Researchers have developed a new robotic muscle that is 1,000 times stronger than a human's, thanks to a material with a wide range of properties.
Vanadium dioxide has been the belle of the ball in the materials world, prized for its ability to change size, shape and physical identity. Now, material enthusiasts can add muscle power to the list of those extraordinary attributes.
See also: Andy Rubin's Next Big Thing at Google: Robots
Led by Junqiao Wu, a physicist with joint appointments at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in the material-sciences division and University of California, Berkeley’s department of material science and engineering, a team of researchers demonstrated a micro-sized robotic muscle created from vanadium dioxide, according to robotic muscle is 1,000 times more powerful than a human muscle. It can catapult objects 50 times heavier than itself over distances five times its length — all within 60 milliseconds.
Vanadium dioxide is valuable because it is one of the few known materials that is both an insulator and a conductor. At low temperatures, vanadium dioxide acts as an insulator, but at 67 degrees Celsius (152 degrees Fahrenheit), the material abruptly becomes a conductor. What's more, vanadium dioxide crystals undergo a “temperature-driven structural phase transition” when warmed, rapidly contracting along one dimension, while expanding along the other two. All of this makes vanadium dioxide the perfect material for creating artificial muscles.
However, the device's appeal doesn't stop there. Because of its ability to “remotely detect a target and respond by reconfiguring itself to a different shape,” there’s potential to create larger systems of the vanadium dioxide muscles, according to the report.
“Multiple micro-muscles can be assembled into a micro-robotic system that simulates an active neuromuscular system,” Wu said. “This simulates living bodies where neurons sense and deliver stimuli to the muscles and the muscles provide motion.”
Your move, Skynet.
We met The Cubinator for the first time at the 2010 World Maker Faire. The robot currently holds the Guinness world record for fastest machine solve of a Rubik's cube. Pete Redmond, who developed the robot for the final project of his master's degree, says that its solve time averages about 25 seconds. Webcams in the robot's eyes detect the colors on the cube and the machine solves the puzzle by using an algorithm to find the fewest moves. It also has has a sense of humor, shouting "oh dear!" when it occasionally drops the cube.
Even though the environmental effects of the Gulf oil spill may not be as bad as we initially feared, we can probably all agree that the oil didn't do the environment any favors. A team from MIT developed a fleet of robots that could clean up more efficiently in the future. The robots are equipped with a nanomaterial that can absorb 20 times their weight in oil. Each machine communicates with the other machines via GPS and Wi-Fi "to create an organized system for collection that can work continuously without human support."
Maybe there are a few people out there who genuinely enjoy sweeping and mopping floors, but the rest of us want this robot. Mint determines its location using "indoor GPS" and creates a map of the space as it cleans. For $250 you can get rid of your housekeeper.
A team at Carnegie Mellon University developed Snackbot to "support research into robust autonomous operation in office environments." We're pretty sure that's code for, "We could build a robot that delivers snacks, so why wouldn't we?" Research will allow the robot to navigate through congested areas in a socially acceptable fashion, detect individual people moving near it, recognize when someone that the it knows approaches, and autonomously learn to recognize new objects.
Baywatch is about to become even more unrealistic. EMILY, the robot lifeguard, isn't much to look at, but PopSci reports that it made 77,192 rescues last year. The current model is remote controlled, but a fully autonomous EMILY that uses a sonar device to scan for underwater movements will be available next spring.
Created by Jason Van Anden in 1996, Neil and Iona are considered elderly among working robots, but they were still spry and relevant enough to tour this year with the San Jose Museum of Art. The robots remain intriguing because of their ability to change expression, use body language and create "strangely endearing sounds." Frankly, they're cute. This mini documentary explains their creation.
You've probably played chess against a computer before, but table soccer? This robot uses a camera to perceive the playing field and then decides how the rods under its control should be moved. Originally developed at the Institute for Computer Science of the University of Freiburg, the robot is now sold as a game called StarKick.
Another project at Carnegie Mellon University, the Snakebot uses its "many internal degrees of freedom to thread through tightly packed volumes." In other words, it moves like a snake. It can coordinate the movements of its parts to swim, crawl, and even climb a tree.
DepthX is a collaborative project designed to create an underwater robot that can map three-dimensional spaces like flooded caverns and mines. The machine will first explore the deepest flooded sink hole in the world, the Zacatón Cenote in central Mexico.
DOMO was the doctoral work of Aaron Edsinger at MIT. The ultimate cool robot, it can accomplish tasks like making a drink, helping with chores, tracking an object and interacting with people. Watch DOMO in action here.
Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.
Image: Berkeley Lab