By Miles O'Brien, Science Nation Correspondent, and Ann Kellan, Science Nation Producer
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
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NSF-supported researchers at the Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue (CRASAR) at the University of South Florida, the University of Minnesota, the University of Pennsylvania and Caltech are working to improve search and rescue robots. CRASAR has conducted training workshops and field exercises to help researchers improve the latest generation of search and rescue robots. Researchers at the University of Minnesota, the University of Pennsylvania and Caltech are working to create coordinated robot platoons for search-and-rescue operations. See the videos and learn more about these robots in NSF's special report on Disasters. Credit: Robin Murphy, University of South Florida
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Dennis Hong is living his dreams ... literally ... in a lab filled with wacky robots
"When
I was seven years old, I watched the film 'Star Wars' for the very
first time. It just completely blew my mind. All the robots and
spaceships," recalls Hong. You never know where you will find
inspiration! For Hong, a mechanical engineer, it was there, on the
silver screen.
"R2D2,
how it moved, its locomotion, inspired me to study robot locomotion,
and C3PO, the human servant robot, inspired me to study human-robot
interaction," says Hong. The force has been with him ever since.
Hong's
lab, the Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory (RoMeLa) at Virginia Tech,
is filled with robots that would fit right into a "Star Wars" sequel.
"From humanoid robots to rolling, climbing, wheel-leg hybrid robots,"
says Hong, as he points to the row of awards that circle the large
rubber robot work out mat on the floor of the lab.
With
support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Hong and his team
are creating "Star Wars" inspired robots aimed at lending a helping
hand. For example, a Robotic Air Powered Hand with Elastic Ligaments
(RAPHaEL) is a relatively inexpensive robot that uses compressed air to
move and could one day help improve prosthetics. Another series of
robots nicknamed CLIMBeR, short for Cable-suspended Limbed Intelligent
Matching Behavior Robot, was built with NASA in mind. The robots scale
steep cliffs and are rugged enough to handle the terrain on Mars.
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Researchers at Intel Labs located on the campus of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh are figuring out a way to take the drudgery out of house work. They are creating a robot butler named HERB that doesn't mind doing the mundane one bit, or one byte. HERB stands for Home Exploring Robotic Butler. The idea is to create a robot that can walk into a home, assess the layout and move about on its own.
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Intelligent
Mobility Platform with Active Spoke System (IMPASS) is a robot with a
circle of spokes that individually move in and out so it can walk and
roll. "So of course, you can use it just like wheels, but by
intelligently controlling them, you can use them as legs. So it shows
extreme mobility, and the application could be used for search and
rescue missions or scientific exploration," explains Hong.
Hyper-redundant
Discrete Robotic Articulated Serpentine (HyDRAS) snakes its way up
dangerous scaffolding so humans don't have to.
Another
upcoming project is a fire fighting robot, says Hong. "The hose itself
is a robot. It's a robot snake so it slithers and props up like a cobra
and it can fight fires."
The
team is also building a family of humanoid robots, some of which are
even learning to play soccer. There's a team of kid-sized robots called
DARwIn--short for Dynamic Anthropomorphic Robot with Intelligence.
DARwIn robots compete for Virginia Tech in the collegiate RoboCup
Competition. "CHARLI (Cognitive Humanoid Autonomous Robot with Learning
Intelligence) is an adult-sized robot getting into the game as well,"
says Hong. "It has two cameras on the head, looks around, searches for
the ball, figures out where it is, and based on that, it kicks the ball
to the goal."
For
another project called the Blind Driver Challenge, the Virginia Tech
team developed the first prototype car that can be driven by the blind.
The vehicle's name is "DAVID," an acronym for Demonstrative Automobile
for the Visually Impaired Driver. Hong dreamed up many of these
award-winning robot designs.
"Yeah,
many of these wacky robot concepts originate from my dreams," he
explains with a grin. "I go to bed at three or four in the morning and
when I close my eyes, I see these weird circles and blocks and lines
exploding in my head and some of these assemble and form these weird
types of robotic mechanisms."
"Next
to my bed, I keep a notepad and a special pen that has an LED light on
it because I don't want to wake up my wife by turning on the light. I
just jot down and sketch everything and go back to bed. Every morning
before my first cup of coffee, before I brush my teeth, I open my
journal. Many times, it's empty. Many times, it's all scribbles. But
from time to time, I see these really ingenious ideas hidden in my
sketches and that's my eureka moment. I type all my ideas into a
database on my computer. When we have calls for proposals in robotics, I
look at my database of ideas and try to find a match," he says.
Hong is making his dreams come true. Not long ago in a galaxy far, far away, but right here and now--life imitating art.
Original article
