Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck
A new robot, developed by researchers at the University of California-Berkeley and inspired by cockroaches, is able to navigate through a series of obstacles without needing additional motors or sensors thanks to the unusual shape of its body. Gross.
As the team behind the robot explains, the robot features a rounded shell similar to that of the discoid cockroach and is capable to sneaking through gaps between vertical beam obstacles.
While other, similar robots have been designed to perform tasks while avoiding objects, this is said to be the first designed specifically to traverse obstacles. The researchers hope that the machine will inspire future terrestrial machines to perform search and rescue operations or monitor the environment.
Rounded shells help execute roll-type maneuver
“The majority of robotics studies have been solving the problem of obstacles by avoiding them, which largely depends on using sensors to map out the environment and algorithms that plan a path to go around obstacles,” lead author Chen Li, a researcher in the Poly-PEDAL Lab and the Biomimetic Millisystems Lab at the university, explained in a statement.
However, he added, “when the terrain becomes densely cluttered, especially as gaps between obstacles become comparable or even smaller than robot size, this approach starts to run into problems as a clear path cannot be mapped.”
So Li and his colleagues used high-speed cameras to monitor how discoid cockroaches moved through an artificial obstacle course filled with grass-like vertical beams with small spacing, and attempted to mimic that movement in their new robots. The machines were outfitted with three different artificial shells – an oval cone similar in shape to a cockroach body, a flat oval, and a flat rectangle – to see how each on affected their movement through the beams.
The more rounded the artificial shell was, the easier it was for the cockroaches to move through the obstacles. This because they had an easier time executing a maneuver in which they rolled their bodies so that their thin sides fit through the gaps, making it possible for their legs to push off beams to help them maneuver through the obstacles.
Building better bots with terradynamics
This rolling behavior emerged with no change to the computer programming, originating instead from the shell itself.
“We showed that our robot can traverse grass-like beam obstacles at high probability, without adding any sensory feedback or changes in motor control, thanks to the thin, rounded shell that allows the robot body to roll to reduce terrain resistance.” explained Li. “This is a terrestrial analogy of the streamlined shapes that reduce drag on birds, fish, airplanes, and submarines as they move in fluids. We call this ‘terradynamic’ streamlining.”
“There may be other shapes besides the thin, rounded one that are good for other purposes, such as climbing up and over obstacles of other types,” he added. “Our next steps will be to study a diversity of terrain and animal shapes to discover more terradynamic shapes, and even morphing shapes. These new concepts will enable terrestrial robots to go through various cluttered environments with minimal sensors and simple controls.”
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