In the past few years, we have covered plenty of interesting drones and robots capable of inspecting bridges and buildings. The Bridge Bot, as the name suggests, is an innovative bot that can operate horizontally, vertically, and upside down. It transitions from one angle to another to complete its task.
Keeping robots balanced while they perform tasks is not always straightforward. Bernd Henze, Máximo A. Roa, and Christian Ott from Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics (DLR), have introduced a new control approach that allow robots to use a subset of their end effectors to stay balanced while the remaining ones are used to interact with the surrounding environment.
There is no better way to learn electronics and programming than building and coding your robots with Raspberry Pi, Arduino, and other comparable platforms. BricKuber is a Rubik’s Cube solving robot driven by a Pi unit. You are also going to need a BrickPi3, Pi camera, SD card with Raspbian for Robots, and LEGO Mindstorms EV3 Kit (31313) to complete this project.
Meet the TTRobotix CX-180 SIRIUS: a co-axial rotor helicopter drone for search and rescue mission. It has a 6-blade rotor system with foldable main rotor. As this video shows, with powerful LED lights, the helicopter than monitor a specific area for activity.
Meet the Zenmuse X7: a compact super 35 camera that lets you capture amazing aerial footage with your DJI drone. It has a 24MP CMOS sensor rated at 14 stops of dynamic range and offers 6K CinemaDNG and 5.2K Apple ProRes. It comes with the DL-Mount.
In the future, amputees will be able to use their brain to control robotic arms. A latest study by neuroscientists at the University of Chicago explores this area. The idea is to control a robotic arm through electrodes implanted in the brain.
To test this idea, the researchers worked with:
three rhesus monkeys who suffered injuries at a young age and had to have an arm amputated to rescue them four, nine and 10 years ago, respectively. In two of the animals, the researchers implanted electrode arrays in the side of the brain opposite, or contralateral, to the amputated limb. In the third animal, the electrodes were implanted on the same side, or ipsilateral, to the amputated limb. The monkeys were then trained to move a robotic arm and grasp a ball using only their thoughts.
The team plans to continue the work to create truly responsive neuroprosthetic limbs.
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Robots are getting good at playing games. ITRI’s Scrabble-Playing Robot is the latest one turning heads. It uses Ai, 3D vision recognition, and eye-hand coordination to play Scrabble and pour coffee.
Soft robots keep getting more advanced all the time. With more sophisticated artificial muscles, they can become safer and stronger. Researchers at the Wyss Institute, Harvard SEAS, and MIT CSAIL have developed origami-inspired muscles capable of lifting 1000x their own weight.
Here is another cute robot that introduces your children to graphical programming and gets them ready for Python. The Codey Rocky robot comes with 10 electronic modules that can be programmed to perform all kinds of functions. Codey is a detachable controller while Rocky is the car.
In the past few years, we have covered a bunch of robots capable of moving at impressive speeds. ACHIRES is high-speed running experiment system for bipedal robots that involves using a high-speed vision system to recognize the posture of the running robot at 600fps.
