Life is just a theory

Now THAT is a tiny robot! Inspired by the agility of flies, researchers have built light, maneuverable flying robots—or flybots, if you will.

The mechanical bugs flap their wings to hover, but all that whirring takes energy. To stay afloat, they need a slim tether connected to an external power source.

You can read more about the flybots in the journal Science.

scinerds:

The ‘FlipperBot’ Is Almost as Cute as the Baby Sea Turtles It Mimics

This adorable little Flipper Bot was designed to mimics the motion of baby turtles as they crawl across a beach toward the ocean.  The speed with which it crawls has a lot to do with an individual turtle’s survival, and along the way, some baby turtles may get stuck in a rut created by the turtles that went before it.

Scientists at Georgia Tech and Northwestern University built the Flipper Bot to understand the motion the turtles use as they cross the sand.  This is valuable not only with respect to sea turtle conservation, but also with respect to beach restoration:

Umbanhowar said understanding beach surfaces and how turtles move is important because many beaches in the United States are often subject to beach nourishment programs, where sand is dredged and dumped to prevent erosion.

“If you are restoring a beach, it might be the wrong kind of sand or deposited in a way that is unnatural,” Umbanhoward said. “In order for this turtle to advance, it has to generate these kind of thrust forces and it may be unable to get their flippers into it. We could say something about that given our models.”

Read more

This is pretty awesome: Interactive Urban Robot, or IURO, can ask people for directions, and use their instructions to navigate to its destination.

Video via Scientific American

Robot Gangnam Style

Robots have a ton of practical applications. They can help us defuse bombs and rescue trapped disaster victims. But let’s face it—wouldn’t you rather watch them dance?

I love everything about this little guy’s routine, but mostly how his head bobs along towards the end of the clip. Let’s face it, robots are more awesome when they’re being adorable.

To see more, check out IEEE Spectrum’s awesome video gallery of robots that can swim, fly, play soccer, and take long walks on the beach.

sciencesoup:

The First Humanoid Robot

Leonardo da Vinci was fascinated by the human anatomy, and he reasoned that the principle of muscles propelling bone could also be applied to machines. To prove this, he designed a ‘robotic knight’—the first humanoid automaton. Da Vinci actually built the robot: a warrior clad in German-Italian medieval armour and capable of human movements, driven by pulleys, cables and gears. Its exact capabilities are unknown, but allegedly it could walk, sit down, raise its visor, independently move its arms, and work its jaw—pretty impressive. However, it was mostly displayed at parties to impress and astonish guests, appearing at the court of Milan in front of Duke Lodovico Sforz in 1495. Da Vinci’s sketches weren’t rediscovered until 1957, and in 2002, a complete working model was built by robotics expert Mark Rosheim. Rosheim later used the foundation concepts to design NASA’s planetary exploration robots, termed ‘anthrobots’—robots with human capabilities.

Finally, a good use for robot technology: performing the “Thriller” dance. These adorable little bipedal robots use quorum sensing to detect what their neighbors are doing and imitate them. That’s why, when one robot gets distracted from its moves, it can jump right back in. Check out the full story over at Discover.

This is one brave little robot…probably because it’s remote-controlled. In this video, the two camera-toting ‘bots nicknamed BeetleCam and BeetleCam Mark II face off with a pride of Kenyan lions, risking life and wheel to snap photos at the behest of brothers Will and Matt Burrard-Lucas. But the wildlife photographers didn’t send their minions into the lion’s mouth unprotected - BeetleCam the First has armor and both robots are covered in netting.

But they’re not entirely lion-proof. As this preview shows, you can’t get beautiful close-ups of lions without undergoing at least a little mauling. And some kidnapping by several frisky cubs.

(Source: blogs.discovermagazine.com)