NASA Volcanobot: Geological Robot Explores Kilhauea Fissures

An active lava flow from Kilauea volcano in Hawaii. 

Credit: Reuters

Nasa is planning to explore volcanoes using robots being developed at its Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The space agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has already tested one robot, VolcanoBot 1, at the Kilauea volcano in Hawaii and is now developing a second, lighter and smaller robot, to find out how volcanoes erupt.

Carolyn Parcheta, from Nasa's JPL, and robotics researcher Aaron Parness are developing bots that can delve into crevices humans never could in order to gain a new insight into volcanoes.

"We don't know exactly how volcanoes erupt. We have models but they are all very, very simplified. This project aims to help make those models more realistic," Parcheta explained.

Two robots designed to explore volcanoes are pictured here. VolcanoBot 1 (right) has a length of 12 inches (30 centimeters) and 6.7-inch (17-centimeter) wheels. 

VolcanoBot 2 (left) is smaller, as it is 10 inches (25 centimeters) long and has 5 inch (12 centimeter) wheels.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

VolcanoBot 1 was 30cm long and 17cm wide. It was rolled down into a fissure (a crack that erupts magma) in the active Kilauea volcano in Hawaii in May last year.

VolcanoBot 1 explored the Kilauea volcano in Hawaii in May 2014. 

The robot is enabling researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to put together a 3-D map of the fissure.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The robot set about mapping the pathways of the magma, descending to depths of 25m to two locations.

VolcanoBot 1 allowed the researchers to develop a 3D map of the fissure, confirming that bulges in the rock wall seen at the surface are present deep underground as well.

"To eventually understand how to predict eruptions and conduct hazard assessments, we need to understand how the magma is coming out of the ground. This is the first time we have been able to measure it directly, from the inside, to centimetre-scale accuracy," Parcheta said.

Researchers now want to return to the site with VolcanoBot 2 to delve deeper into the volcano. The latest version of the robot has stronger motors and electrical communications, so more data can be returned. As well as being smaller and lighter, it can tip up and down and turn to look at features around it.

Carolyn Parcheta working with VolcanoBot 1 in Hawaii in May 2014

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

"It has better mobility, stronger motors and smaller (5 inch, or 12 centimeter) wheels than the VolcanoBot 1. We've decreased the amount of cords that come up to the surface when it's in a volcano," Parcheta said.

VolcanoBot 2will be tested in March 2015, Nasa said.

The researchers say their findings have implications for studying volcanoes on other planets and moons, including Mars, Mercury, Enceladus and Europa.

Parness said: "In the last few years, NASA spacecraft have sent back incredible pictures of caves, fissures and what look like volcanic vents on Mars and the moon. We don't have the technology yet to explore them, but they are so tantalising!

"Working with Carolyn, we're trying to bridge that gap using volcanoes here on Earth for practice. We're learning about how volcanoes erupt here on Earth, too, and that has a lot of benefits in its own right."

NASA Contest: Name a Space Station Droid

This scenario shows NASA's free-flying robot in action. 

The space agency has teamed up with TopCoder in a contest to name the new space robot.

Credit: NASA /Topcoder

NASA needs your help to name a new space robot, and you could win some cash doing it.

NASA officials are asking space fans around the world to help name, and design a mission patch for, a new free-flying robot expected to launch to the International Space Station in 2017.

The first-place winner of the challenge will receive $1,000. Officials with the space agency put out the call to any interested space fans during a packed session here at New York Comic Con on Saturday (Oct. 11).

"We have this new free-flying robot that we're building," Jason Crusan, director of NASA's Advanced Exploration Systems division, told a full house at Comic Con. "We don't know what to call it.

'Free-flying robot' sounds kind of boring and not all that exciting, so we're asking you to actually name the robot for us."

Second, third and fourth place also come with cash prizes. Second place will win $500, with third and fourth prize taking home $250 each. NASA has teamed up with Topcoder to organize the contest.

If an artist's depiction of the new space automaton is any indication, the new robot may look like something out of "Star Wars."

In the artist's concept, the robot could appear as a small, ball-shaped droid that will use fans to move itself around the interior of the International Space Station. It is expected to be able to fly itself, or be operated by remote control.

The new free-flying bot would join a group of other free-fliers already on the station. NASA's SPHERES robots (the name is short for Synchronized Position Hold, Engage, Reorient, Experimental Satellites) are already used on the orbiting outpost.

The program has been running for seven years, and is designed to help scientists test robotics hardware and software in microgravity.

The SPHERES robots and the new robot should be able to move around autonomously, but humans living and working on the orbiting outpost can also control the satellites.

"As the push for manned and automated exploration of the solar system expands, NASA and the NASA Ames Research Center are creating controlled and autonomous robotic devices capable of supplementing flight crew," officials wrote in a description of the challenge on the Topcoder website.

"These 'free-flying robots' will eventually extend the research and exploration capabilities of astronauts, as they are capable of working during off-hours and (eventually) in extreme environments."

To participate in the NASA challenge to name the new robot, space fans need to register with Topcoder. Participants will reach a checkpoint where they will receive feedback on their initial designs on Oct. 22, and the challenge ends on Oct. 27. Officials will announce the winners of the competition on Nov. 2.

Murata Robot cheerleading squad showcases sensor technology - video

A team of cheerleading robots made their dancing debut in Tokyo on Thursday as creator Murata Manufacturing demonstrated its cutting-edge sensor technology.

With curtains pulled back and Japanese pop music pulsing in the background, 10 doll-like robot girls with illuminated pom-poms rolled out onto a stage to perform their choreographed routine.

The cheerleaders stand just 36 centimetres (10 inches) tall with matching bob hairstyles that hide the complicated machinery inside their heads.

The team's advanced gyro sensors, which are usually found in cars and digital cameras, keep them from falling off the balls that they wobble on during their routine, Murata said.

The cute creations have LED eyes that shine in different colours as they manoeuvre into various formations including a heart shape, diagonal lines and a moving figure of eight.

"Of course they cannot jump like true cheerleaders," said Koichi Yoshikawa, a Murata engineer involved developing the technology.

"But the idea is that they are doing their best to stay stable on their little ball, as if they were telling the team, 'hang on, do your best'!"

Group-control technology, developed in collaboration with Kyoto University, makes sure that the robots move in a synchronised way and don't crash into each other.

That promise got off to a shaky start, however, as several dolls collided and fell over during the first take in front of assembled media, prompting assistants to remove clumsy members of the squad.

Despite the hiccup, Murata, a major electronics manufacturer, said the technology has big potential, such as helping cars stabilise on slippery or damaged roads.

The company currently makes sensors that are used to monitor tyre pressure and in engine control units.

Its next-generation technology could also be used as an anti-collision device in self-driving cars being developed by companies such as Google and Tesla.

NASA's Robonaut 2 Droid Gets Its Legs on Space Station

NASA astronaut Steve Swanson poses with the robot Robonaut 2 on the International Space Station after completing an upgrade that gave the robot legs.

Credit: NASA/Steve Swanson

Look out, astronauts, your companion robot on the International Space Station is now mobile!

NASA's Robonaut 2 has received a set of legs that will help it move around the station, and will eventually enable the bot to work on repairs both inside and outside the orbiting outpost.

NASA astronaut Steve Swanson, who commanded the station's Expedition 40 crew, helped attach the appendages to the humanoid robot in late August before returning to Earth last week.

The legs will help the robot move around the space station to complete simple tasks.

Later this year, after a few changes to its upper body, later this year, Robonaut 2 will use its new legs to venture outside for its first spacewalk as well.

"You can only do so much if you're fixed on a stanchion, which is what we've been on for the past couple of years," Ron Diftler, principal investigator for the Robonaut project, said in a televised interview on NASA Television. "With the addition of legs, we'll be able to go mobile."



While the upper half of Robonaut looks a lot like a human, the legs don't resemble a person's legs very much.

Instead of feet, the robot has clamps that allow it to latch onto and climb up on objects.

The legs are also longer than human legs, a span of 9 feet (2.7 meters), and are more flexible, giving the robot more ways to cling to things inside or outside the station.

"In space, you don't use your human legs in the way you use them on the ground," Diftler said. "We didn't adhere to the human form because it didn't make any sense."

"NASA researchers did not even have legs in mind when they sent Robonaut 2 to the space station in 2011, but it was possible to add the appendages with some upgrades to the robot's wiring and computer systems."



The legs were flown to the space station aboard a cargo ship in April.Yet, even while it was fixed in place, Robonaut 2 was occasionally used by space station crews.

In February 2012, Robonaut shook hands with Expedition 30 commander Dan Burbank, and earlier this year, the bot used a "task board" to test its ability to manipulate knobs, switches and buttons.

More recently, Robonaut has been put to work moving "soft goods," such as covers that provide thermal protection for space station components.

Last year, astronaut Tom Marshburn tested teleoperating Robonaut, using virtual reality gear to control the robot and have it catch a free-floating object.

Robot folds itself up and walks away

A team from Harvard's Wyss Institute, Harvard's SEAS, and MIT built an autonomous robot that starts out as a single composite sheet programmed to fold itself into a complex shape and crawl away without any human intervention.

Credit: Harvard's Wyss Institute

A team of engineers used little more than paper and Shrinky dinks, the classic children's toy that shrinks when heated, to build a robot that assembles itself into a complex shape in four minutes flat, and crawls away without any human intervention.

The advance, described in Science, demonstrates the potential to quickly and cheaply build sophisticated machines that interact with the environment, and to automate much of the design and assembly process.

The method draws inspiration from self-assembly in nature, such as the way linear sequences of amino acids fold into complex proteins with sophisticated functions.

"Getting a robot to assemble itself autonomously and actually perform a function has been a milestone we've been chasing for many years," said senior author Rob Wood, Ph.D., a Core Faculty member at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University and the Charles River Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS).

The team included engineers and computer scientists from the Wyss Institute, SEAS, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

In addition to expanding the scope of ways one can manufacture robots in general, the advance harbors potential for rather exotic applications as well.

"Imagine a ream of dozens of robotic satellites sandwiched together so that they could be sent up to space and then assemble themselves remotely once they get there-they could take images, collect data, and more," said lead author Sam Felton, who is pursuing his Ph.D. at SEAS.

The robots are the culmination of a series of advances made by the team over the last few years, including development of a printed robotic inchworm -- which still required human involvement while folding itself, and a self-folding lamp that had to be turned on by a person after it self-assembled.

The new robot is the first that builds itself and performs a function without human intervention.

"Here we created a full electromechanical system that was embedded into one flat sheet," Felton said.

The team used computer design tools to inform the optimal design and fold pattern, and after about 40 prototypes, Felton honed in on the one that could fold itself up and walk away. He fabricated the sheet using a solid ink printer, a laser machine, and his hands.

The refined design only took about two hours to assemble using a method that relies upon the power of origami, the ancient Japanese art whereby a single sheet of paper can be folded into complex structures. The origami-inspired approach enabled the team to avoid the traditional "nuts and bolts" approach to assembling complex machines.

They started with a flat sheet, to which they added two motors, two batteries, and a microcontroller -- which acts like the robot's "brain," Felton said.

The sheet was a composite of paper and Shrinky dinks™, which is also called polystyrene, and a single flexible circuit board in the middle. It also included hinges that were programmed to fold at specific angles. Each hinge contained embedded circuits that produce heat on command from the microcontroller. The heat triggers the composite to self-fold in a series of steps.

When the hinges cool after about four minutes, the polystyrene hardens -- making the robot stiff -- and the microncontroller then signals the robot to crawl away at a speed of about one-tenth of a mile per hour. The entire event consumed about the same amount of energy in one AA alkaline battery.

The current robot operates on a timer, waiting about ten seconds after the batteries are installed to begin folding. However, "we could easily modify this such that the folding is triggered by an environmental sensor, such as temperature or pressure," Felton said.

One of the primary challenges in the process, Felton said, was the propensity for the robots to burn up before they folded up properly; each one runs on about ten times the current that typically runs through a light bulb.

"There is a great deal that we can improve based on this foundational step," said Felton, who plans to experiment with different kinds of shape memory polymers, materials like the polystyrene -- that are stronger and require less heat to activate, for example.

Journal Reference: S. Felton, M. Tolley, E. Demaine, D. Rus, R. Wood. A method for building self-folding machines. Science, 2014; 345 (6197): 644 DOI: 10.1126/science.1252610

NASA Remote Robotic Oxidizer Transfer Test (RROxiTT) robot refuelling satellites

The Remote Robotic Oxidizer Transfer Test (RROxiTT) robot demonstrated a way for future servicing satellites to transfer oxidizer to a satellite in need of refueling, at the Kennedy Space Center's Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility.

Credit: NASA

NASA wants to create a robotic gas station in space.

While that might call to mind visions of interstellar starships, the unmanned depot won't actually be used to refuel rockets leading to the outer solar system or other worlds. Instead, it will service satellites orbiting Earth.

Thousands of satellites currently circle the Earth, transmitting everything from GPS navigation signals to weather forecasts to television shows, and all of them need fuel to maneuver in orbit.

Without a way to refuel these aging machines, many satellites that could otherwise provide many more years of service break down and are retired.


NASA's Satellite Servicing Capabilities Office (SSCO) at Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland teamed with the Kennedy Space Center (in Florida) in 2011 to concoct a way to refuel satellites as they zip around the planet. Under their solution, this refueling will be carried out by robotics.

By creating this new technology, "NASA hopes to add precious years of functional life to satellites and expand options for operators who face unexpected emergencies, tougher economic demands and aging fleets," NASA's Bob Granat wrote in a statement.

This robotic technology is not limited to fueling, though. NASA can also use it to fix malfunctioning satellites and build entirely new structures in outer space.

The partnership between Goddard and Kennedy has been fruitful thanks to each organization's special capabilities.

Kennedy's long history of preparing spacecraft for launch, for instance, meant that it had a lot of experience with loading propellant.

In addition, because of Kennedy's involvement, "project participants were able to use existing equipment, facilities and excess Space Shuttle Program hardware, saving millions of dollars in development costs," NASA said.

Goddard, meanwhile, focused on the robotics. In fact, they recently shipped a robotic arm to Kennedy, 800 miles (1,287 kilometers) away, to test the system's remote-control capability.

During the test, the remote robot operator, located at Goddard, connected the end of the robot arm to a valve on the side of a simulated satellite, which was located at Kennedy.

The Kennedy team then made sure that the nitrogen tetroxide, a substance commonly used in spacecraft, flowed smoothly through the valve.

One beneficial side effect of refueling satellites in orbit is that it lessens the amount of dangerous space junk in the area just above Earth's atmosphere.

Instead of having dead satellites floating around uncontrolled, engineers on the ground can extend their lives with refueling, putting off costly launches and slowing the rate of material sent into space.

At the geosynchronous orbit level, a region 22,236 miles (35,786 km) above Earth, there are more than 100 government-owned spacecraft and 360 "commercial communication satellites."

Therefore, "the capability to refuel and repair satellites at this orbit could make GEO [Geosynchronous Earth orbit] more sustainable and help mitigate orbital debris problems," officials with NASA's Satellite Servicing Capabilities Office wrote on their website.

Japan plans giant Gundam robot

This file picture taken on July 10, 2009 shows an 18-metre tall statue of the Gundam robot in Tokyo park

A team of Japanese animators and engineers on Wednesday unveiled plans to build a moving 18-metre (60-foot) tall Gundam robot, in a nod to millions of science fiction fans.

The "Mobile Suit Gundam" anime series first aired in Japan in 1979, and spin-offs featuring robots locked in intergalactic battles have won legions of enthusiastic fans in Asia, Europe and elsewhere.

In 2009, the 30th anniversary of the show saw an 18-metre-tall Gundam statue erected in a Tokyo park.

"When I created Gundam 35 years ago, I used my imagination freely because it wasn't real," Yoshiyuki Tomino told reporters in Tokyo Wednesday.

"That is what creativity is for, when you dream of something. Four decades later, Gundam is growing into something new."

Now, the plan is to give a new giant Gundam some moves, and organisers are calling on the public for ideas about how to make it happen.

Plausible suggestions would be used in constructing the robot by 2019, the series' 40th anniversary and a year before Tokyo hosts the Olympic Games.

Osaka team fine-tunes quadruped robot Pneupard - Video

Click, clunk, whir, pitter-patter go the footsteps of numerous quadruped robots worldwide, but a recent report focuses on one walking robot, Pneupard, a project from Osaka University.

Tuesday's IEEE Spectrum said Pneupard, the four-limbed robot powered by pneumatic muscles, has been fine-tuned by its researchers.

The original version of Pneupard that the team designed had a lot of pneumatic muscles; controlling the robot became a huge challenge, said the update, and the researchers decided this time around to go lean and mean on the robot's anatomy.

The second version has fewer muscles. This made it easier for control and exploring different gaits.

Last year, IEEE Spectrum first introduced the Pneupard as a robot with pneumatic artificial muscles as its primary means of locomotion.

Jason Falconer wrote at the time, "Pneumatic artificial muscles may be made from a rubber tube sheathed in nylon, but they contract much like the real thing when filled with air."

"They can pack a lot of power in short bursts and are also highly flexible and impact-resistant, giving them a lifelike quality that is often missing in robots powered by electric motors."

Distinguishing features include what the robot does not need rather than what it does; it does not require a complex brain, and uses no ground feedback or sensors.

IEEE Spectrum said it was rather an "open loop" experiment, in control systems parlance. At play is a simple, rhythmic controller called a central pattern generator (CPG).

"There are no external signals telling the limbs how to move," said Ryan Whitwam in ExtremeTech, "instead everything is based on the interaction of the pneumatic muscles and skeletal frame, which rhythmically cycle back to their starting positions after each step. A CPG like this is essentially a biological system, so it could make future robots more lifelike."



The team's approach is driven by the wish to explore a more natural approach to walking robots. Andre Rosendo, the project leader, told IEEE Spectrum that the team believed "locomotion is created not only by the brain, but also the brainstem, spine, and muscles, which also 'have a say' on how the body moves."

In explaining what the team is up to, Whitwam said, "Basically, the Osaka University team wants to see how locomotion can be offloaded from a centralized robotic brain to the rest of the body.

Their approach takes into account the way a real animal works—it's not all higher brain functions controlling your gait and posture. The feedback of peripheral nerves, the brainstem, spine, and muscles all figure into the way we move."

The Pneupard project takes place at the laboratory of Prof. Koh Hosoda at Osaka University The team includes Andre Rosendo, Shogo Nakatsu, Xiangxiao Liu, and Masahiro Shimizu.

The researchers call the 4.8-kilogram robot Pneupard a "biomimetic quadruped robot"—they said the value of these robots is that they allow the study of animal locomotion without experimenting on in animals, recreating them with a constructivist approach.

German Festo Scientists unveil 'BionicKangroo Robot' - Video

German tech leader Festo has built a robot that mimics the way a kangaroo moves -- able to absorb and store the energy of a jump's landing, and quickly and efficiently use that energy to initiate the next hop.

They call it the BionicKangaroo Robot.

If a human tries to move around simply by jumping, he or she is likely to get very tired, very fast.

The human body isn't designed to jump over and over again.

The same doesn't hold true for a kangaroo, of course -- the hopping mammal, omnipresent throughout most of Australia, gets around exclusively via leaps and bounds.

Now, scientists in Germany have replicated the jumping motion of a kangaroo in a robot.


One of the keys to a kangaroo's jump is its highly specialized achilles tendon.

"In the artificial kangaroo, we realised the function of the natural Achilles tendon by means of an elastic spring element made of rubber," Heinrich Frontzek, head of corporate communications at Festo, explained in a press release.

The robot features advanced technologies that propel a powerful jump while enabling balance and flexibility.

Frontzek and the research team at Festo hopes the robo-roo will lead to new and even more complex developments in robotic kinetics.

Trash-talking Scrabble player is robot named Victor - Video

Students at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh have created a Scrabble-playing robot who is quite remarkable, not because it plays well but because it does not play well, and talks with all the human signs of a sneering winner and a sore loser.

This robot is Victor, who has been sitting in the school's computer science lounge playing Scrabble with any human who can accommodate Victor's jokes and jibes.

The robot was designed and developed under the guidance of Carnegie Mellon under the supervision of Reid Simmons, a robotics professor who began working with Victor in 2009, as a test for how robots can interact with humans in a more pal-like way.

The concern is that, if robots are to interact with humans in instances such as home assistance, the goal in robotics should be to design machines that can interact more successfully than toasters and blenders.

Victor's head is a box-shaped screen on a fiberglass body. The Scrabble table consists of a touch-screen Scrabble board where people move tiles by swiping their fingers across the screen.

"Victor sits at one end of the table; he is a robot with a face and a body, no arms, a fiberglass shell; he can look around," said Simmons.

Victor looks at the board, and he looks at people.

Victor's remarks include these one-liners: "Since you're human, I guess you think that is a pretty good move."

"Your word scored less than a CMU student at a party."

For all his clever remarks, Victor is a poor player, incapable of imaging a strategy, two or three moves ahead, and its poor show of Scrabble skills, is by design.

The robot's range of emotional responses was helped by Michael Chemers, a former CMU drama professor who shaped the robot's personality.

Interestingly, some years back, Chemers wrote in his blog about social robotics.

"I am convinced now that performance theory is going to be of greater importance as the field develops…"

"Social intelligence is the reason why human cognition is so much more advanced over the other primates, and it is heavily imbricated with performance and mimesis."

"Machine intelligence will have to develop similarly; I'm proud and excited to be involved with this."

HyQ the most advanced "Hydraulically actuated Quadruped" robot - Video

HyQ is the latest attention-getter in robotics, a torque-controlled robot that takes its name from its being a "Hydraulically actuated Quadruped."

The robot is from the Department of Advanced Robotics at the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT).

The video demonstrates their progress includes notes that "there are no physical springs in the legs or body of HyQ; all compliance results from active adjustment of stiffness and damping by software."

A detailed look at HyQ in Friday's IEEE Spectrum says that though HyQ was already introduced in the past, where its engineers taught the system some moves, a smarter HyQ is back "with even more tricks."

Claudio Semini, the team leader, provided a history of their work on his web page, saying,

"After extensive testing of a first leg prototype in 2008 and 2009, the first prototype of HyQ was operational in 2010. Since then, we have been gradually improving the robot hardware and software and we implemented several locomotion modes."

Namely, the team has given HyQ the ability to move with more versatility and maintain greater autonomy.

The quadruped can walk, trot, and run, and is showing a range of motion skills that make it possible to negotiate difficult conditions.

HyQ motion skills include planned motion over uneven terrain to highly dynamic motions. Some highlights of the robot's skills are: walking over uneven terrain, balancing under disturbances, surviving being slammed into by a boxing bag, performing a flying trot, squat jump, and shows of adjustable stiffness and damping.

More information: HyQ the more advanced quadraped robot

Spiderman robot spins draglines to cross open space

Spider-inspired robots carrying payloads descend on their draglines. 

Credit: Wang, et al. ©2014 IOP Publishing Ltd

Inspired by spiders' abilities to produce draglines and use them to move across open space, researchers have designed and built a robot that can do the same.

Similar to Spiderman shooting a dragline from his wrist, the robot produces a sticky plastic thread that it attaches to a surface, such as a wall or tree branch.

Then the robot descends the dragline, while simultaneously continuing to produce as much line as needed.

The mechanism could enable robots to move from any solid surface into open space without the need for flying.

The researchers, Liyu Wang, Utku Culha, and Fumiya Iida, at the Bio-Inspired Robotics Lab at ETH Zurich in Switzerland, have published a paper on the spider-inspired robot in a recent issue of Bioinspiration & Biomimetics.

"The dragline-forming robot is interesting because it implements a new concept: that a robot may accomplish a task by building structures to assist it," Wang told reporters.

"It is advantageous because the robot can flexibly vary the structure (in this case, the thickness of the dragline) according to environments or tasks that cannot be anticipated."


At first glance, the robot doesn't look much like a spider, since it is about 3 times larger and made of an assortment of metal, wires, and onboard batteries.

The source of its dragline material is a stick of thermoplastic adhesive (TPA), which functions similarly to a glue stick in a hot glue gun.

When the robot is ready to produce a dragline, the solid TPA stick is pushed through a heating cavity and out of a nozzle.

Two wheels located just beyond the nozzle help elongate and guide the dragline in the desired direction. The robot can form draglines with a thickness varying from 1 to 5 mm.

Since the hot TPA dragline is sticky, it can adhere to the solid surface from where the robot starts its journey into open space.

Once the dragline is stuck on the surface, the robot can begin descending down the dragline while producing more of it, mimicking the way that spiders fall down their draglines in a controlled way.

While spiders use a fourth pair of legs to move down their draglines, the robot relies on its two wheels for locomotion down the dragline.

More information: Liyu Wang, et al. "A dragline-forming mobile robot inspired by spiders." Bioinspir. Biomim. 9 (2014) 016006 (10pp). DOI: 10.1088/1748-3182/9/1/016006

Robot with brush, water, wiper tackles solar panel cleaning

Credit: Sinfonia Technology (previously known as Shinko Electric Company)

At large-scale solar plants, keeping the surfaces of solar panels free from dust, sand and bird droppings is not just a matter of finicky housekeeping.

It can be a matter of plant profitability. Dirty panels lower power generation efficiencies.

Bird droppings on panels, for example, block the sunlight.

A Tokyo-based company has a solution. Sinfonia Technology announced late last month that it has developed a robot with camera and sensors that can move autonomously and clean solar panels at large-scale solar power plants.

Sinfonia's robot has a distinction in being "autonomous" in that, rather than tethered to rails, the robot is able to move from panel to panel, to tackle the panels' dirt and debris.

The robot is equipped with scrub brush, wiper and detergent; and also sprinkles water stored in its tank. The robot can work in the dark; it has LEDs, having wavelengths in the infrared range.

Aside from autonomy, another key distinction is that Sinfonia's robot can handle the fact that not all solar panels are alike; the robot is designed to tackle panels that tilt in different ways.

To clean tilted solar panels on a mounting system, the robot can move on a planes tilted at 5-30°. If there is a gap between panels, the robot can go over a gap of 50cm or less and can deal with a height difference of 30cm or less.

The robot is powered by a battery and is capable of wireless data transmission. A tablet can be used to check the robot's status—to check if, for example, it has enough water or to check the battery charge remaining.

Sinfonia Technology, in promoting the benefits of its panel-cleaning robots, also noted cost advantages over using manpower for cleaning panels.

Generally, experts say that, for large-scale solar panel installations, attention to keeping the panels clean makes sense.

Earlier this year, however, a study out of the Jacobs School of Engineering at University of California San Diego, in quantifying losses of electricity output due to dirty solar panels, found panels that hadn't been cleaned, or rained on, for 145 days during a summer drought in California lost on average a little less than 0.05 percent of their overall efficiency per day.

The overall conclusion was, that cleaning the panels often was not worth the cost, according to the study's engineers.

They cautioned, though, that their study focused on smaller systems and that, for very large installations, economies of scale may mean that washing panels was worth it.

Sharp, meanwhile, is another Japan-based company showing interest in devising automatic ways to clean solar panels.

MOBISERV: European funded Robot Companion for the Elderly

A highly customisable robot companion designed by EU-funded researchers to offer support to older people is currently being presented across Europe and could find its way into people's homes within two or three years, potentially greatly enhancing quality of life for older citizens and people with memory or mobility problems.

The robot, a mobile wheeled semi-humanoid figure equipped with cameras, sensors, audio and a touch screen interface, can remind users to take their medicine, suggest they have their favourite drink or prompt them to go for a walk or visit friends if they haven't been out for a while.

As part of a larger smart-home environment that can include smart clothing to monitor vital signs, the system can monitor user's health and safety, and alert emergency services if something is amiss.

'Across Europe, populations are growing older, and many people need care in some way. Care may be provided by professionals at home or in a care facility, but often the caregiver is the person's partner or another family member.

What we are seeing is that carers may also need additional support themselves, especially if they are also older - our vision is that technology can provide it,' explains Mr Herjan van den Heuvel of Smart Homes (Eng), the Dutch Expertise Centre on Home Automation and Smart Living, which oversaw the robot's development.

The median age across the European Union's current 28 Member States, which was around 41.2 years in 2011, is projected to rise to 47.6 years by 2060, while the number of people aged 65 and over will almost double to make up 29.5 % of the population, according to Eurostat's latest population projections.

Meanwhile, the percentage of people aged 80 and above is expected to triple by 2060.

With age-related illnesses also set to increase in line with that trend, more and more people across Europe will need care and assistance if they are to maintain their quality of life, stay healthy and avoid social exclusion.

Developed over 33 months by a consortium of research institutes, universities and technology companies in seven European countries - Finland, France, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the United Kingdom - the companion robot helps address those issues.

It is just one of several results of an EU-funded project titled 'An integrated intelligent home environment for the provision of health, nutrition and well-being services to older adults' ( MOBISERV), which received EUR 2.75 million in research funding from the European Commission.

JAXA Launches Talking 'Robot Astronaut' Kirobo In HTV-4

A Japanese H-2B rocket launches the HTV-4 (Kounotori 4) robotic cargo ship toward the International Space Station on Aug. 4, 2013 Japan Standard Time (Aug. 3, 2013 EDT/GMT) from Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan.

Credit: NASA TV/JAXA

Call it one giant leap for robot kind: A small talking robot launched into space aboard a Japanese cargo ship Saturday (Aug. 3) to keep astronauts company on the International Space Station.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) launched the humanoid Kirobo "robot astronaut" into orbit from the Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan as part of nearly 3.5 tons of supplies and equipment to resupply the space station's six-person crew.

Kirobo was put through a series of zero-gravity and other safety tests before it was deemed ready for flight. Image posted June 27, 2013.

Credit: Kibo Robot Project

Kirobo was packed inside Japan's unmanned HTV-4 (Kounotori 4) cargo ship when it launched into orbit atop the country's H-2B rocket at 3:48 p.m. EDT (1948 GMT), though it was early Sunday morning (Aug. 4) Japan Standard Time at the time of liftoff. The HTV-4 spacecraft will arrive at the space station on Aug. 9.

The Kirobo space robot is a diminutive mechanical person just 13 inches (34 centimeters) tall built to converse with astronauts on long space voyages.

The robot, and its ground-based counterpart Mirata, are part of the Kibo Robot Project to study human-robot interaction technology.

Kirobo speaks Japanese and is expected to talk to JAXA astronaut Koichi Wakata when he arrives at the space station in November.

Kibo, which means "hope" in Japanese, is the name of Japan's research laboratory module aboard the International Space Station. The name of Kirobo is a merging of Kibo and robot, project officials have said.

Kirobo will take part in the first robot-to-human conversation with veteran Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata when they are both onboard the space station

Advanced Humanoid 'Atlas' Robot Unveiled - Video

Boston Dynamics developed the robot for DARPA. It will compete in the DARPA Robotics Challenge Trials at the Homestead-Miami Speedway in December 2013. 

Advancing the technology to assist humans in disaster response is the goal.

CheetahCub: EPFL's Biorobotics Lab robot that runs like a cat - Video

Thanks to the design of its legs, which faithfully mimic feline morphology, EPFL's four-legged "cheetah-cub robot" shares the advantages of its biological model: it is small, light and runs very fast. 

In the long term, this type of machine, which is still in an experimental stage, could be used in search and rescue missions or for exploration.  Credit: EPFL

Thanks to its legs, whose design faithfully reproduces feline morphology, EPFL's 4-legged 'cheetah-cub robot' has the same advantages as its model: It is small, light and fast.

Even though it doesn't have a head, you can still tell what kind of animal it is: the robot is definitely modeled upon a cat.

Developed by EPFL's Biorobotics Laboratory (Biorob), the "cheetah-cub robot," a small-size quadruped prototype robot, is described in an article appearing today in the International Journal of Robotics Research.

The purpose of the platform is to encourage research in biomechanics; its particularity is the design of its legs, which make it very fast and stable.

Robots developed from this concept could eventually be used in search and rescue missions or for exploration.

This robot is the fastest in its category, namely in normalized speed for small quadruped robots under 30Kg.

During tests, it demonstrated its ability to run nearly seven times its body length in one second.

Although not as agile as a real cat, it still has excellent auto-stabilization characteristics when running at full speed or over a course that included disturbances such as small steps.

In addition, the robot is extremely light, compact, and robust and can be easily assembled from materials that are inexpensive and readily available.

Faithful reproduction
The machine's strengths all reside in the design of its legs. The researchers developed a new model with this robot, one that is based on the meticulous observation and faithful reproduction of the feline leg.

The number of segments – three on each leg – and their proportions are the same as they are on a cat. Springs are used to reproduce tendons, and actuators – small motors that convert energy into movement – are used to replace the muscles.

"This morphology gives the robot the mechanical properties from which cats benefit, that's to say a marked running ability and elasticity in the right spots, to ensure stability," explains Alexander Sprowitz, a Biorob scientist. "The robot is thus naturally more autonomous."

Segway Mounted Firefighting Robot Paints 3D Thermal Imaging Pictures

Engineers in the UCSD Coordinated Robotics Lab, have developed new image processing techniques for rapid exploration and characterization of structural fires by small Segway-like robotic vehicles.

A sophisticated on-board software system takes the thermal data recorded by the robot's small infrared camera and maps it onto a 3D scene constructed from the images taken by a pair of stereo RGB cameras.

FFR is a robotic scout for firefighters developed by the Coordinated Robotics Lab at UC San Diego.

This allows small mobile robotic vehicles to create a virtual reality picture that includes a 3D map and temperature data that can be used immediately by first responders as the robot drives through a building on fire.

The research is part of a plan to develop novel robotic scouts that can help firefighters to assist in residential and commercial blazes.

Researchers will present their results at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation to be held from May 31 to June 5, 2014, in Hong Kong.

The robots will map and photograph the interior of burning buildings by using stereo vision.

They will use data gathered from various sensors to characterize the state of a fire, including temperatures, volatile gases, and structural integrity while looking for survivors.

WABIAN robot from Japan steps closer to human walk

Researchers designing adult bipedal robots have faced a challenge in limitations in a robot's walking pattern.

They seek ways to improve on designs to have robots move more naturally.

Improving the walking function has been the goal of researchers at the Humanoid Robotics Institute at Waseda University in Japan.

Last month, led by Professor Atsuo Takanishi, the team presented the results of their efforts at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) in Germany.

What they achieved more closely replicates normal human foot movements than before.

The Institute's researchers turned to their humanoid robot, WABIAN-2R (WAseda BIpedal humANoid - No. 2 Refined), which already had a flexible pelvis, and stretched knees.

WABIAN-2R's feet also had the distinction of a curving arch and flexible toes, landing heel-first and lifting off at its toes, noted the IEEE Spectrum report.

The robot is under 5 feet tall (148 cm), and weighs 64 kg (141 pounds), with 41 degrees of freedom.

Their work on WABIAN has been in step with the Japan government's concern about technology for an aging population, to preserve a decent quality of life for the aging, despite limitations on freely moving about that may result from old age.

The team stated in the past that a robot as "a human's partner" would provide daily robotic assistance, and that kind of application was more in their line of view than an industrial robot earmarked for highly specified and constrained applications.

To accomplish the task, robots have to be able to move in indoor and outdoor conditions, they said, and biped humanoid robots are best suited for this.

They also noted that aside from robots as human assistants, there was a need for evaluation methods for assistive equipment, dependent on human body measurements.

A biped humanoid robot optimized to serve as a human motion simulator is a step in the right direction.



In their latest workup of the WABIAN robot, now called WABIAN-2RIII.the researchers redesigned lower legs, after studying humans walking.

They analyzed the average size and movement range in humans, and analyzed motion-capture data to decide on the best performance requirements.

CSA Dextre Robot: Refuels Mock Satellite on ISS

Dextre, the Canadian Space Agency's robotic "handyman" on board the International Space Station (ISS), made space history last night by successfully refueling a mock satellite on the exterior of the station.

Topping off the satellite's fuel tank was the pivotal task in the experimental Robotic Refueling Mission (RRM), a collaboration between the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) to demonstrate how robots could service and refuel satellites on location in space to extend their useful lifetime.

For RRM, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center designed a module simulating a satellite, as well as custom power tools for Dextre.

Since RRM operations began in 2011, Dextre has performed three series of tests to show how a robot could service satellites, which were designed never to be opened in space.

In this latest set of operations, Dextre removed two safety caps, cut through two sets of thin retaining wires, and finally transferred a small quantity of liquid ethanol into the washing machine-sized module.

The latter maneuver was particularly tricky, since handling liquids in space required perfect precision to prevent dangerous leaks.

The specialized tools built for the job allowed Dextre to seal the connections between the tool and the fuel valve to eliminate the possibility of leaks.

Adding to the level of difficulty was the fuel hose itself, which adds additional forces that tend to pull Dextre's hands.

It took the combined skills of the experienced NASA and CSA robotics controllers to pull off this first-of-a-kind space refueling demonstration successfully and without any mishap.

RRM is a significant step in pioneering robotic technologies and techniques in the field of satellite servicing-saving ailing space hardware by refueling or refurbishing them before they become space debris.

The ability to refuel satellites in space could one day save satellite operators from the significant costs of building and launching new replacement satellites.