#hexapedal

The Botanist

Hikami :3

Ariel (1996) by IS Robotics (iRobot), Somerville, MA. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and the Office of Naval Research contracted IS Robotics to develop a minesweeping robot to work underwater, where legs, not wheels, are an advantage. They studied the way ghost crabs walk in surf zones despite the pull of tides and currents. It has one advantage over crabs, its flexible legs allow it to walk even if it gets turned upside down. “Just below the surface of a reservoir outside Boston, robot Ariel walks sideways like the crab it is patterned on. A machine with a serious purpose, it is designed to scuttle from the shore through the surf to search for mines on the ocean floor. Ariel was funded by the Defense Advanced research Projects Agency and built by iRobot, a company founded by MIT robot guru Rodney Brooks. Inspired by research on crabs at Robert Full's lab at Berkeley, Ariel takes advantage of the animal's stability - and improves on it. Unlike real crabs, which must struggle to right themselves if a wave flips them on their backs, the robot simply reorients itself and keeps walking with its body upside down. But despite its abilities, the technician in charge of the machine, Ed Williams, supervises Ariel's excursions with great anxiety - the machine still gets stuck when it encounters big rocks. "Robots can't do much now," he says, philosophically, "but airplanes couldn't do much in 1910.” ” – Robo Sapiens, by Peter Menzel, and Faith D'Aluisio.

Hermes (1991) by IS Robotics (iRobot), Somerville, MA. Hermes was one of several early 1990s prototypes whose design was inspired by insects, and was conceived for space exploration. With six legs it can navigate a variety of challenging environments.

Grendel (1992) by Rodney Brooks, Colin Angle, and Helen Greiner, IS Robotics (iRobot), Somerville, MA. Designed for spaceflight and planetary exploration, “The rovers had to weigh only half a kilogram, and they required a new onboard computer architecture. At the end of the summer of 1992 we had three good test rovers. By this time Colin Angle and I had been joined at our company by Helen Greiner, another former Artificial Intelligence Lab student. Helen did mechanical design, Colin electrical, and I wrote the software. It was intense work but fantastically satisfying. … Our flight vehicle was installed in the payload of a kinetic kill vehicle and left there for some days, with no communications, to simulate the time it takes to get to lunar orbit. The kill vehicle itself had been modified with landing legs. Everyone was evacuated from the test site, lest the rocket motors blow up. A countdown happened just like a real one. The kill vehicle lifted off, and hovered in the Earth’s gravity, six times what it would encounter on the Moon. It automatically flew over to a mocked-up lunar surface, then descended and landed with only a minor thump. The first major hurdle of the mission had gone without a hitch. … The robot had its legs all folded up to minimize its volume so that it could fit into the cocoon. To get out it had to use one of its folded legs to unlatch a retainer holding the pod together. The robot realized that its mission had started right on cue, again with no explicit control from the mission overseers. … Grendel, the robot, untangled its legs. It stood. It started walking away from the lander, looking for a place to scoop up some soil with its underbelly shovel. The control room crowd went wild. This scheme actually worked!” – ROBOT: The future of flesh and machines, by Rodney A. Brooks.

Hermes II (1991) by IS Robotics (iRobot), Somerville, MA. Like Genghis, Hermes is a hexapedal robot with a mobility system based on insects. A Hermes II robot, known as Miguel, was used by the Mobile Robot laboratory at the Georgia Institute of Technology to study models of the praying mantis. “Miguel wanders around our lab, responding to colored boxes used to represent a predator, prey, mate, and hiding-place. When the execution begins, the hunger, fear, and sex-drive levels are all zero. Therefore, if a predator is detected, Miguel freezes, regardless of whether there is prey or mate visible. Furthermore, if Miguel sees both prey and mate, but no predator, it will move toward the prey, since the hunger increases faster than the sex-drive. If Miguel has not eaten for a long time, then its hunger level will increase beyond the static level that fear is set at when a predator is visible. In this case, if both predator and prey are visible, the robot will move toward the prey even though there is a predator in sight. This is true when the robot has not mated for a long time.” – Implementing Schema-theoretic Models of Animal Behavior in Robotic Systems, by Khaled Ali and Ronald Arkin.

Reagan Robot by Dan Mathias (1989), FutureBots, West Palm Beach, Florida. Named after president Ronald Reagan, this hexapod robot was created in the late 1980s for a college project. Originally, it had a 9 inch CRT and an 8088 computer, retrofitted in 2009 with new hardware including a Pentium processor, solar panel and a colour display. Sensors include a pair of video cameras and four Kodak ultrasonic sonars. Its mechanically linked wooden legs are cranked by a motor driving the middle leg on each side, enabling it to walk 2 to 3 miles per hour.

WonderBorg (2000) from Tiger Electronics, Vernon Hills, IL. This beetle-like hexapod robot was produced in cooperation between Bandai and the Japan Science and Technology agency (JST). Designed as an entry-level robot for use in classrooms, JST also developed an accompanying educational game called, rather unimaginatively, "JST Robot Game" where students program the WonderBorg to navigate a maze. A clever feature of the WonderBorg is that it’s reconfigurable, with different gearings favouring torque or speed, and wheels to replace the robot's usual hexapedal design. Left and right motors enable the WonderBorg to scuttle forward or reverse, and turn while moving or rotate in place. Sensors include left and right tactile antennae, a light sensor, and a floor sensor to detect the presence of a drop. It can be controlled via its infrared receiver using a PC with Bandai’s RobotWorks software. “Today, young people are not interested in maintaining much concern about science and technology which poses a significant problem. … [WonderBorg] is so designed [to] allow easy robot assembly and programming. Therefore, even grade school pupil and junior high school students can go through overall fabrication of things covering electronics, machine and software. … every child can start robot study and deepen robot-related knowledge easily at school and at home.” – What is [JST Robot Game] ?.