IROS 2013: UAVs Get a Grip With Full-Size Robot Arms

ROS 2013: UAVs Get a Grip With Full-Size Robot Arms

As amazing as flying robots are, there's a limited amount of useful stuff that they can do today. Oh, they're great for surveillance and inspection, there's potential to use them to deliver stuff, and in some specialized circumstances we've seen them cooperatively building structures. But to really be useful in the way that we've come to expect from robots, they're going to need to be able to move a variety of objects at will, picking them up and putting them down whenever and wherever they need to. We saw some of the first examples of this at IROS, giving a whole new meaning to the term “mobile manipulator.”

http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/aerial-robots/iros-2013-uavs-get-a-grip-with-fullsize-robot-arms

HiBot Demos New Amphibious Snake Robot

Japanese company HiBot, specialized in robots for extreme environments, will unveil the latest version of its ACM-R5H snake robot at the International Robot Exhibition (iREX) this week in Tokyo.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/industrial-robots/hibot-demos-new-amphibious-snake-robot

Stochastic Robots Assemble and Disassemble Themselves

"Stochastic" is another way of saying random, and stochastic robots are robots that harness the powers of randomness to construct themselves. It's a fairly simple idea that can result in fairly complex objects: you've got some number of different modules, which can come together to form a robot. Instead of putting the modules together and building the robot directly, you instead just toss all of the modules and shake it really really hard. As the modules randomly run into each other, each is programed to latch on if it happens to bump into a module that it's supposed to be next to in the final design. And if you do this for long enough, eventually you'll end up with a fully assembled robot. Or that's the basic idea, anyway.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/medical-robots/stochastic-robots-assemble-and-disassemble-themselves

Modular Robots

Robots out on the factory floor pretty much know what's coming. Constrained as they are by programming and geometry, their world is just an assembly line. But for robots operating outdoors, away from civilization, both mission and geography are unpredictable. Here, robots with the ability to change their shape could be of great value, since they could adapt to constantly varying tasks and environments. Modular reconfigurable robots—experimental systems made by interconnecting multiple, simple, similar units--can perform such shape shifting.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/robotics/industrial-robots/modular-robots

EPFL Developing Connectors for Modular Floating Robots

This is an artistic rendering of a project that's being developed at EPFL (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne). The Laboratory of Intelligent Systems (LIS) is working on a robot (yes, that's totally a robot) made up of soft, floating modules that connect to each other through electroadhesion.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/robotics-hardware/epfl-developing-connectors-for-modular-floating-robots

Linkbot: That Modular Robot You've Always Wanted Is Now on Kickstarter

Last month (I don't know how it can possibly be just last month but somehow it is) at Stanford's Robot Block Party, we talked to the guys over at Barobo, who gave us a peek at a modular educational robot system that they were getting ready to Kickstart. The project has now launched, meaning that the time to get a DIY modular robotics kit of your very own is right now.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/diy/linkbot-that-modular-robot-youve-always-wanted-is-now-on-kickstarter

iMobot Brings Robot Modules to Modular Robots

We love the concept behind modular robots: they're simple, cheap, easy to use, and capable of doing anything you want them to do, as long as you're willing to let them reconfigure. They're also easy to fix, and in many cases, capable of fixing themselves. So for example, if you've got a modular humanoid that you decide to kick in the face, it can put itself back together, as long as it's got enough modules attached to each other to enable movement. But single modules, left on their own, are more or less helpless.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/diy/imobot-brings-robot-modules-to-modular-robots

Modular Robots CKBot Module

My group has been working with Mark Yim and his students to design and implement modular robotic systems equipped with smart camera systems that the modules can use to localize themselves. We were able to use this approach to demonstrate modular systems that self assembled after an explosive event, namely a swift kick. This project has been featured in several publications and at Wired NextFest.

http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~cjtaylor/RESEARCH/projects/ModularRobots/ModularRobots.html

YaMoR

Project description

We have designed hardware for modular robot units called Yamor (Yet another Modular Robot). The aim of the project is to create robot units that can rapidly be attached to each other in order to create arbitrary multi-unit robot structures. We are interested in developing adaptive algorithms that use local interactions rules between units in order to optimize the global behavior of the multi-unit structure.

http://biorob.epfl.ch/yamor

 Birds Labs

Combine off-the-shelf insulation foam and modular robot components and you get a self-assembling robot that could be fit to a variety of tasks.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/diy/watch-this-robot-build-other-robots-out-of-spray-foam

http://www.birds.eecs.umich.edu/discovery_news_robot_builds_itself_with_foa/#more-'

Swimming-pool ships make waves in modular robotics (w/ Video)

(Phys.org)—University of Pennsylvania engineering Professor Mark Yim and his students in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics have been floating their robotic boats at the university pool after-hours as part of a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) project. They have received funding from DARPA's Tactically Expandable Maritime Platform.

http://phys.org/news/2013-02-swimming-pool-ships-modular-robotics-video.html

Roombots

Modular robotics for adaptive and self-organizing furniture

This project intends to design and control modular robots, called Roombots, to be used as building blocks for furniture that moves, self-assembles, self-reconfigures, and self-repairs. 

http://biorob.epfl.ch/cms/page-36376.html

A Modular Robot That Puts Itself Back Together Again

Modular robots are made of small, independent components that can be replicated and combined in different ways.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/07/27/science/20090721-modular-graphic.html?emc=eta3

Modular robots – Festo Molecubes

Modularization is a basic principle of living nature: organisms consist of molecules and cells that use genetic programming in order to group together to form organs. Cell division and modularization are the two mutually opposed aspects of reproduction in living systems. Researchers around the world are trying to make a modular robot that can change its shape according to the needs at that time. In this article we’re going to write about such a concept from Festo, named Molecubes . In our future articles we’re going to write about several modular robots that have been developed.

http://www.robaid.com/robotics/modular-robots-festo-molecubes.htm

Swarmanoid

Swarmanoid is a heterogeneous robot swarm in which different groups of robots have different capabilities, being able to coordinate to have an emergent behavior that is not possible in an individual way.

Swarmanoid: The Movie (Best Video Award at the AAAI-11 AI Video Competition)

Swarm Robots Cooperate with AR Drone

Distributed Flight Array

Individual vehicles self-assemble, coordinate, and take flight

We’ve all heard the expression: “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” Alone, these vehicles can drive about on the ground, but it is not until they assemble that they are able to fly. 

The Distributed Flight Array is a flying platform consisting of multiple autonomous single  propeller vehicles that are able to drive, dock with their peers, and fly in a coordinated fashion. Once in flight the array hovers for a few minutes, then falls back to the ground, only to repeat the cycle again.

http://www.idsc.ethz.ch/Research_DAndrea/DFA

Self-assembling bouncing robots

Small and simple cubes with no exterior moving parts can propel themselves forward, jump on top of each other, and snap together to form arbitrary shapes.

M-Blocks are robots cube-shaped, with no external moving parts. But they are able to propel themselves by means of a flywheel inside them. Such flywheel can reach speeds of 20,000 revolutions per minute. When the flywheel is braked, it imparts its angular momentum to the cube. The M-Block is surface is surrounded by permanent magnets that allow any two cubes to attach to each other.

The only problem I can see is a matter of precision in their movements.

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2013/simple-scheme-for-self-assembling-robots-1004.html

ODE y Robots Modulares


En este ejemplo se simula un robot ápodo del grupo cabeceo-viraje de 16 módulos. El usuario puede establecer los diferentes modos de caminar mediante el teclado: línea recta, desplazamiento lateral, rotación, rodar, girar, etc. Para la generación de todos los movimientos se utiliza la misma técnica de generadores sinusoidales que en el ejemplo de la cocnfiguración PP.

http://www.iearobotics.com/wiki/index.php?title=Tutorial:ODE_y_robots_modulares:Robot_%C3%A1podo

M-TRAN III

As M-TRAN I & II used permanent magnets and SMA actuators for their connection mechanism (details), it was time and energy consuming to control module connection. In order for faster and more power-effective consuming connection, a mechanical connector was newly designed.

http://unit.aist.go.jp/is/frrg/dsysd/mtran3/

SMART

The project seeks to extend the use of modular robotic systems and their research progress, which so far have an important academic aspect, to real-world applications. The intention is to demonstrate that a system based on an inventory of different, simple and low-cost fabrication modules can create a variety of robot configurations that have immediate applications.

http://sade.disam.etsii.upm.es/JBWEB/SMART.html#

SMORES 

The design of this system called SMORES (Self-assembling MOdular Robot for Extreme Shapeshifting) is capable of rearranging its modules in all three classes of reconfiguration; lattice style, chain style and mobile reconfiguration. Modules are independently mobile and are capable of self-assembly from a collection of disconnected modules.

http://modlabupenn.org/smores/