid sense-response sub-layer, and then layer on the computing systems.

          The BEAM name for the architecture was Horse-Rider.

          J Wolfgang Goerlich

        • For instance, imagine such a bot making a sandwich, and then cleaning your toilette...

          And be sure to imagine it completing those actions in exactly that order. No one's been able to teach good kitchen hygiene to cockroaches yet, be they 'bots or bugs.

          • Re:I work on this... (Score:3, Informative)

            by feelyoda ( 622366 )
            actually roaches are probably cleaner than you...

            most poisons work because they touch them, and then clearn their feet constantly...

            that said, they do carry disease
        • Why does it have to be either/or?

          Part of repatition training for humans is to transform a computational movement into a reaction movement. If you repeat something enough, it eventually gets hardwired (my lower brain is an FPGA!?!) and you no longer have to think/compute about it.

          I think a "tri-layer" approach is good, with a sense-response layer (step back - ouch, that's hot) deferring to a trained-response layer (walking) then to a computed-response layer (walking over a rock garden). And if you walk ove
    • I've read something [in Wired probably] about movie makers using evolutionary software to make their creatures walk without having to hard code every movement [think LOTR: kings, the whole orc army was digital for a big chunk of the fight] I for one am not suprised that evolution came up with balance, just a feedback system of a motion dector and legs.
    • The basic problem in perception is dealing with the drastic motions.

      I saw a show on animal channel the other day that was about the fastest runners. Number one was the tiger beetle [ufl.edu]. What struck me is that the reason it runs in short bursts is that its perception system can't keep up with all the input. So it has to keep stopping to get its bearings. Roaches are very fast too, and they use this same method of short bursts and stops. (which has the added benefit of making them harder to stomp. :)

      Anothe

  • Practical Applications (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ScArE2100 ( 663201 ) on Thursday September 16, 2004 @06:43PM (#10272673) Journal
    This could have immediate application for the disabled. Imagine a personal moving device like the segway that walks around with technology derived from insects. It'd be pretty cool I'd say.

    Maybe a mars rover that doesn't faller over or get stuck

    There are lots of possible uses of data from this research.
    • imagine getting for robotic arms complete with a.i. to assist you in the tedium of daily life surgically implanted and wired to your nervous system...

      such a device would be a good for battling genetically mutated human/arachnids that have been plaguing the cityscape lately...

  • This is good news (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 16, 2004 @06:46PM (#10272693)
    ... for real cockroaches. When Armageddon comes, the cockroaches will have robot versions of themselves for slaves.

  • $30M for more insect robots? Sounds like pork. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Thursday September 16, 2004 @06:46PM (#10272695) Homepage
    There's way too much work on insect-level locomotion. Brooks was doing this stuff twenty years ago, and took it about as far as it's going to go. Reactive systems reached their ceiling years ago.

    We realy should be doing better than this. We should at least have Aibo-type robots running (or at least trotting) over real terrain by now. It's embarassing.

    The trouble with this insect stuff is that you can do crap work and get published. If you do work on robots that really balance, you look stupid if your control system doesn't work. Everyone can see you failed. With insect robots, failure is less obvious. Some people think this is a feature.

    • cockroaches are basically reactive animals.

      and uh, what is the "we should have.." based on? wishes? according to scifi we should have flying cars, that however doesn't make them technically feasible(or possible at right price) at the moment.
    • I want a camera system that digitizes real life into a 3d world inside the computer.

      www.geocities.com/James_Sager_PA
    • There's way too much work on insect-level locomotion.

      First spend tens of million studying insect motion. Then spend hundreds of millions researching motion of higher lifeforms. Then billions to develop a factory manufacturing system to make copies of moving animals.

      Why?

      Every year we generate many millions of the most perfect and adaptive biological being the world have ever seen... babies...humans. Yet most of them get nothing but shit and are doomed to live on a dollar a day for their ent
      • Why spend billions to create synthetic robotic psuedo lifeforms when the actual humans themselves are so absurdly cheap

        Because if you send them to another planet they'll either explode (no atmosphere) or disolve (corrosive atmosphere).

        And if you put them in spacesuits and send them there, they won't necessarily do what you tell them to.
        • Why spend billions to create synthetic robotic psuedo lifeforms when the actual humans themselves are so absurdly cheap
          Because if you send them to another planet they'll either explode (no atmosphere) or disolve (corrosive atmosphere).

          Nobody's going to be sending anybody to other planets (outside of few stunts like the moon landings of the 1970s).

          The only countries that have the technology and government structures to do anything even remotely like that are the USA, Russia, and China. Russia's bro

          • Re:robots in space? (Score:1, Insightful)

            by Anonymous Coward
            Nobody's going to be sending anybody to other planets (outside of few stunts like the moon landings of the 1970s).

            Yes, that's pretty much his point. It costs a huge amount to send a human onto another planet, so we can and do use robots. And I hardly think anyone predicting global environmental catastrophies in forty years should be making potshots at others for making broad predictions based on a little data and a lot of guesswork.
            • It costs a huge amount to send a human onto another planet, so we can and do use robots.

              Many people miss the point in the humans vs. robots in space debate. The underlining point is that there is no sense in spending tons of money to put anything on other planets. We have other more urgent priorities here. Interplanetary exploration is, deserves to be, and will remain science fiction for another 200-300 years. The initial space explorations of the 1960s were a historical fluke that is unlikely to b

    • Biggest application: NASA (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mblase ( 200735 ) on Thursday September 16, 2004 @07:08PM (#10272831)
      There's way too much work on insect-level locomotion. Brooks was doing this stuff twenty years ago, and took it about as far as it's going to go.

      I don't think that's true. There was an article in Discover a month or two ago (can't find it online, sorry, but I believe it parallels the linked article) where a researcher was trying to tease more information out of a cockroach's walk, discovering that it doesn't actually use a three-feet-down-all-the-time approach but wobbles side to side, remaining dynamically stable as it walks. This is not what you might intuit by simply watching insects walk.

      As for "too much" being done, I must disagree. Walking robots aren't as good as they can be or it'd be perfected by now. Wheels are faster, but only over ideal terrain; complicated terrain that would confound the best wheels can often be navigated by legged animals. NASA's interplanetary rovers all use wheels, and all of them eventually encounter situations where they're useless, so if they could deploy a robot lander that could walk effectively (and efficiently), it'd be of tremendous value to them.

      • Re:Biggest application: NASA (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Dachannien ( 617929 ) on Thursday September 16, 2004 @07:57PM (#10273119)
        A lot of work in the walking robot field is going into dynamic stability - at least in U.S. academia. The various bipedal robots produced by the Japanese corporate world (Asimo, for example) are all statically stable - meaning that the center of mass is always kept directly over the support base. If you watch videos of those robots carefully, you'll see that this is the case.

        Animals don't work like that. In fact, human walking gait is often described as continually falling forward, saved only by the swinging foot meeting the ground before you face-plant. As for insects, some gaits are statically stable simply by virtue of having so many legs, but the info posted by the parent concerning cockroaches using dynamic stability in tripod gait is really interesting.

        • I know why the Japanese are designing robots with static stability. See, it all comes down to anime.

          Giant robots are masters of martial arts action. The key to most martial arts is keeping balanced at all times. So to built giant martial arts robots, the Japanese are specializing in static stability.
        • I know for certain that not all japanese bipeds use static stability. Bipeds from Honda and Sony (and most of them IMHO) use something called zero moment point (ZMP). The japanese biped robot WL-10RD used this as early as in 1984. Here's a reference I just found: ZERO-MOMENT POINT THIRTY FIVE YEARS OF ITS LIFE [worldscinet.com] by Vukobratovic and Borovac. Should be good since Vukobratovic introduced the concept in the 70s. PS. I did my PhD thesis on control and balance of legged locomotion.
          • I guess my terminology was poorly chosen, my being acquainted with the field but not an expert within it. In any case, I had more in mind robots wherein the center of pressure is not always within the support polygon (and for some robots, almost never is). The MIT Leg Lab [mit.edu] has several examples, and in any case, this is in stark contrast to the equilibrium methods used in any of the Honda or Sony robots I've seen so far.
        • In fact, human walking gait is often described as continually falling forward, saved only by the swinging foot meeting the ground before you face-plant. As is most evident when watching babies starting to walk. :)

      • ... robot lander that could walk effectively (and efficiently)...

        Efficiency is the crux of the problem. Legs are incredibly inefficient compared to wheels and until the on-board power problem is handled in an acceptable manner, you won't see a lot of legged robots too far away from an outlet.

        Having said that, this is where RHEX shines. Since the legs spin like wheels they have a real advantage compared to traditional walking robots in power savings. As an aside, the thing also moves pretty fast. Again
      • discovering that it doesn't actually use a three-feet-down-all-the-time approach but wobbles side to side, remaining dynamically stable as it walks. This is not what you might intuit by simply watching insects walk.

        That's not a new result. Full, at Berkeley, discovered that a decade ago. I once went up to his lab to see the cockroach treadmill.

        Cockroaches appear to run on their hind legs. It's not clear, though, whether the stability comes from active control or from planing on a boundary layer in

      • The Discover article is here http://www.discover.com/issues/jul-04/departments/ biomechanics-of-cockroaches/ Reg required though.
    • We realy should be doing better than this. We should at least have Aibo-type robots running (or at least trotting) over real terrain by now. It's embarassing.

      Yeah, well, that's what happens when ever widening management ass settles into that molded executive chair. Unless there's tall dollars in it, nobody gives a shit, which explains the general fuckitude of everything worthwhile in society.

      There are great things that could be done that will make absolutely NO MONEY but nobody will do them because they
    • Brooks was doing this stuff twenty years ago, and took it about as far as it's going to go.

      Yes, how insightful. Everything that could ever be discovered in this particular field has been. It's time to close the books on this forever. Every time I hear this kind of comment, it sets off my "idiot" alarm.

      My favorite was from my professor in Applied Electricity. We were in the second week, going over Ohm's Law, I asked how the equations worked when the resistance dropped to zero, like in a supercondu

      • Re:$30M for more insect robots? Sounds like pork. (Score:4, Interesting)

        by maxpublic ( 450413 ) on Thursday September 16, 2004 @07:57PM (#10273118) Homepage
        you're definitely not going to contribute any more to society.

        Riiight. As if contributing to society is what we should all be striving for, sacrificing self-interest on the altar of saintly altruism. They teach you that crap in school nowadays?

        In any event, our friend here might be 'contributing to society' by pointing out that the $30 million dollars could be better spent elsewhere. Especially if it's $30 million in TAX dollars, in which case I agree with him.

        Max

  • Yes but... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    How long does it live if you lop off its head?

  • Forget moving like a cockroach... (Score:3, Funny)

    by MooseByte ( 751829 ) on Thursday September 16, 2004 @06:48PM (#10272712)

    I want to see robots that *survive* like a cockroach.

    Well, until they turn evil anyway.
  • major project to understand animals' most distinguishing trait: how they move without falling over.

    And I always thought it was the fact that they demonstrated life. Boy have I been misled!

  • Hannibal and Attila? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by BrewerDude ( 716509 ) on Thursday September 16, 2004 @06:50PM (#10272732)
    Does anyone know how this differs from the insect-like robots (like Hannibal and Attilla [mit.edu]) developed by Rod Brooks' group in the MIT AI Lab? It's been a while since I took his class, but I remember that they found that remarkably simple distributed control systems could be used to generate adaptive legged locomation patterns without requiring complex centralized control.
    • ... but no one listens. This technology is old, incredibly old in the scheme of computer science and electrical engineering. Rodney Brooks, MIT, Rodney Brooks! Okay, I'm okay. It was on the cover of Popular Science, for crying out loud.
      • "This technology is old, incredibly old in the scheme of computer science and electrical engineering. Rodney Brooks, MIT, Rodney Brooks! Okay, I'm okay. It was on the cover of Popular Science, for crying out loud."

        well, so was computer chess, but we see news in AI about it.
        The point is that Robotics is a field, and reactive robots, subsumption architecture, and such are sub-fields.
        Hearing news about the latest instance is perfectly legitimate.
        • I guess so. I keep seeing the same 'new ideas' brought up in response, though, which I guess is what ticked me off. The moment Rodney Brooks' work became widely known, I suggested we send a fleet of autonomous robots with cameras to Mars, with a remote-controlled robot left at base to go after anything that looks interesting.

          Basically, it would be the same mission as what has now been done, but with a lot more video feed, and maybe a few other basic readings of the terrain. Heck, if they're solar powere
    • RHex breaks all records for robot speed over extremely rough terrain, and is easily the fastest legged robot over flat terrain. It also makes for a really fun remote controlled vehicle. You get it going, in a running gait, and there are actually times when it is completely airborne.
  • I move alone.

  • RHex Web Page (Score:2, Informative)

    by bluewee ( 677282 )
    RHex Page [rhex.net]

  • Rodney Brooks said it best (Score:5, Informative)

    by lawpoop ( 604919 ) on Thursday September 16, 2004 @06:57PM (#10272776) Homepage Journal
    When an ant walks, it's falling over all the time. The trick is that it catches itself with its legs.

    You can get a load of his work from the documentary Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control [imdb.com].

  • Just looking at the URL, "amercock.html"... I don't think that's my style of pr0n...

    Apparently amercocks are only 1-1.5" long. I saw much bigger overseas on my last vacation...

  • Huh? (Score:5, Funny)

    by bobobobo ( 539853 ) on Thursday September 16, 2004 @07:01PM (#10272806)
    how they move without falling over.

    Because they have six legs? Am I missing something here?

  • RHex is also cool because it swims (Score:5, Interesting)

    by exp(pi*sqrt(163)) ( 613870 ) on Thursday September 16, 2004 @07:03PM (#10272811) Journal
    I discovered this by reading the story about RHex here [slashdot.org].

  • More on Bob Full (Score:3, Informative)

    by jwgoerlich ( 661687 ) on Thursday September 16, 2004 @07:09PM (#10272838) Homepage Journal

    This is really old news. RHex has been around for at least a few years now.

    Bob Full is one of the lead scientists on the RHex project. His biomimetic approach is amazing. See the following link for one of his lectures.

    Robert Full: "Bipedal bugs, galloping ghosts and gripping geckos: BioInspiration for Rapid Running Robots"
    http://www.princeton.edu/WebMedia/lectures/ [princeton.edu]

    J Wolfgang Goerlich

    • Re:More on Bob Full (Score:3, Informative)

      by MrEd ( 60684 )
      Definitely old news, the legs on RHex have evolved a long way from the 'bar' style shown on the article photo.

      The new, new, new design is now a semicircular length of rubber-treaded fibreglass, which means they have spring to them. In fact when one leg finally snaps they have to replace all six as the robot depends on them to be balanced in stiffness.

      Using these legs they get some great dynamic stability as shown in 'turbo mode' and other showoff moves [umich.edu] plus pronking, etc.

      The coolest are the round legs

  • I'm more interested in how a Slinky walks (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ...without falling over. After all, it's bipedal locomotion without any complex computer intelligence.
  • The DARPA Grand Challenge.

    Didja notice in the "slowmo_great_bound_small.avi" movie how Rhex was running away from that dude? It's 'cause it just kicked him in the nads. Hard.
  • the thought of a small army of those running amuk is frightening. Still, it seems a strange way for science to go: use robots to explain nature. Seems backwards, but cool if it works.

    CB$@#

  • most important feature (Score:5, Funny)

    by kxmas ( 774156 ) on Thursday September 16, 2004 @07:34PM (#10272997)
    Will it flip on its back when runs out of batteries?
  • Well heck they certainly explain some movement.

    When my wife sees one of those little buggers she runs away - she hates them.

  • Not the only people doing this sort of thing (Score:5, Informative)

    by Dachannien ( 617929 ) on Thursday September 16, 2004 @07:41PM (#10273021)
    Read about competitive work here. [cwru.edu]

  • Not a chance (Score:3, Funny)

    by lmuk ( 796766 ) on Thursday September 16, 2004 @08:28PM (#10273290) Homepage

    I've seen Robot Wars and the walkers never stand a chance...
  • A cockroach-like robot named RHex is the starting point for a major project to understand animals' most distinguishing trait: how they move without falling over.

    I'm truly amazed, that with all the modern science we have today, that we don't know the answer to this question. I'm not trying to troll, I truly am amazed. We can fly to the moon and back, but something that seems this simple is really incredibly complicated. Wow.

    • Re:Incredible (Score:3, Insightful)

      by achurch ( 201270 )

      I'm truly amazed, that with all the modern science we have today, that we don't know the answer to this question.

      And we still may not be getting it. All they've built is a robot that coincidentally can also move without falling over--there's nothing (at least as far as I can tell from the article) to say that it works the same way real insects do.

      In all fairness, though, the question "how do animals move" is probably less important than "how can we get robots to move". While learning how the biologic

  • The summary implies that the people who built this robot don't understand how a cockroach works, however they managed to build a roboroach and by studying the roboroach they will gain an understanding of how real roaches work.

    Now surely the geniuses behind this would have had to understand the workings of a cockroach to build a reasonable model of one that gives them a reasonable simulation. In this case, they already understand the roach mechanics well and studying the roboroach won't tell them an awful l

  • BEAM dead? (Score:3)

    by LinuxInDallas ( 73952 ) on Thursday September 16, 2004 @10:46PM (#10274008)
    Whatever happened to BEAM robotics? Anyone involved with that? I first heard about it on a Science Channel robotics series and it seemed interesting. I have been to the main page by the inventor Mark Tilden but I have seen nothing new in the past couple years. Does anyone know if this area of research has died off?
  • Cockroach-Like Robot to Help Explain Animal Movement ...Not to be turned loose around the new Fly Eating Robot [msn.com]

  • Political Science (Score:4, Funny)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Thursday September 16, 2004 @11:51PM (#10274288) Homepage Journal
    We might finally learn where all these politicans come from, by studying cockroaches and other vermin.
  • Animals' most distinguishing trait is that they don't fall over? You gotta admit that's a little funny. "Hi, I'm Greg, an animal, and my most distinguishing trait is that I don't fall over".

    Anyway, I just got a kick out of that. I'm sure once I read on, the point will be well made.
  • I couldn't find the article but I read that as well as cat brains they have piped wires into a cockroach brain and have suceeded in a RC cockroach, that can carry a small camera, great for earthquake rescue, or running it through cheerleader changing rooms...

    That bio/mech device that was implanted into neo in the matrix, imagine something similar, but a bio animal which really is a bug. in both senses.

    or even reptilious: cute Gecko in lew of real cockraoch article [newscientist.com]

    Have fun
  • Cochroach vs MechaCochroach!
  • i've been looking for a robot-me for ages :)
  • meanwhile, the japanese national science foundation works to develop a giant robotic shoe...

  • That's my girlfriends lab, I posted that yesterday!

    Why did I get a +2 comment rating, and have someone else get a full frickin' article post? Argh. (here's me being disgruntled)

    By the way, they have already been slashdotted in the past http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/1 2/0156220&tid=126&tid=14 [slashdot.org], and you didn't mention that it's built at McGill. You could also have included the McGill ARL website link http://www.cim.mcgill.ca/~arlweb/Welcome.html [mcgill.ca]. They love getting slashdotted ;)

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