Insect style robot flies and walks

Lovely video here.

 

Hey that's really cool. Nice find Fort.

 

I loved the little legs.

But what I found most interesting was the actual combination of walking and flight mechanisms. It really does seem to be a very well integrated combination of the two forms of locomotion.

 

I quite like the BIGDOG robot too.

 

BIGDOG has been my fav for yonks. I love that vid. How surefooted is it? It's amazing. And thats a little 2 stroke engine running it when not coupled to the lab?

Sorry didn't mean to detract from the insect flyer Fort. Imagine the 2 bots merged into 1. OH EM GEE is all I gotta say.

 

Definitely cool, but I'd be worried about breaking the propeller. It should retract when it goes in for a landing and starts walking.

Video comes complete with military based application demonstration as a subtle request for funding.

 

Awesome legs ahahah, But that Bigdog thing is creepy...its like....too..organic..

 

Oh yeah, BIGDOG is great, but the insect robot only works well because of the scale.

Maybe. But the prop looks very short, and it's likely made of carbonfibre or something equally strong.

 

Legs were fantastic......but realistically how it is going to be able to find a 2 story building handy (and accessible) in a hostile zone?

 

Looks ideal for urban warfare, where IEDs proliferate and so do 2 story buildings.

 

Ah, miniature robots, i'm right at home.

The locomotion system used (whegs) was previously used on 6 whegged robots (the mini-whegs featured is a later iteration). It only uses two actuators and is passively compliant which is pretty cool (you dont walk over something, you just drive it and the locomotion system takes care of it).

Mini-whegs and jumping miniwhegs (whegs I makes an appearance but whegs VP doesnt)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVjd042E7B4
(You can see from this video the origins of the MMALV )

Heres the CWRU site with all the biorobots: http://biorobots.cwru.edu/
cricket: http://biorobots.cwru.edu/projects/c_mrobot/c_mrobot.htm
whegs: http://biorobots.cwru.edu/projects/whegs/whegs.html (theres also a whegs VP, with semicircular legs but they dont mention it fully on the site)
mini-whegs: http://biorobots.cwru.edu/projects/whegs/miniwhegs.html
climbing mini-whegs: http://biorobots.cwru.edu/projects/cmwhegs/ and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=620MB7tKe2k
and the MMALV's: http://biorobots.cwru.edu/projects/mmalvweb/

Theres a good video talking about whegs and comparing to cockroaches on the CWRU whegs site.


isprawl is pretty cool legged robot: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Rwcxs7LzwM
http://bdml.stanford.edu/twiki/bin/view/Main/IndependentSprawl
http://www.stanford.edu/~sangbae/iSprawl.htm

rolling upright single wheel: http://www.ri.cmu.edu/projects/project_102.html

cockroach controlled robot: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwZD59Ic9T8

stanford stickybot: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odAifbpDbhs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECpY2N5rgcM
and similar: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvIU_DVbkJM (btw, the chassis and wheels are a tamiya builders kit you can get from jaycar)

rolling mini robot: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zwepGOkTLs (theres also a very similar robot, but not commercial which can jump as well)

climbing robot: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzfP0Ig7eVQ


Getting back to flying robots:
http://www.proxflyer.com/pi_meny.htm
http://www.proxflyer.com/na_meny.htm
http://pixelito.reference.be/

ornithoptors are cool: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkfrFLQER8E
AeroVironment are also developing micro ones (they fabricate the wings out of etched titanium then adhere super thin mylar to it). AeroVironment also came up with this 'simple' idea http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=29b_1189136743
Cant find many cool videos except for the above.
Heres some links though: http://mems.caltech.edu/people/past/grad/nick/sa_00.pdf
http://www.jihadunspun.com/TechnologyAndWar/articles/mw.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ornithopter

entomopters:
http://avdil.gtri.gatech.edu/RCM/RCM/Entomopter/EntomopterProject.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entomopter

If you want to look further, try checking out UAV's (micro, nano, pico, whatever they call the tiny ones, its not exactly standardised). Theres whole competitions for mini-UAVs the size of the one in the link. There should be heaps of designs out there if people are interested in looking.





Anyways, I think i've posted too many links by now.....

 

The residents won't find it strange that a miniture bug robot is walking through their lounge room trying to find the roof? Maybe it can ask directions a long the way..... heh

 

I guess if it filmed it and transmitted what it was looking at it doesn't really matter if it returns, could even self destruct.

 

I don't think that'll really matter. The idea is these things will be cheap and if a few go missing that is life.

It's a bloody cool and awesome little robot. I wonder if they are using the electro-muscles at all. That would be a pretty cool solution for the movable surfaces.

 

The eventual aim for the army is to develop cheap small, easily maneuverable robots. That way they can just sent several of them in and due to the quantity and low cost, it doesnt matter if some dont make it. They can also be used in rescue situations (flying/walking robots and crawling snake like robots) so several people can look through a collapsed building for survivors or similar.


Electromuscles dont tend to be used for these kinds of things because they're not all that efficient. For example to use nitinol (memory wire) you need to apply current so it heats up and moves. But then when you remove the current it has to cool back down naturally, so they're not all that fast either. Memory wire has its purposes, but its not used often in micro-robotics. The mechanical cockroach on the CWRU site uses weird actuators that mimic muscles. Theres basically a crimped latex tube. When they pump air into it, it expands outwards. If you put a mesh on the outside (think like PSU cabling or chinese finger traps), the expanding diameter can be used to contract the actuator, so it works in similar way to actual muscles. You can see from the videos that theres a long way to go in developing artificial muscles. Wheels and motors on the other hand are great as they're efficient and simple (which is why the MMALV uses a whegs system)

 

I thought they were pretty quick both ways but that makes sense

I had actually heard about the pneumatic muscles before i had heard of the memory wire ones

The whegs are cool though.

 

"Robot" is a bit rich. It's an RC plane with motorised wheels/legs and foldable wings, no more, no less.

Legs are slow and inefficient - powered wheels would be much better. If they could be switched to a freewheel mode then the plane could even take off again under it's own power after landing. But then it would be more recognisable as just and RC plane.

Actually it looks like a standard GWS prop - no more than orange plastic.

 

Still, if the plane collides head on with something (i.e. hard ground) surely it could break it or perhaps damage the motor or housing.

Any reason why a rear propeller type design, used with the MQ-1 Predator couldn't be used, or wouldn't work as well?

 

They are adding autonomous and semi-autonomous capacity.

It seems you don't understand the reason why they chose whegs instead of wheels. The whegs enable the device to travel over rough ground which would be inaccessible to a wheeled device. It doesn't have to be fast on the ground. They explain that flying is faster than travelling on the ground, and it uses its wings to travel long distances quickly.

In the video they explain and show that it is in fact built from carbon composite.

It could, but given the small size of the prop, and given what it's probably made of, I think that's unlikely.

It might require more thrusting power, and therefore more energy. I don't know.

 

They say they intend to add these features. I'd be very impressed if they ever manage to do it. They certainly won't get a GPS receiver, gyros, a processor, and batteries to run it all inside something that small.

Spiked wheels can get over anything 'whegs' can get over. And they're more efficient. When you've got a lipo that probably doesn't even last 10 minutes, efficiency is everything.

The fuselage is built from carbon composite. The prop is plastic.

Pusher props do require more power, because they're dealing with the turbulent air trailing the fuselage. But the increase is minimal, and the benefits gained by protecting the prop are often worth the trade off, eg. it is a common configuration in RC trainers.

I admire the potential you see in this design, but at the moment it's creators have delivered very little of what they are promising.