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Events such as natural disasters, military actions, and public safety threats have led to an increased need for robust robots — especially ones that can travel across complex terrain in any dimension. The ability to scale vertical building surfaces or other structures offers unique capabilities in military applications such as urban reconnaissance, sensor deployment, and setting up urban network nodes. SRI's novel clamping technology, called compliant electroadhesion, has enabled the first application of this technology to wall-climbing robots that can help with these situations.  As the name implies, electroadhesion is an electrically controllable adhesion technology. It involves inducing electrostatic charges on a wall substrate using a power supply connected to compliant pads situated on the moving robot. SRI has demonstrated robust clamping to common building materials including glass, wood, metal, concrete, etc. with clamping pressures in the range of 0.5 to 1.5 N per square cm of clamp (0.8 to 2.3 pounds per square inch). The technology works on conductive and non-conductive substrates, smooth or rough materials, and through dust and debris. Unlike conventional adhesives or dry adhesives, the electroadhesion can be modulated or turned off for mobility or cleaning. The technology uses a very small amount of power (on the order of 20 microwatts/Newton weight held) and shows the ability to repeatably clamp to wall substrates that are heavily covered in dust or other debris.

“The ability to harness and control the power of bacterial motion is an important requirement for further development of hybrid biomechanical systems driven by microorganisms," said Argonne physicist and principal investigator Igor Aronson. “In this system, the gears are a million times more massive than the bacteria."

Commenter Cynox was browsing through the 137 years of Popular Science magazine which are now available online, and he noticed this robot in the September 1984 issue. Called Odex I, it was developed by a (now apparently defunct) company called Odetics. Odex was six and a half feet tall, had six legs, and was fully capable of walking. Although it only weighed 370 pounds, each of its legs could lift 400 pounds. It could dead lift some 2100 pounds, and carry 900 pounds while walking at normal speed (which was about 18 inches per second). Odex used a tripod gait, and the fishbowl thing on top contained sensors that helped it avoid obstacles. It was one of the first robots with an onboard computer that helped coordinate all of its limbs. Since the limbs could articulate themselves in several directions independently, Odex was able to rapidly change its limb configuration to squeeze through tight spaces, move quickly, or lift stuff. It was able to climb into the back of a truck through a combination of automated step behaviors and teleoperation, which was pretty damn good for 1984.

I remember when, a decade ago, Kevin Warwick, a professor at the University of Reading, in the U.K., implanted a radio chip in his own arm. The feat caused quite a stir. The implant allowed him to operate doors, lights, and computers without touching anything. On a second version of the project he could even control an electric wheelchair and produce artificial sensations in his brain using the implanted chip. Warwick had become, in his own words, a cyborg. The idea of a cyborg -- a human-machine hybrid -- is common in science fiction and although the term dates back to the 1960s it still generates a lot of curiosity. I often hear people asking, When will we become cyborgs? When will humans and machines merge? Although some researchers might have specific time frames in mind, I think a better answer is: It's already happening. When we look back at the history of technology, we tend to see distinct periods -- before the PC and after the PC, before the Internet and after the Internet, and so forth -- but in reality most technological advances unfold slowly and gradually. That's particularly true with the technologies that are allowing us to modify and enhance our bodies.

Scientists from Columbia University, Arizona State University, the University of Michigan, and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have created a robot that’s just 4 nanometers wide. And no, it doesn’t have flashing lights, video cameras or wheels. It does, however, have four legs, and the ability to start, move, turn, and stop. Descendants of the molecular nanobot, or “spider,” could someday be used to treat diseases such as cancer or diabetes. The team built the spider by starting with a protein called streptavidin, that conveniently has four symmetrically-placed binding pockets for a chemical called biotin. The legs were made from four strands of biotin-labeled DNA, which were bound to the pockets. Three of the legs were made from enzymatic DNA, which is a type that binds to and then dissociates (cuts away) from other particular sequences of DNA. Its fourth leg was made from what the researchers call a “start strand” of DNA - it keeps the spider tethered to its starting site, until it’s released.

If you're a long time reader, you may remember our mention in 2008 of Emanuel Diamant's provocatively titled paper "I'm sorry to say, but your understanding of image processing fundamentals is absolutely wrong" (PDF). Diamant is back with a presentation created for the 3rd Israeli Conference on Robotics, with the equally provocative title: "It's Cognitive Robotics, Stupid" (PDF). In it he laments the lack of agreed upon definitions for words like intelligence, knowledge, and information that are crucial to the development of robotics.

There is a long history of attempts at replicating neural systems either in software or in conventional semiconductors, such as the FACETS project (not to mention the creation of conventional logic gates from lab-grown biological neurons!) According to a USC Viterbi news release, researchers at the BioRC project, whose goal is research on an artificial cortex, have succeeded in creating a functioning synapse from carbon nanotubes. The new research was presented by Alice C. Parker in the paper "A biomimetic fabricated carbon nanotube synapse for prosthetic applications" at the Life Science Systems and Applications Workshop in April 2011. (unfortunately the actual paper is behind a paywall but the abstract is readable). An earlier paper, "A Biomimetic Carbon Nanotube Synapse Circuit", describes the proposed design of synapse including schematics and comparison with biological neural

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania are developing algorithms to enable robots to learn to read like a human toddler. Using a Willow Garage PR2 robot (nicknamed Graspy), the researchers demonstrate the ability for a robot to learn to read anything from simple signs to full-length warnings. Graspy recognizes the shapes of letters and associates them with sounds. Part of the computer vision challenge is reading hundreds of different fonts. More information is available in a Psyorg article and from the ROS website.

The Berkeley-based startup is developing exciting new technology that is truly the stuff of comic books and, formerly, of science fiction. Specifically, the company is making wearable, artifi­cially intelligent bionic devices that it calls “exoskeletons”. This has taken shape in two significant forms: eLEGS and HULC. Both of which you can see (as well as an interview with Berkeley Bionics CEO Eythor Bender) in the accompanying video.

IROS 2011 takes place later this month in San Francisco (25th ~ 30th), and as usual there’s so many interesting projects being presented that attendees won’t be able to see them all. We’ve looked at the schedule and will highlight some of them, beginning with this robot developed at the Graduate School of Information Science & Technology, The University of Tokyo, Japan.

The Special Project for Earthquake Disaster Mitigation in Urban Areas (2002-2006) conducted by the Earthquake Research Institute at the University of Tokyo. The project revealed the detailed geometry of the subducted Philippine Sea plate (PSP) beneath the Tokyo Metropolitan area and improved information needed for seismic hazards analyses of the largest urban centers. In 2007 the Special Project for Earthquake Disaster Mitigation in Tokyo Metropolitan Area started focusing at  the vertical proximity of the PSP down going lithospheric plate and the risks for the greater Tokyo urban region that has a population of 42 million and is the center of approximately 40 % of the nation's activities. A M 7 or greater (M 7+) earthquake in this region at present has high potential to produce devastating loss of life and property with even greater global economic repercussions. The Central Disaster Management Council of Japan estimated that a great earthquake in the region might cause 11,000 fatalities and 112 trillion yen (1 trillion US$) economic loss. The Earthquake Research Committee of Japan estimated a probability of 70 % in 30 years for a great earthquake in this region.