Back in 2007 and 2008, funding agencies had a pretty hefty interest in robots with amoeba-like locomotion, also known as whole-skin locomotion (WSL), blob 'bots, or Chembots.  NSF awarded $400k to Dr. Dennis Hong of Virginia Tech's RoMeLa Lab and DARPA awarded $3.3M to iRobot to develop such robots.  Now, most people are familiar with iRobot's jamming skin robot announced at IROS 2009 (photos / videos below).  However, I would like to share with you the equally-clever and interesting work of Dr. Hong, including a new whole-skin locomotion robot called ChIMERA: "Chemically Induced Motion Everting Robotic Amoeba" that was unveiled at a recent TEDxNASA event.  Dr. Hong's robots resemble those slippery water-snake toys that are incredibly difficult to grasp, with silicone skin (flexible but rugged exterior) and water or gel inside (soft interior).  Read on to learn more!

I would like to share a piece of work that I think is awesome on so many levels.  First, it involves the weakly electric knifefish: a curious creature that maneuvers via ribbon-finned propulsion (a marvel of fluid dynamics) and possesses an uncommon sensing modality in the form of electric field sensing (essentially electrostatic / capacitive sensing).  Second, the work models the fish as a dynamic system through its measured frequency response expressed in Bode plots, a process familiar to pretty much any type of engineer.  You read that right, they made Bode plots of a fish -- how cool is that!?  Be sure to check out the videos and photos below.

This is the third installment in what could be billed the "building series."  The first two articles focused on rather involved fabrication techniques for larger robots; this time, I'd like to look at two more-accessible techniques for building miniature robots that I learned about at IROS 2009.  The first technique, by Jessica Rajkowski and advisor Sarah Bergbreiter (et. al.) from University of Maryland, is a relatively new method employing multi-step photolithography via inkjet printed masks to build small polymer robots such as inchworms and grippers that are actuated by shape memory alloys (SMAs).  The second technique examined is a bit more mature.  Called "Smart Composite Microstructures" (SCM) and hailing from UC Berkeley's Biomimetic Millisystems Lab, this technique is used to build inexpensive, resilient, folded composite (cardboard, carbon fiber, fiberglass) prototypes with polymer hinges.  Read on for details and videos.

There has been a lot of press in the last six months revolving around El-E, the autonomous mobile manipulation platform for the motor impaired out of Georgia Tech's Healthcare Robotics Lab (to which I belong).  There was a report in the NY Times on El-E's laser-pointer interface, and now a report in MIT Tech Review on El-E behaving like a service dog.  Recently, the lab's director (and my advisor) Dr. Charlie Kemp, gave an impressive talk at Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute (CMU-RI) where he adeptly ties together these research initiatives and makes a compelling case for more autonomous mobile manipulators for the motor impaired.  Read on for the CMU-RI video and some choice images and themes from the talk.

Troody is a 16 DOF autonomously powered and controlled biped robot built to resemble a Troodon, a small carnivorous dinosaur that lived in the Cretaceous.   Troody remains one of my favorite robots of all time; when I was younger, its bio-inspired design (based off of actual fossil aspect ratios) and its lifelike movements were inspirational.  Unfortunately, Troody may have been a bit ahead of its time -- there was little hope of commercializing such a complex robot for aspiring youngsters like myself to play with.  Meanwhile, Troody's homepage has gone extinct, Troody is now in a traveling StarWars exhibit hangin' out with Darth and Yoda, and Peter Dilworth has moved on to WowWee (the creators of another pre-historic dinosaur robot, the Roboraptor).  We will miss you Troody...

Festo is known as a top-notch automation hardware manufacturer, but apparently their research division is capable of making very artistic, bio-inspired robots as well.  This post specifically examines their robotic dirigible and submersible manta rays, both of which harbor a life-like gracefulness.  I encourage you to check out the videos below; the technical specifications are provided for good measure.