The "California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR)" is testing a new kind of robot, that should be useful not only for the army. They follow a very unique design, are not much bigger then a grenade, can be moved by remote-control, are silent like a whisper and can record or transmit movies and pictures on its own.
The design approach is very unique, because the robot IS only one axis with two wheels, that has all the core functionality attached to the axis. The robot is turned on by pulling a pin. This should make the robot even good to handle on situations, when soldiers are wearing gloves. The lack of an on/off switch will also benefit in such situations, when the robot is falling, what could hit the off-button incidentally. The robot can be controlled by a handheld device from remote, that has a build in monitor. It provides actually pictures from the robot-cam.
The robot is developed by ReconRobotics and was made for military purpose. The scenarios are quite exotic, Popular Mechanics write about the possible usage:
Even if the drone is spotted, and immediately stomped to death, a quick peek could reveal what kinds of weapons are present, and what condition the hostages are in. ReconRobotics also sells a command monitoring kit, which consists of an additional antenna and software that allows the footage to be viewed and recorded on a laptop. "You could throw it in, and do a quick 360 of the room," says Bignall. " So even if all you get is 30 seconds of footage, you can go back and review it frame-by-frame.
If you ask me, this sounds like pure Science Fiction that even tops James Bond and games like "Impossible Mission". Popular Mechanics continues:
The Recon Scout is inexpensive when it comes to robots—it costs $6000, or $9000 with an IR camera—and is built to survive a 30 ft drop onto concrete. ReconRobotics has also tested other options, like dropping the robot from a low-flying unmanned aerial vehicle, and launching it from the same kind of compressed-air guns used to fire tear-gas canisters.
You will definitely also check out this NASA-robot, that follows the same design of axis-control. It is extremely useful and flexible (see the video below).
There is one element on earth, we are very familiar with: water. But how often we try to play out new things with water? Ok, you will need zero gravity to do this here, but at least this is a really interesting inspiration. Look how water behave in zero-gravity. I can't tell myself, but I seen things like this very often at generative graphics, reactive forms and other "natural physics" coding. But I'll bet you don't know how a water bubble in space behaves, when it hits a fizzy tablet. The third part of the video will show it, so watch till end to find out.
One other interesting things with water is the cornstarch-innovation. This really kicks some ass!
Today we will take a look at the robot Grag, part of the Space Opera Captain Future. Space Opera - what a lovely term. On Wikipedia it reads:
Perhaps the most significant trait of space opera is that settings, characters, battles, powers, and themes tend to be very large-scale.
Captain Future is the brainchild of the science fiction writer Edward Hamilton. They were first published as stories and after Hamilton's death were filmed as a Manga TV series, translated and broadcasted in many countries and languages and gained overall success - maybe because of this stunning outer-space atmosphere and great soundtrack (at least in Germany).
Inside the series Curtis Newton, orphaned while their parents died, fights named as Captain Future the evil with his own intelligent robot called Greg and a shape-shifting android Otho. His father build those two robots with the scientists professor Simon Wright, who survived his body as brain in a tub. The brain had to be carried around in its glass-container and later got autonomous control mechanisms. What a cool background story! For more details look at captain-future.tv.
The robot Grag was built from pure metal parts, that gave him incredible strength compared to human. It was the first successful experiment in building an artificial intelligence robot by Captain Futures father. Greg's modular body design allows various enhancements like drills and lasers, which he hides in his steely chest. At least this clearly can be identified on all tin-robots I've seen so far!
Grag is grey, tall, dark, friendly and supportive. He is not such a talker like Otho is, he is more like someone who does. A totally reliable partner in the team. At least very clever, but not that smart like the professors brain Simon is.
Greg, Simon, Captain Future
I also found five maps form the early Caption Future books and if you search on YouTube for Capitan Future Grag, you likely will find some video footage.
Derived from soccer playing robots, smart little spiderbots are used to assist astronauts in the zero-gravity zone.
The idea is to spread a large net in space between four satellites in order to harness solar energy. The mini-robots will climb across this mesh to fix photovoltaic cells in place.
Cute in space
Here is a video from the European Space Agency that shows how this tiny bots capture this subtle net with their fine limbs.
The mini robots have several different software levels. The first level is the strategy level which defines the position and role of a robot, telling it to defend the goal for example, while the next level controls the complex motion functions.
This weblog is dedicated to fresh and alternate views on robotics. We will focus especially in music robots, toy robots, play and game and robots as well as the culture of robots. We are the the first robot-blog from Germany - and maybe from Europe - that write regularly on this topic! This blog is made by the same people around the Digital Tools Magazine. We will have some nice surprises later this year, so stay tuned!
