Octoarm: Flexible 'Tentacle Robots' Could Aid Planetary Exploration

Flexible 'tentacle robots' can stack cones and perform other complex tasks. 

Credit: Ian Walker, Clemson University

Space robots are about to get a whole lot sleeker and slinkier.

Researchers are developing new types of robotic systems inspired by elephant trunks, octopus arms and giraffe tongues.

These flexible, maneuverable "tentacle robots" could have a variety of space applications, from inspecting hard-to-reach gear on the International Space Station to exploring crevices on Mars, scientists say.

"Those are all things that would be difficult for a conventional robot to do," robotic engineer Ian Walker of Clemson University said in April during a presentation with NASA's Future In-Space Operations (FISO) working group.

Robotic systems inspired by elephant trunks, octopus arms and other structures found in nature could have a variety of space applications, experts say.

Credit: Ian Walker, Clemson University

The conventional robots to which Walker refers are mainstays of assembly lines around the world.

They tend to be anthropomorphic, often modeled after the human arm, and are built to do one thing and do it well, over and over again.

These machines perform precision tasks in highly structured environments, with limited flexibility and adaptability, Walker said.

"What we want to do is something rather different than that," he said. The goal is to develop "something that can adapt its shape more completely down its structure, and to be able to adapt to environments you haven't seen before. So it's the non-factory scenario, in many ways."

Such snakelike robots could aid spaceflight and exploration, Walker said.

Engineering antennas into solar panels

Researchers at EPFL have managed to combine antennas and solar cells to work together with unprecedented efficiency in a near future. 

This is a first step towards more compact and more lightweight satellites.

The technology could also be deployed in the autonomous antenna systems used in the aftermath of natural disasters.

Traditionally, telecommunication antennas and solar cells have never really worked well together, as they have to function independently of each other in order to avoid interference.

This has an impact on the weight and size of satellites - the surface area has to be large enough for both antenna systems, which emit and receive data, and solar panels, which supply the electricity.

For his master project, Philippe Dreyer, who is part of Julien Perruisseau-Carrier Group, has been working on ways to combine solar cells and antennas.

Julien Perruisseau-Carrier

In collaboration with the Transparent Conductive Oxides group (TCOs) which is part of the Photovoltaics and Thin Film Electronics Laboratory (PV-Lab), he has developed a mixed surface that allows both the antenna and the photovoltaic cell to perform extremely efficiently.

This could substantially reduce the volume, weight and cost of satellites but not only that. Mobile and autonomous communications systems are often necessary to keep in contact with people in the wake of a natural disaster.

This new technology would make these systems lighter and therefore easier to carry around. "Our device could also support flexible implementation.

It could be folded up so that it isn't deployed until the relief area has been reached," states Julien Perruisseau-Carrier, who supervised the project.

More information: "Copper and Transparent-Conductor Reflectarray Elements on Thin-Film Solar Cell Panels." Philippe Dreyer, Monica Morales-Masis, Sylvain Nicolay, Christophe Ballif, Julien Perruisseau-Carrier. arXiv:1311.4737 [physics.optics] arxiv.org/abs/1311.4737

HyQ - IIT's Hydraulic Quadruped Robot - YouTube

This video shows HyQ in some serious action.

It's not quite an invasion, but in recent years we've seen a small parade of quadruped robots strutting out of labs around the world.

In the United States, Boston Dynamics has introduced its now-famous BigDog and, more recently, a bigger bot named AlphaDog.

Early this year, we wrote about FROG, a prototype built in China, and just a few weeks ago we described the SQ1 robot, a South Korean project.

Now it's time to unveil the latest addition to this pack: HyQ is a robot developed at the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT), in Genoa.

The machine, built by a team led by Professor Darwin Caldwell, is a hydraulic quadruped (Hence, hy-q) designed to perform highly dynamic tasks such as running and jumping.

Legged locomotion remains one of the biggest challenges in robotics, and the Italian team hopes that their robot can become a platform for research and collaboration among different groups a kind of open source BigDog.

Technics
HyQ's trunk is made of stainless steel and a folded, 3mm thick sheet of aluminum alloy. The 1 m (3.28 feet) long, 50 cm (1.64 feet) wide and 98 cm (3.21 feet) tall robot weighs 90 kg with the hydraulic power supply on board, and 70 kg with external hydraulics.

Hydraulic actuation offers high power density, high torque output and velocity. It also allows for high bandwidth torque control.

The downside is that the components are still rather bulky and not very energy efficient, but that is something the researchers at IIT's Department of Advanced Robotics intend to change.

They also want to make HyQ power-autonomous, endow it with a head with a built in stereo camera and a laser range finder and give it an arm with a gripper.

Growing brain is particularly flexible

The brain is continuously changing. Neuronal structures are not hard-wired, but are modified with every learning step and every experience. Certain areas of the brain of a newborn baby are particularly flexible, however.

In animal experiments, the development of the visual cortex can be strongly influenced in the first months of life, for example, by different visual stimuli.

Nerve cells in the visual cortex of fully-grown animals divide up the processing of information from the eyes: Some “see” only the left eye, others only the right. Cells of right or left specialisation each lie close to one another in small groups, called columns.

The researchers showed that during growth, these structures are not simply inflated — columns do not become larger but their number increases. Neither do new columns form from new nerve cells. The number of nerve cells remains almost unchanged, a large part of the growth of the visual cortex can be attributed to an increase in the number of non-neuronal cells.

These changes can be explained by the fact that existing cells change their preference for the right or the left eye. In addition, another of the researchers’ observations also points to such a restructuring: The arrangement of the columns changes. While the pattern initially looks stripy, these stripes dissolve in time and the pattern becomes more irregular.

“This is an enormous achievement by the brain — undertaking such a restructuring while continuing to function,” says Wolfgang Keil, scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization Göttingen and first author of the study.

“There is no engineer behind this conducting the planning, the process must generate itself.” The researchers used mathematical models and computer simulations to investigate how the brain could proceed to achieve this restructuring.

On the one hand, the brain tries to keep the neighbourhood relations in the visual cortex as uniform as possible. On the other, the development of the visual cortex is determined by the visual process itself — cells which have once been stimulated more strongly by the left or right eye try to maintain this particular calling.

The researchers’ model explains the formation of columns by taking both these tendencies into account. The scientists showed that when the tissue grows and the size of the columns is kept constant, the columns in the computer model change exactly as they had observed in their experimental studies on the visual cortex of the cat: The stripes dissolve into a zigzag pattern and thus become more irregular. In this way, the researchers provide a mathematical basis which realistically describes how the visual cortex could restructure during the growth phase.

Ultra Thin Flexible Solar Panels

There's no doubt solar energy is a compelling alternative to fossil fuels, but implementing it has traditionally meant installing the standard, costly and ungainly solar panel.

SRS Energy's dual-purpose roof tiles offer one way to get around that requirement; now another comes in the form of thin, flexible solar sheets that can be integrated with architectural building materials.
Iowa-based PowerFilm makes low-cost foldable and rollable solar panels in which the solar technology is monolithically integrated in a polyimide substrate that's flexible and durable, yet as thin as 0.025mm. With an absorber layer made of amorphous silicon, PowerFilm solar panels use as little as 1 percent of the amount of silicon used in traditional solar panels; they're also cadmium-free.

Since 2005 the company has been using its technology to manufacture solar field shelter tarps for military applications, and now it's developed the ability to combine it with standard building materials as well. Standing seam metal roofing, single-ply elastomeric membrane roofing and architectural fabric can all be combined with PowerFilm's flexible paneling for a variety of low-cost, building-integrated solar applications.

In such uses, the electricity generated by the solar panels is stored in local batteries and converted to 110 AC for general wall outlet use or—in some cases—used directly for low-voltage lighting systems. The buildings can be either off-grid or grid-connected. PowerFilm recently completed a 10-kilowatt demonstration and evaluation project on metal roofing, and is now in the final stages of developing the technology.

PowerFilm also makes a variety of portable solar chargers—one of which won second place in the Mobile CE Fashion & Lifestyle Products competition at CTIA Wireless 2009—and it manufactures for OEM and custom orders as well. The lightweight and durable nature of its thin paneling, meanwhile, seems eminently suitable for use in the developing world. One to get in on early for the application of your choice...?

Astronauts' Security Blankets

Giant Moon Blanket Could Protect Astronauts

Solar flares and powerful cosmic rays can shred DNA and increase cancer risks for future astronauts who might make long-term stays on future moon missions.

As NASA considers this issue in its plans for a return the moon by 2020, a team of college students has proposed a solution: giant blankets.

Engineering students at North Carolina State University (NCSU) designed a "lunar texshield," a layered blanket made of lightweight polymer material. The outer surface of the shield is a flexible array of solar cells that generate electricity. Underneath, a layer of radiation shielding deflects or absorbs incoming particles, to better protect astronauts in lunar outposts.

The students entered their design in a NASA-sponsored aerospace engineering competition for college students that will begin in June.

Robotic Aquatic Flying Penguins!