PLANNING AND LEADERSHIP FOR A BETTER WORLD
PLANNING AND LEADERSHIP FOR A BETTER WORLD You’d like to build a robot? Then why not mimic one of the most successful creatures ever to walk—or scurry across—the Earth? Like, say, the cockroach. That’s exactly what a new paper, published in the professional journal "Bioinspiration and Biometrics," urges.
“Humans can run, but frankly our capabilities are nothing compared to what insects and some other animals can do,” said John Schmitt, an assistant professor at Oregon State University, a co-author of the paper, with Jonathan Clark, assistant professor at Florida State University. “Cockroaches are incredible. They can run fast, turn on a dime, move easily over rough terrain, and react to perturbations faster than a nerve impulse can travel.”
It’s that ability to move with a minimum of information processing and reaction time that attracts the researchers to the cockroach. Current walking robots are highly inefficient because they require the ability to process considerable amounts of data in order to move. If the motion reflex can be streamlined, then the horizons of walking or running robots will be greatly expanded. “You want to free up processing power to do other things,” said Schmitt.
Most important, the cockroach can move swiftly over rough terrain—only slowing by 20 percent to surmount obstacles three times the height of its hips. A robotic device with similar capabilities will be able to traverse far more of the Earth—and other planets—than is now possible.
“Sixty percent of the Earth’s landmass can’t be traversed by wheeled robots,” Schmitt pointed out. If successfully constructed, Schmitt said, running robots could serve valuable roles in difficult jobs, such as military operations, law enforcement or space exploration. “In a military operation, a group of such mobile robots could communicate with one another across a wireless network,” Schmitt suggested.
The paper draws on previous studies of guinea hens, which demonstrate particular dexterity in running across obstacles. “We’re trying to get ideas from cockroaches, guinea hens and other creatures. The end result might not even look like a cockroach,” said Schmitt. “We’re trying to understand how leg energy management contributes to robust running.”
The work follows other attempts to create six-legged robotic devices such as the RHex, which was created at Carnegie-Mellon University.
Schmitt speculated that if funding for research continues, it might be possible to construct a working prototype in six to 10 years. The work is funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation.
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