DARPA Legged Squad Support System (LS3) Demonstrates New Capabilities
Published on Sep 10, 2012 by DARPAtv
This video depicts field testing of the DARPA Legged Squad Support System (LS3). The goal of the LS3 program is to demonstrate that a legged robot can unburden dismounted squad members by carrying their gear, autonomously following them through rugged terrain, and interpreting verbal and visual commands.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40gECrmuCaU [Boston Dynamics upload, including text "The Legged Squad Support System (LS3) is a rough-terrain robot developed by Boston Dynamics with funding from DARPA and the US Marine Corps. It is designed to carry 400 lbs of payload and travel 20 miles without refueling.", at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7ezXBEBE6U ]
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Sand Flea Jumping Robot
Published on Mar 27, 2012 by BostonDynamics
Sand Flea is an 11-lb robot with one trick up its sleeve: Normally it drives like an RC car, but when it needs to it can jump 30 feet into the air. An onboard stabilization system keeps it oriented during flight to improve the view from the video uplink and to control landings. Current development of Sand Flea is funded by the The US Army's Rapid Equipping Force. For more information visit http://www.BostonDynamics.com .
RHex is a 30-lb robot designed for mobility on rough terrain. It is operated remotely via an RF link that includes a high-resolution video uplink. RHex can operate right-side-up or up-side down, as shown in the video, and goes for up to four hours on one charge of its batteries. RHex has been around for several years, but we redesigned this version for ruggedness, long battery life, maintainability, and improved mobility. This version of RHex was funded by the US Army's Rapid Equipping Force. For more information about RHex visit http://www.BostonDynamics.com .
Harvard University researchers working under DARPA's Maximum Mobility and Manipulation (M3) program recently demonstrated the ability to manufacture low-cost silicone robots with microfluidic channels that allow for air and fluids to be pumped in to control movement, color and temperature.
In this video, a soft robot walks onto a bed of rocks and is filled with fluid to match the color of the rocks and break up the robot's shape. The robot moves at a speed of approximately 40 meters per hour; absent the colored fluid, it can move at approximately 67 meters per hour.
Future research will be directed at smoothing the movements; however, speed is less important than the robot's flexibility. Soft robots are useful because they are resilient and can maneuver through very constrained spaces.
For this demonstration, the researchers used tethers to attach the control system and to pump pressurized gases and liquids into the robot. Tethered operation reduces the size and weight of such robots by leaving power sources and pumps off-board, but future prototypes could incorporate that equipment in a self-contained system. At a pumping rate of 2.25 mL per minute, color change in the robot required 30 seconds. Once filled, the color layers require no power to sustain the color.
Earthworms creep along the ground by alternately squeezing and stretching muscles along the length of their bodies, inching forward with each wave of contractions. Snails and sea cucumbers also use this mechanism, called peristalsis, to get around, and our own gastrointestinal tracts operate by a similar action, squeezing muscles along the esophagus to push food to the stomach.
Now researchers at MIT, Harvard University and Seoul National University have engineered a soft autonomous robot that moves via peristalsis, crawling across surfaces by contracting segments of its body, much like an earthworm. The robot, made almost entirely of soft materials, is remarkably resilient: Even when stepped upon or bludgeoned with a hammer, the robot is able to inch away, unscathed.
Sangbae Kim, the Esther and Harold E. Edgerton Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT, says such a soft robot may be useful for navigating rough terrain or squeezing through tight spaces.
The Air Force wants its new spy sensors to work like a bee’s eye.
Here’s why: Most of the military’s optical sensors, which convert an image into an digital signal, are designed by drawing inspiration from human optics. This means that our machines have so far been largely limited to seeing only what we can see. The problem is, the human eye isn’t great. Even if you’re blessed with 20:20 vision, you miss a lot of stuff because our eyes can only detect a small proportion of the all the light waves that are actually bouncing off objects.
Superficially of course, our vision allows us to differentiate between colors, how close something is, and whether it’s coming towards us or away from us – but other animals can see much more [ http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/01/spiders-3d-vision/ ].
If you were to dump an average human in the wilderness somewhere, he’d have practically no idea where in the world he was, if he were to rely on just his sight. But do the same to an arthropod, say a bee or a locust, and it would stand a much better chance at finding its way back to base. That’s because their optical systems can see one very important thing that we can’t: polarized light wave patterns.
The pattern of a polarized light wave is such that it indicates the location of where the light is coming from and the insect understands its own geo-location in relation to the polarized light’s origin. In this way, the insect has a built in, autonomous, and sophisticated way of navigating from point A to point B.
What if we could develop sensors that work more like a bee’s eye than a human one? Navigation systems would be autonomous, they wouldn’t need to beam their signal to second party and wait to be told where it was. It’d just know. In other words, they’d work fine by themselves – no loosing the sat nav signal when you’re car’s flanked by downtown skyscrapers or as you go through a tunnel.
Well, that’s exactly what the U.S. military wants to do. In the latest call [ http://www.dodsbir.net/solicitation/sttr12B/af12B.htm ] for research proposals from small business, the U.S. Air Force is asking for someone to develop “biologically-inspired integrated vision systems.”
In creating the next generation of imaging sensors, the Air Force hopes to improve the navigational capabilities, target detection and range of its military hardware. It’s looking to back a program to create an unified system where data is input, crunched, and used by the same computer to allow “autonomous behavior.” This would make the whole process of navigation altogether faster and more efficient and reduce the need for boots on the ground.
Insect vision also differs from ours in color differentiation, they’re able to detect broad-spectrum light waves, which means they can see colors that we can’t. When we see one shade of red, they might see several distinct shades. They’re altogether more skilled at discriminating where one object starts and another begins. This is something that the Air Force is also enthusiastic to include in the project, expressing interest in “camouflage-breaking techniques.”
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=78944571 (in particular the second group of items, from the second item "Comeback Nation: Why the U.S. Economy Is Much Stronger Than You Think" through "Tiny Factory Could Make Solar Panels Anywhere" and including the tie-ins included after that last-named item) and preceding and following
A team at the Cincinnati Zoo put a 1200-frame-per-second camera on a track and zoomed along for a memorable ride. National Geographic says it is the first time the swift cat has been filmed in slow-mo, high-definition from the side, rather than from a fixed location. This way, the camera was able to capture every sinew and stride in dramatic detail.
Unfortunately, cheetahs are not outrunning extinction. Their numbers have dwindled below 15,000 in Africa due to the shrinking of their habitat and scarcity of prey, the WCS says. In some parts, the populations of subspecies have fallen below 100, putting them among the most endangered cats.