Over the past few years, MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) have developed a variety of powerful robots: some can fly like a falcon, as some can be like a dove perched, there can be like swordfish like swimming. Recently, the list of robot CSAIL on the addition of a more powerful robot that can glide like a snake. In this week’s international conference IEEE / RSJ intelligent robots and systems, CSAIL researchers showed that the development of a flexible robot arm.
Inspired by octopus tentacles, the robot arm can under no circumstances manipulated in a thin tube like walking through a narrow environment.
The arm is made by a 3D printing mold assembly, is one of the most recent projects CSAIL, is committed to the development of soft-type robots, robot more flexible, more resilient, better adapt to the environment.
Traditional “hard” because of the connection joint robot has many shortcomings and limitations, they are not able to move in a narrow space, and especially the hard parts must be installed in order to deal with dangers such as building collapses. However, the variability of the soft joint-type robot, which means that it can move freely in a variety of environments, such as drilling tubules, changing direction. In addition, since the machine flexible, it can deal with minor collision, and through the collision to obtain environmental information.
But the design of such a unique and powerful robot is not an easy task. In order to arrive at a value so that the robot can adapt to various environments elasticity, the team needs to be a lot of experiments and complex and sophisticated calculations.
“To enable the robot to do many environments, it will be exposed to different environments, complex calculation, the various thresholds environments Moreover, this so-called ‘soft’ robot still needs some rigid structure, such as high-pressure brakes. Installed on chewing gum to be as soft as a robot in such a hard thing, you need to overcome a lot of difficulties. Therefore, to successfully develop a truly powerful feature soft robots, we also long way to go. “Responsible person Marchese says.
In addition, Marchese said the intention is to change its R & D all the established view of the robot, rather than a soft robot occupied the future world. In this increasingly common robot, the robot threat rampant era, this non-injurious rubber soft robots can alleviate human concerns.
